By lbrowning@hubspot.com (Laura M. Browning)

I spent the last week asking HubSpot marketers to get really honest about what actually worked for them in 2025 — and what they let go of.

Six HubSpotters share some of their “why didn’t I do this sooner?” moments from the past 12 months, from rethinking how they use AI to backing unmeasurable bets.

If you could go back to January 2025, what would you tell yourself to stop overthinking?

Adam Biddlecombe, Lead marketer, AI media strategist

“Stop overthinking AI. It is exciting, easily the biggest technological shift of my lifetime, but so many use cases are still experimental and not consistently accurate.

“The real wins have come from keeping it simple. Small tasks, small workflow tweaks. Building a handful of custom GPTs for specific jobs, getting meeting notes summarized for a quick Slack update, turning messy ideas into a clear campaign brief.

“Those little building blocks have made me way more productive, organized, and efficient at work.”

Rory Hope, Senior manager, EN Growth

“I would have told myself not to overthink how AI is disrupting top of funnel search marketing, and that’s because we’ve seen this year how the search community has evolved to focus on optimizing for AI visibility. We’ve now got AI visibility monitoring tools, proven AEO tactics, and clear AEO reporting KPIs.

“In January 2025, the route forwards was uncertain, but we’ve thankfully been able to navigate that uncertainty and establish a new AEO process that’s scaling AI visibility for HubSpot.”

What’s the smallest change you made in 2025 that had the biggest impact on your results?

Nuriel Canlas, Senior marketer, HubSpot Media

“My biggest win came from a simple mindset shift. I stopped thinking I needed a playbook for everything and started treating each challenge like something I could figure out. Once I leaned into that, my work got faster and the results got better.”

Amanda Kopen, Manager, Marketing

“One small change I made in H1 2025 that had an outsized impact on H2 results was repurposing one 15-minute meeting per month to educate my team on AI developments. AI Overviews, model updates, and the decrease of organic traffic was very nerve-wracking — especially for those with SEO backgrounds. But spending the time to consolidate information from across the industry into short lessons empowered my team to use AI in their work daily.

<img src="https://53.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/53/masters-in-marketing-HubSpot-marketers-4-20251212-2737289.webp" style="margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;display: block;width: 650px;height: auto;max-width: 100%" title="" alt="“one small change i made in h1 2025 that had an outsized impact on h2 results was repurposing one 15-minute meeting per month to educate my team on ai developments. spending the time to consolidate information from across the industry into short lessons empowered my team to use ai in their work …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog