Start researching 2025 marketing trends and you’ll find a laundry list of complicated-sounding insights: Incorporate AI into every step of your marketing funnel, build a robust influencer network, get hyper-focused with message personalization, provide a custom experience for every customer on every platform. Pair these suggestions with today’s volatile media and cultural landscape and it can feel daunting to keep ahead of the marketing curve. For small nonprofits and impact businesses that are doing the work to make a difference in the world but don’t have the resources to hire an entire R&D team for their next fundraising campaign, throwing up your hands in frustration can be tempting.
At Bark Media, we love digging into new technologies, platforms, and capabilities. But over the years, we’ve come to know one simple truth. The way to meaningfully incorporate new opportunities into your communications funnel always comes down to the same tried-and-true answer: a strong multichannel strategy based in high-quality content.
An authentic, content-focused marketing strategy is the best way to build and connect with your audience and develop long-lasting relationships that provide the foundation for success and enable you to incorporate relevant new technologies as they unfold. Thanks to the content marketing strategies we’ve built with our clients, we’ve seen them achieve measurable marketing success year in and year out, no matter what comes their way — from political shifts and pandemics to the advent of Bluesky and ChatGPT.
Below, we share the top reasons high-quality content is key to a successful marketing strategy in 2025 and beyond. If you’d like to learn more about our approach to building a content marketing strategy, read our three-part series that covers positioning statements, core messages, and key messages.
Building your own audience makes your organization resilient to shifts in the political and tech landscapes.
With shifting social media algorithms, a polarized and unpredictable political environment, an oversaturated digital landscape, and ever-changing social media trends, executing a powerful multichannel communications strategy can feel overwhelming. Building your own audience that cares about your mission makes you resilient to these shifting tides. With an authentic content-based strategy, you find and gather your people in a way that enables you to ride the cultural waves alongside an engaged audience that cares about and will support your work.
A strong content-based conversion funnel is both multichannel and channel-agnostic.
When you build a content-driven conversion strategy, any channel can feed into it, yet no one channel is solely responsible for the success of your strategy. If a change to Google’s search algorithm causes a sudden dip in website traffic, you’re poised to turn up the levers on your other channels. Did a new opportunity pop up with an influencer on a social channel you don’t use? Connect to new followers and funnel them straight into your communications machine. With an multichannel communications strategy, you can both take advantage of every opportunity and insulate yourself against sudden shifts in the media landscape that are outside of your control.
Storytelling is a powerful tool to build connections.
The human brain is evolutionarily programmed to remember and connect with storytelling over data or information. Centering authentic storytelling in your communications strategy helps build lasting relationships with customers, supporters, donors, employees, and partners who will empower you to grow your work and exponentially enhance your impact.
AI-generated content will make authentic storytelling more important than ever.
AI is a powerful tool that can help with many tasks, but its writing has a shallow, robotic flavor. As AI content increasingly enters the media landscape, authentic, human-centered stories will become more and more compelling. This creates the opportunity to differentiate your brand with connection-building content that reminds us of our humanity and drives us to take action together.
Quality is key.
As leading marketing data firm Meltwater says: “Consumers are going to continue to be inundated by more content and more offerings from more brands, but the truth is their reality leaves them with less attention, less time, and less resources to give. Comprehensive quality across marketing touchpoints will be an important distinction. When you invest in partnerships, content, and experiences — are those leading to quality relationships and a quality impression of your brand?” To differentiate your organization in a sea of information (and misinformation), go back to basics. Creating high-quality content — such as articles, videos, and in-person events — and building your communications strategy around it remains the best and most proven way to develop and retain authentic relationships with your stakeholders.
Content creates a path for meaningful personalization.
More marketing experiences seek to build relationships by incorporating personalization. But for many brands, this stops at inserting a name into an email subject line or sending an abandoned cart reminder. Meaningfully personalized experiences go way beyond these tactics to tailor messaging that highlights the most relevant parts of your work and your story. But how do you know what audience members care about? You could ask them via surveys (BTW, surveys are also content) or tailor their experience based on their actions — i.e., opens or clicks on content. By understanding and meaningfully segmenting your audience based on their interactions with content, you can provide messaging and CTAs that speak directly to their interests (not just their name).