The Top Marketing Trends and Technologies for 2025: Marketers Balance AI and the Human Touch
Companies today operate in an environment where they are both blessed and cursed by the proliferation of channels and tools for creating and disseminating content to their audiences. Blessed because the sheer number of opportunities means that they can more precisely target their messages than ever before. Cursed because these opportunities can be, and often are, overwhelming.
Just keeping up with the pace of change can exhaust even the most capable marketers and their executive leadership. And then it’s a constant struggle to show the value of their work.
Carey Madsen, a marketing executive with more than 25 years of experience advising marketing leaders across the country, is a vice president at the Fletcher Group, a company whose research suggests that while CMOs have become respected members of the C-suite, that position has been hard-earned. They “will need to show continued proof of this impact, as well as the full breadth of their division’s influence via data-driven and collaborative approaches to maintain it,” she says..
Importantly, CMOs across all industries, whether focused on business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) audiences, must stay on top of the trends that are impacting their role, audience needs, and how they connect with their audiences.
In a “2025 B2B Marketing Trends Shaping the Future” report from MarketingProfs, the following trends will continue to shape marketing’s future:
Predictive personalization. This involves using data-driven storytelling and behavioral insights to develop campaigns aligned with prospects’ preferences and buying cycles.
Generative AI (genAI). It comes as no surprise that this trend is continuing as more and more marketers begin experimenting with and adopting genAI.
Hyper-individualization. Beyond personalization, individualization drills down to an even more granular level to focus on building real-time marketing journeys tailored to individual prospects’ behaviors.
Micro-influencers. With a narrower reach than the mega-influencers that tend to get the most attention, they are particularly valuable in the B2B environment, where niche targets can hold promise due to the higher price points of B2B offerings.
Value-driven content. This means a focus on depth over volume through content deliverables like long-form thought leadership and research-backed reports.
GenAI Generates Buzz
Of all the trends in 2025 and beyond, genAI is still the big disruptor in the world of marketing, holding this spot for at least the past two years.
“The future of marketing is in AI, whether we choose to repel it or embrace it,” says Justin Staples, owner of JS Interactive, a digital marketing and search engine optimization services agency. The growing use of these tools, he says, is allowing some agencies to downsize their teams as they lean into genAI to help produce content. Staples predicts this trend will continue.
Still, the proliferation of genAI is having another, perhaps contradictory, impact: Marketers are moving away from computer-generated content to take a human-first approach, says Yaniv Masjedi, chief marketing officer of Nextiva, a customer experience technology provider. “AI is everywhere, and a lot of content feels like it was written for an algorithm instead of people,” he says. “Social media influencers have lost trust, and audiences are getting tired of being sold to by people with expensive cameras and scripted opinions.”
And as Nick Spivak, head of business development at IT Monks, a WordPress development agency, suggests, “AI isn’t the future of marketing anymore. It is the present.” Today, there’s no question about whether brands should use AI, but whether they can do so “without making their marketing soulless,” Spivak says. “AI can generate thousands of blog posts, emails, and videos in minutes, but the brands that rely entirely on automation are setting themselves up for failure; audiences can smell generic AI-driven content a mile away, and trust is the hardest thing to rebuild once it is lost.”
In today’s climate, Masjedi agrees, “what’s actually working is creating content that doesn’t feel like content. Writing with a real voice, putting actual thought into things, and making even the boring stuff interesting. Copying trends or recycling influencer strategies doesn’t work anymore.”
Max Shak, founder and CEO of nerDigital, a digital marketing firm, stresses that marketing isn’t just about algorithms and automation; it’s about real connections. “The brands that balance AI-driven efficiency with authentic human engagement will lead the future of marketing,” he says.
In this environment Shak says, companies should do the following:
- Be transparent about AI-generated content.
- Invest in human oversight and fact-
checking. - Use AI as an assistant, not a replacement.
“AI and automation will handle repetitive marketing tasks, but brands that inject human storytelling and authentic engagement will win,” Shak predicts.
