AI Will Transform Marketing in 2025, Start Preparing Now

Well, welcome to 2025, where I believe AI isn’t just changing marketing. This year it is going to completely rewrite the rules of how customers are going to find and choose different businesses to work with. From conversational search replacing keywords, to AI-powered recommendation engines becoming the absolute norm. And this transformation is clearly already here. We’ve been talking about AI for so long, but I just believe that this is the year that you really need to take it seriously. So today we’re going to dive into exactly how these changes are going to affect you and your business, and also the essential steps that you need to be taking right now to ensure that you do stay ahead in this game.

Hi, my name is Jordan McFadyen. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast, where this podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing that we all face, especially in an AI-driven world, and help to challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategies that move, importantly, with industry evolutions. And we’re seeing that a lot at the moment.

Now, this marketing landscape, it is changing, and it is experiencing its biggest transformation since, honestly, the internet began. AI just isn’t another tool. We need to move past just thinking that AI is simply just ChatGPT, or AI is just simply Claude. It’s fundamentally changing how customers are not only discovering, but also how they’re actually interacting with your business day to day.

And this is the critical part that I need you to think about today: while AI can create an enormous opportunity for you and your business, it will also expose a lot of different weaknesses in your marketing foundations. In 2025, we need to stop thinking about resisting the change and resisting using AI and AI-powered tools. This year, I want to make it the main focus for you to think about how you can understand exactly how AI is reshaping customer behaviour. And I want you to do this, and I want you to focus on this, to ensure that your business is positioned to benefit from these changes.

And again, we’ve spoken about this a lot over the past 12 months, the past 24 months, ever since ChatGPT kind of blew up on the scene. But this is the year that I really want you to focus really hard on making sure that you are using the AI tools that have been given to us.

This is how we currently sit at the moment. AI is becoming a core marketing capability. It’s not an optional extra. That’s the first thing you need to understand right now. The second thing is that I believe businesses this year need strong digital foundations to be able to leverage AI effectively. And all the changes that are happening with Google search and Meta ads and Advantage+ and all those different things, you need strong marketing foundations in general to be able to leverage AI effectively.

And I’ll go through some of these ideas shortly as well. I believe that this year you need to start thinking around going back to some of the fundamentals, the basic website and marketing infrastructure issues that will limit AI’s effectiveness in terms of your marketing and your business’s marketing. And this year, I also think the gap between prepared and unprepared businesses is going to widen dramatically. So we need to be really aware of that as well. So that’s kind of the current market as I see it.

And in 2025, this is what I want you to start thinking about. At the end of this, I want you to have a real clear understanding about what marketing readiness is for AI integration for your business. What do we need to do? What are the fundamentals we need to start thinking about to make sure that we’re ready for this AI onslaught that’s about to come? The other thing I want you to get out of this episode is having a comprehensive checklist, a few ideas of how you can audit your current marketing infrastructure to make sure it is set up correctly for AI. And also, I hope that by the end of this, you’ll also have a prioritised action plan for being able to strengthen your marketing foundations as well. Those are the key things.

So let’s go through this. The first big thing that I can see with AI in 2025 is that reminder that there is that big shift that we’re seeing at the moment, from simply keyword search to more conversational search. And I think we need to kind of rewire our brains, and our marketing brains, in the way that we interact and market our businesses to be able to suit that.

AI is fundamentally right now altering how we search online. Think about your own behaviours right now. Think about if you are dabbling in ChatGPT or Claude or any of those different tools. How are you using it differently? Are you still just using keyword search? Back in the day, you might just go in and say “best blogs for marketing”. Or are you actually asking for more conversational searches? You’re looking for “the best content writing tips for B2B businesses in 2025”, or something like that. So how is your search behaviour kind of changing? Because AI is fundamentally altering the way that we are searching online right now.

So if we break that down a little bit more, think about it that AI is actually now able to decipher not only the keywords that you’re talking about, but it’s actually able to decipher the true intent behind your searching inquiry. So that’s a big thing that I think you need to think about this year: it’s not just about what someone’s putting into Google, but it’s actually around what is the intent of that user? We’ve spoken about intent for years with SEO, with search engine optimisation, but now I just think we need to take that step up.

