5 Key Marketing Trends for 2025: Insights from Top Growth Leaders

Marketing is being shaped by privacy-first strategies, AI-powered efficiency, and a stronger emphasis on retention alongside acquisition. These marketing trends for 2025 are redefining how brands will be able to drive sustainable growth not only this year, but in years to follow.

2025 is well underway, and one thing is clear: it will be nearly impossible for marketers to drive results if they continue to rely on old-hat strategies, because the traditional playbooks aren’t cutting it anymore.

That shift was front and center in our recent panel discussion, “4 New Year's Resolutions for Growth Marketers to Embrace in 2025,“ where leaders from Reddit and Right Side Up shared trends shaping the year ahead. From making AI work without losing the human touch to prioritizing retention alongside acquisition, the conversation made one thing clear—success this year isn’t just about having data, but knowing which data truly matters.

Missed the discussion? You can watch the full replay on-demand, or read on for five key takeaways from the conversation.

1. Performance marketing in the era of specialization

With rising acquisition costs and increased scrutiny on marketing spend, the days of mindlessly scaling performance budgets are over. 

Though B2B marketers are more optimistic about ad spend than they have been in recent years, that doesn’t mean that marketers shouldn't be hyper-focused on efficiency and maximizing every dollar they spend.

These are the areas of performance that could have the biggest impact this year:

Play with channel diversification

Relying too heavily on a single channel is becoming increasingly risky. Diversifying your marketing mix allows you to mitigate risk, reach new audiences, and uncover untapped opportunities.

While these platforms can no longer be considered “emerging,” there is still ample opportunity to find success on Reddit, TikTok, and connected TV (CTV). These platforms offer fresh ways to engage users beyond traditional paid search and paid social. 

TikTok’s fate may remain in flux over the coming months, but the platform’s undeniable reach coupled with its precise algorithm can help you connect with your target audience.

Growth leaders recognize that audiences are consuming content in different formats. Expanding your presence to new channels in addition to or instead of optimizing existing channels will ensure you’re remaining visible where your target customers are spending their time.

Experiment with ad creative

If you’ve been relying on video, image, or a specific type of ad creative for some time, 2025 may be prime time to experiment with new ad creative.

This could include testing new ad formats, leveraging user-generated content (UGC), and collaborating with influencers to create more engaging and authentic campaigns. We’ll dive into how you can automate this process and iterate rapidly with the use of AI below.

Look at full-funnel measurement

Growth teams are no longer just tracking immediate conversions: they’re looking at long-term retention and customer lifetime value (CLTV) to ensure marketing efforts contribute to sustainable growth. 

It’s important that you’re tracking, analyzing, and utilizing data throughout every stage of the funnel (which may look different depending on the growth stage you’re at) and prioritizing adding tools to your tech stack to ensure you’re scraping the most accurate data possible.

Measure offline and dark social attribution

Not everything can be measured through traditional digital analytics platforms. Marketers are turning to offline attribution models like brand lift studies, customer surveys, and direct feedback loops to understand the impact of their campaigns. 

These qualitative insights can work hand-in hand with quantitative data and help teams further refine their strategies.

2. Attribution and measurement in a cookieless world

For years, marketers leaned heavily on third-party cookies and pixel tracking. 

Now, with increasing privacy restrictions (hello, iOS updates) and the ever-looming threat that Google may phase out cookies, (though plans have been thwarted for now), first-party data is always going to be a critical factor in your attribution strategy.

Leaning into first party data

As marketers are forced to loosen their grip on third-party data, there’s a renewed emphasis on first-party data and the direct relationships we build with customers through email, SMS, and community-driven initiatives. 

By owning this data, brands can gain deeper insights into customer behaviors and reduce reliance on third-party platforms.

Investing in media mix modeling (MMM)

Rather than depending solely on platform-reported numbers, marketers are using media mix modeling (MMM), or statistical models to analyze multiple touchpoints and better understand how different channels contribute to overall performance. MMM can illuminate opportunities for smarter budget allocation and long-term strategic planning.

Embracing post-purchase surveys

When’s the last time you asked your customers, “How did you hear about us?”

Post-purchase surveys are gaining popularity as a simple yet effective way to bridge attribution gaps. A single or select number of questions can provide valuable qualitative insights that complement quantitative data, offering a clearer picture of impact.

3. AI and automation: Your new growth engine

AI has been in the mix for years, but growth marketers are getting sharper with how they’re using AI across their job functions.

Here’s where AI is making the biggest impact:

• Predictive audience targeting: Platforms like Meta and Google are improving their AI-powered targeting, so marketers are shifting from manual audience segmentation to machine-learning-driven optimization.
• Dynamic personalization: AI is enabling hyper-personalized experiences at scale, whether through chatbots, email recommendations, or landing page customization.
• Creative automation: Marketers are using AI to generate variations of ad copy, social posts, and even video content—increasing both efficiency and output.
• Content development: Growth marketers can rapidly generate content ideas, briefs, outlines, and even initial drafts for social media posts, blog articles, and ebooks, using them as a jumping off point to refine, QA, and polish for external use.

With the help of AI, growth marketers can streamline execution, leaving more time for strategic planning, testing, and optimization.

4. Retention and customer-led growth

In 2025, growth marketing leaders are shifting focus toward retention and lifecycle marketing, realizing that keeping a customer engaged is just as valuable—if not more so—than acquiring a new one.

Here’s what that might look like in practice:

Community-driven marketing

Activating your best customers is not a new trend by any stretch, but more brands are investing in loyalty programs, exclusive groups, and ambassador networks to foster deeper relationships with their audience and reduce costs further up the funnel. 

These communities not only drive repeat purchases—they also create brand advocates who organically promote products to their networks, helping you save money down-funnel.

Personalized lifecycle marketing

Automated, highly tailored email and SMS campaigns based on user behavior are keeping customers engaged throughout their journey. By delivering relevant content at the right moments, brands increase retention and reduce churn.

Subscriptions and membership models

More companies are exploring and expanding to subscription and membership models to drive recurring revenue. Rather than having to remarket to customers every time you’re hoping to drive the next sale, subscriptions automate their next purchase on a consistent basis.

Through exclusive perks, early access, or subscription-based offerings, brands can establish long-term customer relationships and predictable revenue streams.

5. Growth marketers as deep generalists (with the ability to specialize)

The role of growth marketers continues to evolve in 2025. Traditionally, they’ve been seen as deep generalists: they had the chops to do a little bit of everything, intersecting with product, sales, and operations to drive business growth holistically.

Now, marketing leaders are recognizing that growth marketers can (and should) specialize within different areas of marketing, particularly those directly tied to revenue. As CMOs and marketing teams face increasing pressure to deliver measurable business impact, growth marketers must align with broader business objectives—not just acquisition metrics.

This is where deep specialization comes in. Growth marketers need to be strategic, data-driven generalists who see the big picture. But they also need the ability to go deep—whether in PPC, SEO, or paid social, for example—focusing on the channels that drive direct revenue.

In 2025, the most effective growth marketers will be those who can balance both—big-picture thinking with deep expertise where it matters most.

Leveraging key marketing trends in 2025 with top talent

If you’re leading your organization’s growth efforts this year by focusing on efficiency, data, AI, and/or retention, it’s important to get the right people in-seat—whether full-time or fractionally—to help you inch closer towards meeting your goals.

👉 Learn how to optimize your marketing team for growth

👉 Catch the full conversation: “4 New Year's Resolutions for Growth Marketers to Embrace in 2025“

👉Get in touch with Right Side Up to discuss your marketing strategy, growth opportunities, and the talent needed to help you hit your growth milestones in 2025.