Downsizing Influence
That’s where another trend—micro-influencers—comes into play.
Influencer marketing involves real people, often celebrities, to connect with various audiences in authentic or seemingly authentic ways to promote products and brands.
Many, of course, make a lot of money connecting with their followers and successfully convincing them to buy various products and services. Traditionally, marketers have turned to influencers with very large audiences, sometimes numbering in the millions.
Influencer marketing has proven to be successful, which is why so many marketers have adopted it. Emarketer predicts the marketing spend on influencer marketing to continue to grow, reaching $9.3 billion this year, a 14.2 percent increase over 2024. It’s a rate, they say, that is greater than both digital and social ad spend growth in the United States. That growth rate will slow, they say, in 2026, but still represent an increase of 8.4 percent.
Today’s marketers, though, especially in B2B environments, where more targeted messaging is used to reach decision makers, are finding that leveraging smaller influencer audiences through micro-influencers can also have a positive impact.
As MarketingProfs reports: “Partnering with multiple micro-influencers allows you to target specific industries, job titles, and regions, creating an authentic, relatable presence that builds trust and drives leads.”
In delivering their messages this year and into the foreseeable future, personalization and individualization, as pointed out by MarketingProfs, will be important strategies for effectively engaging with audiences of all kinds, and as with content generation, genAI will have an important role to play.
Personalization Gets Individual
“Within marketing, AI will enable personalization at scale in a way that we haven’t seen previously,” says Iris Meijer, chief product and marketing officer of Verizon Business. “In 2025, we will see product leaders using AI to create more efficient processes and drive innovation,” Meijer says. “We’re also going to see more businesses navigating the stakeholder landscape, both internally and externally.”
As this continues to grow, Meijer says, “businesses will be able to segment their customers in new ways that enable them to better serve those customers.”
Nikhil Raj, chief business officer for retail media at Moloco, a provider of performance marketing solutions, says that “three in four customers expect personalization and will get frustrated without such capabilities.”
Companies that don’t invest in personalization, Raj says, “will fall behind as consumers continue to respond to relevant ads that meet their immediate shopping needs.”
Delivering personalized ads, Raj adds, “leads to more clicks, which in turn maximizes yield for advertisers, creating a win-win for both consumers and brands.”
Looking ahead, Raj predicts “continued evolution in both ad personalization and the ability to leverage real-time first-party data, as brands use machine learning to refine audience segmentation, automate decision making, and stay competitive while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.”
SEO Gets a Refresh
Just as it has done in the past, Google is poised to once again upset the marketing field with continued emphasis on its search capabilities. And along with that, the search parameters and algorithms are also changing.
“SEO is on life support for anyone who still thinks ranking high is just about cranking out keyword-heavy content,” Spivak warns. “Search engines are drowning in AI-generated articles, and Google is shifting its priorities. Expertise is making a comeback, and companies that invest in real thought leadership instead of content farms will be the ones that survive the next algorithm shake-up.”
This is causing the demand for value-driven content to grow as companies look for ways to stand out from an avalanche of content increasingly created by genAI.
In fact, while Google itself uses AI-generated content, in 2024 it announced, “We’re enhancing Search so you see more useful information and fewer results that feel made for search engines.”
It’s an interesting dichotomy. Google can and does leverage genAI in its outputs, but it also recognizes its role in ensuring that consumers are getting value from their search results.
It’s a shift, as MarketProf’s research suggests, that is causing companies to rethink their content creation strategies, shifting from volume to quality in the form of authoritative content that offers higher-quality and more unique insights to users.
This is just one example of a notable move by companies to focus on more transparent and honest content creation and delivery.
Transparency and Honesty
In a marketing environment characterized by the continued presence of genAI and influencers, it likely comes as no surprise that another emerging trend is the need for marketers to focus on transparency and honesty.
Rebecca Swift, senior vice president of creative at iStock, points to some relevant insights from her company’s “2025 Marketing Trends Report”:
- 67 percent of people believe traditional ads are more authentic than sponsored influencer posts.
