Machina or ex-machina: ~40 marketing and comms predictions for 2025

If these predictions are any indication, there’s little consensus across marketing and PR about what will happen next year; exciting times are ahead

In pouring over predictions I received this year, I had a simple observation: I disagreed with a lot of them (which is a good thing). Indeed, if you peruse these entries, you’ll see a lot of conflicting views. In other words, if this roundup is any indication, we don’t have a consensus about the future.

On the one hand, this seems logical. How can we gain consensus over something that’s yet to happen? On the other hand, in years past, while there were some outliers, I thought many of the predictions had the same basic forecast.

As you read please, keep in mind these notes:

There is no order of merit here; I’ve presented them chronologically;
Accordingly, my own predictions are at the very end;
Entries were edited for clarity and grammar;
Explicit political references were eliminated; I avoid politics; and
Some of the contributors are international; English is often a second language.

Finally, I invite contributions from previous years, and those who have subscribed to this blog by email, or to my monthly newsletter.

And with that, I present to you, 40+ marketing and PR predictions for 2025

1. The AI reckoning is coming

“The deluge of AI tools has created a frenzy over implementing them in our businesses, but the risks are also becoming more prevalent. I expect lawmakers to double down on regulating this technology and the few, truly useful tools will rise to the top – begging the question: is there enough AI for all of us to still be authentic and unique marketers and communicators?”

~ Stacey Miller | Vice President Communications | Auto Care Association

2. Gamification of AI lawsuits

“AI agents will enable citizen groups to file lawsuits en masse creating huge PR headaches and complex legal entanglements. Eventually, regulations will sort this out but watch for the gamification of lawsuits in the near future.”

~ Mark Schaefer | Executive Director | Schaefer Marketing Solutions

3. Here comes a podcast bandwagon

“This past election cycle really showed us how big podcasts have become – it was basically the year of the podcast. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more brands, companies, and thought leaders jumping on board, whether that’s through podcast ads, starting their own shows, or making guest appearances part of their marketing game plan.”

~ Britt Klontz | Founder, Digital PR Consultant | Vada Communications

4. Transparency as a competitive advantage

“Truth and transparency will be the ultimate competitive advantage. While truth has forever been a core component of communications, brands that prioritize truth and transparency in 2025 will rise to the top. Consumers will continue having less tolerance for brands that BS them. All the money and time spent on strategic plans and crisis comms is wasted if leaders don’t see the value in showing customers or clients respect through honesty.”

~ Nikki Little | Senior VP | Franco

5. AI agents get good enough

“Picture this. It’s 9 a.m. on Tuesday, December 9, 2025.

You turn on your computer.

Overnight, your PR AI agent has been hard at work.

It has scanned thousands of the prior day’s news articles, blog posts, podcasts, and videos for relevant keywords and evaluated each of them for contextual relevance.

For the pieces it found to be relevant, the PR AI agent has dug up reporters’ emails and then drafted pitches (referencing your prior work with those reporters when appropriate).

And now, sipping your coffee, you spend a few minutes looking through the articles and pitch drafts one by one, tweaking them here and there (and btw every tweaked pitch makes the next pitch better), and then you send them all off.

It’s now 9:21 a.m.

Then an email lands in your inbox. It’s from a recent college grad interested in a PR job.

You think to yourself – The PR AI agent is so productive I may not need to hire junior staff.

And then you think even deeper – The PR AI agent is so productive, future clients may not need to hire me.

You go for a walk, reflecting on life’s mixed blessings.”

~ Josh Inglis | Founder and Principal | Propllr

6. Earned media can’t go it alone anymore

“There’s going to be much more demand for precision and predictability in PR campaigns. Teams will need to show the data analysis behind their strategies before they launch.

Pure earned media might not be enough anymore. We’re shifting towards mixed paid-earned approaches, and there’s a good reason for that – they’re more effective.

This will affect how we analyze and report on campaigns. PR metrics are going to be much more closely tied to the company’s bottom line. Things like cost per lead, and customer lifetime value are entering PR reports.”

