As AI and automation technologies continue to transform the landscape, marketing is evolving faster than ever before. With tighter scrutiny on marketing budgets, marketers are under pressure to optimize processes, boost efficiency, and demonstrate clear ROI at every stage.
We’ve always been big fans of HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, so when we saw its 2025 version, we knew we would want to share some of the insights the report covers.
Drawing data from 1,200 marketers across both B2B and B2C organisations, the report not only covers emerging strategies but also takes a deep dive into the rapidly evolving AI landscape. With over a quarter of the year already gone, we’ve picked some key insights from the report that we believe are already shaping the marketing landscape or will continue to impact marketers for the rest of the year and beyond.
Data-Driven Marketing at the Forefront of Marketers’ Minds
The Marketing industry has changed significantly in the past year. Unsurprisingly, AI has had a big influence, with data close behind, as marketers continue to become more data-driven across all avenues.
When asked what are the biggest ways the marketing industry has changed, 44% of marketers shared that focusing on the customer and their experience with the brand has become more important. Followed by 35% of marketers who rated creating content that reflects brand’s values is the most important for their businesses.
31% of marketers started using data to demonstrate ROI, and 35% now use data to inform marketing strategies. Data-driven marketing is definitely becoming a must rather than a ‘nice-to-have’, although marketers also reported worries about data privacy, as they are faced with challenges like poor data quality, and increased data regulations with the phasing out of third-party cookies.
Continued Increase of Brand-Led Marketing
Marketers are continuing to recognise the importance of brand awareness, leveraging data usage and AI to support with this approach.
92% of marketers plan to maintain or increase investment in brand awareness, while 1 in 4 marketers are currently exploring creating content that reflects their brand’s values. 65% of marketers also reported that addressing social issues in marketing campaigns were effective for their brand.
Brand awareness campaigns are usually a smart move in terms of growing and developing trust and customer loyalty. But, measuring brand awareness can be challenging, and although setting things like KPIs can make this easier, companies need to ensure campaigns are focused on delivering tangible results.
Visual Brand Storytelling
HubSpot’s report revealed that visual storytelling is overtaking text heavy content formats and is a key priority for marketers. This isn’t a surprise, with this being a trending move for a while, as B2B marketers rate websites, blogs, SEO, paid social media content and social media shopping as their top marketing channels in 2024.
Unsurprisingly, the top performing content format in 2024 was short form videos, images and live streamed videos.
This is a trend we have seen for a while, and as attention spans get shorter, and competition gets tougher, marketers will continue to look for opportunities to stand out in the market.
The Focus on Millennial and Gen Z audiences
It was no surprise to see the report dedicate a section to the shift in audiences. As something that has been discussed frequently, marketers are now prioritising how to engage with Millennial and Gen Z audiences.
Known for growing up online, these audiences are easy to target, but notoriously hard to engage, and companies are looking at different content avenues to be successful.
The HubSpot report references a 2024 example from Jaguar who were looking to reach a younger audience and raise awareness of its electric vehicle (EV) models. They knew how to capture their audiences by having a common interest, in this case, it was caring about the environment and sustainable brand practices, which they utilised throughout the messaging of the campaign.
Results revealed that 64% of Gen Zer’s and 63% of Millennials are willing to pay more for environmentally sustainable products, and that 1 in 4 will reduce their relationship with a company if they don’t believe in the brand values.
Aside from messaging, companies are also looking at different ways to target these audiences, with 70% of marketers reporting plans to target millennials, and 92% planning to maintain or increase their investments in podcasts and audio content; a key channel in reaching these target audiences.
The Rise of AI Chatbots in 2025
The report revealed that interest in marketing to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers is down more than 30% over the year. A huge reason behind this trend is that AI is viewed as influencing Millennials and Gen Zer’s, and as marketers shift their focus, tools like AI chatbots will be vital in communicating with them.
31% of Gen Zer’s report that they most often use AI platforms or chatbots to find information online, and more than one in three consumers hopes that AI will be more helpful for online research in the future.
For brands, showing up where consumers are and in the format they prefer to engage with is top of mind and 19% of marketers plan to build an SEO strategy for generative AI in search in 2025.
We’ve previously discussed limitations marketers can face when using generative AI, but AI chatbots can be a great opportunity to save time, engage audiences, and help companies engage with target audiences
The Struggle to Integrate AI for Marketers
54% of Marketers stated that they felt overwhelmed by the prospect of implementing AI into processes and work. Kieran Flanagan, the SVP of Marketing at HubSpot stated “Marketers need to learn a new skill set, a lot of the science of marketing will get automated by AI, leaving them more time for craft.”
Whilst this is true, the reality is that generative tools like Gemini and ChatGPT can help B2B marketers plan their social calendars, generate ideas and make content briefs. But when it comes to technical content, or in-depth writing, there still needs to be a balance of human expertise vs AI. Marketers are still trying to understand this balance, and we are already seeing the effects AI generated content has had on SEO.
Conclusion
As we reflect on the year so far, each of these trends are making an impact across the marketing landscape. In fact, marketing continues to move quickly, and 2025 has already revealed some of impacts of AI, and new challenges marketers are having to face.
It will be interesting to see what else can change as we move further into the year. There are unanswered questions right now, but as Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot stated, marketers need to think, “a year from now, will I feel like I’ve learned enough, tested enough, and evolved our strategies enough to keep up with the shifting landscape? … If the answer is no, get into the mindset of embracing new tech, and don’t be afraid to move fast. Or risk getting left behind.”
To download the full report from HubSpot, please click here.
