Content ideation
Image generation
Web personalization
Video generation
Chatbots & virtual assistants
Sales outreach
Generating demand and driving pipeline has never been more critical or complex, with 49% of marketers in our survey identifying these as top priorities. Marketers are embracing tailored strategies that seamlessly blend brand storytelling with demand-driving initiatives, extending beyond creative messaging into areas like product-led growth and digital-first buying experiences.
The rise of AI and predictive technologies further enables marketers to craft hyper-targeted go-to-market strategies by persona, vertical, geography, or intent and engagement. Organizations can identify high-impact segments and allocate resources where they will generate the most revenue. Teams are armed with the data to facilitate multi-channel thought leadership initiatives and executive outreach programs that serve dual purposes: reinforcing brand authority while driving meaningful engagement with target audiences.
As leaders take on broader responsibilities for customer experience and advocacy, alignment across marketing, sales, customer success, and product is becoming paramount. RevOps structures are increasingly uniting sales and customer service teams to ensure seamless collaboration and reduce friction in the buyer journey. For marketing leaders, owning the early-stage narrative while aligning to other teams previously not thought of as “marketing” to personalize every touchpoint is critical for driving both immediate pipeline impact and sustained brand loyalty.
According to the AMP.25 survey, 35% of B2B technology marketers identified creating meaningful content as a top challenge for 2025. Further, nearly half of survey respondents (49%) selected generating quality leads as a top challenge. As marketers devise strategies to address these concerns, we recommend an approach that can tackle both simultaneously: creating content that engages prospects and drives conversions by aligning to the customer journey.
While content marketing remains a key tactic—42% of marketers plan to leverage it this year—its role appears to be shifting. Last year, 56% of marketers prioritized content, suggesting a growing focus on quality and effectiveness rather than sheer volume. The key to impact isn’t just producing more content but ensuring it serves a clear purpose at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Thought leadership pieces can engage early-stage buyers, product comparisons can influence consideration, and case studies can provide the final nudge toward a decision.
To overcome this challenge, B2B marketers must refine their content strategies with greater precision. This means using data-driven insights to deliver the right content at the right time and addressing buyer needs at every touchpoint. When content is strategically mapped to the customer journey, it doesn’t just inform—it guides, nurtures, and ultimately converts.
Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2024 suggests that generative AI has just passed the Peak of Inflated Expectations and is approximately 2 to 5 years from reaching the Plateau of Productivity. In many ways, we're seeing a similar trend in generative AI applications for marketing.
Our recent research, which surveyed how marketers plan to leverage AI in 2025, provides additional context on where we're seeing critical mass in AI adoption. Content ideation leads with 43% of marketers, followed by image generation (40%), website personalization (39%), video generation (36%), and chatbots and virtual assistants (33%). While generative AI adoption remains strong across multiple applications, there is a slight decline in most use cases compared to previous years. Video generation stands out with a notable increase of 27% to 36%—a trend that aligns with advancements in AI models and the introduction of tools like OpenAI's Sora and Luma AI built on Bedrock from AWS.
Is this decline a sign of disillusionment, as Gartner might suggest, or simply a statistical anomaly in our dataset? From my experience, many generative AI tools are still too new to be beneficial because we don't know their exact limitations or capabilities. Free tools, such as OpenAI's offerings, are useful but limited when not trained on proprietary data. Consistently generating responses that align with a specific worldview requires extensive prompting, which can be time-consuming.
As SaaS platforms continue integrating generative AI, the ability to customize and fine-tune models or agents with proprietary datasets will significantly enhance their value. Will this evolution take 2 to 5 years, as Gartner predicts? That remains to be seen. However, one thing is certain: AI's role in marketing will only continue to grow. Organizations that identify where AI is most valuable in their processes will gain the earliest competitive advantage.