It’s hard to imagine a time in B2B marketing history when everything changed this quickly.
Just in the last couple of years, we’ve seen incredibly volatile Google SERPS, entire job categories created (AI prompt engineer?), and hundreds of new tools and features just waiting for us to learn.
The one theme running through the B2B marketing trends for 2025 is a continuation of this evolution. But with change comes opportunity. Marketers who plan for what’s coming will take giant leaps ahead of their competitors.
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6 B2B marketing trends to follow in 2025
Let these B2B marketing trends guide you as you create your 2025 marketing strategy.
1. AI agents go mainstream
AI agents are revolutionizing how everything from a factory floor to a dentist’s office operates. And they’re poised to do the same for B2B marketing.
These semi-autonomous problem solvers are already tackling several tasks for marketers, like:
- Optimizing campaigns
- Personalizing marketing messages
- Creating content
- Improving customer engagements
AI agents, like LocaliQ’s Dash, will help marketers provide more personalized and engaging experiences for prospects and customers.
Developers, both big and small, will continue to iterate on how AI agents help marketers. Facebook, for example, is bringing an AI agent to its ads manager. You’ll just feed it your marketing goals and give it some guidelines, and it’ll deliver the best outcome based on changing factors.
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This is probably the fastest-evolving trend in marketing. If you’re ready to jump on it, here’s how to get started.
Follow thought leaders
Find a few marketing thought leaders who talk about AI agents on LinkedIn, in podcasts, and in their newsletters. Don’t hesitate to get active in the comments—you’ll find many of the best recommendations there.
List jobs to be done
AI agents are designed to take on specific tasks. Make a list of workflow bottlenecks and growth opportunities you don’t have the bandwidth to address. Then, look for AI agents that handle them.
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2. Experience marketing comes back into focus
Experiential marketing fell out of favor for a while. In large part, that’s down to marketers focusing on digital mass communication strategies like content and social media marketing. Of course, the pandemic gave that shift a huge shove, too. But the trend is shifting back now. 74% of Fortune 1000 marketers report that they’ll be increasing spending on experiential marketing in 2025
Almost paradoxically, AI is helping to make experience marking en vogue again for two reasons. First, the specter of robo-crafted content has marketers looking for new ways to connect with audiences more authentically. A conference, webinar, or even sponsored coworking sessions are great ways to do that.
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At the same time, new AI tools help marketers make more of every event. You can now use AI to pull insights from a keynote speech or expert panel and almost instantly repurpose it into a series of blog articles, social posts, and video scripts.
Some marketing leaders are hiring specifically to curate content fodder from marketing events.
Events are excellent opportunities to gather first-party data, expert insights, and overall industry trends. Here’s how you can take advantage of the experiential marketing trend.
Find ways to host events
A conference is great, but it’s not in every brand’s budget. Try looking at more manageable events like webinars or even AMA (ask me anything) events on Reddit. You can also get some of the benefits by attending other brands’ events.
Get intentional about repurposing
Before any event you host or attend, create a list of how you can repurpose the information you gather there. When you go in knowing you want five blog articles, three short videos, and a dozen LinkedIn posts, you’ll seek out insights to fill them.
3. AI education is now non-negotiable
More than half of marketers say AI is already important in their role, but 70% said their employers don’t provide generative AI training. In 2025, businesses that create an AI curriculum will close the knowledge gap and be set up for success.
The educational chasm is only going to get deeper. New tools and use cases for AI in marketing are increasing exponentially. Wait too long, and the learning curve could get too steep to climb.
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Expect to see many more B2B businesses baking in some AI training and experimentation in 2025. The evidence of this marketing trend will be noticeable as thought leaders share their trials and learnings publicly.
Expect more public sharing of AI experiments and use cases in 2025.
AI will only get more entrenched in marketer’s workflows this year. Here are a few ways you and your team can get ahead and stay ahead.
Formalize your AI education
Create a structure around you and your team’s learning activities. Set aside learning time blocks, have experimentation sprints, and dedicate meetings to share new ways to use AI.
free tools
Many new AI tools, like copy generators, offer free versions as a way to gain market penetration. Others offer a “free forever” plan with limited but still useful features. Use these affordable options to try out new platforms and test use cases.
🛑 Need a little more context about AI? Download the Emergency Guide to AI in Marketing for a crash course.
4. AEO is the newest component of SEO
30-plus years ago, B2B businesses started focusing on getting their websites to appear at the top of Google search pages. Early SEO tactics were clumsy, rules were ambiguous, and results varied greatly. In 2025, we’ll see B2B marketers take their best shot at answer engine optimization (AEO) so their sites sit atop results in AI platforms like Perplexity and Google’s Gemini.
