Agency marketing is evolving. Clients are no longer just looking for execution — they expect strategic guidance, smarter reporting, and real business impact. Fortunately, 2025 is the year AI–driven agencies will have even more tools to make savvy marketing choices that increase their ROI and improve client outcomes.
Earlier in the year, we asked a group of agency marketers what trends were on the horizon in 2025. Their insights revealed a shared focus on leveraging AI to scale operations, diversifying content strategies to stay ahead of declining organic reach, and adopting tools that balance creativity with efficiency. As we hit the halfway mark of 2025, we’re keeping an eye on how these trends are playing out — and how agencies may need to adjust.
Read below for the mid-year update.
1. Prioritize user-centric AI strategies
The rapid adoption of AI by creators in 2025 signals a shift in how agencies approach their marketing strategies. While AI tools are becoming mainstream, the real differentiator will be how agencies use them to prioritize user experiences and foster authentic connections with their audiences.
“Creators are adopting AI quickly,” says Franco Aquino, Co-Founder of REN Marketing. “This is great for early adopters but in a short amount of time, it may not be a differentiator. Being able to excel in high-quality (but not necessarily high production) user-generated content will separate the one-hit wonders from those that will grow long-term.”
As AI becomes more pervasive in marketing, agencies that use it to enhance authenticity rather than just production will be at an advantage. One way to be more authentic with prospects and customers is to share user-generated content (UGC), particularly reviews and testimonials. Those kinds of high-quality UGC create trust and foster long-term relationships with customers. Reviews, for example, provide an organic way for customers to share their experiences, offering authentic touchpoints that build credibility.
Mid year update: But standing out in a world where everyone uses AI means going further than just using the tools — you need to integrate them in a way that amplifies your brand’s voice and your customers’ needs. Agencies that pair AI efficiency with community building — like featuring customers in social content, responding thoughtfully to reviews, or co-creating content with loyal users — are the ones laying the groundwork for sustained, long-term growth.
Tip: Make it easy for customers to leave reviews by linking to your review pages in emails and on your site. Actively ask for and incentivize leaving reviews by sending follow-up emails.
Bonus tip: Don’t just collect reviews — turn them into short-form content. With help from AI tools, you can quickly identify trends, highlight meaningful feedback, and repurpose testimonials into powerful social or email content.
2. Diversify channels to increase visibility
As Google Search continues to change, marketers will also need to alter their tactics to get clients in front of prospects. “We're starting to see sites lose traffic due to AI overviews,” says Joy Jawkins, Owner/President of SterlingSky. With the rise of AI on Google, it's going to be challenging for SEOs to come up with more ways to get traffic to their clients' sites. A lot of informational queries that gave people an entry point are resulting in less clicks. The solution will be to diversify traffic sources and double down on the more transactional queries that will ultimately become more competitive.”
Diversification in content types and distribution will help agencies share client messaging, as will distinctive brand storytelling.
“2025 is going to be all about diversification,” explains Tanya Wigmore, Chief Growth Officer & General Manager of Cronyx Digital. “We're seeing a shift away from organic traffic as a primary traffic source and a drop in organic social visibility. You need to diversify your content types to include video and audio, as well as your traditional text content and will need to make sure that you're increasing visibility for your brand across multiple channels. Building all this new content is going to be a lot easier than ever with the help of AI, but make sure you're editing it to add in your unique perspective and expertise so that you can differentiate from other AI-created content.”
Expansion across more and varied channels will mean added complexity in identifying traffic sources. By using tracking tools that can identify online and offline touchpoints, as well as self-attribution, you can fill in the gaps of your customers’ journeys.
Mid-year update: Six months into 2025, AI overviews are continuing to impact organic visibility, especially for top-of-funnel informational content. Agencies that pivoted early toward more transactional queries, localized SEO, and multichannel promotion are seeing better results. Diversifying not just where content lives, but how it's packaged — short-form video, podcasts, even conversational formats — is helping brands stay discoverable in a fragmented landscape.
Tip: As you try new tactics, consider using tools like Call Tracking and Form Tracking. Visibility into data like keyword searches and lead sources will help you make smarter marketing decisions.
3. Experiment with new tactics — but track their effectiveness
Marketers have to worry about meeting their clients’ goals as well as their agency’s. For those marketers who said they didn’t meet last year’s revenue goals, two of the top reasons were economic impacts and client turnover. Testing new tactics can help you improve performance, but it’s important to track your progress. AI can help with both.
“With a new year approaching, this is a great time for marketers to test out new avenues to reach audiences and to see if those new avenues can drive efficient conversions,” says Director of SEM, Chad Stewart at Accelerated Digital Marketing. “Many of these new tactics will rely on AI to help segment and define audiences, and possibly even to determine the messaging or creative these audiences will see.”
Stewart believes that as marketers experiment with these new approaches, they must be mindful of the importance of tracking at each touch point. “Because different tactics can support different stages of the funnel, success may be defined differently for each of these tactics, and the only way for AI-based campaigns to succeed is to ensure they are optimizing toward the right goals,” he says.
With this in mind, marketers looking to leverage AI for more efficient marketing must be powering their campaigns with the most appropriate and complete performance data for each tactic, whether that means phone calls, lead form submissions, or web purchases.”