~ Aleksandra Kubicka | PR Evangelist | Prowly

7. Staff cuts coming to corp comm thanks to AI

“PRs to dedicate more time to work their in-house audiences. As AI gains traction in many professions, PRs are at danger of losing their footing.

Over the last 6 months, I have noticed that many discussions on tech adoption centered on AI, and in particular, leadership’s wish to reduce costs. Read: cut the headcount of department.

I often argue that efficiency of the current team – [which is] doing more with the same team and gaining big in what a comms department can achieve in 12 months – is the way to look at this development [even though] it is not what the C-suite have in mind when investing in AI-driven CommTech.

My prediction is therefore that we will see job cuts in comms departts and the need for PRs to showcase their value internally more than ever before.”

~ Bart Verhulst | Co-founder | Presspage

8. Human expertise maybe expiring

“Given the never-ending pressure to produce more content (because ‘more content’ is exactly what every enterprise needs right now; the indexed web ‘only’ contains only about 2.25 billion pages with total data volume growing by about half-a-zettabyte per day in 2025), with less resources (budget, people, etc.), the temptation to rely increasing on AI-created content will become overwhelming.

Anyone who spends any time with it can’t help but to have noticed that the writing quality of AI has gotten remarkably better over just the past year. And in a recent AI course I attended, the presenter shared a prompt that, with a bit of thought and tweaking, can produce a guide or ebook on virtually any topic in less than an hour.

I’ve not actually tried it yet, but…it’s tempting. For the moment, authenticity, unique point of view, and human expertise will remain more highly valued than synthetic, generic, AI-produced content. But for how much longer?”

~ Tom Pick | Digital Marketing Consultant | Webbiquity LLC

9. Focus on executing the basics of media relations

“With media outlets shrinking and doing more with less, I think there will be a movement to ‘back to basics.’ Leveraging relationships to garner results. Those firms that have those solid relationships will thrive and those trying to make those relationships will have some work on their hands.

In addition, the pay to play/sponsored content movement will continue to grow. PR industry should not be afraid to embrace the P2P movement. Sponsored content will have a place in the PR industry moving forward.”

~ Jason Brown | Principal | PublicCity PR

10. Hyper targeted media relations is essential

“In 2025, hyper targeting wins out over big media lists.

CNN, Los Angeles Times, WAPO and others, cut staff. Writers have to cover more beats. They are extraordinarily busy: A Reddit thread disclosed that journalists file two to six stories daily.

To break through the noise, be selective and use more care when pitching. In 2025, the trend for success will be to hyper-target one reporter who is a stunning fit for a much higher chance of quality coverage. You can’t do this intelligently when pitching 500 media outlets.

Hyper personalize as well.”

~ Michelle McIntyre | President | Michelle McIntyre Communications LLC

11. Priority goes to crisis comm and results-measurement

“On the heels of a busy year, we expect 2025 to be more focused. It’s time to show results and initiate efforts that measurably move the needle. We expect to see less interest in proactive crisis communication planning, and more effort toward ongoing strategic communication, issues management and advocacy needs.”

~ Megan Paquin | Founder and CEO | Paquin Public Relations

12. The role of PR gets harder

“Sadly, PR people will have to work even HARDER to distinguish themselves and their clients from the vast amount of lies and ‘alternative facts’ that will be present for, at minimum, the next four years. The lack of fact checking and mistrust of all media and those who work in the media is only going to rise. It’s going to be a very sad (and dangerous) time. I’m hoping we’re all up for the challenge.”

~ Peter Shankman | Founder | Source of Sources

13. Trust in influencers gets tested

“2025 will be the first year where we see a trust drop in influencers on TikTok, podcasts, and such…or at the least, their credibility will start to get tested.

There was a lot of editorial written on the power of non-traditional media in the recent election, but I believe some of this influence will wane when we start seeing more high profile influencers make high profile mistakes that have real world consequences.

The true believers of the most popular influencers will not be swayed no matter what happens, but some of the newer audiences of these channels (and less popular ones) will start to vote with their ears and eyeballs.

