“What do you imply AI received’t repair all the pieces?” That dialog with a advertising and marketing government final month sparked my journey into creating this advertising and marketing government playbook for 2025.
As I dove into knowledge and interviewed executives throughout industries, I found one thing stunning: Whereas 56% of promoting leaders imagine advertising and marketing has modified extra up to now three years than the earlier 50, probably the most profitable leaders are taking a way more nuanced strategy than I anticipated.
To grasp the place advertising and marketing is headed, HubSpot surveyed 724 advertising and marketing leaders on the director stage 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 convey 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:
Growing 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 usually create productive pressure, pushing leaders to seek out inventive options that steadiness 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 Steadiness: A New Playbook for 2025
Keep in mind when advertising and marketing groups had to decide on between driving fast 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 robust emphasis on deeper buyer understanding (16%) and model consciousness (16%).
And these aren’t both/or decisions — many leaders reported pursuing a number of strategic priorities concurrently.
Sarah Reece, director of demand era 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 way in which our gross sales workforce outbounds, we’re constructing a model status 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 strategy. “We truly noticed a reasonably fast influence 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 large model second we introduce.”
With this basis of balanced priorities in place, let’s have a look at how advertising and marketing leaders are utilizing AI and automation to execute these targets successfully.
How Advertising Executives Are Approaching AI and Automation
Advertising leaders are transferring previous the “AI will repair all the pieces” mindset to a extra strategic strategy. 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 Steadiness
What fascinates me most about these numbers isn’t simply the excessive adoption charges — it’s how leaders thoughtfully combine AI into current workflows.
Christine Royston, chief advertising and marketing officer at Wrike, a workflow administration platform, has noticed this evolution firsthand.
“We’ve definitely seen a variety of change up to now three years with the rise, recognition, and accessibility of AI,” she explains.
“Essentially the most dramatic change I’ve witnessed is an growing shift in the 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 main focus for sustaining competitiveness.
Royston and her workforce are responding by investing closely in AI-powered predictive analytics.
From Idea to Apply
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 remodeling 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 received and can proceed profitable. Making these items scale properly 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 strategy with Rovo, Atlassian’s AI-powered instrument.
“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 number of the messaging for our merchandise,” Faus explains.
Her workforce 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 capabilities.
“AI in venture administration has been extraordinarily useful for creating venture boards, automating standing updates, and holding work transferring ahead,” she explains.
“We’re additionally heavy customers of AI for video and podcast modifying and manufacturing. AI has made all the pieces associated to modifying video and audio, selecting out clips for social, and transcribing for social posts, captions, and content material repurposing past straightforward.”
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 all the pieces we do at Sendoso as a result of they’re the beating coronary heart of fine advertising and marketing. We imagine that AI is a tremendous method to increase human workflows, nevertheless it wants a human on the helm, and oversight is important.”
Jenkins’ workforce has discovered success by specializing in utilizing AI to boost slightly than change human capabilities:
“We use AI for analysis, to assist us goal our advertising and marketing efforts extra successfully, to eradicate mundane, guide work, and to ship the fitting personalised reward and message to the fitting 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 steadiness.
“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 revolutionary methods, and fostering genuine buyer connections.”
This balanced strategy to AI units up one of many greatest challenges advertising and marketing leaders face in 2025: scaling personalization with out shedding authenticity. Let’s have a look at how probably the most profitable executives are tackling this problem.
Professional tip: Establish areas the place AI can deal with routine duties, liberating your workforce to deal with strategic considering and artistic improvement.
How Advertising 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 main problem.
Past Fundamental 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 Deb Garber emphasizes this evolution at Kount, an Equifax firm targeted on fraud prevention and digital id options.
“Advertising 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 frequently shifting and may make it difficult to maintain up.”
Information-Pushed Personalization at Scale
For monetary providers corporations, this problem is especially acute. Marla Pieton, senior director of influencer advertising and marketing at Alkami, a digital banking platform, has seen how subtle personalization drives precise enterprise outcomes.
“In digital banking, the sooner we will analyze account holder conduct, the sooner we will tailor services to fulfill their wants,” she explains. “This stage of personalization could 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 knowledge know-how with superior analytics, notably predictive analytics, can present helpful foresight into consideration holder wants and preferences, enabling extra proactive and personalised experiences.”
Professional tip: Give attention to refining your knowledge assortment and analytics course of. Prioritizing behavioral insights and predictive analytics will aid you anticipate buyer wants and guarantee campaigns stay impactful and related.
Constructing Belief By Transparency
Probably the most attention-grabbing approaches I encountered got here from Huntress, a cybersecurity firm. Chief Advertising Officer Jason Marshall takes a radically clear strategy 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 knowledge assortment and the way we use it.”
