What Will Marketing Look Like in 2025? 9 Bold Predictions

Marketing is changing at a pace we couldn’t have anticipated just a few years ago. As B2B companies and their agencies start developing strategic plans for 2025, they’ll need to factor in these nine key trends that are changing the face of marketing.

1. Companies will place a premium on creativity.
   As I shared in this post inspired by world-renowned designer and architect Antoni Gaudi, there needs to be more creativity across marketing, and it’s threatening the very results we’re tasked with delivering. The same analytics, algorithms, and generative AI tools that provide value in many respects can hamper the creativity needed to differentiate your business. I call it a sea of sameness; another marketer described it as the beige-ing of content. (The rise of influencers doesn’t help: When everyone aspires to be a clone of one influential individual, the sameness overtakes the world like crabgrass.)

   We’ve reached a tipping point where businesses that want to capture buyers’ attention crave originality. For the first time in a while, our agency is starting the new-year planning from the premise that we need highly creative campaigns that highlight our clients’ unique value proposition in a standout way. This should make for some impactful work in 2025!

2. Operationalizing AI will deliver a competitive advantage.
   Our company’s AI Council meets weekly to discuss how we can operationalize generative AI to improve the quality and efficiency of our work and scale the business. This approach will take hold all across B2B in 2025.

   An AI Institute certification program shared that 75% of employees use AI in some form … but they’re not using it consistently. That likely means few best practices and no guardrails. 2025 will be the year that mid-sized companies get serious about operationalizing AI, especially within marketing disciplines like analytics, content creation, and SEO. The most successful will take an incremental approach—continually testing and refining—while keeping the initiative moving forward. And they’ll be rewarded with results that power them past bigger competitors.

3. In-house marketing will only exist in some mid-sized companies.
   The rising cost of talent, the hyper-specialization of marketing, and the rapid pace of digital transformation make it challenging for a middle-market company to staff the marketing function internally. Hiring a team with all the skill sets, capabilities, and expertise needed to generate results is cost-prohibitive for most. It also ties up a disproportionate percentage of the budget on salaries, bonuses, and benefits, leaving little for marketing execution. But an army of one can’t possibly do it all, either.

   I expect more mid-sized companies to stop building an in-house marketing team and instead adopt the fractional marketing model. These organizations will outperform competitors with deeper pockets by getting the proper slice of the specific skill sets and resources they need—and gaining the ability to flex that fractional team as conditions change and opportunities emerge.

4. CRMs will do much more to support marketing.
   We all hate it when we contact a company we already do business with, and they don’t seem to know us—lots of wasted time repeating our questions, no personalized offers. That happens when your customer relationship management (CRM) system isn’t equipped to build a loyal customer base and isn’t integrated with the enterprise systems that hold all the transactional information about the relationship.

   Growth-minded companies know this is a severe hindrance to driving profitable revenue. So, they’ll take a hard look at their marketing technology infrastructure and ask much more of their CRMs in the name of better ROI. At a minimum, they’ll expect much richer detail about the relationship: notes on past conversations with a rep, a history of documents exchanged, all the questions the customer has asked, and the products they’ve purchased.

5. Content strategy will evolve from SEO-focused to audience-focused.
   The emergence of new tools has transformed our search habits, which profoundly impacts content strategy. When AI-enabled tools like Perplexity serve concise summaries with citations, why would you ask Google to return a list of sources you must comb through yourself? Developing a content strategy primarily based on keywords will ensure your marketing is successful as search evolves.

   Effective marketers will develop content strategies rooted in a deep understanding of what’s important to buyers: their challenges, pain points, and problems that need solving. Keywords will still have value but no longer drive your content calendar. Creating an audience-focused content strategy is more challenging, but the payoff (better ROI) is worth it.

6. Savvy marketers will expand beyond the company blog.
   Have you noticed that your search results draw information from a more diverse set of sources now? Search tools aren’t just scraping your blog and website. So, if that’s the sole focus of your content strategy, you need more opportunities to engage.

   In 2025, marketers will deliver thought leadership through more informal sources. That means understanding where buyer conversations happen and how you can add to the discussion by being authentically helpful and insightful. For example, Reddit is building a nice following with its industry-specific “subreddits” focusing on peer knowledge sharing. And LinkedIn’s Reels feature is an excellent showcase for engaging video shorts.

7. Storytelling will thrive, with video leading the way.
   We all love a good story, which is why compelling content that moves buyers to action almost always involves storytelling. We’re also drawn to bite-sized content we can fit into our busy lives. Those two realities make video shorts an effective vehicle for engaging B2B buyers.

   Creative marketers will use video more strategically in the coming year, taking a nod from the movie world to develop trailer-like shorts that entertain and inform. (No more talking heads!) By making an emotional connection early in the buying journey, they’ll give prospects more reasons to keep moving through the revenue funnel. And by stirring up excitement among existing customers, they’ll create profitable brand loyalists.

8. Non-consultative sales will become (nearly) extinct.
   Prospective clients tell me they’re tired of the constant barrage of generic offers that go right into the Trash folder. But if no one is responding to these dumbed-down robo-emails, why are companies using them? I suspect it’s partly a cost function: They’re using AI to create vanilla messages and scatter-shoot them versus targeting a specific audience with a relevant offer.

   Now that marketing owns a large portion of the buyer journey, random outreach that aligns differently with the buyer’s needs will go the way of BlackBerry. Reputable companies will insist on grounding their marketing in profoundly understanding their buyers, what they care about, and the problems they want to solve. If roles like sales development representative (SDR) and business development representative (BDR) are to succeed in this new normal, they’ll need to morph into a more consultative function.

9. Third-party credibility will reign.
   When AI can create deepfake photos that are tough to spot, it naturally spotlights authenticity. Buyers want assurance that they’re dealing with a credible, legitimate company, and there are plenty of ways to demonstrate that you fit the bill.

   In 2025, we will see more emphasis on thought leadership—in trade publication bylines that talk trends, not products, and podcast guests who engage in unscripted, informative dialogues. We’ll also see more marketers doing the legwork to elicit genuine reviews from real customers on sites like Clutch and developing case studies that reassure buyers that their peers are getting value from the company’s solutions.

Marketing directions like these will be the difference-makers for growth-minded companies in 2025.

Written by Deb Andrews.
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