The Top Goals of Marketing Managers and Executives in 2025 (New Data + Expert Tips)

To effectively lead a marketing team, you need to know what you’re working towards. Whether your focus is increasing sales or improving your customers’ understanding of your products, starting with a clear priority can guide all your efforts in 2025 and beyond.

But sometimes you may find it difficult to identify your company’s most important goals. That’s why we surveyed more than 700 marketing executives to help you make the right decisions.

Let’s explore the top marketing management goals for the coming year and some advice from executives at ClickUp, RocketReach, Uber, and more on how to achieve them.

The most important goals for marketing managers in 2025

1. Increase sales and revenue.

According to our survey, “increasing sales and revenue” is the top priority for most marketing leaders in 2025, with just over 20% saying this.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. Our primary job as marketers is to impact a company’s bottom line by targeting the right audiences and driving leads into the sales pipeline.

Gaurav Agarwalthe Chief Operating Officer of ClickUp, once echoed this sentiment: “As a fast-growing company with industry-leading NDR, sustainably generating new revenue is always our top priority.” To achieve this goal, we must fully focus on building various growth and sales capabilities .”

Tips for achieving this marketing manager goal:

To increase sales, marketing leaders need to identify areas of their customer journey that can be further optimized. Additionally, marketing managers want to focus on lead generation.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to effective lead generation. To improve your lead generation strategy, you can test new landing pages or calls to action. Try creating stronger offers or refocus your efforts on more effective lead nurturing campaigns.

It’s also important to continually test new platforms like TikTok or podcasting to reach new audiences.

Consider sales as a goal, Michelle KeeneVice President of Product Marketing at Rocket Lawyer told me that as the years ahead are likely to be marked by economic uncertainty, the transition to profitable growth (rather than growth at all costs) will only accelerate – from a good idea to a requirement.

To address this challenge, Keene offers five key principles that marketing leaders should follow:

1. Move from a pure sales target to a sales and acquisition cost target.
2. Find technology solutions that enable CAC measurement at the program level.
3. Evolve your marketing attribution models.
4. Thoroughly understand your target groups and their needs to deliver the right messages at the right time.
5. Promote the continuous use of hypothesis-driven experiments and optimizations.

She added: “As a marketing leader, I embrace this challenge and value efficient growth. While any change in mindset is challenging, the benefits far outweigh the costs of change management.”

“It can change the way senior leaders look at marketing – not as an expense but as an investment – ​​which to me is really empowering and energizing.”

2. Gain a better understanding of customers and their needs.

Next, marketing leaders ranked “better understanding customers and their needs” as their second-biggest priority in 2025.

This makes sense when you consider that the biggest change in the industry over the last 12 months has been a greater focus on the customer and their experience with brands.

Your happiest customers can be not only your most lucrative customers, but also your brand’s strongest advocates to the public. Customers remain loyal to brands they love and want to recommend them on social media and to friends and family. But how do you build that commitment?

Tips for achieving this marketing manager goal:

Jennifer Chou, Senior VP of Marketing at RocketReach believes that thoroughly understanding your customers is an important first step in building brand loyalty.

She told me: “Marketing is about telling stories and helping people imagine how your solutions can help them achieve their goals. A better understanding of your customers and their needs is critical to building that intangible connection that builds affinity, consideration and ultimately loyalty.”

She continues: “Customers want to build a new relationship with companies. They want to feel like “the company understands what I’m dealing with and is building products for me.” This means we need to know their challenges and goals as well or better than they do.”

Additionally, to build a strong relationship between your brand and its community, make sure your marketing materials convey your brand’s values.

People will feel more connected to your company if they believe your company cares about the issues that matter most to them.

As Daniel GodoyGlobal Head of Programmatic Evangelist at Microsoft, says, “The best way to gain trust is to be upfront about the values ​​your brand holds dear and have transparent communications that highlight your goal commitments.”

Create better customer experiences through personalization.

As more and more marketers are realizing, loyalty also comes down to creation a great one Customer experience. In fact, according to Adobe, 86% of consumers will pay more for a superior customer experience.

As marketers, we need to take a closer look at what our buyers want from what we offer and their interactions with us. What would make it easier or more enjoyable to be your customer?

Personalization can be the key.

Zendesk found that 70% of customers expect everyone they interact with at a company to know the full context of their previous engagement and actions.

And in our survey, 86% of marketers said a personalized experience moderately or significantly increases sales.

How can you personalize your marketing?

• Address your buyer by name in all interactions, including email, website, phone calls, and in-person meetings.
• Make recommendations based on their specific needs, concerns, demographics, or past behavior.
• Have team members personally respond to all social media interactions. While AI can be very helpful in personalization, this is one use case where it can act robotically.

But these are just a few ideas. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers what they want and need. Ask for feedback after interactions or purchases. Good or bad, the insights can only help you improve.

Additionally, create opportunities for your customers to interact with each other.

You can create a Facebook or Slack group so your customers can connect with each other, share industry best practices, and receive ideas or suggestions to help them address their business challenges.

HubSpot’s social team founded a Facebook group back in 2019 and has since used it to foster a stronger sense of community among its members.

3. Increase brand awareness/reach new target groups.

This is probably consistent with our first two points, but according to our research, marketers’ third priority in 2025 is to increase brand awareness and reach new audiences.

I mean, think about it. Of course, this is intended to help increase sales and revenue, but success depends on understanding your target audience.

As your business expands into new markets, you need to take the time to understand your new customers so you can effectively demonstrate how your product will help them.

Tips for achieving this marketing manager goal:

According to our survey, marketers believe the most important information about their customers is:

• How they consume content (33.43%)
• Your demographics (31.77%)
• Products they are interested in purchasing (27.9%)

This information will help you understand what value your marketing needs to provide and what new audiences it could attract.

