128: 7 Marketing and copywriting trends to boost sales in 2025
Ready to transform your marketing strategy for 2025?
I'm breaking down seven game-changing marketing and copywriting trends that most experts aren't talking about.
We’ll get into why human-centered marketing is more crucial than ever and discuss the big shifts happening in the marketing industry for 2025.
Plus, I share candid thoughts on AI's role in marketing and why going local could be your best strategy in the current economic climate. Whether you're a course creator, consultant, or small business owner, this episode will help you navigate the ever-evolving marketing landscape and boost your sales in 2025. Let’s dive in!
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why the traditional sales funnel might be holding you back, and what to do instead
The unexpected marketing channel that's making a comeback (hint: it's not digital)
How currency fluctuations could impact your global business strategy
The real reason your sales cycles are getting longer (and how to adapt)
A powerful alternative to "going viral" that actually converts
Why certain trendy marketing tactics might be damaging your brand
The truth about AI in content creation that most marketers won't tell you
Loved this episode? Explore how you can get more marketing and copywriting strategy, support and sales by working with me in 2025: https://bookacallwithkim.as.me/introcall
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Welcome to ill communication, copywriting tips and sales strategies for small business. I'm your host, Kim Keel. I'm a copy coach, sales strategist, and direct response copywriter. It's my mission to help women leaders and changemakers amplify their voices through copy. It's why I'm dishing out all the juicy tips, writing prompts, and sales formulas to help you generate more leads, book more calls, and get more high value clients on repeat. Sounds pretty good. It's time to ditch the overwhelm you might be feeling and find confidence in your copywriting so you can get your message out there and attract more soul mate clients. Let's get started. Hello. Hello and welcome back to the Ill Communication Podcast. I hope you gave yourself a well-deserved pause from business and work to enjoy yourself over the holidays. And if you're still kind of getting back into the groove of business and work, I want to remind you about my past two episodes. One is on reflections and questions you can ask yourself about 2024, and one is on 25. No BS resolutions for 2025, which really aren't resolutions as much as they are about creating a vibe for success, ease, and joy in 2025. If you haven't listened to those episodes yet, cue them up and listen to them after you hear this episode. And I gotta hand it to you. You are super smart for listening to this episode, because today I'm breaking down seven marketing and copywriting trends to boost sales in 2025.
[00:01:47]
And a lot of these are things other marketers aren't talking about. So it's going to give you a leg up and I want to get into it. You see, I follow a lot of marketing experts, thought leaders and educators. I've seen how they've shifted their messaging and what they're sharing about the coming year. I also work with incredible business owners, some of the most successful online business course creators in the industry. And so I have a front row seat to what's working and what's not working. And from my vantage point, I am here to share the top seven marketing and copywriting trends for 2025. And in preparation for this episode, I went back and reviewed last year's Top Trends episode. And I gotta say, a lot of those trends still stand this year. I'll dive a little deeper into a couple of them, but if you want, I'll drop the link to last year's trends episode into the show notes so you can remind yourself about what it's going to take to really market and sell yourself and your services in 2025. So let's get into it. Trend number one will be no surprise. Human centered marketing. Human centered marketing prioritizes authentic relationships, human connection, and personalization. Listen, consumers today are savvy, sophisticated, and skeptical. We have been on these internet streets now for a long time. We've all invested in crappy programs and coaches that never delivered on their promise.
[00:03:21]
We've fallen for the click bait and switch too many times. We are more sophisticated and savvy when it comes to buying things and investing in our businesses. We are more choosy and careful. We can sniff out AI generated content in seconds flat. The truth is, consumers want and deserve more real points of connection. So show up in your marketing as your human self. Tell more of your personal stories and daily anecdotes. Showcase more real life client case studies in a sea of pithy and generic content. Your personality and stories will allow you and your brand to rise to the top. Let me share a couple of examples. A couple of weeks ago, I saw several posts on LinkedIn from different creators with the exact same hook. Content is dead. Content marketing is dead. Content is dead. It was boring to me that people were using the exact same hooks, and to be honest, I feel the same way about all the Instagram Reels and TikToks using the POV trend POV. Finally recording my marketing trends of 2025 podcast episode. It's boring, and I understand that that kind of content will help you go viral or get your content seen by more eyeballs, but I question whether that content will help you attract real, qualified buyers to your brand, especially if you're a you're a consultant working in B2B or working with a higher level buyer, originality and having an actual point of view is going to win the day when everyone is zigging you should zag.
