“What do you imply AI gained’t repair the whole lot?” That dialog with a advertising and marketing govt final month sparked my journey into creating this advertising and marketing govt playbook for 2025.
As I dove into information and interviewed executives throughout industries, I found one thing stunning: Whereas 56% of promoting leaders consider advertising and marketing has modified extra previously three years than the earlier 50, probably the most profitable leaders are taking a way more nuanced method than I anticipated.
To know the place advertising and marketing is headed, HubSpot surveyed 724 advertising and marketing leaders on the director degree and above throughout main markets, together with:
The U.S. (27.49%),
Nice Britain (18.78%),
Netherlands (11.74%), and
Japan (10.91%).
Then, to carry these findings to life, I spoke with advertising and marketing executives from corporations like Wrike, Atlassian, Sendoso, and extra about how they’re approaching these challenges of their organizations.
Our analysis reveals three clear priorities for 2025:
Rising income and gross sales (20%).
Deepening buyer understanding (16%).
Increasing model consciousness (16%).
What fascinated me most in my conversations with advertising and marketing executives was how these priorities typically create productive stress, pushing leaders to seek out artistic options that stability innovation with confirmed fundamentals.
Let’s dive into what’s working now and what’s subsequent, with sensible insights from each our analysis and real-world advertising and marketing leaders.
Desk of Contents
The Progress–Model Stability: A New Playbook for 2025
Bear in mind when advertising and marketing groups had to decide on between driving quick income or constructing long-term model worth? That line is blurring.
Our analysis reveals advertising and marketing leaders are rejecting this false dichotomy.
Whereas 20% prioritize growing income and gross sales as their prime purpose, there’s additionally a powerful emphasis on deeper buyer understanding (16%) and model consciousness (16%).
And these aren’t both/or selections — many leaders reported pursuing a number of strategic priorities concurrently.
Sarah Reece, director of demand technology at Orum, a gross sales acceleration platform, captures this shift completely.
“My philosophy is that model is demand, and each touchpoint is a model touchpoint,” she explains.
“From our social presence to our web site to the best way our gross sales staff outbounds, we’re constructing a model fame that creates belief, builds affinity, and drives desire so that people default to Orum once they come into the market.”
And the numbers again up this built-in method. “We truly noticed a fairly quick impression on our demand gen targets when taking decisive motion to emphasise model,” Reece shares.
“Direct and natural internet visitors elevated, social attain climbed, pipeline and income grew, and deal velocity elevated too … If something, progress was exponential and has continued to tick up with each massive model second we introduce.”
With this basis of balanced priorities in place, let’s take a look at how advertising and marketing leaders are utilizing AI and automation to execute these targets successfully.
How Advertising and marketing Executives Are Approaching AI and Automation
Advertising and marketing leaders are transferring previous the “AI will repair the whole lot” mindset to a extra strategic method. Our analysis reveals advertising and marketing leaders are prioritizing three key AI initiatives for 2025:
Leveraging AI to create multi-modal campaigns (24%).
Utilizing AI brokers for end-to-end advertising and marketing automation (22%).
Implementing AI-powered reporting instruments for ROI analysis (21%).
Discovering the Proper Stability
What fascinates me most about these numbers isn’t simply the excessive adoption charges — it’s how leaders thoughtfully combine AI into present workflows.
Christine Royston, chief advertising and marketing officer at Wrike, a workflow administration platform, has noticed this evolution firsthand.
“We’ve actually seen a whole lot of change previously three years with the rise, reputation, and accessibility of AI,” she explains.
“Probably the most dramatic change I’ve witnessed is an growing shift in direction of delivering environment friendly progress by data-driven decision-making.”
In response to Wrike’s 2024 Impactful Work Report, greater than 80% of enterprise leaders have named effectivity their major focus for sustaining competitiveness.
Royston and her staff are responding by investing closely in AI-powered predictive analytics.
