11 Marketing Trends for 2025
A little late on this one.
Still, worth putting it on the record, so we can kick back at the end of the year and see how it all panned out.
The theme under most of these is an extension of the last couple years:
Trust is extremely low.
And burnout and fatigue is high. Which means it’s hard for businesses to feel creative.
The plus side?
It means your audience’s radar for quality and depth is extremely high.
(Just today, Ruby was saying how they’re putting on another Dinner Club in March. Which is a private event for women. And the uptake has been very fast. I also just saw a local gym sold out a very unique event for the second year in a row too. People are hungry, for good stuff.)
OK, Here we go:
1 - Sell by chat, chat bots, fast call booking funnels, nurture sequences and other front end tactics will become less effective.
People will also start to notice the difference in client lifetime value based on *how* the person come into your world, with outreach and bots being lower quality entry points. Clients that enter your world on their terms will stay for longer and get better results.
2 - Interest overlap marketing and brand building will be more effective.
One example of this is the Dinner Club stuff that Ruby and Emilia created that I mentioned above. Small events, that aren't directly related to their service. They’re done purely with the guest in mind. So that women can get together for a dinner and meet each other. Another example I saw was an accountant writing children’s books, that infused some basic stuff about money in them. Not the main offer. But excellent brand building.
3 - Long form written content will outperform for some audiences.
If you haven’t seen the email, Substack and article space already surging, again, then it’s worth checking out. (Substack users grew almost 50% in only five months in 2023/2024. My guess? That growth has and will continue). Long form content - like this article - has one big advantage, it helps you build trust at levels that just ain’t possible in posts and reels.
4 - Written copy in Instagram stories will keep doing well.
It’s a pattern interrupt, and offers a private moment with the creator that leads to conversations… Almost feels like a ‘rest’.
5 - Live events to play an even stronger role in brand building, if not direct marketing and sales.
Whether for coaches and consultants, service providers or even retail - getting people together in a room solves the trust issue a lot faster, and also creates a sense of belonging and community. We'll also be seeing some smart, unexpected collaborative marketing this year, bringing unique business worlds together.
6 - AI will be important but not just how people think.
Sure it’ll help a few with productivity et cetera. But also it’ll play a role in driving people away from social media. And make the trust deficit bigger. When you go to an event, or read a book or long form article (say Substack), there’s what it is - written copy with personality - and what it isn’t - it's a break from short videos of people and businesses promoting themselves. AI will be helpful in parts, but we’re going to actively look for places to go that are less clogged with AI too.
7 - World Building is more important.
But back-story and origin story type of content will play a smaller role in marketing narratives. Why? Because demonstration, and sharing relevant slices of life and your ‘world’, as you go, builds the relationship. Which is the goal. Backstory became a ‘hack’ that social media content creators exploited, and is not as relevant as what’s happening now.
8 - The era of quality:
Leather bound books, quality clothing, quality of coaching, quality coffee, quality onboarding programs, quality programs with cool merch. Some deeper thought is going to be required to come up with really good stuff that people are missing in this post-modernist, minimalist hangover. Warning - when you do the work to think deeper, expect others to replicate what you did.
9 - It’s going to be harder for consultants, coaches and mentors to sell stuff with only short form content (audience trust issues).
Making consistent long form marketing or live events key.
10 - ‘Depth’ is attractive.
Depth of expertise in your service, depth of thinking, depth of world. Surface level stuff is everywhere, but depth can’t be faked. The value of depth for the audience is that it both offers a paradigm shift, and helps them in identity transformations. It’s also more attractive for the businesses, because it creates resilience and stability as you grow (rather than growing through more sales of a shallow offer).
There are a bunch of ways to create more depth. One of the easiest? Research, demonstrate and share more specifics and details of your world and craft. Most marketing, goes to a surface level, that’s already covered by other podcasts and experts. But if you can go deeper, and more specific, then it’s easier to stand out.
11 - There’s a growing gap between ‘content’, and ‘content that matters’.
Regular content ain’t worth much, anymore. Partly because of supply and demand. Content that matters, is worth a bunch. Often, the difference is timeliness. For example I've tried re-sending an email from a year ago that originally went great, only for it to bomb second time round. Find out what your audience is thinking about ‘today’, rather than last year, and engagement will jump.
Look, only time will tell.
And either way, the world is on offer for those that show up for it.
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