By Gurdeep Dhillon, Chief Marketing Officer at Contentstack
In 2024, LinkedIn reported that 72% of marketers feel overwhelmed by how quickly their job is changing. That makes sense — over the last few years, the landscape has shifted in ways we couldn’t have imagined.
Brands now juggle more consumer touchpoints and data, and increasingly complex customer journeys. At the same time, teams must constantly adapt and innovate to create personalized, high-quality content. The transition has made marketing both more exciting and challenging.
Marketing will continue to change throughout this year, especially as teams figure out how to wield the new tools they’ve been given, like AI. Here are some trends I’m expecting to see marketers lean into this year.
AI, Automation, and Real-Time Data Will Power Adaptive Experiences
We’re living in an exciting moment. One-to-one personalized experiences used to be a pipe dream, but the convergence of AI, real-time data, and automation will turn that dream into a reality.
It couldn’t have come at a better time. Approximately four-fifths of customers globally say not only are they comfortable with personalized experiences, but they expect it from companies. They want the promotional offers and product recommendations that feel right for them. Moreover, they want entire journeys designed with them at heart.
AI, when paired with automation, unlocks the ability to create personalized content at scale across different geographies, industries, and customer segments. This means marketers can deliver tailored content adapted to each audience without having to manually create those individual experiences themselves.
But to really make this work, marketers need content excellence. And that doesn’t happen without access to real-time customer data. Unfortunately, much of that data is still siloed in various systems, like Google Analytics or Snowflake, making it hard to integrate and act on quickly. The right technology partners can help brands break down those silos to deliver truly adaptive, personalized experiences that meet the high expectations of consumers today.
The future is about smart, adaptable marketing that meets customers where they are, at any time. With the right people, processes, and technology, marketers can achieve both the scale and quality that were once seen as mutually exclusive.
A Final Wave of Brands Will Choose a Modern, Headless CMS
Headless is no longer just for early adopters. Now, it’s mainstream and essential for brands managing sophisticated omnichannel and personalized experiences. Over the coming year, we’ll see even more brands recognize the power of a headless CMS. By 2035, experts predict the global headless CMS software market will grow by a 22.6% compound annual growth rate.
That growth largely reflects the modern customer’s expectation to interact with brands across multiple touchpoints: social media, third-party platforms, in-store kiosks, mobile apps, you name it. Case in point: 75% of consumers from younger generations even prefer to purchase their groceries through combined digital and physical channels.
But meeting customers where they are requires more than just being present across multiple channels. It demands the ability to manage, scale, and update all of these touchpoints in real-time.
The problem? The CMSes that worked a decade ago were built for a different era: when brands only had to manage a single website for desktop and mobile. They weren’t designed for the speed and complexity of modern experiences. Because of that, they leave marketers struggling with fragmented workflows and developers buried in custom code to force systems to work together.
A headless CMS decouples the content layer from the presentation layer. Brands can create, manage, and distribute content seamlessly across every channel, ensuring consistency and adaptability over time.
Marketers Will Use AI to Free Up Time for Creativity
The same LinkedIn study referenced earlier found that 59% of marketers are already using AI. We’ll see marketers lean into that, offloading tedious, time-consuming work like SEO research or writing product descriptions to AI-powered tools.
Other real-life tasks for AI I’ve seen brands use to help free up marketers’ time:
- Audience segmentation: AI can analyze customer data to identify patterns and behaviors, helping brands target the right audiences more effectively.
- Campaign automation: AI-powered tools can optimize campaigns at scale, from email workflows to ad placements.
- SEO research: AI can analyze search trends, suggest keywords, and even generate content outlines, taking the time-consuming guesswork out of SEO.
AI helps marketers work smarter, faster, and more effectively. Which means they now have the time and bandwidth to work on the strategic, creative projects they always wanted to pursue.
Only a human could give us that viral Super Bowl commercial featuring Seal as an actual seal (for now, anyway). Marketers shine as creatives, and AI lets them shine brightly.
