This year, marketers are facing a mix of challenges and opportunities in their efforts to satisfy customers and achieve their marketing goals. While some are optimistic about the future, others are bracing for a challenging year ahead.
Here are some headlines to share:
Marketer Satisfaction and Concerns
Many marketers are feeling uncertain about their ability to reach performance goals in 2025. According to a recent survey, 42% of marketers expect it to be ‘very or somewhat difficult’ to achieve their targets 1. This uncertainty is reflected in the emotions marketers are experiencing, with significant portions feeling indifferent 13%, stressed 13%, and anxious 12%) about their roles 11.
Despite these concerns, there are some positive indicators:
- 56% of marketers expect their roles to expand in 2025 12
- Only 29% feel insecure about their job security 13
Key Challenges and Areas for Improvement
Budget Constraints and Content Creation
The top two concerns for marketers heading into 2025 are:
- Lack of budget 15%
- Ability to produce fresh, engaging content 13% 14
These challenges highlight the need for marketers to focus on efficiency and creativity in their strategies.
Embracing AI and New Technologies
Marketers recognize the need to leverage AI and other emerging technologies to stay competitive. However, many remain less than confident about their ability to use these tools effectively 2. To improve, marketers should:
Invest in AI training and integration for content creation and imagery across campaigns 3
Explore AI-driven personalization and creative testing, especially in direct mail strategies 31
Adapting to Changing Consumer Behaviors
Marketers need to be aware of shifting consumer preferences:
Younger generations Gen Alpha and Gen Z) are increasingly valuing physical brand interactions over digital ones 32
Social media remains a crucial channel for product discovery across generations 21 To address these trends, marketers should:
Develop strategies that balance digital and physical marketing channels 33 Invest in social media content creation and strategy 22
Strategies for Improvement
To enhance their marketing efforts, professionals should consider the following strategies:
Focus on Customer Feedback: Collect and act on customer feedback to drive improvements in products and services 4 5.
Leverage Data for Personalization: Use advanced AI tools to identify and curate impactful user-generated content and create personalized experiences 6 .
Invest in Social Media: Prioritize social media as a high-ROI marketing channel, focusing on content creation and social selling strategies 23.
Embrace Sustainability: Explore new ways to highlight authentic sustainability initiatives, as consumers are becoming more selective based on brands’ commitments 34.
Optimize Customer Satisfaction Measurement: Utilize tools like Net Promoter Score NPS) and customer satisfaction scores to track and improve customer experiences 4 1.
By focusing on these areas, marketers can work to overcome the challenges they face and improve their overall satisfaction with their marketing efforts as they move into 2025.
Conclusion
We are beginning to see marketers tackle many of the areas identified above for improvement. Marketers we talk to also understand the data, their own customer data actually is the foundation of all of their marketing events and are beginning to work with their colleagues in IT and Risk to start to tackle getting the data right at scale. Assisting them is the move most large organizations are making to create large private instances of their technology efforts in the public clouds, leaning in on customer data and AI technology.
We’ll keep checking in on the efforts of the marketer in these areas to see how much and how fast progress is being made to improve satisfaction, especially around the data complexity issues.
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https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/surveymonkey-research-marketers-sentiment-for-2025/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-blog-marketing-industry-trends-report
https://www.quad.com/insights/20-marketing-trends-and-predictions-for-2025
https://contentsquare.com/guides/customer-satisfaction/techniques/ https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/customer-satisfaction/