Marshall emphasizes that whereas extra shoppers are acutely aware of their data-sharing practices, having clear-minded insurance policies and trustworthy dialogue helps keep belief.
This deal with belief turns into much more important as personalization will get extra subtle. At GRIN, a creator administration platform, Senior Director of Product Advertising 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 purchasing expertise for audiences who genuinely belief these creators in the case of 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 actual magic occurs when corporations discover methods to personalize at scale whereas sustaining authenticity. Kacie Jenkins and her workforce at Sendoso mix AI, intent knowledge, and automation to personalize interactions at scale, producing over $1M in outbound certified pipeline per quarter.
This balanced strategy to scaling personalization pays off. Jenkins’ workforce efficiently makes use of AI and knowledge to ship “the fitting personalised reward and message to the fitting particular person on the proper time throughout the total buyer journey.”
The important thing? Taking knowledge upkeep critically. “Don’t use AI in case you can’t belief your knowledge!” Jenkins emphasizes.
This steadiness 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 remodeling their content material methods to fulfill this problem.
Professional tip: Begin with clear, dependable knowledge 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 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 knowledge:
20% prioritize value-aligned content material.
21% are growing model content material that includes business specialists.
17% deal with repurposing content material throughout channels.
The Rise of Genuine Video Content material
Probably the most 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 most important change in video advertising and marketing is the shift to short-form, genuine video as a method 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 client 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’ve got a practices and evangelist workforce to assist us join with extra technical audiences,” she explains.
The outcomes converse for themselves: Their technical evangelists have constructed important 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 strategy to neighborhood content material. Somewhat than limiting themselves to exterior specialists, they’ve created a program that turns their most engaged customers into content material creators.
By month-to-month coaching classes on new options, business tendencies, and platform finest practices, they’re serving to their neighborhood members grow to be genuine voices for the model.
Worth-First Content material Growth
“Fall in love with the shopper’s downside, 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.
Somewhat 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 strategy 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 apply 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, government vp of worldwide strategic consumer engagement at international advertising and marketing company TEAM LEWIS, reinforces this shift.
“Content material stays king. Nonetheless, it has grow to be extra of a ‘present, don’t inform’ strategy,” he explains. He factors to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Video Advertising survey, which discovered that 89% of shoppers need to see extra movies from manufacturers, with 75% particularly preferring short-form video content material on cell units.
Socialive VP of Advertising Jennifer Burak agrees.
“Transfer from promoting merchandise to fixing issues by highlighting how your model’s mission aligns along with your prospects’ values, similar to 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 revolutionary methods to maximise its influence. At Goldcast, Palash Soni sees AI as an important instrument for content material amplification.
“Excessive-quality video content material calls for a variety of work and prices so much to create,” Soni explains. “AI will help that work and value go so much farther by serving to take current video belongings throughout channels and campaigns.”
Jason Marshall at Huntress has taken a complete strategy 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 suggestions, constructing the cybersecurity experience of our shoppers will ideally convey 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 arrange and run operations by productiveness instruments like Plaky, Pumble, and Clockify, provided a helpful perspective:
“Search 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 it’s best to, too.”
In apply, this implies being strategic about content material repurposing. Jennifer Burak of Socialive recommends in search of platforms that assist groups effectively rework long-form movies into brief clips for social, blogs, or e-mail campaigns.
I’ve seen this multi-channel strategy work notably properly when the core content material is stable and value-driven.
Professional tip: Begin constructing your content material repurposing technique now. Establish your most respected 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 lots of of responses and talking with dozens of promoting leaders, I’m seeing a transparent sample emerge: Profitable content material methods in 2025 should steadiness 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 strategy to content material ties immediately into how advertising and marketing leaders are utilizing knowledge to drive choices. Let’s discover how executives are transferring past primary metrics to know and serve their audiences higher.
How Advertising Executives Are Utilizing Information to Drive Choices
Our analysis reveals an interesting evolution in how advertising and marketing leaders strategy knowledge. The priorities have shifted considerably, with leaders specializing in:
Content material consumption habits (33%)
Fundamental demographics (32%)
Buying habits (28%)
Shifting Past Fundamental Demographics
I’ve seen a major shift in my conversations with advertising and marketing leaders: They’re now not happy with realizing who their prospects are — they need to perceive how their prospects behave and what they like.
“Essentially the most important evolution in advertising and marketing up to now decade has been with the digital engagement of audiences by a number of channels and the harvesting of that knowledge footprint for higher conduct,” explains Vibhor Kapoor, chief enterprise officer at NextRoll, a advertising and marketing and promoting know-how firm.
“Central to each efficient advertising and marketing workforce’s technique as we speak must be leveraging the information to seize intent indicators, perceive conduct, make suggestions, and predict the subsequent finest actions.”
