Put any 2 marketers in a room, and before long, you’ll have 3 opinions on how marketing is changing. Whether you think that the world has changed beyond all recognition in the last 2/5/10 years or that the basics are still the same, just with a new layer of glitter, here are 6 areas we think deserve some focus in 2025.
The AI juggernaut
We couldn’t ignore the big kahuna, could we?
Most of the attention has been on Generative AI, whether for making edits or generating content from scratch. There are definitely some strong opinions on how much you can hand over and how much oversight is needed. We’re firmly in the “AI for suggestions, but humans making the final decision” camp when it comes to content generation.
We’re more excited by the data analytics potential of AI, the ability to crunch all your data and find key groups of customers. That might be a group who could become your next VIPs with a little nudge, or a few who at risk of leaving you but can be pulled back.
You should also expect to see a big push on Conversational AI; chatbots on websites and social channels will become more capable as they no longer have to rely on pre-loaded responses. Pre-AI chatbots might be helpful if you entered “my debit card has been stolen”, but might not understand “I’ve been mugged and they took my card”. AI language models will recognise that these phrases are equivalent to each other and be able to help without needing you to retype your query.
Privacy Laws
In the first half of 2024, discussions around privacy focused on the planned Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill. As the bill was not passed into law before the General Election on July 4th, we had to wait for the new Government to decide its fate. As the main principles of the DPDI Bill had the support of all parties, it is now back as the Data Use & Access (DUA) Bill.
The Data & Marketing Association has an excellent deep-dive on the specific changes, but for our purposes there are a few things to highlight;
- Greater clarity on the application of Legitimate Interest;
- Easier data sharing through a “smart data framework”;
- Closer alignment between GDPR & PECR
These add up to a great opportunity for hyper-personalised marketing, as the rules become easier to interpret and give marketers greater confidence in what is allowed.
Employee Advocacy
Advocacy isn’t a brand new idea, but 2025 will find it in an important place.
Gartner’s “Hype Cycle” charts the response to new technologies in 5 phases. First comes the Innovation Trigger; a new technology is released and starts to gain attention. Second is the Peak of Inflated Expectations; “[new tech] will change the world; there’s never been anything like it”. Closely behind this is the Trough of Disillusionment; the tech doesn’t immediately match up to the hype, either in performance or in financial return for its backers.
Stage 4 is the Slope of Enlightenment; a more realistic picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the tech emerges as organisations gain more experience. The final stage is The Plateau of Productivity, where the tech delivers measurable results and starts to hit mass adoption.
Earlier this year, Gartner mapped Employee Advocacy to the Slope of Enlightenment. This means we can expect to see mass adoption in the next 12-18 months, so there’s still a window for brands to build an advantage in this space before it becomes crowded. Spotler Social allows you to explore the benefits of advocacy; your employees can share content as it is or adapt it to suit their existing voice.
Video Content
There are several strands that will drive the importance of video in 2025.
According to Demand Gen Report’s 2024 B2B Buyers Survey, webinars and social media have become noticeably more important in buying decisions.
LinkedIn has supported native video since 2017, but what’s new this year is the video feed in the mobile app.
The big difference this will make is that posting video in itself will not stand out. When your video competes solely with other videos, it will need to stand out on its own merits.
If you’re not sure where to start with social video, creating clips from your webinars is the smoothest way to handle both these trends at once.
Sustainability
Sustainability in the B2C world has been around for a while, but we’ll see it make real inroads into the B2B space in 2025. There are two things to notice as you try to understand what it means for you.
First up, there is willingness to pay more for properly sustainable solutions in several industries. Weirdly, this willingness is higher in the industries furthest from raw materials.
The other reason we wanted to bring sustainability to your attention is the existence of a priority gap. Multiple industries whose customers have indicated they would pay a premium for sustainable solutions lack a dedicated budget for putting such solutions into place. We’ll be hosting a webinar in February which will help you address this.
iOS 18
The rise of mobile opens has been a trend for a while, so we couldn’t ignore Apple’s launch of iOS18 in September.
However, in our particular case, mobile still doesn’t feature heavily in B2B audiences.
In our most recent B2B newsletter, only 0.06% of the engagement came from iOS18. iOS users of any kind made up 0.24% of the engagement, and mobile users a total of 0.31%.
So, while iOS is leading the pack amongst mobile devices, the changes won’t cause us to panic. We suggest you do the same analysis of your email performance before you decide how much time to spend optimising for iOS18.
The only constant is change
The maxim “you can’t control what happens, you can only control how you react to it” has been attributed to many different thinkers. Wherever it comes from, it’s solid advice!
Whether all, some or any of these trends will have a material impact on you specifically is impossible to know for sure. We’ll provide the tools and insights to address potential opportunities, if you keep your eyes open and make clear decisions. Deal?