From Principle to Observe
Whereas many advertising and marketing groups are nonetheless experimenting with AI, some are already seeing concrete advantages. At Goldcast, a B2B video platform, CEO Palash Soni sees AI reworking content material creation and distribution.
“The basics of what makes a B2B model profitable haven’t modified,” he explains.
“Excessive-quality thought management, differentiated PoV, standout attention-grabbing content material, and a bulletproof operations base have at all times gained and can proceed profitable. Making this stuff scale nicely is the place AI is available in for prime manufacturers.”
Ashley Faus, head of lifecycle advertising and marketing at Atlassian — a office collaboration and productiveness software program firm — takes a focused method with Rovo, Atlassian’s AI-powered software.
“We used it to work on a content material audit, brainstorm matters, and even create a customized agent so as to add context on a few of the messaging for our merchandise,” Faus explains.
Her staff plans to increase these capabilities: “I foresee us creating extra brokers to assist analyze asset and channel efficiency, shut gaps in our content material technique, and personalize the journey for various personas.”
At Orum, Sarah Reece has discovered sensible functions throughout a number of features.
“AI in venture administration has been extraordinarily useful for creating venture boards, automating standing updates, and preserving work transferring ahead,” she explains.
“We’re additionally heavy customers of AI for video and podcast modifying and manufacturing. AI has made the whole lot associated to modifying video and audio, choosing out clips for social, and transcribing for social posts, captions, and content material repurposing past simple.”
Balancing AI and Human Creativity
What struck me most in my conversations with leaders was their emphasis on sustaining human oversight.
Kacie Jenkins, senior vp of promoting at Sendoso, an enterprise gifting and advertising and marketing engagement platform, put it completely:
“Human connection and considerate personalization are the guts of the whole lot we do at Sendoso as a result of they’re the beating coronary heart of fine advertising and marketing. We consider that AI is an incredible strategy to increase human workflows, but it surely wants a human on the helm, and oversight is important.”
Jenkins’ staff has discovered success by specializing in utilizing AI to reinforce fairly than change human capabilities:
“We use AI for analysis, to assist us goal our advertising and marketing efforts extra successfully, to remove mundane, handbook work, and to ship the precise personalised reward and message to the precise particular person on the proper time throughout the total buyer journey.”
Whereas AI adoption is accelerating, advertising and marketing executives emphasize the significance of considerate implementation. Wrike’s Royston advocates for stability.
“Though we welcome AI implementation because it permits for elevated alternatives for high-impact work and collaboration,” she explains, “human creativity and empathy are irreplaceable in crafting compelling storytelling, creating modern methods, and fostering genuine buyer connections.”
This balanced method to AI units up one of many largest challenges advertising and marketing leaders face in 2025: scaling personalization with out shedding authenticity. Let’s take a look at how probably the most profitable executives are tackling this problem.
Professional tip: Determine areas the place AI can deal with routine duties, releasing your staff to give attention to strategic considering and inventive growth.
How Advertising and marketing Executives Are Scaling Personalization
The numbers from our analysis inform a compelling story about personalization in 2025:
90% of promoting leaders supply considerably or very personalised experiences.
86% report that personalization will increase gross sales reasonably or considerably.
18% cite quickly altering viewers lives as their major problem.
Past Primary Personalization
These statistics solely inform a part of the story. In my conversations with advertising and marketing leaders, I found they’re utterly rethinking what “personalised” means in 2025. VP of Advertising and marketing Deb Garber emphasizes this evolution at Kount, an Equifax firm centered on fraud prevention and digital id options.
“Advertising and marketing is continually evolving, and so are our goal audiences,” Garber explains. “What they need, how they behave, how they need to be communicated with is regularly shifting and might make it difficult to maintain up.”
Knowledge-Pushed Personalization at Scale
For monetary companies corporations, this problem is especially acute. Marla Pieton, senior director of influencer advertising and marketing at Alkami, a digital banking platform, has seen how refined personalization drives precise enterprise outcomes.
