How Entrepreneurs Can Work & Degree-Up Like 700+ Leaders in 2025 [New Data]

“What do you imply AI gained’t repair every thing?” That dialog with a advertising and marketing govt final month sparked my journey into creating this advertising and marketing govt playbook for 2025.

As I dove into knowledge and interviewed executives throughout industries, I found one thing stunning: Whereas 56% of promoting leaders consider advertising and marketing has modified extra previously three years than the earlier 50, essentially the most profitable leaders are taking a way more nuanced strategy than I anticipated.

To grasp the place advertising and marketing is headed, HubSpot surveyed 724 advertising and marketing leaders on the director degree and above throughout main markets, together with:

• The U.S. (27.49%),
• Nice Britain (18.78%),
• Netherlands (11.74%), and
• Japan (10.91%).

Then, to convey these findings to life, I spoke with advertising and marketing executives from corporations like Wrike, Atlassian, Sendoso, and extra about how they’re approaching these challenges of their organizations.

Our analysis reveals three clear priorities for 2025:

• Rising income and gross sales (20%).
• Deepening buyer understanding (16%).
• Increasing model consciousness (16%).

What fascinated me most in my conversations with advertising and marketing executives was how these priorities usually create productive stress, pushing leaders to seek out inventive options that stability innovation with confirmed fundamentals.

Let’s dive into what’s working now and what’s subsequent, with sensible insights from each our analysis and real-world advertising and marketing leaders.

Desk of Contents

Sarah Reece, director of demand era at Orum, a gross sales acceleration platform, captures this shift completely.

“My philosophy is that model is demand, and each touchpoint is a model touchpoint,” she explains.

“From our social presence to our web site to the best way our gross sales group outbounds, we’re constructing a model status that creates belief, builds affinity, and drives choice so that people default to Orum once they come into the market.”

And the numbers again up this built-in strategy. “We really noticed a fairly fast influence on our demand gen targets when taking decisive motion to emphasise model,” Reece shares.

“Direct and natural net visitors elevated, social attain climbed, pipeline and income grew, and deal velocity elevated too … If something, development was exponential and has continued to tick up with each massive model second we introduce.”

With this basis of balanced priorities in place, let’s have a look at how advertising and marketing leaders are utilizing AI and automation to execute these targets successfully.

Christine Royston, chief advertising and marketing officer at Wrike, a workflow administration platform, has noticed this evolution firsthand.

“We’ve definitely seen numerous change previously three years with the rise, reputation, and accessibility of AI,” she explains.

“Probably the most dramatic change I’ve witnessed is an rising shift in the direction of delivering environment friendly development by data-driven decision-making.”

Based on Wrike’s 2024 Impactful Work Report, greater than 80% of enterprise leaders have named effectivity their major focus for sustaining competitiveness.

Royston and her group are responding by investing closely in AI-powered predictive analytics.

From Idea to Apply

Whereas many advertising and marketing groups are nonetheless experimenting with AI, some are already seeing concrete advantages. At Goldcast, a B2B video platform, CEO Palash Soni sees AI remodeling content material creation and distribution.

“The basics of what makes a B2B model profitable haven’t modified,” he explains.

“Excessive-quality thought management, differentiated PoV, standout attention-grabbing content material, and a bulletproof operations base have at all times gained and can proceed successful. Making these items scale properly is the place AI is available in for high manufacturers.”

Ashley Faus, head of lifecycle advertising and marketing at Atlassian — a office collaboration and productiveness software program firm — takes a focused strategy with Rovo, Atlassian’s AI-powered instrument.

“We used it to work on a content material audit, brainstorm matters, and even create a customized agent so as to add context on a few of the messaging for our merchandise,” Faus explains.

Her group plans to increase these capabilities: “I foresee us creating extra brokers to assist analyze asset and channel efficiency, shut gaps in our content material technique, and personalize the journey for various personas.”

At Orum, Sarah Reece has discovered sensible purposes throughout a number of capabilities.

“AI in venture administration has been extraordinarily useful for creating venture boards, automating standing updates, and preserving work shifting ahead,” she explains.

“We’re additionally heavy customers of AI for video and podcast modifying and manufacturing. AI has made every thing associated to modifying video and audio, selecting out clips for social, and transcribing for social posts, captions, and content material repurposing past simple.”

