As 2025 kicks off, agencies are navigating a marketing world powered by AI, evolving platforms, and consumer expectations that change overnight. The pace is dizzying, but it’s also full of opportunity.
When we asked marketing agencies what new trends they anticipate for 2025, their insights revealed a shared focus on leveraging AI to scale operations, diversifying content strategies to stay ahead of declining organic reach, and adopting tools that balance creativity with efficiency. These trends reflect not only where the industry is heading but also how agencies are preparing to meet new challenges.
We’ll unpack the key insights from over two dozen marketing agencies, explore the strategies that will define success for agencies in 2025, and offer actionable takeaways to help your agency thrive in the year ahead.
1. Prioritize user-centric AI strategies
The rapid adoption of AI by creators in 2025 signals a shift in how agencies approach their marketing strategies. While AI tools are becoming mainstream, the real differentiator will be how agencies use them to prioritize user experiences and foster authentic connections with their audiences.
“Creators are adopting AI quickly,” says Franco Aquino, Co-Founder of REN Marketing. “This is great for early adopters but in a short amount of time, it may not be a differentiator. Being able to excel in high-quality (but not necessarily high production) user-generated content will separate the one-hit wonders from those that will grow long-term.”
As AI becomes more pervasive in marketing, agencies that use it to enhance authenticity rather than just production will be at an advantage. One way to be more authentic with prospects and customers is to share user-generated content (UGC), particularly reviews and testimonials. Those kinds of high-quality UGC create trust and foster long-term relationships with customers. Reviews, for example, provide an organic way for customers to share their experiences, offering authentic touchpoints that build credibility.
Tip: Make it easy for customers to leave reviews by linking to your review pages in emails and on your site. Actively ask for and incentivize leaving reviews by sending follow-up emails.
2. Diversify channels to increase visibility
As Google Search continues to change, marketers will also need to alter their tactics to get clients in front of prospects. “We're starting to see sites lose traffic due to AI overviews,” says Joy Jawkins, Owner/President of SterlingSky. With the rise of AI on Google, it's going to be challenging for SEOs to come up with more ways to get traffic to their clients' sites. A lot of informational queries that gave people an entry point are resulting in less clicks. The solution will be to diversify traffic sources and double down on the more transactional queries that will ultimately become more competitive.”
Diversification in content types and distribution will help agencies share client messaging, as will distinctive brand storytelling.
“2025 is going to be all about diversification,” explains Tanya Wigmore, Chief Growth Officer & General Manager of Cronyx Digital. “We're seeing a shift away from organic traffic as a primary traffic source and a drop in organic social visibility. You need to diversify your content types to include video and audio, as well as your traditional text content and will need to make sure that you're increasing visibility for your brand across multiple channels. Building all this new content is going to be a lot easier than ever with the help of AI, but make sure you're editing it to add in your unique perspective and expertise so that you can differentiate from other AI-created content.”
Expansion across more and varied channels will mean added complexity in identifying traffic sources. By using tracking tools that can identify online and offline touchpoints, as well as self-attribution, you can fill in the gaps of your customers’ journeys.
Tip: As you try new tactics, consider using tools like Call Tracking and Form Tracking. Visibility into data like keyword searches and lead sources will help you make smarter marketing decisions.
3. Experiment with new tactics — but track their effectiveness
Marketers have to worry about meeting their clients’ goals as well as their agency’s. For those marketers who said they didn’t meet last year’s revenue goals, two of the top reasons were economic impacts and client turnover. Testing new tactics can help you improve performance, but it’s important to track your progress. AI can help with both.
“With a new year approaching, this is a great time for marketers to test out new avenues to reach audiences and to see if those new avenues can drive efficient conversions,” says Jake Meline, Associate Director of Sales Operations at Accelerated Digital Marketing. “Many of these new tactics will rely on AI to help segment and define audiences, and possibly even to determine the messaging or creative these audiences will see.”
Meline believes that as marketers experiment with these new approaches, they must be mindful of the importance of tracking at each touch point. “Because different tactics can support different stages of the funnel, success may be defined differently for each of these tactics, and the only way for AI-based campaigns to succeed is to ensure they are optimizing toward the right goals,” he says.