“In digital banking, the quicker we will analyze account holder habits, the quicker we will tailor services and products to fulfill their wants,” she explains. “This degree of personalization might be the deciding consider whether or not an account holder stays loyal to their monetary establishment or seeks options.”
The answer? In response to Pieton, it’s about modernizing your know-how stack:
“To remain forward, modernizing information know-how with superior analytics, significantly predictive analytics, can present invaluable foresight under consideration holder wants and preferences, enabling extra proactive and personalised experiences.”
Professional tip: Deal with refining your information assortment and analytics course of. Prioritizing behavioral insights and predictive analytics will assist you to anticipate buyer wants and guarantee campaigns stay impactful and related.
Constructing Belief By way of Transparency
One of the crucial fascinating approaches I encountered got here from Huntress, a cybersecurity firm. Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Jason Marshall takes a radically clear method to personalization.
“We offer a full audit log so prospects can see how we use their enterprise data,” says Marshall. “We additionally publish detailed insurance policies concerning information assortment and the way we use it.”
Marshall emphasizes that whereas extra customers are aware of their data-sharing practices, having clear-minded insurance policies and sincere dialogue helps keep belief.
This give attention to belief turns into much more important as personalization will get extra refined. At GRIN, a creator administration platform, Senior Director of Product Advertising and marketing and Partnerships Olivia McNaughten sees co-selling as the subsequent frontier.
“If you let creators select merchandise they genuinely love and share them with their viewers, you create an unforgettable procuring expertise for audiences who genuinely belief these creators in relation to product suggestions.”
Professional tip: “Empower creators to take the result in curate and promote merchandise,” says McNaughten. “It’s extra private, extra impactful, and delivers stronger outcomes for each manufacturers and creators.”
Scaling Personalization With out Shedding the Human Contact
The true magic occurs when corporations discover methods to personalize at scale whereas sustaining authenticity. Kacie Jenkins and her staff at Sendoso mix AI, intent information, and automation to personalize interactions at scale, producing over $1M in outbound certified pipeline per quarter.
This balanced method to scaling personalization pays off. Jenkins’ staff efficiently makes use of AI and information to ship “the precise personalised reward and message to the precise particular person on the proper time throughout the total buyer journey.”
The important thing? Taking information upkeep significantly. “Don’t use AI in the event you can’t belief your information!” Jenkins emphasizes.
This stability of know-how and belief units up one other essential problem advertising and marketing leaders face in 2025: creating content material that resonates throughout a number of channels whereas sustaining consistency and worth. Let’s discover how executives are reworking their content material methods to fulfill this problem.
Professional tip: Begin with clear, dependable information earlier than implementing AI-driven personalization instruments. The standard of your personalization efforts can solely be nearly as good as the information that drives them.
How Advertising and marketing Executives Are Reworking Content material Technique
Our analysis reveals advertising and marketing leaders are evolving their content material technique past primary product promotion. Three key tendencies emerged from our information:
20% prioritize value-aligned content material.
21% are growing model content material that includes business consultants.
17% give attention to repurposing content material throughout channels.
The Rise of Genuine Video Content material
One of the crucial dramatic shifts I’ve noticed is in video advertising and marketing. Jennifer Burak, vp of promoting at Socialive, a video content material platform, explains the basic change in viewers preferences:
“The largest change in video advertising and marketing is the shift to short-form, genuine video as a strategy to appeal to audiences with the purpose to get them to go deeper.”
This shift, she notes, is pushed by evolving social media habits and rising shopper desire for relatable content material over polished advertising and marketing supplies.
Constructing Professional Communities
At Atlassian, Ashley Faus has taken this authenticity precept even additional. “We now have a practices and evangelist staff to assist us join with extra technical audiences,” she explains.
The outcomes converse for themselves: Their technical evangelists have constructed vital followings, with one receiving LinkedIn’s High Voice badge in 2024 and one other changing into an everyday keynote speaker at main tech conferences.
