5 Marketing Trends That Will Disrupt 2025 (And How to Stay Ahead)

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Chance, and guess what? Just me, no guests today. I'm doing a solo show. You know, 2024 is getting ready to wrap up when you're listening to this. So I thought I would do my predictions for marketing disruption in 2025. And no shock, I'm going to actually give you five of them, but no shock, a lot of them have to do with AI. That's just where we are at this point in time. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what I think marketers, marketing consultants, marketing agencies, you as a marketer for your organization need to be aware of.

0:48Number one, I'm calling this hyper personalization powered by generative AI. There are a heck of a lot of tools out there now that are helping us get better at segmenting rather than just like market segments, but actually all the way down to individual segments. So, you know, AI is going to give us the ability to create one-to-one campaigns really at scale. And I think that it's going to be a huge differentiator because customers, I think, are just going to demand. You know, once the market starts doing things and people start experiencing them, we start demanding, hey, I want that experience.

1:26And I think generic messaging is really going to make you fall behind. So you're going to need to adopt some AI tools that offer or help you offer this idea of hyper personalization. You know, frankly, a lot of the CRM tools, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, you know, allow you to personalize email campaigns. You combine that with a segmenting tool, a customer data platform will really then allow you to go deeper and deeper, do that kind of almost one-on-one personalization. Start small. You don't have to go crazy, but I think you need to start Really, businesses at all levels need to start thinking that way beyond the CRM or the marketing platforms to really getting into starting saying, OK, our newsletter.

2:11Do we have the ability to start sending instead of one newsletter that everybody gets, 100 newsletters that really understand who they're sending to and replace content? That's what we're going to start seeing. Eventually, we'll start seeing websites. You revisit our website and depending upon what I know about you or dependent upon the pages you look at, you might actually start seeing personalized content. That's the world that I think is coming. Actually, it's happening. We just don't even realize if people are doing it well. All right. Number two, decentralized communities on places like Reddit.

2:50And of course, everybody's talking about Blue Sky right now is a new one. I think you're starting, you are going to see consumers moving to some of these platforms that, you know, they're a little ad light experiences. I think people are getting, you know, really distrust with the traditional social networks that have become politicized and have, you know, been just cramming ads down our throats and selling data and whatnot. So I think you're just going to see people, consumers moving to some of these new platforms. So consequently, you're going to see brands moving to them. And I think this idea of nurturing smaller communities is probably going to be something that starts happening.

3:28Again, starting small, set up at least the presence on places like Reddit, Blue Sky. I don't know if you've done a search on Google lately. We're starting to see all kinds of Reddit content come into the search results. And so participating in at least understanding what's going on in those places, I think, is going to matter. And I'm not even talking about some of, you know, those are public places, but, you know, some of the private, like if you don't belong to a Discord community, you know, it's not being surfaced in search and you wouldn't know what's going on there. So I think you're going to see a lot more of that.

4:01Using tools like BuzzSumo and Brandwatch to really monitor discussions that are happening in some of these places, I think is whether it's your brand or it's related to the products and services that you sell. I think understanding how and where people are having these conversations and the fact that they are going to be in a lot of places that maybe you're not today. And I'm not necessarily suggesting this idea that, oh, you need to sign up for every new thing that comes along. I think it's more understanding the trend that consumers are moving to some of those and moving away from really listening to a lot of the traditional platforms.

4:40All right. Another one with AI directly in the title. Number three, generative AI led creative production. Everybody talks about content, and certainly we're getting there to where content production using these AI tools has become very effective. I think the next obvious thing is the creative assets. So make them faster, cheaper, more accessible. It really levels the playing field, I think, to be able to have graphics, to be able to create videos. I think we are going to continue. I could make this an entire trend when I'm talking about agencies. traditional agencies, people who are doing tactics the same way, I think do risk some obsolescence.

5:22Agencies are not going to be replaced, but ones that are using traditional tactics and selling traditional tactics really run that risk. Our job, I think, is going to be strategy. It's going to be orchestrating using the rich set of tools that are available to us. I think that that's going to happen. You're going to see more and more of it. Things like DALI and Pictory, you know, that are allowing us to create video and image assets. You know, all of the design folks, you know, the Adobe's of the world are going to get into this. You know, Canva is actually adding, it's a great for creative production and just being able to automate things across some of these platforms.

6:02You know, so again, from the tools, you know, start looking at, you know, Pictory AI and DALI and MidJourney. Adobe's entry right now is called Firefly. These are some of the things that I think that we really need to understand, but they're certainly disrupting the industries as well. I would say where we are at the close of 2024 going into 2025, these tools are not ready for prime time in terms of saying, oh, I'll just create all my images, all my illustrations, all my video. I'll just have avatars creating those. I mean, I think we're a long way from people understanding how the market's going to respond to those.

6:41And certainly you've all seen the kind of oddities that can be created using a dolly. So we're not there yet necessarily, but we're moving there rapidly. And certainly in 2025, it's only going to continue. I was like, this, I found it. I found it. This is what I've been looking for. I can honestly say it's genuinely changed the way I run my business. It's changed the results that I'm seeing. It's changed my engagement with clients. It's changed my engagement with the team. I couldn't be happier. Honestly, it's the best investment I ever made. What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the duct tape marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs, marketing agencies, and consultants.