Mid-year update: Marketers who embraced experimentation early in 2025 are already seeing results, but only where measurement strategies are strong. Agencies are refining their attribution models to better capture AI-driven campaign performance, especially as blended tactics across voice, form, and chat continue to blur the funnel. Real-time data visibility is proving to be just as important as creativity.
Tip: A/b test and measure your experiments to gauge effectiveness. Then, make adjustments based on that data.
4. Be real with your customers
Presenting your clients authentically is an effective way to connect with the right audience. As Ben Wright, Founder/CEO of Risely Marketing says: “Be human!”
“Marketers are always leveraging the latest trends, and AI is no different,” adds Wright. “In 2025 it will never be easier to sound robotic, feel generic, and get ignored online. Agencies that help their clients build incredible brands will win. That means being human, genuine, memorable, and unique.”
Mid-year update: As AI-generated content floods every channel, audiences are tuning out anything that feels templated or overly polished. Agencies that leaned into real stories — client wins, behind-the-scenes posts, and customer feedback — are seeing higher engagement and stronger brand recall. Authenticity isn’t just a differentiator anymore; it’s an expectation.
Tip: Share real customer and employee stories when relevant. Take advantage of ways to interact with your clients’ customers on social media.
5. Automate tedious tasks
Marketers are planning to use AI to help their agencies scale in the coming year. Their top planned uses for AI-driven tools are for:
- Customer data analytics platforms
- Lead intelligence software
- Marketing automation
Blake Akers, CEO of Webology, LLC says, “Imagine automating repetitive tasks like installing a Google Ads container in WordPress! For us in the SEO space, there's the potential to automate things like citation building and internal linking that will have a direct impact on the costs of SEO services very soon.”
Mid-year update: Six months in, more agencies are shifting from basic task automation to deeper process automation — like follow-ups, lead routing, and reporting. AI tools like Convert Assist and Voice Assist are helping teams move faster without sacrificing quality, and the payoff is clear: more time for strategy, less time lost to manual busywork and overtime.
Tip: Automating follow-ups with an AI-powered tool like Convert Assist will help your clients save time and ensure that leads and customers don’t fall through the cracks.
6. Innovate with no-code platforms
With AI-driven platforms, it’s easier than ever to create apps and tools for your customers. More agencies are trying no-code platforms to create these offerings, but it’s important to make sure they address real customer needs. With a deluge of new tools, customers may be annoyed by new apps that don’t solve real pain points or simplify their lives.
“The trend every marketer should explore is AI-first, no-code tool creation,” says Andrew Peluso, CEO & Owner of Bananas Agency. “Building useful, customer-centric tools has never been easier.”
For example, his agency recently leveraged the OpenAI GPT-4 API with a no-code platform to build a bug identification tool for their client's customers. Previously, customers had to sift through a vast library of bugs to identify what they were seeing—now, with AI, they can snap a quick picture and receive instant identification and relevant information about the bug. “A tool like this, once costly and complex, can now be built in hours for just $30 a month,” says Peluso.
This shift represents a massive opportunity for marketers to create value-driven solutions that directly improve customer experiences. In a world where AI can generate content, images, and video at scale, the real challenge is figuring out how to combine these capabilities to deliver unique, impactful solutions. The marketers who innovate with AI will be the ones who capture lasting customer loyalty.
Mid-year update: Bananas is now using custom GPTs trained on client inputs to speed up content creation across blogs, ads, and web copy. “Our biggest wins this year have come from pairing AI with deep client knowledge and structured prompts,” says Peluso. “That’s what’s driving better output and faster results.”
Tip: Use tools that allow for no-code integrations and custom AI applications — paired with strong internal frameworks — to unlock scalable, high-impact solutions for your clients.
7. Optimize SEO with AI-driven tools
Agencies have been improving and streamlining SEO with AI-powered tools to do everything from research keywords to analyze data. Now, there are a growing number of ways AI is impacting SEO, including changing search interfaces.
Patricia Walterick, CEO of Open Space Digital, explains, “As AI platforms become a primary tool for search, marketers must adapt their SEO strategies to cater not only to traditional search engines but also to AI-driven search interfaces.”
Key trends to watch, according to Walterick, include:
• AI backlink ecosystem: Emerging data from tools like Google Search Console indicates a rise in backlinks from AI-generated sources. These backlinks, often generated by AI-powered content creators, can impact SEO dynamics and require marketers to monitor and assess their quality.
• Optimization for AI interfaces: With more users relying on AI chatbots and virtual assistants for answers, optimizing content to be AI-friendly will be crucial. This includes structuring content for clear, direct answers, leveraging schema markup, and focusing on conversational keyword strategies.
• Training AI models: Agencies may increasingly focus on training proprietary AI models with optimized content to enhance brand visibility within AI-driven search experiences. This proactive approach can help brands become the go-to source for specific topics or queries.
Mid-year update: These predictions are proving accurate. Agencies are seeing clear shifts in how traffic arrives — less from traditional SEO and more from AI-driven snippets and summaries. Optimizing content for AI interfaces is no longer optional. Agencies that began structuring content for clarity, schema, and natural language are gaining more traction in both search and AI assistant results.
Tip: An AI-powered platform like Premium Conversation Intelligence™ can improve keyword spotting and SEO analysis. You can easily see which ads and keywords are driving your most valuable leads.
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