Written by Christopher Melotti
The Australian commercial environment in 2025. I have some thoughts, for sure.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
We’re in for some interesting times ahead. Not saying it’s all negative – more… unpredictable and far less consistent than I’ve ever seen it over the last 20 years anyway.
While the below are just my predictions for Marketing in 2025 (and beyond), I’m basing this all off my own first-hand market experience, discussions with my network and insights from my colleagues.
1. AI: from gimmick to actual utility
There it is. I finally said those two letters: AI!
But I’m not saying it to jump on the bandwagon.
In actual fact, I predict AI to reach full integration and ‘normalcy’ in 2025, where it becomes less of a novelty and more of ‘just another tool’.
Look, you can see how oversaturated it has all become and how very over people are with seeing “powered by AI” on everything.
Nevertheless, AI isn’t going away and I feel that, in 2025, there will be an AI baseline with everyone using it to varying degrees.
Marketing practises will also become increasingly reliant on MarTech (marketing technology) and they will all have AI baked in. I expect this to exponentially increase in 2025 and…
…while hopefully these marketing AI tools will increase accuracy and productivity, I predict there will also be subscription bloat and a lot of wastage too.
2. Average AI use in business
Despite the above, just because businesses are normalising AI in their everyday, doesn’t mean they’re using it correctly or to its full potential. This is actually something I predict in 2025: AI complacency.
Of course, I expect AI to be used far more in marketing, but whether marketers will upskill themselves correctly to get the most out of AI, I’m not sure.
From my Marketing Consulting and AI teaching classes, I’m seeing a lot of complacency here – and I don’t blame people.
AI seems super smart which means it CAN seem like it doesn’t require a lot of expertise to use: but nothing could be further from the truth.
As it appears really smart, people aren’t as motivated to advance their skills in using it. Worse is that most won’t even realise that they’re not getting the optimal use out of it as I’m seeing a lot of “this does it better than I could already so I’m happy with my current use.”
I think it will be a few years before there is a push to improve the average skill level when it comes to AI’s commercial use.
3. Growth of AI ethics
I guess it wouldn’t be a very good 2025 business predictions article without this elephant in the room: AI ethics and AI policy creation.
The AI tech excitement has definitely worn off, and it’s now just becoming integrated into society. This is where tech actually gets its most utility and strength: when it becomes less of a gimmick and more of a tool.
This will shift the focus towards AI governance, AI policy development and AI ethics in business.
I’m already doing this a lot for larger businesses and governments. Every organisation’s identity, ethos and circumstances are different – which means AI ethics will be different for each.
However, the main factors that need to be taken into consideration in 2025 include:
- Governance Structure: outline the policy structure for AI ethics within the organisation.
- Ethical AI Development Process: describe the process for ensuring AI systems are developed, adopted and integrated ethically.
- Monitoring and Reporting: detail how the organisation will monitor AI systems for ethical compliance and report on performance.
4. Economic downward pressure
We’ve seen across the world, but more specifically in Australia, that the economy has slowed right down due to higher interest rates, and this impact will last long into 2025.
Only now are people starting to truly feel the pinch and this is flowing on to businesses of all sizes, types and industries.
As you can imagine, this means businesses are being more cautious with their budgets, impacting marketing spend and ROI expectations.
While there is money getting exchanged, businesses are taking far longer to make decisions as they are protecting their budgets and prioritising certain projects over others. This will affect marketing spend and ROI expectations during 2025 – which means that there’s going to be a big push to innovate and prove value over the next 12 months.
5. DIY Marketing
Following on from the above, with restricted marketing budgets, businesses will be forced to start experimenting with DIY marketing.
I expect that this will initially be exciting, as internal teams begin to try different tactics, aided by AI.
However, AI is not the silver bullet and, without real experience in marketing, internal teams are going to be reminded why marketing is best left to the professionals.
This will be an opportunity for marketing practitioners to take back market share later in 2025 when businesses start to allocate more budget back to marketing, advertising and sales tactics.
6. Longer sales lead times for conversions
Building upon the previous point, I’m certainly seeing that timelines and decision-making are expanding quite dramatically.
So, whether you’re in marketing or you’re a business decision-maker, I feel that we all need to be wary that, what were once easier conversion rates are now becoming far more drawn out and considered.
People are looking at more options, asking for more information, seeing more value and also, basically taking longer to go ahead with marketing projects.
So, in 2025, expect to become more omnichannel in your marketing than ever before and make sure that you have content which covers the entire customer journey!
For more information, check out the 8 stages of the customer content journey here.
7. More proposals, less transactions
Building upon even THAT, I’m seeing that clients are now requesting a lot more paperwork to scope out projects in more length.
It makes perfect sense. After all, when the economy was running red hot a few years ago, getting a quote for a new website or a marketing campaign was accepted almost immediately with something like a simple quote.
However, my marketing agency (and most in my network) are finding that robust proposals with options are now becoming a far more prevalent norm.
In 2025, expect to have to invest to improve all of your marketing collateral and sales materials, as clients start to ask for them more often.
Also, we’ve found that having a qualified sales psychology background gives you a really strong competitive advantage – just ask my team how to hack this!
8. Shifts in Marketing recruitment, hiring and resources
From my experience, I’m seeing many companies shift their choices in hiring internal marketing staff and making different decisions around marketing resources.
For instance, having a Virtual Chief Marketing Officer or Fragmented CMO is all the rage and will continue to be going into the next year. I think it’s because marketing staffing costs are increasing significantly, whereas a fragmented CMO as a contractor can come in for a day or two a week and manage all of the strategy and implementation, while keeping costs down.