Balancing AI and Human Creativity

What struck me most in my conversations with leaders was their emphasis on sustaining human oversight.

Kacie Jenkins, senior vice chairman of promoting at Sendoso, an enterprise gifting and advertising and marketing engagement platform, put it completely:

“Human connection and considerate personalization are the center of every thing we do at Sendoso as a result of they’re the beating coronary heart of excellent advertising and marketing. We consider that AI is an incredible approach to increase human workflows, nevertheless it wants a human on the helm, and oversight is important.”

Jenkins’ group has discovered success by specializing in utilizing AI to boost somewhat than change human capabilities:

“We use AI for analysis, to assist us goal our advertising and marketing efforts extra successfully, to remove mundane, handbook work, and to ship the best customized present and message to the best particular person on the proper time throughout the total buyer journey.”

Whereas AI adoption is accelerating, advertising and marketing executives emphasize the significance of considerate implementation. Wrike’s Royston advocates for stability.

“Though we welcome AI implementation because it permits for elevated alternatives for high-impact work and collaboration,” she explains, “human creativity and empathy are irreplaceable in crafting compelling storytelling, growing modern methods, and fostering genuine buyer connections.”

This balanced strategy to AI units up one of many greatest challenges advertising and marketing leaders face in 2025: scaling personalization with out shedding authenticity. Let’s have a look at how essentially the most profitable executives are tackling this problem.

Professional tip: Establish areas the place AI can deal with routine duties, releasing your group to give attention to strategic considering and artistic improvement.

These statistics solely inform a part of the story. In my conversations with advertising and marketing leaders, I found they’re fully rethinking what “customized” means in 2025. VP of Advertising and marketing Deb Garber emphasizes this evolution at Kount, an Equifax firm targeted on fraud prevention and digital id options.

“Advertising and marketing is consistently evolving, and so are our goal audiences,” Garber explains. “What they need, how they behave, how they wish to be communicated with is frequently shifting and may make it difficult to maintain up.”

Information-Pushed Personalization at Scale

For monetary providers corporations, this problem is especially acute. Marla Pieton, senior director of influencer advertising and marketing at Alkami, a digital banking platform, has seen how subtle personalization drives precise enterprise outcomes.

“In digital banking, the sooner we will analyze account holder habits, the sooner we will tailor services and products to fulfill their wants,” she explains. “This degree of personalization may be the deciding consider whether or not an account holder stays loyal to their monetary establishment or seeks alternate options.”

The answer? Based on Pieton, it’s about modernizing your expertise stack:

“To remain forward, modernizing knowledge expertise with superior analytics, significantly predictive analytics, can present priceless foresight under consideration holder wants and preferences, enabling extra proactive and customized experiences.”

Professional tip: Concentrate on refining your knowledge assortment and analytics course of. Prioritizing behavioral insights and predictive analytics will aid you anticipate buyer wants and guarantee campaigns stay impactful and related.

Constructing Belief By Transparency

One of the crucial attention-grabbing approaches I encountered got here from Huntress, a cybersecurity firm. Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Jason Marshall takes a radically clear strategy to personalization.

“We offer a full audit log so clients can see how we use their enterprise info,” says Marshall. “We additionally publish detailed insurance policies relating to knowledge assortment and the way we use it.”

Marshall emphasizes that whereas extra customers are aware of their data-sharing practices, having clear-minded insurance policies and trustworthy dialogue helps preserve belief.

This give attention to belief turns into much more important as personalization will get extra subtle. At GRIN, a creator administration platform, Senior Director of Product Advertising and marketing and Partnerships Olivia McNaughten sees co-selling as the following frontier.

“While you let creators select merchandise they genuinely love and share them with their viewers, you create an unforgettable buying expertise for audiences who genuinely belief these creators relating to product suggestions.”

Professional tip: “Empower creators to take the result in curate and promote merchandise,” says McNaughten. “It’s extra private, extra impactful, and delivers stronger outcomes for each manufacturers and creators.”

Scaling Personalization With out Dropping the Human Contact

The actual magic occurs when corporations discover methods to personalize at scale whereas sustaining authenticity. Kacie Jenkins and her group at Sendoso mix AI, intent knowledge, and automation to personalize interactions at scale, producing over $1M in outbound certified pipeline per quarter.

This balanced strategy to scaling personalization pays off. Jenkins’ group efficiently makes use of AI and knowledge to ship “the best customized present and message to the best particular person on the proper time throughout the total buyer journey.”