Trust will start to become a consideration when looking for new podcast, YouTube Channels or even giving some traditional media outlets another look.”

~ Scott Rosenblum | President/Founder | LEVEL PR

14. Tech sector navigates new political priorities

“The new administration with a sweeping agenda means the news in 2025 will be dominated by national and political issues. In tech, that includes tariffs, changes to H1-B, restrictions on tech exports to China, FCC regulation, crypto act FIT21 to name a few.

For brands, this means they need to connect their media strategy to those events if they want press attention, and at the same time avoid being dragged into crisis issues through missteps.

Audiences and reporters will feel anxiety and uncertainty. So. how can PR teams explain, contextualize, assuage, or distract from that to gain attention?

Be sure the attention is there, to build brands or to tear them down.”

~ Morgan McLintic | CEO | Firebrand Communications

15. Predictive technologies get better at predictions

“Predictive insights are no longer Sci-Fi: With larger data sets comes greater accuracy.

In 2025, AI will grow powerful enough to not only incorporate trillions of relevant data points for any company – media sentiment, stock fluctuations, executive commentary, and beyond – but also extract predictive insights that prepare executives for any scenario.

If 2024 taught us anything, it’s to heed the lessons of history.

With advances in machine learning and access to untapped unstructured data sets, the potential applications for communicators are endless: we could test messages before they’re delivered, quantify the likelihood of a risk affecting a particular company, or even determine the most influential campaigns ahead of launch.”

~ David Benigson | CEO Signal AI | Signal-AI

16. Enter hyper personalization

“Balancing Gen AI with hyper-personalization Gen AI is here, and marketing and PR professionals will continue to incorporate it into day-to-day operations and tasks, but not without hesitation.

PR and Marketing professionals will also invest more time and attention in hyper-personalization to combat the fear of losing that personal touch.

For example, a) Micro-influencers will take center stage as brands value higher quality connections over higher quantity connections. b) PR professionals will work to enhance personalization within media outreach.

This may include sending personalized snail-mail, cold calls, and/or media kits to target media outlets as a way to stand out.”

~ Hannah Bernhard | Head of PR | Rentokil Terminix

17. AI takes erroneous PR pitches (spam) to a new level of noise

“Automated agents pitching journalists will be the next circle of PR hell, as terrible AI-generated pitches flood journalists’ inboxes and DMs without any human involvement. Those who suffer most will be good, well-meaning PR folks who can’t break through the noise. Great PR people cultivating deeper relationships with select journalists will continue to reap rewards thanks to their low-tech, high-EQ, off-the-charts-value approach.”

~ David Berkowitz | Founder | AI Marketers Guild

18. PR turns to real-time data

“I see PR evolving into more real-time data-driven strategy with growing channels like LinkedIn, podcasts, Substack, and even Patreon. The use of analytics data to show off the results of PR work will build understanding and recognition across company/organization leadership and with agency clients, allowing PR pros to be more agile in these growing channels.”

~ Kelly Byrd Marin | Senior Director, Marketing | Notified

19. It’s all about consistency

“My prediction for 2025 is that forward-thinking businesses who understand AI-based search will put an emphasis on instituting a consistent public relations program.

PR pros can help you find opportunities to increase your brand’s visibility.

Now, with the era of AI-based search upon us, PR matters more than ever because you want your business to show up EVERYWHERE.

Why? The more your company is featured, the more likely it’ll be to appear when someone searches using a platform like Perplexity, for example. (While AI-based search currently comprises a much smaller portion of search than Google, it’s growing.)

If you care about AI understanding your business and recommending you, then your biggest investment should be in public relations, as Christopher Penn, co-founder of Trust Insights, puts it.”

~ Michelle Garrett | Consultant | Garrett Public Relations

20. Creators draw audiences away from traditional media

“Creators will establish themselves as key players in sharing news, shaping public opinion and driving brand influence. Historically, social and digital platforms curated their content from traditional news outlets.

