Dollars to donuts, your feed is full of thought leaders touting the latest trends in content marketing for 2025. But how can you separate genuine trends and worthwhile strategies from clickbait and wild speculation?
We examined predictions from dozens of marketers, carefully considering each in the context of the current market. That includes developments like Generative AI, new platforms, and the latest changes in customer expectations. Below, we provide a list of content marketing trends worthy of your valuable time and efforts, weeding out trends that are over-hyped or immature.
We also discuss how to best capitalise on these strategies—without breaking your back or budget.
Key Takeaways
We’re leveraging four key trends to help our partners grow in 2025. Read on to find out why we’re betting on them and how you can harness these strategies, too.
- Generative AI Adds a Unique New Channel
- Tap into Your Niche Community Now for Long-Term Value Add
- Time for TOFU to Take a Back Seat
- Ecosystem Marketing
Trend 1: Generative AI Adds a Unique New Channel
AI shook up SEO and the content marketing industry at large last year. We saw many companies hastily jump on the LLM bandwagon, and many of them got stung by Google updates and manual actions.
Now that the dust has settled, we’re starting to get a clearer picture of how AI is likely to impact SEO in 2025.
First, it’s worth noting that, as far as we can tell, there’s been no mass exodus of Google users to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or anybody else. In fact, AI doesn’t seem to have made a dent in Google’s search domination.
As marketers, we need to be mindful of the echo-chamber that is LinkedIn. It may seem like everybody and their dog is using ChatGPT for everything from recipes to starting a business…. But the vast majority of Internet users still go to Google as their primary means of finding information. This is good news, as it gives marketers more time to adjust to the new AI world order, along with everybody else.
Still, SEO is changing the way we create and consume content. Here are the most noteworthy trends we think are worth paying attention to in 2025.
Search Everywhere Optimization
With the addition of LLMs and AI Search services, content marketers have one more channel to be aware of and compete in. This gets added to the long list of search engines (including voice and image), social media networks, YouTube, podcasts, and more.
We see two main consequences of this:
Already, we’re seeing new tools for monitoring a company’s presence in Generative AI results. Trackerly.ai, for example, allows you to run multiple queries to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity on a daily basis and track brand presence, representation, and share of voice. Ahrefs has also rolled out a feature allowing you to check mentions in Google’s AI Overview.
We expect to see marketers paying much closer attention to the Generative Search channel and using tools like Trackerly.ai and Ahrefs to track performance there.
So far, it seems strong correlations exist between ranking well on Google and appearing in LLM results.
Provided that stays true, then the primary objective for content marketers vis-à-vis Search hasn’t changed: rank well in Google and you’re rank well for Generative AI.
However, not everybody believes that will always be the case, and it may depend on the industry, brand, or search query. Companies should start monitoring these channels separately now to stay ahead of the game.
There’s a second, unintended consequence of the rise of Generative AI. Like skittish investors dumping Nvidia stock following news of DeepSeek’s unexpected successes, marketers may choose (rightly or not) to prioritise other channels over traditional SEO. As a result, those channels may become more saturated and see greater competition. We expect to see already crowded places like LinkedIn and Twitter/X and budding new platforms like BlueSky see a lot of attention from marketers. As a result, companies may need to work even harder for their share of voice there.
Don’t spread yourself too thin trying to enter new channels and markets. More than ever, it will become important to pick just a few key channels that make sense for your brand.
The biggest factor should be whether your core audience is already present there or not. Then invest heavily in those channels and be prepared to react quickly in the coming months.
GEO: Content for Generative Engine Optimization
AI Overviews started appearing in more search results in 2024, and word from Google suggests this trend will continue. This will likely lead to fewer click-throughs overall, as already seen towards the end of last year (70% decline in Organic CTR when AI Overview was present on a SERP). More so than with any previous Search “features”, Google is becoming another “zero-click” platform. (What that means for their business model is something even Google hasn’t been able to answer clearly…)
What does this mean for marketers? A few things.
