The Marketing Executive's Playbook: How Marketers Can Work & Level-Up Like 700+ Leaders in 2025 [New Data]
“What do you mean AI won’t fix everything?” That conversation with a marketing executive last month sparked my journey into creating this marketing executive playbook for 2025.
As I dove into data and interviewed executives across industries, I discovered something surprising: While 56% of marketing leaders believe marketing has changed more in the past three years than the previous 50, the most successful leaders are taking a much more nuanced approach than I expected.
To understand where marketing is headed, HubSpot surveyed 724 marketing leaders at the director level and above across major markets, including:
- The U.S. (27.49%),
- Great Britain (18.78%),
- Netherlands (11.74%), and
- Japan (10.91%).
Then, to bring these findings to life, I spoke with marketing executives from companies like Wrike, Atlassian, Sendoso, and more about how they’re approaching these challenges in their organizations.
Our research reveals three clear priorities for 2025:
- Increasing revenue and sales (20%).
- Deepening customer understanding (16%).
- Expanding brand awareness (16%).
What fascinated me most in my conversations with marketing executives was how these priorities often create productive tension, pushing leaders to find creative solutions that balance innovation with proven fundamentals.
Let’s dive into what’s working now and what’s next, with practical insights from both our research and real-world marketing leaders.
Table of Contents
- The Growth–Brand Balance: A New Playbook for 2025
- How Marketing Executives Are Approaching AI and Automation
- How Marketing Executives Are Scaling Personalization
- How Marketing Executives Are Transforming Content Strategy
- How Marketing Executives Are Using Data to Drive Decisions
- Marketing Executive Outlook: Preparing for 2025
- Marketing Leadership Reimagined: Insights for 2025
The Growth–Brand Balance: A New Playbook for 2025
Remember when marketing teams had to choose between driving immediate revenue or building long-term brand value? That line is blurring.
Our research shows marketing leaders are rejecting this false dichotomy.
While 20% prioritize increasing revenue and sales as their top goal, there’s also a strong emphasis on deeper customer understanding (16%) and brand awareness (16%).
And these aren’t either/or choices — many leaders reported pursuing multiple strategic priorities simultaneously.
Sarah Reece, director of demand generation at Orum, a sales acceleration platform, captures this shift perfectly.
“My philosophy is that brand is demand, and every touchpoint is a brand touchpoint,” she explains.
“From our social presence to our website to the way our sales team outbounds, we’re building a brand reputation that creates trust, builds affinity, and drives preference so that folks default to Orum when they come into the market.”
And the numbers back up this integrated approach. “We actually saw a pretty immediate impact on our demand gen goals when taking decisive action to emphasize brand,” Reece shares.
“Direct and organic web traffic increased, social reach climbed, pipeline and revenue grew, and deal velocity increased too … …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