That dynamic has shifted as nearly one in five Americans, including a notable 37% of adults under 30, now regularly turn to influencers on social media for news, according to the latest Pew Research Center study.

These creators aren’t just amplifying stories; they create original narratives and draw audiences away from traditional media. As a result, we’ll see news organizations rethink their strategies to remain relevant.”

~ Gregory Galant | cofounder & CEO | Muck Rack

21. ‘Wait and see’ marketing might be left behind

“To quote a famous rapper, I once sold Twizzlers to at the Commack Multiplex, ‘Don’t call it a comeback.’

With the ‘wait and see’ mentality of 2024 behind us, brands will be ramping up their PR and marketing programs. This will be a disappointingly hard challenge for brands that took their foot off the gas too long in 2024, as those that didn’t scale back too much have more momentum and mindshare.

Also, AI will still have a PR problem. While it will continue to play a growing part in our world, we will see AI fatigue from customers and investors.”

~ Bill Byrne | Co-Founder and Managing Director | Remedy PR

22. Shape-shifting content adapts to audience, channel, in real time

“We’ve been talking about adaptive content for several years (maybe 8?), but this is the year it will really start to take hold for comms pros.

Adaptive content automatically ‘reshapes’ itself based on the channel, audience, and previous interaction history – much like social media ads do today. But from a PR perspective, we’ll begin to use it in our owned and earned media to hyper-personalize our interactions, master the art of building direct relationships, and create compelling reasons for audiences to share our stories.

This goes beyond repurposing to create truly channel-specific experiences that maintain message consistency across the PESO Model© framework.”

~ Gini Dietrich | Founder and author | Spin Sucks

23. PR will no longer be just PR

“In 2025, the change that AI and data are generating in PR will begin to take place. Thanks to AI, a communications professional can simultaneously manage customized content for different platforms and audiences, while monitoring expands far beyond classic media to embrace a variety of sources. This is leading to a natural evolution towards a more comprehensive approach that intersects corporate affairs, reputation management and integrated communication.

At the same time, the PR mission itself is transforming: it is no longer just about managing media relations, but about analyzing and interpreting large volumes of data. This makes it possible to concretely measure the impact of communication actions and provide a strategic interpretation of the context.

In essence, AI and data are transforming PR from a primarily media relations-oriented function to a data-driven discipline of integrated communication and strategic business intelligence.”

~ Nicola Comelli | co-founder | Point-out

24. Team structures get more flexible and versatile

“The traditional in-house marketing team will become more obsolete for small and mid-size brands. Building and maintaining a full internal agency with every skill set is cost-prohibitive and ends up pulling resources away from execution.

As marketing becomes increasingly specialized and technology evolves faster than teams can keep up with, brands are likely to lean on fractional talent and specialized agencies. Expect to see more flexible and versatile team structures in 2025.”

~ Megan Shroy | Founder + President | Approach Marketing

24. Budgets are back, but tech changes the job

“Podcasts will continue to enjoy popularity as a nontraditional media target for PR. Savvy pros will track and focus on these and other channels that are growing in importance, e.g. newsletters.

There will be lots of turmoil and media focus on the new incoming administration and its moves and policies. This will challenge PR to ride the wave and news jack without getting too caught up in politics.

AI will become ever more ingrained into the journalist and PR worlds. Watch for it to sneak up on us and take hours and jobs away. Hopefully this will be mitigated by a stronger economy that once again opens the spigot on marketing spending, as 2024 was a tough year for many in the agency world.”

~ Bob Geller | President and Partner | Fusion PR

26. The paid placement fad will fade

“Smart CMOs will realize that paid placement’s reach and impressions cannot replicate the benefits of earned media coverage. Clients will tire of paying for placement when they already pay a retainer for earned media coverage. Smart agencies will exit the paid placement experiment and restore efforts to build awareness and credibility within conventional news media.”

~ Kevin Mercuri | CEO | Propheta Communications

27. Educators need to add AI the curriculum

“Communicators will have the daunting task of judiciously countering the use of AI. The fear of creativity suffering is strong, what with even movie scripts being generated through AI. It’s reducing the human element. As such, the temptation to rely on AI for anything and everything lies at the end of our fingertips.

