Read time: 7 minutes
Marketing budgets have steadily declined in recent years, with studies revealing that budgets dropped by 15% in 2024.
As we step into 2025, we’re unlikely to see growth in this area as marketing budgets come under more scrutiny than ever.
With tighter resources and higher expectations, driven largely by the rise of AI-powered tools and analytics, the year ahead looks to be tough for marketing professionals who are being asked to do more with less.
The biggest challenge? How to decide where to focus their efforts for maximum impact and the biggest return on investment (ROI).
The question on every marketer’s mind is clear: which mix of channels will deliver the best results in today’s dynamic landscape?
To answer that question, we need to consider broader marketing goals such as generating high-quality leads, implementing effective multi-channel campaigns and equipping sales teams with actionable insights.
Achieving these objectives requires a deep understanding of your audience. Only then can you allocate your marketing budget effectively.
With that in mind, we’re going to look at some marketing insights and actionable steps to help you prioritise the right channels in 2025.
Get to know your audience
The foundation of any successful marketing strategy is understanding your audience and uncovering their behaviours, preferences and key pain points. In order to do this, you need to:
Understand the human side of marketing
It can be tricky, but it’s important to remember that marketing is more than just data. It’s about understanding the human side of the equation and recognising the people behind the numbers, too.
Ultimately, you’re selling to a person, someone who wants to feel understood, valued and genuinely seen. To achieve this, you may need to move beyond traditional B2B marketing frameworks and focus on building emotional engagement.
When done effectively, emotional advertising has been proven to have a bigger impact on audiences. In fact, campaigns featuring purely emotional content outperform those with solely rational content by nearly double (31% vs. 16%).
Develop detailed buyer personas
Creating detailed buyer personas—a fictional representation of your ideal customers—allows you to humanise your audience and craft marketing strategies that resonate on a deeper level. These personas help you tailor messaging, content, and campaigns to the specific needs, behaviours, and challenges of your target audience.
Recommended reading: How to build an ideal customer profile for better lead generation results [+ free template]
Start by analysing existing customer data to identify patterns in demographics, job roles, pain points, and decision-making processes. Surveys and customer interviews can offer valuable qualitative insights, helping you understand motivations, objections, and the factors that influence purchasing decisions.
Your buyer personas should include:
- Job title and role – What responsibilities do they have? Who do they report to?
- Industry and company size – Are they in a niche sector or a broad market?
- Pain points and challenges – What obstacles do they face, and how can your product or service solve them?
- Buying triggers and objections – What prompts them to seek a solution? What concerns might prevent them from converting?
- Preferred content and channels – Do they engage with whitepapers, LinkedIn articles, or webinars? Are they more active on email or social media?
The more detailed your personas, the more effectively you can personalise your outreach, engage in lead nurturing, and provide relevant content at every stage of the buyer journey. Keep your personas updated with fresh data to ensure they remain accurate and aligned with evolving customer needs.
Map your customer journey
Understanding the journey your customers take from initial awareness to final decision-making is also essential. Every interaction a prospect has with your brand—whether it’s seeing an ad, downloading a whitepaper, or engaging with a sales rep—shapes their path to conversion.
To optimise the customer journey, you need to identify the most impactful touchpoints—those key moments when prospects engage with your brand in a way that influences their buying decision. These could include:
- Paid ads, organic search, and referrals during the awareness stage
- Email nurtures, content syndication, and targeted remarketing campaigns in the consideration stage
- Sales conversations, free trials, and one-to-one consultations in the decision stage
By collecting data and customer feedback—particularly leveraging intent data—you can gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviour, interests, and motivations.
A well-mapped customer journey ensures that your marketing and sales efforts align, delivering the right content at the right time and through the most effective channels. Regularly refine this journey based on performance metrics and customer insights to keep your strategy relevant and responsive to changing buyer behaviours.
Start evaluating which channels are most effective
Once you have a better understanding of your audience, the next step is to assess which channels are going to be the most effective way to reach them. When asked which channels they leveraged most in 2024, almost half (44%) of marketers revealed that social media was their number one choice. This was followed by:
- Website/blog - 36%
- Email marketing - 35%
- Content marketing - 32%
- Influencer marketing - 30%
- SEO marketing - 26%
These trends look set to continue in 2025, but it’s important that as you get to grips with your target audience, you understand where they spend their time and, therefore, which platforms are likely to be most effective.
Recommended reading: The top 8 channels you should be using for better demand generation
Here are some actionable steps that can help you to determine the most effective marketing channels for your business:
- Define your marketing and lead generation goals and KPIs early on so you can monitor these and review
campaigns to determine what works and where - Analyse your key competitors to see which channels they're using most and if this aligns with your audience
- Leverage analytics and data to measure channel performance and user engagement
- Use AI tools to analyse user behaviour across different platforms to predict which content will resonate
most with different audience segments
Allocate your budget strategically
Now, armed with this clear understanding of your audience and top marketing channels, the next step is to allocate your budget strategically.
Prioritise high-impact channels
Start by identifying which channels have consistently delivered the best results for your business and allocate a larger portion of your budget to them.
You can use analytics tools to track performance metrics like conversion rates and ensure these platforms give you the best results.
Collaborate with the sales team
One of the key roles of demand generation is to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. By leveraging AI and predictive analytics, you can identify high-intent leads and predict which prospects are most likely to convert. You can then share these insights with your sales team to help prioritise outreach.
Recommended reading: The easiest way to align sales and marketing (it's really not that hard)
Implementing closed-loop reporting can also connect sales and marketing data, allowing you to track which campaigns and channels lead to closed deals. This data is invaluable for refining your strategy.
Experiment with emerging channels
While investing in proven channels is important, it’s also a good idea to experiment with new and upcoming channels.
For example, generative AI is revolutionising content creation and personalisation; therefore, these platforms should not be ignored. That said, be careful to allocate a smaller portion of your budget to these endeavours until you have a better understanding of how effective they are.
Balance your short and long-term goals
While achieving immediate ROI is important, it’s vital that you don’t neglect strategies that build long-term brand loyalty and drive traffic, such as SEO and content marketing. A balanced approach ensures continuous lead generation and sustained growth.
Test and optimise your strategy
Finally, you should use a portion of your budget for testing and optimising your strategy. You can do this by running small-scale campaigns on new channels or with new formats and then scaling up what works. A/B testing and AI-driven analytics can help you to refine your approach and secure the best results.
Succeeding in 2025
As the marketing landscape continues evolving, agility is key to staying ahead. Successful demand generation is all about knowing your audience as deeply as possible and reaching them where they spend
their time.
By understanding their preferences and behaviours and evaluating the effectiveness of different channels, you can allocate your marketing budget more strategically.
Just remember to support your efforts with actionable insights and monitor performance metrics so you can continually refine your strategy.