Of course, every audience is different, but in general there are some trends you can use to test. For example, more than half of consumers prefer to search for products online or on social media.

This means a strong SEO or social media strategy is a good place to start if you’re trying to build brand awareness and increase reach.

By creating product-focused content on your website and social media, you can show potential customers what your product is about and how it works long before they make a purchase.

For example, let’s say you work for a video editing company.

Writing content like “Why Video Marketing Matters” and “5 Ways to Create Higher Quality Videos” will introduce people interested in videos to your brand as a player in this space.

But you don’t want to stop there. Go further by creating Comparison article that target X or Y high intent keywords. Even if your software isn’t well-known in buyer cycles, you can compare yourself to popular competitors and once again help explain your role in the industry.

Once readers learn that you are an option for them and find value in your content, they are more likely to explore your site further. It’s content marketing 101.

If you are marketing to Generation Z or Millennials, it is also essential that you use social media for product education. It is Gen Z’s favorite channel to learn about new products and Millennials’ second favorite channel (just behind search engines).

More about this in: Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Top marketing manager goals based on trends

Our survey also revealed several emerging trends that marketers are interested in and based on which they plan their strategies. Here are the top three.

4. Invest in personality-driven content and YouTuber partnerships.

Where there is social media, content creators cannot be far behind. Therefore, it is not surprising that marketing managers’ goals in 2025 include investing in influencer and creator partnerships.

Influencer marketing is proven to drive engagement, increase traffic and clicks, and generate conversions and sales. Modern consumers tend to trust influencers more than brands and find them authentic and likeable.

That’s probably why Sprout Social found that 49% of consumers make daily, weekly, or monthly purchases based on influencer posts. With this in mind, it is advisable not to neglect the marketing power of influencers and YouTubers.

But how do you start?

Tips for achieving this marketing manager goal:

Influencer marketing campaigns can take place on various platforms (Instagram, YouTube, etc.) and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, including:

• Affiliate or discount codes
• Contests and giveaways
• Sponsored Posts
• Give
• Acquisitions
• Cooperation

Start by identifying the platforms your audience is most active on and who they interact with there. From there, HubSpotter colleague Ramona Sukhraj explains the different options and how to develop your influencer marketing strategy in this article.

5. Diversify paid media across direct, indirect and branded models.

With increasing competition in search engines and social networks, as well as increasingly elusive algorithms across the board, the importance of paid media cannot be ignored.

In 2023, effectively promoting their products and services has been one of the top goals of marketers and now the focus is on diversification.

Advertising is no longer what it used to be. These are not the days of Don Draper from Mad Men and create funny advertising slogans – at least not completely. In addition to the more traditional channels such as print, TV, radio and direct mail, many brands now advertise almost exclusively on digital platforms.

Many digital advertising platforms offer helpful tools for targeting, creating engaging ads, and responding quickly when something isn’t working.

For example, Google’s responsive ads feature tests different headlines and descriptions and ultimately displays the combination that resonates best with the intended audience.

Meanwhile, Facebook allows A/B testing and is known for having one of the most robust audience targeting tools for social media.

Tips for achieving this marketing manager goal:

Overall, marketers have a wealth of paid advertising options today, and it’s smart to experiment with them. As with influencer marketing, start by figuring out where your audience is consuming content and looking for answers.

Next, look at which advertising options are relevant to your goals.

For example, if you’re trying to increase downloads for a specific offer, you might want to run a Facebook lead ad. Combine your options with your budget in mind and see what delivers the best results.

Learn more about your paid advertising options at: The Ultimate Guide to PPC Marketing

6. Update SEO strategies for AI-driven search.

They didn’t think we would talk about 2025 and not mention it Artificial Intelligence (AI)do you have?

According to our survey, updating SEO strategies for AI-driven search rounds out the top goals for marketing leaders.

AI search is no longer limited to assistants like Alexa, ChatGPT and Claude. It is also being adopted by industry leaders like Google with AI overviews.

source

HubSpots Kieran Flanagan expected AI is set to transform SEO in three ways. It will:

1. Reduce click-through rates on search engines.
2. Challenge search engine experts to be more holistic digital marketers.
3. Emphasize customer-centric strategies over keyword-centric ones.

So what can we do?

Tips for achieving this marketing manager goal:

Here’s what Flanagan recommended in a recent article:

• Create high-quality, expert content: Your content can no longer just answer frequently asked questions with relevant information. Anyone can do that. Now it needs to offer credible perspectives, trusted tips that most readers won’t find elsewhere, and other elements consistent with Google’s EEAT philosophy.
• Optimize for Selected excerpts: Structure your content so that it is easy to search and provides direct answers to frequently asked questions. As AI digests slowly replace featured snippets, we expect the criteria for publishing here could be similar.
• Focus on user intent: Tailor your content to specific user needs, which can increase your chances of being recommended as an answer in search results generated by LLM.
• Building authority and backlinks: Like search rankings in general, High-quality backlinks and mentions can signal to LLMs that you are a trustworthy source. Continue to make this a priority.

You can also check out these resources from HubSpot:

Set (and achieve) goals like a marketing manager

Setting your ultimate goal depends on the needs of your business.

If your business is striving for visibility, an increase in traffic can be an indication that you are on the right path. If your business is struggling to meet its financial goals, revenue from your marketing initiatives could be your main goal.

Your goals and KPIs should include a lot of thought, but some priorities and focuses remain universal even in today’s market. So use the trends and advice in this article to explore your company’s possibilities and the best ways to achieve its goals.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2022 and has been updated for completeness.