Instead of just matching simple keywords, search engines are now actually to understand the intent more behind a user’s query. And that’s because they’re moving more away from that keyword search, as we would typically kind of think about, and kind of more thinking about that conversational search instead. And this is going to lead to more relevant and helpful results for them, whether they’re using Google, or whether they’re using Bing, or whether they’re using ChatGPT or Claude or any of those other types of tools as well. They’re looking for more conversational search and longer answers.

And this is a massive change from traditional search. And this is a massive change to how we used to be found online when marketing businesses, especially on search engines, but not only search engines. Think about TikTok and Facebook, and how we’re actually searching and finding companies to solve the problems and fill the desires that we have as consumers.

Obviously, the big one here is AI chatbots as well. This is your ChatGPTs, your Claude, any of those virtual agents that we have that enables users to be able to ask and get answers to complex conversational questions much faster. So instead of having to rely on the traditional methods of going to Google and asking Google, people are finding different ways to find this information that they want. And they’re using ChatGPT. And what this means is that answers are gathered from multiple sources from these chatbots and these chat engines like ChatGPT.

So it’s often bypassing traditional search engines, and kind of using ChatGPT and Claude and all those different tools to be able to answer the problems that we have. And you’ve got to make sure that you’re appearing in some of these searches as well. So we’re starting to think less around how we can appear higher in a Google ranking on a Google search, and more how can we appear as part of the conversation that people are having with ChatGPT and with Claude. And that’s going to come with your overall marketing strategy. How are you seen? How are you trusted? How are you referenced online?

Do you have an active social media following? Are you able to show both Google and ChatGPT and all these different AI agents that you are the trusted source for that product or service that you sell? And this goes back to everything we talk about all the time around making sure that you’ve got a really clear USP. You’ve got a really clear audience. And if you can match all of those strategic things that we go on about all the time, if you can get those fundamentals, those foundations right, then you’re going to set yourself up better to be able to enhance yourself in an AI-driven world as well.

The other big shift we’re going to see in 2025 is we’re going to get more and more personalised recommendations. AI is going to tailor search results and answers to your queries based on individual users, based on things like your past searches, your browsing history when it comes to Google, your location, about where you’re actually searching from, and even your personalised preferences. And you’re probably seeing that now anyway. You’re probably starting to see that you’re getting much more personalised results, and your results may look completely different to someone else who’s sitting next to you that’s searching for something very similar.

And this is going to create even more highly customised search experiences as this evolves over the year as well. Because AI is going to use your browsing history, it’s going to look at your preferences, your behavioural data, to offer you more tailored suggestions, creating really hyper-targeted customer journeys.

The other big thing I can see this year that I think you need to think about, and I’m starting to use more and more, is visual and voice search. Not as much visual search for myself, but just to break that down, visual search is obviously when you’re able to go to ChatGPT, or you’re able to go to Google now, and take a photo of a product and say, find me this, find me the best person to be able to supply me with these shoes, or this piece of tech, or this piece of equipment that I need. Who is the best person to supply me with this? And you’ve got to make sure that if you are selling that product, that physical product, that you’re going to come up as one of the suggested results from either one of those search agents, like ChatGPT or Claude, or from traditional Google, or using Gemini or anything like that as well. So that’s visual search.

But the other big one is voice search. And I’m finding I’m using this more and more, especially over the holiday break, where I wasn’t necessarily in front of my computer or my laptop all the time. I was kind of using my mobile phone to still try and do as much normal business activities, but being out there, being at the beach or being out on holiday with the kids.

So being able to use voice search, what this does is it goes right back to that point that I had at the start, that we’re moving away from the traditional keyword search, because when you’re talking into your phone or talking into a device, it’s obviously much more conversational. And so this is where the conversational search comes back into it as well. So it’s thinking around the long-tail keywords. It’s what we’d call a long-tail keyword, where you’re not just going again for a couple of keywords, but you’re going for that full context, that full question. And that’s what you’re more likely to talk to ChatGPT or talk to Claude and get answers for, is when you’re actually using more conversational pieces and relying on it to understand truly what you’re talking about, be able to give you the best answers for it as well.