AI answer engines’ place in search is growing. Google expanded its AI Overviews last year. Perplexity’s user base continues to increase. And ChatGPT launched its search-focused platform. For each search involving these tools, there are citations to websites that can deliver both brand awareness and clicks from the interaction.
SEO expert Lily Ray pointed out how many places a brand can be cited in an AI search result.
It’s very likely that we’ll see more online searches involving AI-generated answers. Marketers will follow the search migration and focus more on AEO in 2025. And just like the early days of SEO, those in the know will land more of that coveted citation real estate. Use these tips to get started.
Get specific in copy and content
Answer engines seem to like to cite pages with direct answers to specific questions. So, ranking in an AE will be similar to grabbing the coveted feature snippet on a standard Google search. Make sure your copy includes a direct answer to the questions you’re trying to rank for.
Get your structure down
FAQs, meta descriptions, and schema markups will help answer engines understand and share your pages. Go back to those basics if you haven’t already done so.
Shore up your local listings
AI search tools pull data for local businesses from business listings. If your business has a physical location, make sure your directory listings are complete and up to date.
5. Employee ambassadors take the lead
SEO is most certainly not dead, but it does look a lot different than it did just a few years ago. Google SERPs are now rowdy places with frequently violent shifts in rankings and rules. In 2025, we’ll see many B2B marketers respond by diversifying their traffic sources. One popular way to do this is to help their employees become brand ambassadors.
Employee brand ambassadors work a lot like traditional influencers, but they’re employed by the business they’re promoting. They’ve been popular in B2C marketing for a while (this Papa John’s pizza maker has 1.4 million TikTok followers).
Scroll through LinkedIn, and you’ll see how the trend is taking over in the B2B space as well.
Employee brand ambassadors are bringing the TikTok vibe to LinkedIn.
There will be many variations on the internal influencer theme. Many will be marketers whose job it is to promote the brand online. But you’ll also see more engineers, customer success reps, and sales pros amplify their business’s digital footprint.
Keep these ideas handy as you consider joining this B2B marketing trend.
Offer a variety of ways to participate
Not everyone in your office (virtual or otherwise) will be eager to post TikTok-like videos or create extensive product demos for LinkedIn. And you don’t need them to. Start by asking them to repost a post or shout out a milestone on their account. Give them the option to jump in doing whatever feels natural and build from there.
Give them tools and incentives
Unless they were hired as an influencer, you’re asking something extra from someone who may not be familiar with social media marketing best practices. As you create your employee brand ambassador program, include some incentives (like helping them build their personal brand) and support (like writing captions for them).
6. AI transparency becomes a big debate
While many people don’t care if robots created your marketing copy, most want you to tell them if it was. In two recent surveys, 71% and 69% of respondents said that businesses should say when they use AI. Another poll by the AI Policy Institute showed that 80% of Americans think it should be illegal to pass off AI-generated content as created by humans.
AI photo generators are getting really good, making it hard for the average consumer to know what’s real and what’s AI.
We’ll also see new federal, state, and industry AI regulations add energy to the need for transparency.
The exact way B2B marketers react is still unknown. We may see brands self-regulate by adding disclosures about their AI use. Or we may get vertical best practices from individual industries (like healthcare, for example).
No matter what it looks like, 2025 will be the year transparency becomes a big part of the AI transformation. Here are some ways to be prepared.
Create an internal AI use policy
The most important step in planning for AI is codifying how your team should use it (and how they should discuss it). It’s okay to start simply with rules around writing blog posts and creating images. Remember to consider privacy since many AI models use the information you give them as a part of their training protocol.
Consider an AI use statement
If you want to get ahead of industry or legal standards, consider adding an AI use statement to your website. Explain how you use AI for asset creation, customer data, or other purposes.
Map your success with these B2B marketing trends
Few aspects of B2B marketing escaped the sudden shifts over the last couple of years. If you’re feeling a little dizzy from it all, know you’re not alone and that there’s a path to success. The most important step is to stay informed. Find a few information sources you enjoy and dedicate time to learning.
The B2B marketing trends we’ve listed here are a good place to start. Here’s a handy recap:
- AI agents go mainstream
- Experience marketing comes back into focus
- AI education is now non-negotiable
- AEO is the newest component of SEO
- Employee ambassadors take the lead
- AI transparency becomes a big debate
