The stakes are high for marketing leaders. Consumers are still price sensitive, with ever-increasing expectations for the brands they buy from. Executives and board members want to see proof of ROI in light of tight budgets. Creating a competitive advantage on digital channels like social media is getting harder. Internal teams are battling burnout and bandwidth constraints, despite being asked to do more with less.

With so many concerns, where do you go from here? To help you identify your most strategic focus areas, we’ve curated a list of the six most pressing marketing priorities you should have on your radar in 2025.

Optimize tools to create an AI-driven culture

Marketing teams who aren’t getting serious about AI are lagging behind. It’s no longer enough to just have tools. Organizations need wide-scale AI integration to anticipate customer needs and become best-in-class.

Sprout’s CMO Scott Morris put it this way, “Fostering a culture of AI within marketing (and beyond) isn’t just about adopting the latest tools—it’s about embedding AI into the way we operate day to day. With the help of AI, marketers can redefine their industries, create new markets and drive economic growth. At Sprout, we’re committed to ensuring our team not only understands AI’s potential, but is equipped to use it responsibly and ethically.”

The opportunity costs of not championing AI are extensive. According to Sprout’s 2024 Social Media Productivity Report, 63% of social marketers report manual tasks prevent them from doing high impact work. Almost one-third attribute their efficiency struggles to not having tools—or having the wrong ones.

A stat call-out that reads 63% of social marketers report manual tasks prevent them from doing high impact work

Just because something is “AI powered,” doesn’t mean it’s right for your martech stack. Resist the urge to add AI tools for the sake of it. While AI can save your team time, endless training, navigating poorly integrated tools and rebuilding workflows can be a full-time job—especially for teams already at max capacity. It’s critical to equip your team with the right tools, ones that are compatible with the platforms you already rely on.

Considerations: Selecting the right technology is essential, but an AI strategy that doesn’t address people, culture and processes will collapse. You need low-lift, ongoing trainings and built-in rituals to encourage employee experimentation (with the right guardrails in place). Consider creating an AI steering committee to ensure you pursue AI solutions that support your most critical marketing opportunities, while avoiding overbuying technology or overcomplicating your tech stack.

Amplify your brand by unifying your message

Social media platforms are reaching max saturation. Email marketing has dwindling click-through rates. Even the ROI of performance marketing is getting harder to justify.

As digital channels become more overwhelming, there’s less opportunity to reach consumers. Successful brand amplification requires streamlining your strategy. This can be achieved by doing fewer, bigger things, and integrating key messages across channels. It’s one thing for each team to be firing on all cylinders, but they need to be in sync and telling the same story to really allow your message to break through.

Morris adds, “Marketing teams everywhere are doing incredibly creative, innovative work, but they’re operating in silos that prevent them from maximizing results. When we all work together to get louder and prouder, we multiply the impact of everything we’re doing tenfold, reach prospects more effectively, create a better customer experience and ultimately drive more revenue.”

Though it might seem counterintuitive, effective brand amplification requires taking things off your team’s plate. For example, according to The 2024 Content Benchmarks Report, brands published 10 posts a day across networks in 2023. Brands in consumer-facing industries—like media, leisure, sports, recreation and retail—far surpassed this threshold. But consumers’ feeds are already brimming with posts from their friends and family, influencers and brands alike. And you’re competing with all of them for attention. It’s time to cut back on your cadence and publish significantly less content.

Considerations: The key to brand amplification is prioritizing quality over quantity, and efforts that ladder-up to key initiatives over one-off activations. What can you do to remove silos between teams within the marketing org? How can you adopt an org-wide campaign mindset? What can you stop doing that will afford your team more time to focus on the right things?

Take influencer marketing beyond social media

Consumers trust influencers, and their trust is growing steady in some pockets. According to The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, nearly half of consumers trust influencers as much as they did in 2023, and another 30% trust them more. This is especially true for Gen Z and Millennials.

Sprout’s VP of Brand and Social, Layla Revis, describes, “People trust people, and they want to be entertained and educated. Whether it’s humor, fashion, fitness or sports, people are more likely to seek out influencers than brands or celebrities. This is a sign the media has become democratized.”

The potential of influencer marketing exceeds social media. Almost all (80%) of consumers agree they are more likely to buy from brands who partner with influencers beyond social content—from in-person events and brand trips to multichannel ad campaigns.

A data visualization from The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report that says 80% of consumers would be more willing to buy from brands that partner with influencers beyond just social media content, with 22% strongly agreeing.

Social media is where culture is born, so it makes sense that successful influencer marketing campaigns permeate other channels, too. The more well-orchestrated influencer activations are, the more they boost brand awareness and the bottom line.