The other big thing I can see this year is content summarisation. Now, these large language models, LLMs, this is like ChatGPT or the Claudes, they now obviously are fantastic. They’re creating concise overviews about websites and pages on your websites. And this means that as a business, and your marketing strategies, you need to adapt your content to be what we would call snippet ready. So those snippets, like those couple of sentences where it truly answers a user’s query based on your authoritativeness or your voice that you have in the market, that’s what essentially we’re talking about, snippet ready. So making sure that you’re providing the correct snippets, the correct FAQs around a particular product or service, that is going to help get you seen and you featured in some of these ChatGPT or Claude searches or these Google searches.

So that’s how I see it shaping this year. AI really starting to take over. And there are some fundamentals in your marketing that you need to be focusing on right now. So you need to start to optimise for AI search right now. If you haven’t been thinking about this over the past 12 months, now is the time to do it. And some of these items that we’re going to go over now, you may have an understanding on right now. And if not, then this is your cue to be able to get a marketing professional involved and actually start to make these adjustments to your strategy and to your fundamentals, to your marketing landscape.

I want you to look at your structured data firstly, and ensure that your website is using things like schema markup to help AI truly understand your content better. Review the pages on your website. These are just nice fundamentals. Give them a bit of a tidy-up. Do the spell checking. This is the time to make sure that everything is looking as pristine as what it needs to be, because AI engines are searching websites right now looking for authoritative content.

Anyone can go through a website. This is something you can do right now. Go through your website. Kill off all the dead pages that no one is seeing, the pages that you might have created and it’s just not providing any value, not getting any traffic. Focus on the pages that are getting a lot of different traffic and are getting searched and are getting found and are getting read, and people are actually spending time on them, and really start to work on the content of those pages.

Focus on your FAQs and your summaries. For these, provide the concise, clear answers to real common questions that your audience might be asking AI systems. Make sure that those answers and those pieces of content are on your website, and they’re featured on there in a truly trustworthy, authoritative manner. And this goes back to what I was saying before just around the snippets, the content summarisation. Be snippet ready. So make sure that you have conversational content available on your website. You write the content to match the natural language queries that are going to start coming through, those long-tail keywords as well.

So look, those are just some of the real basic fundamentals. But the other things I want you to think about kind of go past not just your website, but I want you to think even further than that. 2025 is a time for you to start thinking past Google as well. The fundamental with marketing is knowing who you are talking to. And we talk a lot about this on the podcast. But now we’ve spoken about it a lot, but it’s time for you to take that really seriously, because AI is getting so clever that it’s going to get too clever for your marketing strategy as it stands right now.

So I want you to think about how to diversify beyond Google search. Depending on your customer, it may be time to start building a presence on alternative platforms. There are businesses that are doing really well on moving over to Bing, for example. People that have built real niche followings on platforms like Reddit, or niche marketplaces. Maybe you need to be thinking more about not as much around your Google search and your blog content, but if you’re going to create content, how can you create content that is designed for your audience if they’re on social media, if they’re on LinkedIn, if they’re on TikTok? How can you create content that you can produce on there that can still drive people back to your website potentially?

But think beyond the click. We’ve got to stop thinking around what’s going to generate us a click on the website. Think more about how can we use the tools in our content to be able to help with our branding, help with our overall brand voice, and help being seen by more people, so that they can get in touch with us in different ways, not just going to Google search, going to your website, filling out your contact form. We need to think of a focus of being indexed in things like AI models, like ChatGPT and Claude, using the first steps that we’ve already discussed so far.

But again, just not expecting that everything is going to generate a click. So even if you do appear in a ChatGPT search, which is amazing, it may not obviously drive any website traffic through to you, but it’s about that overall branding that I think we need to focus on, and how can we get those tools to help build the brand authority and build the brand trust as well. So start to think over and above what Google essentially is.

The next thing I think you need to focus on this year is investing in content quality. AI slop is what we’re going to call it. It’s so 2023, 2024. That was the time where you could just post something on your blog that was just purely written by AI. Obviously, I would never recommend you would ever have wanted to have done that. But AI slop has got to go. It’s come too far, and as consumers, we can spot it from a mile off. So 2025 has got to be the year that you think about how to create authoritative, high-quality, engaging content that promotes your product or your service. That’s going to help you to get prioritised in AI results and AI answers.