7:20Just like them, you could use our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit dtm.world slash scale to book your free advisory call and learn more. It's time to transform your approach. Book your call today, dtm.world slash scale. This next trend number four, I'm calling AI-driven marketing orchestration. I think AI, in a lot of ways, is going to become a central hub for certainly for campaign management. I think we can make a case for a lot of things in operations and finance. You know, we're all really going to be disrupted in terms of how we do things.

8:07So you could actually say I talked about marketing orchestration, but you could really talk a lot about business orchestration as well. There's no question that a lot of the campaigns, some of the automation, some of the integrations and things that we do today are going to be replaced. So you're seeing many, many tools. HubSpot, GoHighLevel, they're building a lot of AI into email and ad workflows. Even things like Google Analytics, you're going to start seeing people analyzing for insight. A lot of times just reports of like, here's the data, make some sense of it. these tools are very good at doing that.

8:46So I think you're going to see really full scale, AI driven automation, and really something that's going to allow us to automate a lot of the touch points seamlessly. So it's not a overnight buy one tool, get rich, flip the switch. It is just something that piece by piece, SOP by SOP, campaign by campaign, you're going to start seeing people integrating these more effectively. All right. Now I'm going to come full circle because I think a lot of people look at these AI tools and they really look at them as, oh, this is going to replace humans and this is going to replace our need to do marketing or to have marketers in general.

9:25And I think to me, what it's going to do is it's going to, no question, it's going to impact some of the things that were done by hand, some of the inefficiencies. It's going to allow people to actually deliver more value, maybe more profitably, if you understand how to employ these. And number five, to me, it is actually the piece that brings this together. I think brand marketing, I call it as the new standard. Branding, brand marketing has always been important. But I think in turn, when it comes to customer growth and generating leads, a lot of people have gotten away from that idea. Because if you could figure out SEO, you could get cheap leads.

10:03If you could figure out the ad platforms and certainly they would sell you all their data, you could get cheap leads. And I think that's going away. That's one of the things that generative AI is making go away. A lot of the easy search, a lot of the ad platforms are going to not being able to sell their third party data. And so this differentiation through brand marketing is a comfortable circle, right? I mean, it was so important, you know, frankly, before we actually even had a lot of the online and digital channels that exist today. And I think we're going back there to some degree that I think consumers are really going to be much more effective in aligning their values with the brand's values.

10:42And the fact of the matter is, no matter how much we talk about all these platforms and tools and technology changing, the thing that continues to change rapidly is how people get to choose to buy. I mean, so much of the power, if you will, in the equation has shifted to the buyer because they can find out so much more information. They can actually be well down their journey to making a purchase decision before we even know they're out there. Brands that really want to differentiate today are going to focus on trust or increasing trust, increasing loyalty. You're going to have continued regulatory scrutiny.

11:17I think it's going to continue to drive some of that. And I think that we have to, as businesses, really focus on aligning campaigns with authentic brand values. And really, again, our ideal customer wants to see and I think has the ability now to choose to work with companies that really do communicate their values. In terms of how do you go there, one of the things you might do is just audit everything you're doing. I mean, are you in alignment with your brand standard and your values? Are you putting out messages out there that don't make sense necessarily to the market that you're trying to attract?

11:55And frankly, one of the things we have to do is continue to monitor these things because consumers are going to become very wary of AI-produced content, AI-produced visuals, all the way to the level of AI-produced video that can replicate somebody so thoroughly that it's very, very difficult to tell if that's the real person or if that is an AI video. I think a lot of consumers are going to want to know. They're going to want that transparency in addition to that value alignment. So those are things that I think we really are going to have to be very wary of. I think we have the opportunity, though, to lead, whether it's in our business or if we're an agency working with clients.

12:43I think we do have the ability to teach and to lead. When there are new tools, new technologies, there's going to be a lot of misinformation. There's going to be a lot of hype. It's going to be a lot of people telling you all you need is AI to get rich. I mean, every single day you're going to be hearing those kind of messages. And I think that one of the things that we have to do is cut through the clutter. That's really always been what I've tried to do. When I see a new technology, the first thing I want to know is, can this help me do my job better? Can this actually help me provide more value for my customers?

13:14And if the answer is yes, I want to explore it. If the answer is no, it's just the new thing. Everybody's talking about it in ways that don't make sense. I mean, I don't really care about that. But I think that's how you can start breaking these new technologies down in very practical ways. All right. That's all I have for today. Hopefully you find some interest in this as you charge into 2025, or if you're listening to this in 2025, certainly some things to consider. Love to hear feedback. Feel free to send me messages. It's just john at ductapemarketing.com. And of course, we love that feedback.

13:47Well, we really love five stars, actually. on Apple or Spotify or wherever you choose to listen. All right, take care. Appreciate it. Hopefully we'll see you one of these days out there on the road.