Considerations: As what it means to be a spokesperson and celebrity changes, influencers will slide into roles formerly held by actors, athletes and other pop culture icons. What will it take to make an influencer the face of your brand campaign off social? In what ways will that change how your team works? What new roles will you need to hire for? What steps will you take to ensure brand safety in these partnerships?

Use audience insights to inform your content strategy

In 2023, most business leaders (96%) said their company needed to continue to invest in social marketing to be successful. But how can leaders make the most of limited budgets and bandwidth? Especially when social users are everywhere.

The 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report found that most consumers are just as engaged or interact with brand content more on social compared to six months ago. When asked which platforms brands should stay away from, consumers said (somewhat surprisingly) “none.”

A pie chart that explains how much social media users have interacted with brands over the past six months. 48% have interacted more, 36% the same and 16% less.

Consumers have never been so plugged into social, or eager to see brand content. But, as mentioned before, brands compete in an attention economy, and teams are on the brink of burnout (if they aren’t already there). It’s imperative to use audience insights to determine how to craft the right content for the right channels. Senior marketing leaders at enterprise companies agree content strategy is their top priority in 2025.

While there is a place for everyone and every brand on social, that doesn’t mean you need to be everywhere. Real-time audience insights make it clear where your team should concentrate—rather than expecting teams to balance content across every available network.

Considerations: As algorithms evolve, networks diversify and the battle for attention intensifies, your team needs actionable learnings to stay ahead of the competition and exceed consumer expectations. Do you know with certainty which networks your audience turns to for entertainment and discovery? How about for customer care? What data is your social team missing that could help make more informed choices about content and network prioritization?

Deliver personalized customer journeys

Social media is consumers’ preferred customer care channel of choice, and responding to them on social isn’t optional. In Sprout’s Q4 2024 Pulse Survey of over 2,000 consumers, respondents agreed brands should make personalized customer service on social a top priority in 2025.

This means collaboration between social and care teams should be more than a handoff. They need to truly work in tandem to provide a seamless customer experience—finding processes and tools that increase productivity and surface strategic insights. If you’re not hyper-focused on customer care, you’re setting your brand up to fail long-term.

Morris sums it up like this: “Why do so many marketing leaders continue to think of customer care as something that is ‘another department’s problem?’ Marketing and care are two halves of the same whole. Do you care about your brand image? Do you care about overall customer sentiment about your company? Dive deep into your company’s NPS score, and the drivers behind it, and you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about.”

A quote from Sprout's CMO Scott Morris that says, "Why do so many marketing leaders continue to think of customer care as something that is some other department's problem? Marketing and care are two halves of the same whole."

Considerations: Customer service and marketing teams must be more aligned than ever before. Are incompatible tech stacks and departmental silos getting in the way of that? What new processes and resources are needed to unite the teams?

Put social media at the center of your marketing strategy

Brands today exist in the context of online culture, and social media is the epicenter of that culture. Social’s influence on consumers (and businesses’ long-term health by proxy) is undeniable. From Chili’s TikTok presence being responsible for 40% of their quarterly growth to Duolingo’s CEO mentioning how the brand’s social media presence helped them blow past projected gains on an earnings call, the results are tangible. The greatest business risk in 2025 is not investing in your brand’s presence and tapping into social data.

Social data is a source of truth that will help your company refine product development, strengthen your employer brand and recruit top talent, and directly drive revenue gains. Used correctly, social insights make it easy to prove organization-wide value, facilitate cross-collaboration and ensure customer care, sales, HR and R&D buy-in on your initiatives.

Sprout’s CEO Ryan Barretto said it best: “Executives who prioritize a social-first approach not only mitigate risks effectively but also empower their teams to innovate and connect with customers in meaningful ways. If I had to share some motivation with fellow leaders, it would be this: Take inventory of where your current and future customers are. There are few companies that can say this isn’t on social. If that’s true for your business, how do you plan to show up for them?”

Considerations: If you want to build a marketing strategy that prioritizes your customers and future customers, you need to put social insights at the center of it. Does your current tech stack make social data accessible? What information or examples do you need to make the case for more investment in social? How can you quantify the risk of not being proactive?

Focus on the marketing priorities that matters most

In 2025, marketing leaders must focus on a few strategic imperatives to drive sustainable growth in a complex landscape. Building an AI-driven culture, unifying brand messaging, expanding influencer marketing and centering social data are no longer optional but essential.

With resources stretched thin and consumer expectations high, concentrating on these core priorities will empower your team to deliver impact, foster stronger customer connections and stay ahead of rapidly changing demands. By ruthlessly prioritizing what matters most, you can create a resilient strategy that resonates and drives results.

Looking for more guidance on staffing needs, team processes and marketing tech stack optimizations you need in 2025? Read our CMO 2025 content strategy pre-mortem cheat sheet.