However what actually caught my consideration was Atlassian’s method to neighborhood content material. Relatively than limiting themselves to exterior consultants, they’ve created a program that turns their most engaged customers into content material creators.
By way of month-to-month coaching periods on new options, business tendencies, and platform greatest practices, they’re serving to their neighborhood members change into genuine voices for the model.
Worth-First Content material Improvement
“Fall in love with the shopper’s drawback, not your product.”
This recommendation from Joanie Kindblade, senior director of product advertising and marketing at Lumen Applied sciences, a Fortune 500 tech firm offering enterprise-level networking, cloud, and safety options, captures how advertising and marketing executives are rethinking content material technique.
Relatively than main with product options, they’re specializing in understanding and addressing buyer challenges first.
Professional tip: Kindblade suggests creating content material that “resonates with buyer values by understanding their wants, preferences, and ache factors.” This customer-centric method is reshaping how advertising and marketing executives take into consideration content material.
Ashleigh Cook dinner, CMO at RainFocus, an occasion advertising and marketing platform, places this precept into follow by direct buyer engagement.
“We depend on insights from our personal consumer convention and buyer surveys to higher perceive the place alternatives exist for broader market schooling in addition to extra technical schooling on our platform,” she explains.
“It’s additionally important to have direct conversations with prospects and a relentless suggestions loop between gross sales and advertising and marketing.”
Noah Dye, govt vp of worldwide strategic consumer engagement at world advertising and marketing company TEAM LEWIS, reinforces this shift.
“Content material stays king. Nonetheless, it has change into extra of a ‘present, don’t inform’ method,” he explains. He factors to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Video Advertising and marketing survey, which discovered that 89% of customers need to see extra movies from manufacturers, with 75% particularly preferring short-form video content material on cellular gadgets.
Socialive VP of Advertising and marketing Jennifer Burak agrees.
“Transfer from promoting merchandise to fixing issues by highlighting how your model’s mission aligns together with your prospects’ values, reminiscent of sustainability, variety, or innovation,” Burak says. “Use storytelling to attach emotionally and collaborate with staff and prospects to create relatable video content material.”
Content material Effectivity and Sensible Repurposing
Whereas high-quality content material stays important, advertising and marketing leaders are discovering modern methods to maximise its impression. At Goldcast, Palash Soni sees AI as a vital software for content material amplification.
“Excessive-quality video content material calls for a whole lot of work and prices rather a lot to create,” Soni explains. “AI may help that work and price go rather a lot farther by serving to take present video property throughout channels and campaigns.”
Jason Marshall at Huntress has taken a complete method to content material by Huntress’s new accomplice portal. The platform combines cybersecurity coaching, product updates, and business insights in a single place, serving to construct buyer experience whereas strengthening their connection to the model.
“By offering ongoing entry to data on Huntress merchandise alongside deep dives into business matters and advertising and marketing and gross sales ideas, constructing the cybersecurity experience of our customers will ideally carry them nearer to our firm,” explains Marshall.
Sustaining High quality at Scale
“One concern I heard repeatedly was about sustaining content material high quality whereas scaling manufacturing. Marija Kojic, director of content material at CAKE.com, an organization that helps companies worldwide set up and run operations by productiveness instruments like Plaky, Pumble, and Clockify, provided a invaluable perspective:
“Engines like google are nonetheless giving priority to well-structured content material delivering excessive worth, in-depth data, infused with unique knowledgeable opinions and insights — and you need to, too.”
In follow, this implies being strategic about content material repurposing. Jennifer Burak of Socialive recommends searching for platforms that assist groups effectively remodel long-form movies into quick clips for social, blogs, or electronic mail campaigns.
I’ve seen this multi-channel method work significantly nicely when the core content material is stable and value-driven.
Professional tip: Begin constructing your content material repurposing technique now. Determine your most useful content material items and plan how they are often remodeled for various channels and audiences whereas sustaining their core worth.