[00:05:11]
So share your own out of the box ideas and thoughts. Create opportunities for authentic connection and personalization in your marketing and copy. Be bold with your voice, your personality, and your unique take on the world. Ditch the professional corporate speak. Ditch the AI generated phrases and write and talk like a human. Talk and write conversationally. Human centered marketing requires you to put your audience first. So ask yourself, what does my audience want to see, hear, feel and do? And then speak to that in your marketing while infusing your own personality, your originality, and your unique approach. I have an entire mini series and workbook on finding and refining your unique brand voice. I'll drop the link in the show notes, but if you want it, it's a voice workbook. And if you want more of a done for you service, I do create Pitch perfect brand voice guides for businesses and brands who want to dial in that unique voice so they stand out, attract their ideal buyer, and close more sales. One final thing I'll mention about human centered marketing and sales. You're going to expect to have more sales or discovery calls. Your buyers want to know their investment is going to be a good one.
[00:06:36]
They want assurance you're the right fit for them. So plan to offer sales or fit calls, host open houses, or offer private tours of your programs and services. In human centered marketing, especially for higher ticket items, click to buy is out. Click to book a call is in because we're all craving more human to human connection. Trend number two video, audio and live events for the win. Now this of course, is directly related to trend number one. But one of the best ways to show your an actual human is by giving people opportunities to connect with you in human ways. Showing up on video helps people see and feel your energy. Showing up in audio allows people to hear and connect to your voice. Live events, whether they're virtual or in person, allow people to experience you and your genius. It shows us that you're a real person with expertise. We need video, audio, and live events, build trust, connection, authority and in a time when customer trust is at an all time low, this is increasingly important. So here are just a few ways you can infuse more audio and video into your marketing. Use loom or other video software to welcome new buyers and subscribers. Send a personal voice note to folks who join your email list or follow you on social. Send audio or video messages in your emails or include it in your blog content.
[00:08:11]
Course reels and TikToks are a great way to share video content of yourself. Host more live events, more masterclasses and yes, the dreaded webinar. In fact, I think webinars are back, baby. Trend number three think of flywheels instead of funnels. We're going to see more and more marketers and business coaches talking about marketing flywheels versus sales funnels. Now you're probably very familiar with the term sales or marketing funnel. It's a term to describe the linear path or customer journey to get leads, qualified prospects and sales. If you picture a funnel that you'd use in your kitchen or garage, it's wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. In a sales funnel, you attract large amounts of leads or a bigger audience at the top of your funnel. With your lead magnet, your free gift, your challenge or an event. And then as your audience moves down the funnel, they move from being that colder, newer prospect to being warmer and closer to the sale. Lots of people are at the top of the funnel. Fewer people convert into buyers or clients at the bottom of the funnel. In this model, a lot of effort is put into attracting as many people into the top of your funnel. And traditionally this is powered and scaled with ads and paid marketing. Now alternatively, you can build your business with marketing flywheels. A flywheel is a rotating mechanical wheel that turns on a crankshaft.