Don’t rely on AI to do all that heavy lifting for you. Sure, use AI as a tool. I use it as a tool. It’s great at being that research assistant. It’s great to help kind of be that editor, check over your content, make sure it’s structured correctly for search, make sure the headings are in the right spot, make sure the language is right, any typos that are in there, anything that’s factually incorrect. All that stuff is absolutely fantastic, but nothing more than that. You still need to write that first draft. You still need to get that idea, you still need to know exactly who you’re talking to, how you’re going to talk to those people.

And then make sure that when you’re creating this content, update the content on a regular basis. This year is about trying to update the content often to ensure relevance at all times, as we’re already starting to see that AI systems are going to favour fresh information. So that’s another thing to really think about.

Another big tip for 2025: focus on first-party data. Privacy is always going to be an issue. AI is going to rely on behavioural data. So make sure you own your customer data. That’s going to be absolutely key. Now, when I say own and collect first-party customer data, we want to do this ethically and strategically to be able to enhance your personalisation. Gone are the days of being put onto a blind list and being marketed to without the consent of the user. It is not going to do anything for your brand trust and for your brand reputation. And these AI agents are going to be able to pick that up so easy as well.

So we need to move away. The key here is people are really concerned about privacy. So make sure we’re only collecting data of those that want to hear from you, those that have given you their information to be able to do business with you, or they want to learn more from you. First-party data that is consensual data, that is going to be the best source of being able to help with your AI behavioural data from 2025. That’s going to be a big key for us to have a think about.

So going back over it: the fundamentals. Go back over your website, check all those fundamentals, write all the content, go, do that health check for 2025. Make sure everything’s looking good for the start of the year, that you’re putting your best foot forward, especially in this AI-driven world. That’s the first thing I want you to do.

Diversify. Think beyond Google. Don’t worry too much about getting a click. We may be entering the zero-click era this year. It may not be always a click to your website. It may be about how can we build our brand authority, our brand trust, our brand awareness, more so than just getting a click to your website. Brand authority, brand trust, brand awareness may be what is going to pull in more conversions and leads and purchases and sales for your business this year. So think beyond just a Google search, just a blog post. How do you amplify that to where your audience is hanging out?

Investing in quality content. Remember, quality content that’s written by you or your team or your marketing team, not by an AI agent. Use the AI agent as a tool, but don’t rely on it. And focus on that first-party data. AI is going to rely on behavioural data. And we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got consented first-party data in our hands, so that we can make sure that we are actually going to be able to reach and provide personalised content for our customers, or the people that are interested in our product or service.

So look, the first podcast of 2025. This is going to mark the year where AI stops becoming just a buzzword that you see on LinkedIn every now and then. It’s not just going to be a fancy shiny object tool that you’re going to be using every now and then. It is going to become a fundamental part of how customers find and how customers choose to work with your business. Successes aren’t going to come from chasing every new AI tool that gets developed, but instead it’s going to be from understanding the core shifts in customer behaviour and then adapting your marketing accordingly. That’s going to be the big key.

So again, start with your fundamentals that we’ve discussed today. Optimising for conversational search. Diversifying beyond just Google search. Investing in quality content as opposed to AI-generated content. And focusing on your first-party data. That’s going to give you a good start for the start of 2025. The businesses that are going to thrive from here on out won’t be the ones with the most AI tools behind them that are driving their cold outreach or anything like that. No, no. It’s going to be the ones who best understand and who best adapt to how AI is changing customer behaviour. And honestly, for the first podcast of 2025, I believe the journey starts right now.

If you want any more information, or you need a consultant or a team to kind of help guide you through these changes, that’s obviously what me and my team do best, is working with marketing strategies, building marketing strategies to help businesses thrive in an AI-driven world. 2025 is going to be a big one as well. So make sure you get in touch with me or the team. You can go to our website, donebynine.com. You can find all the details, how to get in touch with our team. Or, of course, we release podcasts and informational content a lot of the time as well. A lot of the stuff that we’ve spoken about today is how we drive our marketing strategy as well.

So you can learn all about those different pieces of all that content that we’ve pieced together. Well, sign up for any of our podcast or article content for the rest of the year as well. And if you do need some advice or anything like that, please reach out to myself or a member of the team. We’ll be more than happy to help your journey in 2025 as well. Here’s to a massive year of marketing our business successfully, navigating this AI world. Look forward to navigating it with you guys as well. Thanks so much for listening.