Yet communication educators have the task of engaging with case study-driven learning practices for hands on learning and teaching. AI provides simulated experiences, helping envisage real life situations in advance.

Communication practices would become truly universal and uniform as language barriers would be broken, lifestyles, fashion trends, living trends, consumer sensibilities, all already uniform, the globe having truly shrunk.

One of the many common factors would be through exact multi-lingual translations in real time. Appropriate communication plans could be developed using AI for gauging the pulse of the customers. With so many options thrown up by AI, it is entirely up to us practitioners as to the manner and extent to which we engage/disengage AI.”

~ Maya Chakravarti Vishwanathan | Communications Educator & Practitioner | IKON PR

28. Social media splits further into distinct media realities

“In 2025, the social media ecosystem will fragment further into polarized digital territories, reflecting broader societal divisions. The exodus from X (formerly Twitter) will accelerate, with major brands and influential users gravitating towards more ideologically aligned platforms such as BlueSky and Threads.

Despite predictions of its demise, X will find new life with politically conservative voices, particularly following the election. Trump supporters who have previously fled to TruthSocial will return to X following Trump and Muskâ€™s alliance. According to Musk himself, companies like IBM, Disney, Comcast, and Warner Bros. have signaled a return to advertising on the platform.

Meanwhile, BlueSky will emerge as a primary alternative, attracting users seeking a more nuanced, less politically charged communication space. In just three months, the platform has doubled its user base to 20 million, indicating a significant demand for alternative social networks. More and more brands and celebrities are embracing BlueSky as their new platform of choice.

This split represents more than a technological shift; it is a manifestation of deeper societal polarization. Users will increasingly self-segregate into echo chambers, reducing meaningful cross-ideological dialogue and reinforcing existing belief systems. The result: two distinct media realities, each with its own narrative, audience, and perceived truth that comms and PR professionals need to be aware of.”

~ Fady El-Murr | Founder & Managing Partner | pressrelations

29. A greater need for internal comms

“Employers of all sizes are thinking differently about recruitment and retention, especially as it relates to various return-to-office, continued remote workplaces and connecting with frontline workforces. There will be a renewed focus on internal communications – bringing understanding of the value of employee engagement and employee experience to the forefront.

Internal communications will be more frequently a communications-led practice vs. an HR-led program – as the c-suite recognizes the ROI of keeping employees connected to the business and retained. New opportunities to engage deskless and remote workers will be a priority – and new tools will be developed that eclipse current thinking on resources.”

~ Hinda Mitchell | President and Founder | Inspire PR Group

30. The rise of the freelancer brand

“As mainstream media outlets continue to lay off staff, the freelancer pool is growing and many of them aren’t just writing for other media outlets, they’re building niche audiences of their own on podcasts and/or platforms like Substack.

And as freelancers invest energy into building their own personal brands on social media as a way to grow their audience (and income), we’re seeing more of these writers become influencers in their own right.

Media relations in 2025 might start to look more like influencer marketing. Expect some convergence between these two functions and departments.”

~ Kathy Casciani | Consultant/Owner | Azul PR + Communications

31. GenAI gets limited to a first draft

“While all the discussion in marketing and communications is about AI – I am going out on a limb to predict the beginning of its rejection in producing content.

Don’t get me wrong, sadly the market will continue to be flooded with mediocre writing (not new but made worse by AI content), however this will create an opportunity for authentic, unique, highly personal content to start to differentiate itself. Consumers and customers have already begun to reject the overly complex, overly superlative AI writing and crave simple, pure and meaningful content.

In a world where we are bombarded by messaging, words and their meaning and promises do actually matter. Content producers must find their voice again – and I guarantee while generative AI might be a place to start – it is not the place to finish.”