Trying Forward: Content material Technique in 2025
After analyzing tons of of responses and talking with dozens of promoting leaders, I’m seeing a transparent sample emerge: Profitable content material methods in 2025 should stability authenticity, effectivity, and worth.
The best approaches mix:
Deep understanding of buyer challenges.
Professional and community-generated content material.
Sensible repurposing throughout channels.
Constant high quality requirements.
This multi-faceted method to content material ties straight into how advertising and marketing leaders are utilizing information to drive choices. Let’s discover how executives are transferring past primary metrics to know and serve their audiences higher.
How Advertising and marketing Executives Are Utilizing Knowledge to Drive Choices
Our analysis reveals a captivating evolution in how advertising and marketing leaders method information. The priorities have shifted considerably, with leaders specializing in:
Content material consumption habits (33%)
Primary demographics (32%)
Buying habits (28%)
Transferring Past Primary Demographics
I’ve observed a big shift in my conversations with advertising and marketing leaders: They’re now not glad with figuring out who their prospects are — they need to perceive how their prospects behave and what they like.
“Probably the most vital evolution in advertising and marketing previously decade has been with the digital engagement of audiences by a number of channels and the harvesting of that information footprint for higher habits,” explains Vibhor Kapoor, chief enterprise officer at NextRoll, a advertising and marketing and promoting know-how firm.
“Central to each efficient advertising and marketing staff’s technique at present needs to be leveraging the information to seize intent indicators, perceive habits, make suggestions, and predict the subsequent greatest actions.”
The Monetary Companies Instance
I’ve seen this evolution play out significantly nicely in monetary companies. At Alkami, Marla Pieton reveals how refined information evaluation drives personalization.
Her staff makes use of superior analytics to attract on account holder habits, “uncovering deeper patterns in classes like transaction historical past, service provider spend habits, channel utilization, and engagement with previous affords. This permits the data-informed digital banker to create extra related and well timed advertising and marketing campaigns.”
Navigating Knowledge Challenges
Nonetheless, advertising and marketing executives face vital hurdles of their information initiatives:
21% cite decreased shopper belief in sharing private information.
18% face growing information privateness laws.
16% wrestle with poor information high quality.
Sarah Reece, director of demand technology at Orum, found an surprising resolution: specializing in high quality over amount. Her staff made the daring transfer to chop all its demand seize digital spend and de-emphasize low-intent conversions.
“Our total lead quantity undoubtedly went down,” Reece explains. “However we’ve been in a position to present that leads are usually not a powerful indicator of pipeline well being… Solely high-intent leads are helpful for predicting pipeline (demo requests, contact gross sales, and so forth.).”
The outcomes? “Whereas total leads decreased, we’ve been in a position to develop our whole alternatives and enhance our alternative worth by focusing our intention on maximizing the precise conversions.”
Inventive Options for 2025
Trying forward, advertising and marketing leaders are discovering modern methods to stability information wants with privateness issues.
Chris Williams, CMO at Arima, a cloud-based shopper insights platform that creates privacy-compliant artificial information mirroring actual shopper habits, suggests an unconventional method: utilizing artificial information to create inhabitants simulations that may inform advertising and marketing methods whereas defending particular person privateness.
“Relatively than attempt to acquire large information units of hard-to-get information on prospects, entrepreneurs wish to corporations that create artificial information as a substitute,” says Williams.
This evolving method to information units up the broader problem advertising and marketing leaders face as they put together for 2025: balancing innovation with confirmed fundamentals. Let’s discover how executives are making ready their groups for what’s subsequent.
Professional tip: Deal with accumulating and analyzing the precise information, not simply extra information. As our consultants present, focused, high-quality information factors typically show extra invaluable than huge portions of normal data.
Advertising and marketing Government Outlook: Making ready for 2025
As I’ve analyzed our analysis and spoken with advertising and marketing executives throughout industries, I’ve observed a transparent theme rising: Success in 2025 would require a fragile stability of innovation and fundamentals.
