AI-Powered Marketing Is Driving Growth
The annual “State of Marketing Report” from HubSpot surveyed more than 1,200 marketing leaders across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, to explore what marketing teams are focusing on in 2025, what’s blocking them from growth, and what’s driving impact.
The results show marketers have embraced AI tools during the past year, which has opened new data privacy and quality concerns. Despite the prevalence of generative AI, companies are seeing content that demonstrates their brand values. Marketers are at a turning point for automation, AI, and creativity, and this blog explores three emerging trends related to this shift.
1. Strategy and Team Trends
As marketers look for ways to capture the attention of their target audiences, they are rethinking content strategy, goals, and top channels. Today’s decision makers are digitally savvy and are gravitating toward authentic, value-driven content, and more personalized marketing.
In addition, AI is impacting the roles and responsibilities of marketers in 2025 and driving the need for data-driven strategies that also address data privacy.
- Both B2B and B2C marketers are ramping up their focus on Millennial and Gen Z audiences
Each generation has its shared lens through which they view personal and professional decisions. Gen Zers and Millennials grew up online, making them easy to target, but also making them the hardest audience to reach for both B2B and B2C brands, according to HubSpot’s survey. Over 70% of marketers plan to target Millennials in 2025, making them the largest audience of decision-makers, and interest in targeting Gen Zers is up year over year. Interest in marketing to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers is down more than 30% year over year.
- Businesses are increasing investments in brand-led marketing, and authenticity resonates
It is a key priority for marketers to get leadership buy-in for brand-led campaigns in 2025. When asked about the biggest changes to the marketing industry in the past year, the top two responses were related to brand experiences and brand-led content. For the first time, 13% of marketers plan to invest in brand awareness in 2025. Marketers are also leaning into sharing content that reflects their brand values, such as social responsibility content.
- Data-driven marketing strategy is no longer a nice-to-have, but data privacy is a concern
When asked about the biggest changes to marketing in the past year, two of the top five were related to data. Marketers are in the process of becoming more data-driven in every capacity. The biggest challenges during this transition are consumer resistance to sharing personal data, poor data quality, and increased data privacy regulations—the phasing out of third-party cookies, for example. - Marketing teams are building a content-rich, social-driven future
Consumers want to know the brands they interact with and keep up with them across social media and their preferred content channels, like email. Marketing leaders are prioritizing hiring for social media, creative, and content roles in 2025, as well as marketing data analysts, who can support internal and customer-facing analysis projects. They’re looking to use AI to bridge the gap between current headcount and workload expectations. This evolution highlights a pivotal trend: the era of passive, one-size-fits-all marketing is over. Successful brands in 2025 will be the ones that actively listen, adapt, and engage with their audiences in real time.
- Personalized marketing experiences boost sales
The number one way that marketing leaders say the industry has changed over the past year is that “focusing on the customer and their experience with your brand became more important.” And in the HubSpot survey, 96% of marketers reported that personalized experiences have increased sales.
- Top Five B2B Marketing Strategies for 2025
- Using AI to turn text into multi-modal campaigns
- Using AI-powered reporting tools to evaluate the ROI of campaigns
- Automating marketing strategy and execution with AI
- Creating content that reflects your brand’s values
- Personality-led content, creators, and authentic engagement
2. Content Trends
We’ve entered the era of visual brand storytelling. In 2025, we expect to see a premium on visual content with compelling storytelling, even more authenticity, and an increase in niche influencer partnerships. For B2B brands, the top marketing channels resulting in ROI in 2024 were 1) website, blog, and SEO, 2) paid social media content, and 3) social media shopping tools. For B2C brands, the channels with the best ROI were 1) email marketing, 2) paid social media content, and 3) content marketing. For both B2B and B2C brands, the top performing content format in 2024 was short-form video, and the top channel that brands plan to use for the first time in 2025 is AI chatbots.
- Visual storytelling is overtaking text-heavy content formats
The most popular content formats for business-facing and consumer-facing brands is short-form video, followed closely by images. Attention may seem limited, but when consumers are engaged, they’re watching interviews, listening to podcasts, and tuning into live-streamed videos from brands and creators they find valuable and entertaining. The content formats that marketers say deliver the highest ROI are short-form video (21%), images (19%), and live-streamed videos (16%), and marketers plan to invest more in these channels in 2025.
- Podcasts and audio content are growing for B2B and B2C brands
Podcasts have become an influential format for people across all ages and stages in life. The average adult, across all generations, listens to around eight hours of podcasts each week. The research shows that podcasts are both popular and influential. After hearing about it on a podcast, 46% of weekly podcast listeners have purchased a product or service.
- The top social channels for 2025 are YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok
In 2025, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube will remain strong for both B2B and B2C brands. B2B marketers plan to invest more in LinkedIn, and B2C marketers in TikTok, reflecting how shoppers research new products and services personally and professionally. - Marketers are finding success with influencer marketing—specifically those with niche audiences
In 2024, 24% of marketers reported using influencer marketing, and both B2B and B2C brands found the most success with micro influencers with 10K – 100K followers. Working with smaller creators and influencers has allowed brands to build trust with new audiences, gain access to niche, tight-knit communities, and stretch their influencer marketing budget further. However, 86% of surveyed leaders believe it’s likely that AI-generated influencers or social media avatars will replace influencers by the end of 2025.
3. AI Trends
In the past year, marketers have become much more comfortable with conversational AI tools, generative AI for content creation, and using AI for research. Looking ahead, many plan to incorporate AI into their marketing strategy, and to invest in AI education and training. AI tools have impacted marketing roles and can take on a lot of the heavy lifting, but there’s a learning curve.
- AI tools are helping marketers keep up with increasing content needs and to conduct research
The top AI use cases for marketing are content creation: using generative AI to write copy or create images, using AI to conduct research or analyze data, chatting with AI to brainstorm content ideas, and asking AI for help with learning how to do things. In 2025, marketers plan to use AI to turn text-based content into multimedia campaigns, and to create AI agents to automate marketing workflows from strategy to execution.
- There’s still a learning curve to be addressed regarding AI in marketing
A little over two years since the launch of ChatGPT, the roles and responsibilities of marketers have changed. They are expected to be using and optimizing AI in their marketing workflows and know how to edit AI generated content. Along with the great power of AI tools comes a responsibility to maintain data security, integrity, and creativity in the world of automation and artificial intelligence.
- AI has changed how people search, and how brands need to think about their online presence
Nearly half of marketers have noticed that consumer use of AI for search has positively impacted their search traffic. While consumers across generations haven’t fully switched over to AI-assisted search, 31% of Gen Zers report that they most often use AI platforms or chatbots to find information online. In 2025, 19% of marketers plan to build an SEO strategy for generative AI in search.
The marketing landscape in 2025 is at a crossroads of artificial intelligence and human creativity. As AI tools help take on some of the heavy lifting of data analysis, content optimization, and workflow automation, marketers will be able to focus on creating authentic connections and valuable brand experiences. The future is not about choosing between AI and authenticity, but about how to use them most effectively. Whether you’re a B2B brand focusing on value-driven content, or a B2C company sharing user-generated stories, successful marketing in 2025 will stem from being present where your audiences are, speaking to their experiences, and using technology to scale those connections.
The adoption of AI has tremendous potential benefits for B2B manufacturers. Grant Marketing can help you explore what will work best for your business needs. Contact us now to discuss your marketing needs or call (413) 259-0319 to get started. Download our e-book, “How to Implement AI in B2B Marketing for Manufacturers,” for a detailed blueprint on how to unlock the power of AI to drive business growth.