One popular opinion we’ve seen among marketers is that success in AI Overview will become a question of brand awareness rather than click-through rates. The basic idea is that users who see mentions of your brand more frequently in AI Overview will come to know and trust it. This mechanism can lead to more direct traffic to your website from users who search for your brand rather than following a link.
To appear in AI Overviews as a trusted source, you need to develop a strong body of content around a given topic, present original research, and provide clear answers to relevant questions. If that sounds familiar, it should: this approach has been the hallmark of great SEO for the last several years.
Besides appearing as a trusted source, businesses will be competing for space on more directly commercial queries, like, “What is the best marketing agency?” (hint: it’s Eleven Writing). These kinds of queries are interesting, because depending on the LLM, the query, the conversation history, and the time of day, they could either result in the AI performing an online search to find the answer or providing a response based on training data.
In the first instance, the solution is to ensure you appear in top-ranking articles in traditional Search. Companies can do this by creating their own listicles (and positioning themselves as the best solution for their audience), by reaching out to authors of Best X listicles with a compelling argument for why they should appear on such a list, and by encouraging their customers to be vocal brand champions.
In the second case, it will largely be a matter of ensuring LLMs are aware of your existence, aware of your product and audience, and strongly associate your brand with “Best” signals. Which, for a long time to come, will probably boil down to showing up on “Best X” listicles, anyway.
In addition, you’ll want to ensure LLMs can accurately report on your business (and thereby reduce the likelihood of embarrassing or damaging hallucinations). It’s more important than ever that your website provides a clear description of who you are, who your customers are, and what you do to help them.
High-Quality Content is Still In
The main takeaway from the above, we’re happy to say, is that creating content that ranks in 2025 will still come down to demonstrating expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. Generative AI is another channel to be aware of, and definitely a whole new beast… But so was the Internet when it started, and so was social media when it erupted.
Focus on creating high-quality content that demonstrates your value to users and LLMs, and start monitoring and tracking your performance in LLMs as early as possible. As with all other channels, knowledge is power, and data will allow you to test new strategies, invest in what works, and skip what doesn’t.
Trend 2: Tap into Your Niche Community for Long-Term Value Add
In 2025, who you know—and who knows you…—will be more important than ever.
In 2022, a McKinsey article offered a great introduction to the Community flywheel framework. Now, it’s time to lean into this concept even further. Sales cycles are getting longer, markets are as saturated as ever, and as we saw above, AI may have the unintended consequences of seeing channels beyond Search become even more competitive.
How should companies proceed?
One way is to engage with rich and sophisticated niche communities in a way that resonates strongly with members. This works by leveraging people’s own preferences for brands and how they engage with them. For example, research has shown that Gen Z audiences prefer brands that cater to a specific niche rather than those that try to appeal to everyone.
The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago; the next best time is now. Communities take time and resources to develop, but you can start small and grow at a steady pace. You don’t need to sponsor a major conference to get started.
Public events, whether online or offline, can help drum up interest in your brand and offer a forum for people to exchange ideas. Look at running a simple webinar with guest speakers from your industry, for example. Meet existing community members where they are, be that on Reddit, community forums, or in stores.
Leverage Employees & Customers over Influencers
We see user-generated content from employees and customers as an increasingly important way to drive engagement and search. Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU) in 2024 saw content that wasn’t considered high quality and relevant to users’ needs demoted. Many large brands suffered losses with the update, while communities on Reddit and forums were pushed to the top of the result page. It’s clear that Google and users value the opinions of peers and “regular people like them.”
2025 is a prime time to collaborate with your customers and put your community first. Long-term relationships with vocal customer champions can provide greater value than transactional relationships with social media influencers, for example. Dig into existing communities to understand what your customers really need, exchange with them in an authentic way, and provide opportunities for your audience to engage with your brand beyond making mere purchases. Successful brands are ones that people feel share their unique values and those of their community.
