2025 Marketing Lessons (That Aren't AI Focused)

Upon reflection, it's always incredible to see what a year can do. Whether you've been in marketing for 2 years, over 10 or beyond that, there's always space to learn and these three 2025 marketing lessons. That's exactly why so many marketers love what they do, it's fast moving, you can learn from each other and best of all it's constantly changing.

2025 was no different. This year was filled with new clients, new learnings while testing and new information from my network of freelancers. So, let's chat about some of the key learnings I discovered, not online, but while actually in the thick of it with clients.

Too Many Discounts And Sales Can Hurt A Business

Thanks to an almost guaranteed pop in sales, discounting is one of the biggest moves that tempts business owners. Whether you need to hit your month's goal, need to pay off some credit cards or anything in between it's a quick fix for something that's an immediate need.

The problem is, it's not a fix for the future.

Don't take it the wrong way, discounting is a key and important piece of your business plan, but it's all in the frequency of the sales. Unfortunately, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there's a secret sauce to how many sales you should do a quarter or year, because every company is different (see also why I hate strategy templates).

What I can say is, start doing sales around the big moments: Black Friday, Holiday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Labour Day and various long weekends. If doing those performs well, see if you can start sprinkling in a couple more, but always see how you can make them more exclusive as well. Some examples of this would include:

• Two-day sale for SMS subscribers only

• Three-day sale for people who have viewed your best seller, but haven't purchased

• Seven-day sale for people who have never purchased, and reiterate the Welcome Offer with different wording, or if margin allows, bump it up by a couple percentage points or offer a gift with purchase

• ... there's lots more where those came from

If you are always sharing sales to your entire subscriber list and on your website, your customers will very quickly learn a pattern (and yes, I've seen this happen more than once) and soon you'll see theirs which will be:

• They always wait for your sales, because they know one comes per month or more

• Your sales when discounts aren't running will be lower than ever, and even when you run them, your revenue will be lower than expected since people don't feel the urgency as intensely

If the above sounds like your business right now, have no fear. You can 100% recover from the discounting cycle and come out of it more successful than ever, it's just about shifting how you do things (and of course, I'm here to help if you need it).

Data Needs To Be Clean... From The Beginning

It happens all the time, so if this is you, please know it's not just you. If you're reading this and you're in the early stages of setting your data up, it's important to invest in properly building this out. That includes a process around data capture and tracking, along with setting up the back end of GA4, Shopify and even a platform like TripleWhale or Northbeam.

But why is this important if I can see the revenue and everything on Shopify, Katie??

Good question, because you need to see a full scope of everything and not even Shopify does that. It's true, that using Shopify is a great to see your revenue growth, returning customer rates and more, but it's also important to compare that data to what you see in GA4 to get deeper into the details. In addition, a platform like TripleWhale will include everything from paid media costs, product costs, net profit, and more for you to quickly look at and check the pulse of the company.

If this isn't set up from the beginning, teams tend to get too busy to think about getting it together. Then, one day, they realize how badly they actually need it. This then involves a full-scale project and the inability to properly looks on historical data, leaving you feeling like you're at day one.

Bottom line, it might be boring, but just get it set up ASAP and you'll thank yourself, I promise.

Good Marketing Starts With Planning Ahead

You're probably thinking obviously, I'm just going to skip over this section, but please stay because it's more than that.

Everyone knows this, but how many people actually put it into play? Not as many businesses as you think, and I don't blame them since it's so easy to get lost in the day to day. That being said, planning at least one month ahead to start, and then moving to quarterly makes a world of a difference.

If you're not using one already, I suggest using a content calendar and starting with month to month planning. With the content calendar, you'll set aside a couple hours at the beginning of one month to plan for the next, and this will include:

• Key themes / focuses for the team

• Sales/discount information

• Key partnerships going live

• In addition, you'll have all email and SMS sends planned along with the social calendar

  • If you work with freelancers, they can most likely help with this, or you can do it yourself

After you finish the calendar, you'll send this out to the team (from customer support, to your paid media team and anyone else) so everyone is on the same page and has time to ask questions, build out the content and more.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. You CAN use AI to help you build this out, and that's not a bad thing. Just make sure some of it holds human intervention because your imagination and understanding of your brand will always add more than AI which is just simply grabbing from what's already been done, and we all know you can do better than that. However, AI can be a great starting point if you're having a block.

Remember, having a content calendar in place doesn't mean nothing can be changed, it's of course very fluid. It however at least gives you and your team a guideline.

Not sure where to start? I've got a template for a content calendar you can use, or I can even jump in and partner with you to do your content calendar on a monthly basis. Just say hello and we can chat!