- 98 percent of people say authentic images and videos are important for earning trust.
- And, while 74 percent are OK with AI-generated content if used ethically, 86 percent believe that the use of AI should be clearly labeled.
Meijer agrees. In our digital world, it is increasingly difficult to build trust and loyalty, she says. “The rise of fake images generated through AI can easily destabilize how customers view a business. Therefore, it’s so important to have clear company values and focus on the responsible use of AI.”
It’s important for companies to have clear guidelines and to be open and transparent about how they engage with AI, Meijer stresses. Establishing boundaries and guidelines, she says, will create trust with customers.
That trust is also boosted by authentic and relevant connections with consumers on the social media channels they frequent.
A Social Shift
Social media continues to resonate with a wide range of audiences through a growing number of platforms, and marketers need to be there as well.
“With so many different platforms out there, it is absolutely necessary for a business to be active on at least one, whether that be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn,” says Annie Everill, a digital marketing executive at Imaginaire, an e-commerce marketing firm.
But how marketers engage with prospects and customers via social media is changing, Everill says. Today, she says, it’s “a lot more than posting photos with trending hashtags; it’s now opened a whole new world in terms of social commerce and micro-influencing, offering customers a new funnel in terms of transactions and conversions.”
Social media also offers a low- or lower-budget alternative to other types of content distribution.
Shrinking Budgets
Sara Richter, chief marketing officer of SAP Emarsys, says the need to leverage analytics to better manage and extend the impact of shrinking budgets is also on the rise.
A 2024 Gartner survey of CMOs revealed that marketing budgets had dropped to 7.7 percent of company revenue in 2024, down about 15 percent from previous years.
“While some signals are showing potential for economic relief in 2025, many companies are still seeing margin pressure and flat or declining marketing budgets. This comes with the need to better measure the ROI for sales and marketing investments, along with the CX platforms supporting them,” Richter says.
In an environment where CMOs have less to spend, many are looking to technology to provide relief. As Gartner reported: “Sixty-four percent of CMOs say they lack the budget to execute their 2024 strategy, but genAI offers the opportunity to grow the marketing function’s impact far beyond its budgetary constraints.”
Insights into Analytics
It’s not only AI of the genAI variety that is impacting the field of marketing. Advanced analytics, fueled by AI, is also having an impact, helping marketers better understand the performance of their marketing efforts to make better, more well-informed decisions.
As Richter notes: “A centralized customer data platform will be vital to collecting and activating all data, providing brands with a 360-degree view of consumer behavior and enabling tighter, more personalized communication.”
In this environment, says Scott Sutton, CEO of Later, an influencer marketing and social media management software firm, vanity metrics reflecting surface-level engagement are taking a backseat. “Today, brands have access to advanced predictive analytics and AI-powered attribution,” he says, helping them scale their efforts strategically. The “democratization of advanced marketing technology allows brands of all sizes to execute highly targeted campaigns with clear ROI metrics.”
That democratization, notes Sandy Meier, head of marketing and operations at Contentellect, a link building and SEO content writing services provider, means that marketers are going to need to rethink how they ply their craft to differentiate from competitors. “When absolutely every brand uses AI for their content generation and data analysis, then we’re pretty much back to square one and once again competing on the fundamentals,” she says.
Moving forward, Meier adds, it “won’t be about which AI tools you’re using; it’ll be about how creatively you are deploying them.”
Meier finds it frustrating “that too many are treating AI just like a magic wand for marketing.” What will really set them apart, she says, “will be the ability to master customer advocacy and real engagement while using automation to scale these human connections.”
Spivak agrees. “Marketing technology will keep changing, but one thing stays the same: The brands that win are the ones that actually know their audience, tell real stories, and use technology to amplify their voice instead of replacing it,” he says.
And that’s a trend that’s as true today and into the future as it was decades ago.
Linda Pophal is a freelance business journalist and content marketer who writes for various business and trade publications. Pophal does content marketing for Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and individuals on a wide range of subjects, from human resource management and employee relations to marketing, technology, healthcare industry trends, and more.