[00:09:44]
It takes a lot of energy to get that wheel moving, but once it's spinning, it has momentum. It turns more easily with less energy required. Think about how those first few pedals on your bike Take a lot of effort to get into motion, but once you're in motion, pedaling becomes easier, faster, and you can even coast along occasionally. So what does this have to do with marketing? Well, there's a couple of marketers like HubSpot and Rand Fishkin of Moz and Sparktoro, who have been talking about marketing flywheels for ten years or more. But more recently, I've seen folks like Caitlin Burgoyne, Ashley Carter talking about growth and marketing flywheels. If you think of your marketing efforts as a flywheel or a circular system, you invest in getting your marketing efforts off the ground by starting a blog, launching a podcast, building your email list. It is slow to start, but once you get in motion, you build momentum and you start growing faster and more easily. Your audience is in a cycle with you. You engage, nurture, sell, deliver your service and steward them in a circular flywheel. Your audience in the flywheel will help spread the word and refer you to their networks, which attracts more people into the flywheel and makes growth happen exponentially without necessarily more effort. The payoff for investing in the slower, steadier marathon of marketing could potentially have a bigger payoff in the long run than investing in shorter term.
[00:11:20]
Quick click funnels. But to be clear, it's not that you should do one or the other. You need funnels and flywheels to power your business. I have a lot more to say about this, so I'll probably record an entire episode dedicated to marketing flywheels, because I see more and more people talking about them, and I see it as an untapped potential. Speaking of which, I'm actually kind of worried the term flywheel will soon become more of a buzzword or a trendy term. So pro tip start using it now in your own marketing and be ahead of the curve. Trend number four expect slower and longer sales cycles. You probably saw in 2024 that the sales cycle is longer and slower than it was in years before 2022. And that trend is continuing in 2025 for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. Consumers are more sophisticated, more savvy, and more skeptical today. It's taking longer to generate sales and close those sales because many of us are taking our time to make decisions. We're more careful and more choosy with our investments, both time and money. So we should all expect longer, slower sales than in the past. Which means I think we're going to see a downturn in live launching and an uptick in evergreen sales systems or funnels. Evergreen funnels are automated marketing sales systems that continuously nurture and convert customers on an ongoing basis, rather than being tied to a to a specific launch or deadline.
[00:12:57]
This is the flywheel versus the funnel. Evergreen sales systems allow people to buy when they're ready to buy. Live launches, on the other hand, typically occur over a couple of weeks. You work to get a big crowd of people to show up to a live five day challenge or a masterclass series. Then, on the third or the fifth day, you make a pitch or invitation to get folks into your program, and then you give them 5 to 7 days to buy your offer. Typically, online coaches or course creators host one, two, or even four live launches per year. But with consumers taking longer to buy, we will see continued softening of revenue from live launches and more investment in evergreen sales systems instead. So if you're planning live launches, it will be critical that you have a strategic pre-launch content phase in the 4 to 6 weeks leading up to your live launch window. This extends that buying window and helps increase sales when you do open cart on your live launch. Developing the strategy and writing copy for your pre-launch is one of the best services I provide, so please reach out to me if you want to chat about how I can do a lot of that heavy lifting for you, and create a pre-launch plan to allow that longer sales cycle so you can maximize your sales and revenue.
[00:14:18]
I can also help you optimize your evergreen sales systems and flywheels too. If you've been putting off upgrading and investing in your evergreen strategies, let me tell you this is the year to do it. So I'll drop a link in the notes to book a call to chat about your live launch copy or your evergreen sales strategy. Trend number five is a little outside the box. It's direct mail. This is probably less of a trend, and more of a wide open opportunity for you to jump on in a world that's inundated with email digital marketing. One of the ways you can stand out is by adding in more direct mail. Now, direct mail is something the fundraising world and the old school advertising world has used for centuries. And of course, the pendulum has really swung to more online communication. But if we can infuse more direct physical mail. Yes. Good old mail into our business marketing and client stewardship, I think we'll all see a huge payoff. It will help us stand out. So here are just a couple of brainstorming ways you can use direct mail in your business. You could send friendly postcards or note cards to surprise and delight and thank your clients and collaborators. Send a physical newsletter even once a year, twice a year or quarterly to your clients and prospects.