The important thing? Taking knowledge upkeep significantly. “Don’t use AI if you happen to can’t belief your knowledge!” Jenkins emphasizes.

This stability of expertise and belief units up one other essential problem advertising and marketing leaders face in 2025: creating content material that resonates throughout a number of channels whereas sustaining consistency and worth. Let’s discover how executives are remodeling their content material methods to fulfill this problem.

Professional tip: Begin with clear, dependable knowledge earlier than implementing AI-driven personalization instruments. The standard of your personalization efforts can solely be pretty much as good as the information that drives them.

One of the crucial dramatic shifts I’ve noticed is in video advertising and marketing. Jennifer Burak, vice chairman of promoting at Socialive, a video content material platform, explains the basic change in viewers preferences:

“The most important change in video advertising and marketing is the shift to short-form, genuine video as a approach to entice audiences with the purpose to get them to go deeper.”

This shift, she notes, is pushed by evolving social media habits and rising shopper choice for relatable content material over polished advertising and marketing supplies.

Constructing Professional Communities

At Atlassian, Ashley Faus has taken this authenticity precept even additional. “We’ve a practices and evangelist group to assist us join with extra technical audiences,” she explains.

The outcomes converse for themselves: Their technical evangelists have constructed important followings, with one receiving LinkedIn’s Prime Voice badge in 2024 and one other turning into an everyday keynote speaker at main tech conferences.

However what actually caught my consideration was Atlassian’s strategy to group content material. Moderately than limiting themselves to exterior specialists, they’ve created a program that turns their most engaged customers into content material creators.

By month-to-month coaching classes on new options, trade traits, and platform greatest practices, they’re serving to their group members turn out to be genuine voices for the model.

Worth-First Content material Growth

“Fall in love with the shopper’s downside, not your product.”

This recommendation from Joanie Kindblade, senior director of product advertising and marketing at Lumen Applied sciences, a Fortune 500 tech firm offering enterprise-level networking, cloud, and safety options, captures how advertising and marketing executives are rethinking content material technique.

Moderately than main with product options, they’re specializing in understanding and addressing buyer challenges first.

Professional tip: Kindblade suggests creating content material that “resonates with buyer values by understanding their wants, preferences, and ache factors.” This customer-centric strategy is reshaping how advertising and marketing executives take into consideration content material.

Ashleigh Cook dinner, CMO at RainFocus, an occasion advertising and marketing platform, places this precept into observe by direct buyer engagement.

“We depend on insights from our personal person convention and buyer surveys to higher perceive the place alternatives exist for broader market schooling in addition to extra technical schooling on our platform,” she explains.

“It’s additionally important to have direct conversations with clients and a continuing suggestions loop between gross sales and advertising and marketing.”

Noah Dye, govt vice chairman of world strategic shopper engagement at international advertising and marketing company TEAM LEWIS, reinforces this shift.

“Content material stays king. Nevertheless, it has turn out to be extra of a ‘present, don’t inform’ strategy,” he explains. He factors to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Video Advertising and marketing survey, which discovered that 89% of customers wish to see extra movies from manufacturers, with 75% particularly preferring short-form video content material on cellular gadgets.

Socialive VP of Advertising and marketing Jennifer Burak agrees.

“Transfer from promoting merchandise to fixing issues by highlighting how your model’s mission aligns along with your prospects’ values, equivalent to sustainability, variety, or innovation,” Burak says. “Use storytelling to attach emotionally and collaborate with staff and clients to create relatable video content material.”

Content material Effectivity and Good Repurposing

Whereas high-quality content material stays important, advertising and marketing leaders are discovering modern methods to maximise its influence. At Goldcast, Palash Soni sees AI as an important instrument for content material amplification.

“Excessive-quality video content material calls for numerous work and prices quite a bit to create,” Soni explains. “AI might help that work and value go quite a bit farther by serving to take present video belongings throughout channels and campaigns.”

Jason Marshall at Huntress has taken a complete strategy to content material by Huntress’s new accomplice portal. The platform combines cybersecurity coaching, product updates, and trade insights in a single place, serving to construct buyer experience whereas strengthening their connection to the model.

“By offering ongoing entry to info on Huntress merchandise alongside deep dives into trade matters and advertising and marketing and gross sales suggestions, constructing the cybersecurity experience of our customers will ideally convey them nearer to our firm,” explains Marshall.

