You may love it, you may hate it, and you may well be sick of hearing people talk about it, but, the truth is, AI is here to stay.
In the latest State of Marketing & Trends Report by HubSpot, AI is definitely the hot topic of the year. In fact, the report begins with a simple statement:
“On the brink of a major shift in marketing, it’s time to go all in on AI.”
A key theme throughout the report is the ever-growing desire for attention. Marketing success is no longer engrained in ticking off certain metrics but instead is a fight for attention, and the AI marketing landscape is opening up space for creative, brand-led content that garners the attention we seek.
Kieran Flanagan, SVP of Marketing at HubSpot said: “Marketing is going to change in 2025. Instead of scaling traffic, we need to scale attention. It’s different. Marketers need to learn a new skill set. A lot of the science of marketing will get automated by AI, leaving more time for the craft.”
B2C marketing strategies: leveraging AI
Within the report, HubSpot set out the top five B2C marketing strategies for 2025. User-generated content, promoting your brand values, and utilising social media DMs for customer service all made the cut, but two of the five strategies involve leveraging AI.
Leveraging AI to turn text into multi-modal campaigns
AI shouldn’t be a cheat code when it comes to content; I truly believe that a human can write much better than an AI can. However, AI can be utilised to help stretch a piece of content much further than its original intended purpose.
Take a single blog post. Once you’ve spent the time researching, writing, and proofreading (all with the human touch), AI can help speed up the process of:
- Turning the content into multiple short snippets for social media
- Producing email copy from the original content
- Turning the content into an audio file
- Creating graphics or videos from the content
Using AI-powered reporting tools to evaluate the ROI of campaigns
Data analysis is vital for marketers, but it’s time-consuming. Take the heavy lifting off your plate by using AI tools to analyse the return on investment of your marketing and advertising campaigns.
AI can aggregate data from multiple sources, including ad platforms, GA4, CRM systems, sales systems, and social media. Using multi-touch attribution models, AI can determine which of these channels are contributing the most to conversions, displaying the data in a visualised report. And, of course, this can be completed almost instantaneously.
HubSpot linked some helpful resources in the report to expand on and support these strategies, so check out the full report for more information.
Measuring brand awareness with AI
Measuring brand awareness is a challenge, but conversational AI tools, like ChatGPT, can make it easier to keep track of audience sentiment. Conversational AI tools can be very powerful when used correctly, and the key to success is the right prompt.
HubSpot provided the following prompt to analyse your online presence:
“Please help me determine my brand awareness and positioning. You have access to a large amount of consumer sentiment and intelligence. Help me determine information about my company [URL]. We are a [company description]. We sell to [target audience]. Please estimate our aided awareness among our target companies, key reasons people choose us over competitors, and a net promoter score range.”
If you’re trying to analyse text-based reviews or customer support tickets to better understand customer sentiment and brand positioning, try this prompt:
“Analyse this dataset of customer feedback and provide: 1) key sentiment trends and patterns, 2) customer pain points and priorities, 3) a competitive analysis, and 4) recommended positioning opportunities. Please quantify findings where possible and provide specific examples/quotes supporting key insights.”
Making it personal with AI
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.’ In HubSpot’s survey, 96% of marketers reported that personalised experiences have increased sales.
Here’s how to use AI for personalised marketing across all channels:
- Email – Use AI to gather customer details. Enter this information into a large language model to tailor email content to each individual customer’s preferences. This will ensure each customer receives an email personalised to their needs and wants, such as including certain product recommendations and offers based on data.
- Thought leadership – AI can assist with social listening streams, helping to identify thought leadership opportunities within your company’s space, such as journalist requests or speaking slots. Automating this process can give you the upper hand over competitors, allowing you to quickly respond to any relevant opportunities.
- Chatbots – Utilise a chatbot on your website. Not only can chatbots give instant responses, but AI can leverage existing data to ensure the customer or prospect receives a personalised response.
- Landing pages – Large scale content marketing campaigns that require multiple niche, personalised landing pages can be taxing on a content team. AI can create the content for these pages at scale – but make sure you have some human eyes check them over!
- Localisation & translation – Personalise content by region and language with AI to capture new audiences or expand into emerging sales regions.
AI and influencer marketing
Marketers have been working with smaller creators and influencers, helping brands to build trust with new audiences, gain access to niche, tight-knit communities, and stretch their influencer marketing budget further. From those surveyed, it was found that brands most commonly spend 50-74% of their marketing budget on influencers or content creators.
But, will the brand-influencer partnership trend continue, or evolve? 86% of surveyed leaders believe it’s likely that AI-generated influencers or social media avatars will replace influencers by the end of 2025 – a scary thought!
What are the implications of transitioning to AI-generated influencers? Will consumers build the same trust with an AI influencer that they can with a real person?
The marketing landscape in 2025
In 2025, by leveraging AI tools to take on some of the heavy lifting of data analysis, content optimisation, and workflow automation, marketers can focus their time on creating authentic connections and valuable brand experiences.
HubSpot’s report supports the idea that technology is helping to facilitate human connection, with 96% of survey respondents reporting seeing increased sales from offering personalised experiences. It shouldn’t be about choosing between AI and authenticity, but about how we use the two most effectively.
Successful marketing in 2025 will stem from being present where your audiences are, speaking to their experiences, and using technology to scale those connections.
“As marketers, we have an unprecedented opportunity to be smarter, more efficient, and more human in how we connect with our audiences. The tools are here, and the possibilities for creativity are endless.” – Kieran Flanagan
HubSpot’s 2025 State of Marketing & Trends Report
Survey undertaken in October 2024 with a total of 1,200 marketers across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia across industries