~ Dr. Wendy Zajack | Faculty Director & Associate Professor of the Practice | Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies

32. Cognitive AI supplants generative AI

“Crisis comms and internal comms will benefit from AI game theory. Crisis leaders use real-time data to inform and test brand messages pre-deployment. And possibly companies ingesting employee sentiment data – through anonymized data capture from emails and internal messaging apps – to inform internal comms and culture.

We will finally start to see a shift from generative AI to cognitive AI – where data will actually inform decisions – from campaign strategy to risk mitigation and predictive stakeholder engagement.

Many will continue to participate in AI-washing and posturing – claiming capabilities and proficiencies – but they will all be tested by procurement at brands who will bring actual technologists to the table to stress test their proclamations.

Companies and agencies alike will invest more in training staff on different tools and guidelines – and will spend more time on building private AI environments with a focus on permission-ing, data hygiene and compliance.”

~ Aaron Kwittken | CEO & Founder | PRophet

33. Higher stakes require a higher touch

“Four years ago, Kara Swisher predicted that everything that can be digitized will be digitized. We’ve seen that happen. But digital technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum – it must involve, engage and be created by real people. Even as AI matures, tech stories are people stories. And people want to be inspired, maybe now more than ever given the political climate.

What does this mean for PR and marketing?

For most organizations post-Covid, the stakes are higher for employee and customer engagement. Smart employers will deepen their commitment to wellness, upskilling, team building, and, yes, DEI, though they may be a bit quieter about diversity initiatives.

For brands, customer relationships are at risk of being influenced or even outsourced to third-party apps, digital influencers, even brand agents like chatbots. That spells opportunity for PR and marketing professionals who help brands build trust with ever-smaller segments of their customer base.

The paradox of the AI era is that high-touch communications are more important than ever. Campaigns that focus on ideas that drive media attention, bridge the virtual and physical, and extend budgets will be in demand, particularly in our fractured and fragmented attention economy.”

~ Dorothy Crenshaw | Chief PR Officer | Mod Op

34. AI still can’t read the room

“More so than ever before that ability to communicate from the heart will be invaluable, even when others disagree, especially when others disagree. Being able to speak from the heart and be open-hearted and open-minded whilst others share their stories, truths and experiences without looking at shutting them down will become vitally important in terms of both marketing and PR.

Without being able to communicate from the heart, our egos get stuck, and the world gets stuck in the mess that it’s in! We all have to find a way to navigate by listening more deeply to each other without judgement so that we can move through difficult conversations and situations with greater ease, grace and less judgement and far more kindness even when we disagree.

This could translate into more and more niche communities, to support people more but it still will not solve the bigger issues around the importance of being able to communicate be it in Marketing or PR from the heart, instead of from the head or using AI, which has no capacity to read the room!”

~ Caroline Eddins | Founder | The Blondepreneur Ltd

35. Customer marketing impact catches up with demand gen

“Having waited years for their own source of audience insights for data driven campaigns, customer marketers finally have it, thanks to their company’s customer success tech stack.

Those who can enlist the help of their customer success (CS) teams to access and activate this data can finally outgrow customer marketing’ traditional domain of advocacy, references and case studies, using data like product usage and customer health to create campaigns that drive retention and expansion opportunities at scale.

Might customer marketing teams surpass the impact of their demand gen counterparts? 2025 will tell.”

~ Hunter Montgomery | CMO | ChurnZero

36. Perfection is the enemy of trust

“Marketing and PR have always been obsessed with polish, especially with multimedia like graphics and video. Generative AI tools have taken this to a new level, bringing both polish and efficacy to the process. Yet views are changing. Customers and prospects are more sophisticated than ever. Polish is starting to be associated with manipulation.

People distrust polish and want candid insight from real people without all the varnish. Some examples include:

- Words without a teleprompter or script;
- Videos shot and edited on an iPhone; and
- Brevity, clarity and candor in communication.

Perfection is still the enemy of good, but 2025, it might also be the enemy of trust.”

~ Frank Strong, Founder & President, Sword and the Script Media, LLC

37. A talent crunch puts the human back in HR

“Surveys throughout this past year have shown CMOs and marketing leaders need talent. If given extra budget, they’d invest that budget in staffing.