Sustaining High quality at Scale

“One concern I heard repeatedly was about sustaining content material high quality whereas scaling manufacturing. Marija Kojic, director of content material at CAKE.com, an organization that helps companies worldwide set up and run operations by productiveness instruments like Plaky, Pumble, and Clockify, supplied a priceless perspective:

“Engines like google are nonetheless giving priority to well-structured content material delivering excessive worth, in-depth info, infused with unique skilled opinions and insights — and it’s best to, too.”

In observe, this implies being strategic about content material repurposing. Jennifer Burak of Socialive recommends searching for platforms that assist groups effectively rework long-form movies into quick clips for social, blogs, or e-mail campaigns.

I’ve seen this multi-channel strategy work significantly properly when the core content material is strong and value-driven.

Professional tip: Begin constructing your content material repurposing technique now. Establish your most precious content material items and plan how they are often reworked for various channels and audiences whereas sustaining their core worth.

Wanting Forward: Content material Technique in 2025

After analyzing lots of of responses and talking with dozens of promoting leaders, I’m seeing a transparent sample emerge: Profitable content material methods in 2025 should stability authenticity, effectivity, and worth.

The best approaches mix:

• Deep understanding of buyer challenges.
• Professional and community-generated content material.
• Good repurposing throughout channels.
• Constant high quality requirements.

This multi-faceted strategy to content material ties instantly into how advertising and marketing leaders are utilizing knowledge to drive selections. Let’s discover how executives are shifting past fundamental metrics to grasp and serve their audiences higher.

“Probably the most important evolution in advertising and marketing previously decade has been with the digital engagement of audiences by a number of channels and the harvesting of that knowledge footprint for higher habits,” explains Vibhor Kapoor, chief enterprise officer at NextRoll, a advertising and marketing and promoting expertise firm.

“Central to each efficient advertising and marketing group’s technique as we speak must be leveraging the information to seize intent alerts, perceive habits, make suggestions, and predict the following greatest actions.”

The Monetary Providers Instance

I’ve seen this evolution play out significantly properly in monetary providers. At Alkami, Marla Pieton reveals how subtle knowledge evaluation drives personalization.

Her group makes use of superior analytics to attract on account holder habits, “uncovering deeper patterns in classes like transaction historical past, service provider spend habits, channel utilization, and engagement with previous gives. This enables the data-informed digital banker to create extra related and well timed advertising and marketing campaigns.”

Navigating Information Challenges

Nevertheless, advertising and marketing executives face important hurdles of their knowledge initiatives:

• 21% cite decreased shopper belief in sharing private knowledge.
• 18% face rising knowledge privateness rules.
• 16% battle with poor knowledge high quality.

Sarah Reece, director of demand era at Orum, found an sudden answer: specializing in high quality over amount. Her group made the daring transfer to chop all its demand seize digital spend and de-emphasize low-intent conversions.

“Our total lead quantity undoubtedly went down,” Reece explains. “However we’ve been capable of present that leads usually are not a powerful indicator of pipeline well being… Solely high-intent leads are helpful for predicting pipeline (demo requests, contact gross sales, and so on.).”

The outcomes? “Whereas total leads decreased, we’ve been capable of develop our complete alternatives and enhance our alternative worth by focusing our intention on maximizing the best conversions.”

Artistic Options for 2025

Wanting forward, advertising and marketing leaders are discovering modern methods to stability knowledge wants with privateness issues.

Chris Williams, CMO at Arima, a cloud-based shopper insights platform that creates privacy-compliant artificial knowledge mirroring actual shopper habits, suggests an unconventional strategy: utilizing artificial knowledge to create inhabitants simulations that may inform advertising and marketing methods whereas defending particular person privateness.

“Moderately than try to gather huge knowledge units of hard-to-get knowledge on prospects, entrepreneurs wish to corporations that create artificial knowledge as an alternative,” says Williams.

This evolving strategy to knowledge units up the broader problem advertising and marketing leaders face as they put together for 2025: balancing innovation with confirmed fundamentals. Let’s discover how executives are making ready their groups for what’s subsequent.

Professional tip: Concentrate on accumulating and analyzing the best knowledge, not simply extra knowledge. As our specialists present, focused, high-quality knowledge factors usually show extra priceless than huge portions of basic info.