[00:15:42]
Send welcome gifts to new clients and referral partners. Send invitations to join your programs using a well written sales letter. I think if more coaches and consultants use this tactic, we'd see much higher conversion rates and more profitability. Now this is only going to work for maybe very intimate masterminds, much smaller groups, but you never know. Charities have been using direct mail appeals forever and they still work very well. So I really think that they could work in our online education, consulting and coaching industries. I personally love writing these kinds of physical mail sales letters, and I really think there are huge untapped potential. So reach out if you want me to write a direct mail piece for you or your business in 2025. Trend number six go local. Now with this trend, I'm letting my own experience come into play. You see, I'm a Canadian and the Canadian dollar is performing horribly against the American dollar, the pound and the euro, which means I have to be really choosy about whether I work with us coaches or service providers or anyone overseas. If you're an American, UK or European service provider or coach, and Canadians or Australians or other low performing currencies make up a good portion of your clientele, please know it is very tough for us to pay in the pound, the USD or the Euro. We may need longer payment plans to work with you.
[00:17:22]
Plus, with the political rhetoric coming from the incoming American president, specifically the threats of tariffs and trade wars, other industries, including product based businesses, may focus on growing and sourcing products for their businesses locally. Due to the potential fee increase and a widening gap in the currency conversion. In my own business, I've seen a big uptick in Canadians buying from me and joining my programs because I charge in Canadian dollars for my Canadian clients. Another reason why we want to go local is because we are all craving in-person human connection. I want more human connection, and I don't want to have to fly and pay for a hotel to have that experience. So I'm joining local networking groups. I'm looking at building more local business relationships. I'm planning to host my own in-person events in my city. I expect wherever you are, people are craving in-person experiences too. So think about how you can plug into your local community to host events or find new local networks to plug into. And the final seventh trend I'll share with you is kind of a no brainer. It's that AI is going to continue to be a part of your business, but less so for content creation and more so for automating elements within your business like research, brainstorming Ideating workflows. You can find all kinds of content in top trends for 2025 that speak to the many different uses of AI in your business.
[00:18:57]
So I'm actually not going to spend any time on it. What I will say is that you don't want to rely on AI to generate your content or copy. For all of the reasons I've shared earlier in this episode. Yes, continue to use AI to create workflows, automations, and shortcuts in your business. But don't use AI to generate pithy, generic content, boring headlines, or subject lines. As I mentioned in trend number one, invest in sharing your own stories, anecdotes, and personality instead. So my friend, those are the top seven marketing and copywriting trends to boost your sales in 2025. Whether you're sharing short form video, investing in your email list, or creating long form content like a podcast or a blog, keep these seven trends at the top of your mind. Trend number one go all in on human centered marketing. Number two video, audio and live events for the win. Number three think of building flywheels instead of funnels. Number four expect slower and longer sales cycles. Number five experiment with direct mail. Number six go local. And number seven use AI to streamline and automate tasks in your business. But not for your copy. I'd love to help you embed or experiment with any of these trends. My calendar is open if you'd like to book a call. We can chat about some of the services that I offer.
[00:20:26]
That might be a great fit. I really have a bunch of different price points or investment levels, ranging from about $300 a month to more like four and five figure launch copy investments. So there's really a range of ways that I can support you in your copywriting needs to boost your sales in 2025. So please book a call or visit my website. I'm happy to support you. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I'm wishing you the most successful 2025. Hey, would you like to hang out with me and other women business owners doing rad things in the world just like you? Then you should join the Joy of Copy Club. It's a group copy coaching experience where you receive access to all my sales templates, writing prompts, and copy recipes so you're never wondering what or how to write. Once a week, you can pop into my open office hours, where we'll live, review and edit any kind of copy you've written. Seriously, you can bring a social post and email or even some edits to your homepage, and I'll help you optimize it before you send it out into the world. The Joy of Copy Club gives you the tools and the confidence to get your message out there so you can grow your impact and your revenue. Find out more at Copy Club. I'll see you next week.
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