Yet there was far more talent chasing fewer jobs in marketing throughout the year. Recruiters would post a job and see 100 applicants in minutes. To manage the deluge, they started treating candidates – people – without the dignity humans deserve. In 2024, it wasn’t the human resources department, it was just the resources department.

The recruiting horror stories being shared online are surreal. Companies would put candidates through 10 grueling interviews, and require personality test, cognitive tests, writing tests, portfolio samples and more. They’d drag this out over a month or longer – and then ghost the candidate. How rude is that? Very rude.

Here again, the surveys all suggest marketing budgets are coming back – and so too will the demand for talent. The recruiters that have behaved badly will find the tables have turned.

The marketing world is a small community. Word gets out about recruiters and hiring managers to avoid. No one wants to be married to a company that abuses candidates during the courtship.”

~ Frank Strong, Founder & President, Sword and the Script Media, LLC

38. A return to the soul of content marketing – a subscribed audience

“As a concept, content marketing has gotten away from its roots. ‘Every company is a media company’ was once a popular refrain. Being a media company means focusing on the audience and building subscribers as the news media does. That means developing useful and relevant content that’s published consistently: at the same place, at the same time and doing this consistently over time to attract and build a subscribed audience.

That was what made the notion of content marketing so interesting. Sure, there were outliers like John Deere and The Furrow, that had been doing this for decades, but for the majority of marketers, content marketing was a refreshingly different take.

It was derived from the concept of custom publishing, which early adopters surely know, was the brainchild of Joe Pulizzi – around 2008 or so – who had made a career in custom publishing. He observed the advent of the web made custom publishing more accessible to more companies at a significantly lower cost than traditional custom publishing. He chose the term “content marketing” over “custom publishing” because, at that moment in time, it landed better with decision-makers, like CMOs.

Trends in advertising made the timing perfect too. Advertising spend has shifted to digital media at the expense of traditional trade publications – and many started to shutter. There was a golden opportunity for content marketers (and, frankly, savvy PR people by virtue of their position relative to editorial), to step in, save or replace those publications, and “cover” their own industry niche like a trade.

It was genius. Marketing was already spending a ton of money on ads – effectively renting an audience – so why not build your own and cut out the middle person? Or even better, make a strategic play to acquire an existing publication.

But that’s not where we are with content marketing right now.

Today, anything that’s remotely related to content seems to get labeled as content marketing. SEO, ebooks, and even some ad campaigns are being mercilessly awarded this label. Except none of these things fit the bill. It’s gotten worse with every passing year. As a judge for several years in a row for the annual CMI content marketing awards, I’ve watched in dismay as the subscribed audience slipped from the award application lexicon.

As a community, we’ve broadened the definition of content marketing so wide, that we have confused ‘marketing content’ with ‘content marketing.’ That might sound like semantics until you try to persuade leadership to implement a true content marketing program: We are not all working from the same definition. That leads to misaligned expectations. Misaligned expectations derail valuable, but time-intensive efforts, like true content marketing with a well-defined and subscribed audience.

And content marketing, done right, really works. I championed a blog that grew to 20,000 monthly visitors, and 2,000 email subscribers – and in its third year was a proven point of attribution, among others, on a sales cycle for about one-third of the deals that close for an enterprise SaaS product with an average selling price of $1.3 million.

How can we make that attribution? We looked at the email addresses associated with those closed deals and cross-referenced it with the blog’s email subscribers. We could not have demonstrated the value of content marketing in such a clear way without email subscribers.

But it took three years. There is no quick and easy path in content marketing. It’s a long hard slog. Yet once you get a content marketing program to this point, you start to see a very powerful flywheel emerge.

In recent years, the pressure on trade publications has intensified. That means the timing is even better today than it was when this new marketing idea first really started to grow legs.

As a community, we have an opportunity in 2025, or perhaps even an obligation, to seize the moment and get back to the soul of content marketing – and that means returning our focus on building a subscribed audience.”

~ Frank Strong, Founder & President, Sword and the Script Media, LLC