With this in mind, marketers looking to leverage AI for more efficient marketing must be powering their campaigns with the most appropriate and complete performance data for each tactic, whether that means phone calls, lead form submissions, or web purchases.”
Tip: A/B test and measure your experiments to gauge effectiveness. Then, make adjustments based on that data.
4. Be real with your customers
Presenting your clients authentically is an effective way to connect with the right audience. As Ben Wright, Founder/CEO of Risely Marketing says: “Be human!”
“Marketers are always leveraging the latest trends, and AI is no different,” adds Wright. “In 2025 it will never be easier to sound robotic, feel generic, and get ignored online. Agencies that help their clients build incredible brands will win. That means being human, genuine, memorable, and unique.”
Tip: Share real customer and employee stories when relevant. Take advantage of ways to interact with your clients’ customers on social media.
5. Automate tedious tasks
Marketers are planning to use AI to help their agencies scale in the coming year. Their top planned uses for AI-driven tools are for:
- Customer data analytics platforms
- Lead intelligence software
- Marketing automation
Blake Akers, CEO of Webology, LLC says, “Imagine automating repetitive tasks like installing a Google Ads container in WordPress! For us in the SEO space, there's the potential to automate things like citation building and internal linking that will have a direct impact on the costs of SEO services very soon.”
Tip: Automating follow-ups with an AI-powered tool like Convert Assist will help your clients save time and ensure that leads and customers don’t fall through the cracks.
6. Innovate with no-code platforms
With AI-driven platforms, it’s easier than ever to create apps and tools for your customers. More agencies are trying no-code platforms to create these offerings, but it’s important to make sure they address real customer needs. With a deluge of new tools, customers may be annoyed by new apps that don’t solve real pain points or simplify their lives.
“The trend every marketer should explore is AI-first, no-code tool creation,” says Andrew Peluso, CEO & Owner of Bananas Agency. “Building useful, customer-centric tools has never been easier.”
For example, his agency recently leveraged the OpenAI GPT-4 API with a no-code platform to build a bug identification tool for their client's customers. Previously, customers had to sift through a vast library of bugs to identify what they were seeing—now, with AI, they can snap a quick picture and receive instant identification and relevant information about the bug. “A tool like this, once costly and complex, can now be built in hours for just $30 a month,” says Peluso.
This shift represents a massive opportunity for marketers to create value-driven solutions that directly improve customer experiences. In a world where AI can generate content, images, and video at scale, the real challenge is figuring out how to combine these capabilities to deliver unique, impactful solutions. The marketers who innovate with AI will be the ones who capture lasting customer loyalty.
Tip: Use tools that allow for no-code integrations to make it easier for your agency and your customers to innovate.
7. Optimize SEO with AI-driven tools
Agencies have been improving and streamlining SEO with AI-powered tools to do everything from research keywords to analyze data. Now, there are a growing number of ways AI is impacting SEO, including changing search interfaces.
Patricia Walterick, CEO of Open Space Digital, explains, “As AI platforms become a primary tool for search, marketers must adapt their SEO strategies to cater not only to traditional search engines but also to AI-driven search interfaces.”
Key trends to watch, according to Walterick, include:
• AI backlink ecosystem: Emerging data from tools like Google Search Console indicates a rise in backlinks from AI-generated sources. These backlinks, often generated by AI-powered content creators, can impact SEO dynamics and require marketers to monitor and assess their quality.
• Optimization for AI interfaces: With more users relying on AI chatbots and virtual assistants for answers, optimizing content to be AI-friendly will be crucial. This includes structuring content for clear, direct answers, leveraging schema markup, and focusing on conversational keyword strategies.
• Training AI models: Agencies may increasingly focus on training proprietary AI models with optimized content to enhance brand visibility within AI-driven search experiences. This proactive approach can help brands become the go-to source for specific topics or queries.
Tip: An AI-powered platform like Premium Conversation Intelligence™ can improve keyword spotting and SEO analysis. You can easily see which ads and keywords are driving your most valuable leads.
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