Our analysis reveals advertising and marketing executives are making ready for a number of vital shifts:
20% are specializing in personality-led content material and creator partnerships.
21% are diversifying paid media approaches.
19% are updating web optimization methods for AI-driven search.
Embracing Uncertainty
“Even with the U.S. elections behind us, uncertainty will persist in 2025,” observes Noah Dye from TEAM LEWIS. “As manufacturers put together for the 12 months forward, they should stay versatile. Be sure that advertising and marketing plans can flex in response to alter.”
Strategic Useful resource Allocation
What’s shocked me most in these conversations isn’t simply what advertising and marketing leaders plan to do — it’s how thoughtfully they method the stability between innovation and fundamentals.
Take Kacie Jenkins, senior vp of promoting at Sendoso, who plans to dedicate 60% of her 2025 funds to model and class constructing, with the remaining 40% centered on demand technology.
Her reasoning?
“We all know that’s the strategy to create the belief and desire that can put us within the consideration set for the huge share of potential consumers (95%) who are usually not but out there,” she explains.
“You realize if you do one thing at present as a result of your future self will profit from it, like filling up the gasoline tank or establishing computerized financial savings deposits? Identical concept.”
Making ready for A number of Futures
By way of my conversations with executives, three key approaches to future-proofing stand out:
Worth First, Expertise Second. “Making this stuff scale nicely is the place AI is available in for prime manufacturers,” explains Palash Soni. His staff focuses on utilizing know-how to amplify confirmed methods fairly than change them.
Balanced Innovation. At Lumen Applied sciences, Joanie Kindblade and her staff are “exploring prospects of AR and LLMs in product presentation and moral content material technology” whereas sustaining give attention to “buyer pursuits and moral algorithm inference.”
Belief-Based mostly Relationships. Ashley Faus emphasizes neighborhood and long-term relationships. Her staff has expanded their Atlassian Creator program to include extra neighborhood members, internet hosting month-to-month coaching periods on new options, business tendencies, and platform greatest practices to assist them enhance their attain and engagement.
Professional tip: Begin making ready for 2025 now by auditing your present advertising and marketing stack and figuring out areas the place AI can increase (not change) your staff’s capabilities.
Advertising and marketing Management Reimagined: Insights for 2025
As I wrapped up my conversations with these advertising and marketing executives, I discovered myself excited and humbled by their shared insights.
What struck me most wasn’t simply their technical information or strategic considering — although each had been spectacular — it was their capability to remain grounded in advertising and marketing fundamentals whereas embracing transformation.
The info paints a transparent image of this stability: Whereas advertising and marketing leaders are specializing in AI for multi-modal campaigns (24%) and end-to-end automation (22%), they’re concurrently prioritizing human parts — 90% are investing in personalised experiences, and 20% are specializing in value-aligned content material.
Discovering Stability in Change
Our analysis confirms that advertising and marketing has modified extra previously three years than within the earlier 50. But these leaders are doing greater than chasing the subsequent shiny AI software or leaping on each new development.
As an alternative, they’re thoughtfully evaluating how new applied sciences and approaches can amplify what already works: understanding prospects, creating worth, and constructing belief.
I began this analysis anticipating to put in writing about dramatic technological transformations.
As an alternative, I found one thing extra nuanced: Probably the most profitable advertising and marketing executives are those that can stability innovation with authenticity, automation with human connection, and quick outcomes with long-term model constructing.
Charting Your Course for 2025
As you propose your technique for 2025, do not forget that the purpose isn’t to implement each new software or development. It’s to seek out the correct mix of innovation and fundamentals that works to your viewers, your staff, and your targets.
In any case, as a lot of our consultants jogged my memory, whereas the instruments of promoting might change, the core precept stays the identical: It’s all about creating real connections with the folks we serve.
Editor’s observe: This submit was initially printed in January 2023 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.