The Monetary Providers Instance
I’ve seen this evolution play out notably properly in monetary providers. At Alkami, Marla Pieton reveals how subtle knowledge evaluation drives personalization.
Her workforce makes use of superior analytics to attract on account holder conduct, “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 Information Challenges
Nonetheless, advertising and marketing executives face important hurdles of their knowledge initiatives:
21% cite decreased client belief in sharing private knowledge.
18% face growing knowledge privateness laws.
16% battle with poor knowledge high quality.
Sarah Reece, director of demand era at Orum, found an surprising resolution: specializing in high quality over amount. Her workforce made the daring transfer to chop all its demand seize digital spend and de-emphasize low-intent conversions.
“Our total lead quantity positively went down,” Reece explains. “However we’ve been capable of present that leads aren’t a robust indicator of pipeline well being… Solely high-intent leads are helpful for predicting pipeline (demo requests, contact gross sales, and so on.).”
The outcomes? “Whereas total leads decreased, we’ve been capable of develop our whole alternatives and enhance our alternative worth by focusing our intention on maximizing the fitting conversions.”
Inventive Options for 2025
Trying forward, advertising and marketing leaders are discovering revolutionary methods to steadiness knowledge wants with privateness issues.
Chris Williams, CMO at Arima, a cloud-based client insights platform that creates privacy-compliant artificial knowledge mirroring actual client conduct, suggests an unconventional strategy: utilizing artificial knowledge to create inhabitants simulations that may inform advertising and marketing methods whereas defending particular person privateness.
“Somewhat than try to acquire large knowledge units of hard-to-get knowledge on prospects, entrepreneurs want to corporations that create artificial knowledge as an alternative,” says Williams.
This evolving strategy to knowledge 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 getting ready their groups for what’s subsequent.
Professional tip: Give attention to accumulating and analyzing the fitting knowledge, not simply extra knowledge. As our specialists present, focused, high-quality knowledge factors usually show extra helpful than huge portions of normal data.
Advertising Govt Outlook: Making ready for 2025
As I’ve analyzed our analysis and spoken with advertising and marketing executives throughout industries, I’ve seen a transparent theme rising: Success in 2025 would require a fragile steadiness of innovation and fundamentals.
Our analysis reveals advertising and marketing executives are getting ready for a number of important 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 yr forward, they should stay versatile. Ensure 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 strategy the steadiness between innovation and fundamentals.
Take Kacie Jenkins, senior vp of promoting at Sendoso, who plans to dedicate 60% of her 2025 price range to model and class constructing, with the remaining 40% targeted on demand era.
Her reasoning?
“We all know that’s the method to create the belief and desire that may put us within the consideration set for the huge proportion of potential consumers (95%) who aren’t but available in the market,” she explains.
“ while you do one thing as we speak as a result of your future self will profit from it, like filling up the gasoline tank or organising automated financial savings deposits? Identical concept.”
Making ready for A number of Futures
By my conversations with executives, three key approaches to future-proofing stand out:
Worth First, Expertise Second. “Making these items scale properly is the place AI is available in for prime manufacturers,” explains Palash Soni. His workforce focuses on utilizing know-how to amplify confirmed methods slightly than change them.
Balanced Innovation. At Lumen Applied sciences, Joanie Kindblade and her workforce are “exploring prospects of AR and LLMs in product presentation and moral content material era” whereas sustaining deal with “buyer pursuits and moral algorithm inference.”
Belief-Primarily based Relationships. Ashley Faus emphasizes neighborhood and long-term relationships. Her workforce has expanded their Atlassian Creator program to include extra neighborhood members, internet hosting month-to-month coaching classes on new options, business tendencies, and platform finest practices to assist them improve their attain and engagement.
Professional tip: Begin getting ready for 2025 now by auditing your present advertising and marketing stack and figuring out areas the place AI can increase (not change) your workforce’s capabilities.
Advertising 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 data or strategic considering — although each have been spectacular — it was their means to remain grounded in advertising and marketing fundamentals whereas embracing transformation.
The info paints a transparent image of this steadiness: 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 components — 90% are investing in personalised experiences, and 20% are specializing in value-aligned content material.
Discovering Steadiness in Change
Our analysis confirms that advertising and marketing has modified extra up to now three years than within the earlier 50. But these leaders are doing greater than chasing the subsequent shiny AI instrument or leaping on each new pattern.
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 write down about dramatic technological transformations.
As an alternative, I found one thing extra nuanced: Essentially the most profitable advertising and marketing executives are those that can steadiness innovation with authenticity, automation with human connection, and fast 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 instrument or pattern. It’s to seek out the right combination of innovation and fundamentals that works in your viewers, your workforce, and your targets.
In spite of everything, as lots of our specialists 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 notice: This publish was initially printed in January 2023 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.