I’m seeing this very often now, where companies just have a marketing coordinator internally, a fragmented CMO and then execution agencies conducting all of the marketing work.
I’m expecting that the current fragmented CMO, marketing contactor trend will continue throughout 2025. I’m seeing so many businesses now turning away from hiring a full-time high-level marketing resource, and instead, recruiting a marketing admin person, while hiring a marketing agency to look after the majority of everything else.
It's a smart decision for 2025, as a marketing agency can do so much more if businesses give them the 6-figure budget that was earmarked for an internal CMO.
I feel businesses will take this onboard over the next 12 to 24 months.
9. Niche speciality over full-service
This always goes up and down, especially in the Marketing Agency world. We see boutique marketing specialisation, then it shifts to full-service and right back again.
Well, from my recent marketing meetings and what I’m hearing at conferences, full-service agencies are really feeling the pinch by being spread seriously thin.
In fact, at a marketing conference recently, many of the Australian marketing agencies were saying (in a very stressed tone), “just 8 months ago, it was a different world!”.
So, for 2025, I’m predicting that boutique marketing specialisation will reign supreme once again, and businesses will hunt down those that go above and beyond in their space.
10. Marketing Upskilling vs Complacency
Marketing, and in fact, everything is changing. The pace of evolution is getting faster, which means upskilling in different areas, like law, data, cybersecurity and psychology are all really important for marketers to stay relevant.
I have been studying these areas and it has given me access to new insights, allowing me to better service those growing industries.
In 2025 and beyond, marketing professionals can’t just be marketers anymore. We must diversify our skillsets further.
11. Industry dynamics
I’m also seeing entire industries changing quite dramatically.
For example:
- Medical and healthcare are changing to incorporate a lot more technology.
- Data industries are feeling the flow-on effect from privacy laws.
- The property space is feeling a wide range of influences, from rising material costs to huge demand surges for housing.
- Law is being disrupted by AI.
- Personal branding is becoming essential in niches where people were used to hiding behind their businesses.
Long-story-short is that most industries and sectors are experiencing quite a lot of revolutionary change that requires rethinking, especially when it comes to marketing.
So, 2025 will be a year of extreme industry evolution in ways we probably cannot predict. All we know is that it will happen.
12. Prominent digital platforms are evolving
While platforms like Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, HubSpot, SalesForce, Facebook, Amazon, eBay and TikTok have been shifting constantly, I’m predicting major algorithm overhauls next year.
Why? Because they HAVE to – and marketers need to keep these on their radars.
Google is evolving to incorporate AI in search, OpenAI is trying to make ChatGPT more cost-efficient, TikTok has to keep innovating as it reaches its maturity, and so on.
While it’s a lot to watch, people who want to get the best results from marketing need to keep an eye on everything in this space if they want to take full advantage of them in 2025.
13. Lack of Marketing Basics
Something I’m already seeing as a Marketing Consultant is that marketers are getting distracted by the ‘shiny bauble’-syndrome rather than taking the time to set up marketing fundamentals – and that’s costing them.
What I mean is that, with all of this new tech arriving on our doorsteps every day, I’m seeing businesses wanting to try the latest platform or approach, without thinking about how it fits into their business plan, ethos or identity.
I’m predicting that this “distracted phenomenon” will continue into 2025 and even past that, as businesses start to pursue the latest toys, and skip the fundamentals, they will see a real lack of results.
We need to fight this, as the fundamentals are so critically important for marketing to be effective.
14. Marketing human-centricity
Last but DEFINITELY not least is that, in the rapid adoption of AI and exploring its potential, I’m already seeing that businesses are forgetting that their audiences are humble humans.
Hear me out. I know it seems strange but it’s true.
With AI being so exciting for marketers, I feel the whole space is foregoing customer-centricity for automation.
This is putting the cart before the horse – but for marketing.
For example, before AI, marketers took the time to craft personalised emails that focused on the real needs of a customer, however now with AI, the temptation to mass-spam generic mailouts is too great.
That is one example of many where businesses are resorting to efficiencies over humans.
While this will correct itself maybe after 2025, I think as we all learn how to work in this AI era, marketers will be entranced by AI and forget that a human is making a decision – and those humans HATE spam and being treated as a commodity.
Keep an eye out for my book coming out in 2025 on this trend.
There are my 2025 marketing trends
Remember, these are just my subjective predictions for 2025 marketing in Australia, however being a marketing consultant working across many industries every day, I see a lot.
I’d be interested to see what happens throughout 2025.
However, if you want to be best prepared to survive and thrive in 2025, then speak to me, your trusted Energetic Marketing Consultant, Christopher Melotti, to get strategic guidance.
Or you can touch base with my team at my Australian content marketing agency, Melotti Content Media. They’ll help you with all of your brand development, marketing communications and content copywriting to stay top of mind in 2025.
Have a successful year ahead!
DISCLAIMER: These are general predictions only and are intended as general information only. These don’t take into account your specific business or career circumstances and business-critical decisions are not to be made based on this information alone.
Please conduct your own specific research into your 2025 marketing initiatives and make your own independent decisions.
Let’s start earning the results your business deserves! To speak to your trusted message marketers and Australian copywriters, email me at chris@melottimedia.com.auor phone 0415 522 521.
Christopher Melotti
Melotti Content Media | Content Marketing Bureau
www.melottimedia.com.au