For instance, McDonald’s drew in the global anime crowd by creating campaign content so relevant to the community that fans began creating and sharing their own content on YouTube to showcase branded pop-ups, explain the concepts, and review new menu items. Enabling your customers and employees to use your IP will pay off in organic search.
Further reading:
- Creating Niche Communities: Brand Engagement Guide | Bettermode
- Niche Communities: Unleashing The Power Of Micro-Influencers
Trend 3: Time for TOFU to Take a Back Seat
Set to the music of a funeral march, Paul Ince of LikeMindMedia gave a eulogy to the traditional marketing funnel at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in late 2024.
While we wouldn’t sound the death knell for the traditional sales funnel just yet, it does feel more and more outdated. It’s always been confusing to decipher what types of content support each step of the funnel and attribute ROI on one part of the content strategy.
Plus, the flood of AI generated content and people’s growing comfort with it have made the Top of the Funnel a chaotic space for the moment.
As Lee Densmer puts it, 20% of branded content should now focus on the top of the funnel, which she calls “what is” content: the pain point and the size of the problem. The middle 40% should be “how to” content, and the narrowest 40% of the funnel is defined by “how we” solve your pain with product or service X, Y, Z. (Although, we would suggest Kelly Johnstone’s approach of “co-creating spaces with customers.”)
Focusing on the Middle of the funnel provides more opportunities to serve the needs of your customers that most closely map onto your USPs.
Focus on creating content that will help potential customers in their decision-making process.
Good MOFU content informs and educates people about your solution and demonstrates how it can be used to address common pain points. Good BOFU content offers compelling arguments for choosing your solution over others, via comparison/alternative pages and, of course, case studies, customer success stories, and feature demos.
What TOFU content you do create should be high-value and unique, such as original research and thought leadership.
Further reading:
- How Mid-funnel Content Can Be Your Secret SEO Weapon
- How to Create Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) Content for Lead Generation
Trend 4: Ecosystem Marketing
Companies continue to diversify their marketing efforts. As mentioned above, we expect Generative AI to push marketers in this direction even further, as fears around the relevance of Search (whether well founded or not…) see efforts refocused from Google. But whatever the impetus, now is as good a time as any to develop a more holistic approach to content marketing. One unique way of doing that is ecosystem marketing, and we expect to see a lot more of it in 2025.
Ecosystem-designed marketing allows your brand to be in more places at once. It’s the process of engaging with other companies in your company’s industry and developing partnerships in ways that extend the reach and performance of all the companies involved. This could be as simple as contributing content to industry publications, for example, as opposed to publishing it to your own blog.
But it can also take a much richer and more sophisticated form through the co-creation of marketing material and efforts in concert with other businesses. It’s this second form that we feel is the most powerful and meaningful kind of ecosystem marketing, and which we feel is poised to become a successful trend in 2025 and beyond. Certainly, it’s an approach we’ll be taking with our own partners.
Be prepared to devote resources to ecosystem marketing, as it takes time to build partnerships with other companies.
If your company is still finding its place in your industry, you can reach out to a PR or marketing firm that specializes in your market—they’ll have many connections you can leverage. Watch for opportunities to participate in industry events, too.
For example, try to find out which companies in your industry have recently hosted webinars, and ask to be invited to the next one or suggest you host one together. Building relationships is the longest part of ecosystem marketing, but it’s essentially to seeing success and well worth the investment.
Further reading:
What Do You Foresee for Your Brand in 2025?
2025 promises exciting opportunities for those ready to adapt. From navigating AI-driven search to building niche communities and leveraging ecosystem marketing, success will come from staying focused on what works and evolving with the trends.
At Eleven Writing, we help our partners create high-quality, strategic content that drives results—no matter the channel.
Ready to take your content strategy to the next level? Let’s talk.
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