Many business owners and marketers are struggling with their marketing. Why? Because many act like a hammer – they think everything is a nail and bang away accordingly.

But it’s impossible now to have impact in the constantly changing landscape of digital communication when you’re “doing the same old thing.” And this year really broke that type of marketing habit.

What’s happened in 2025 that made this change? Here are just some of the factors:

• 24/7 news/media updates became a total distraction for many, creating a real challenge for marketing messages
• Google’s 2025 update created upheaval in marketing campaigns
• The meteoric rise of ChatGPT and other LLM’s has changed how people search
• Apple’s ongoing privacy updates make it harder and harder to get emails delivered
• LinkedIn’s algorithm changes rendered some organic posts useless
• The rise of YouTube (over television viewing) has changed the viewing paradigm

This isn’t even a list of all the factors at work, but any marketer will tell you that any one of them, on its own, has tremendous impact.

I asked AI to quantify the cumulative effect of all this for me (another cool use of AI!) and here’s what came back:

1. Over 86% of U.S. adults now get news digitally, splitting user focus across channels. Digital ad engagement rates, as measured by click-throughs (CTR) have trended downward year-over-year with some marketers reporting double-digit percentage declines in organic reach since the rise of the 24/7 news cycle.
2. Google’s aggressive 2025 rollout of AI Overviews means zero-click searches have risen from 56% to 69% in the past year. This means as much as two-thirds of user interactions (in Google Search) do not result in a site visit; instead, users see answers and product recommendations directly on the search results page and don’t see your website.
3. ChatGPT now commands 64% of generative/creative queries, shifting a large fraction of early-funnel marketing out of Google’s reach, into an area that marketers are just starting to address and figure out (that is, how to get into LLM search results).
4. Apple’s updates and privacy protections have led to many marketers reporting that their emails only reach their most engaged contacts, with dramatic decline in open rates; more than 50% of open/click data is now distorted for Apple mail users.
5. LinkedIn now prioritizes expert content and comments with more than 10 words, as well as carousel and video formats. For organizations that haven’t adapted, audience reach has dropped 20 – 40%.
6. As of April 2025, YouTube holds 12% of all TV viewing in the U.S., a 29% increase year-over-year. This shift means digital video ads must now “compete at TV scale” while appealing to this new demographic audience (younger, etc.).

With all of these combined together, marketing practices in 2025 – based on what’s worked in the passed – aren’t working.

So what’s the answer – or antidote to this upheaval?

Again, according to AI, marketers must reallocate budgets and tactics, moving to the platforms that are rising in traffic and usage (such as YouTube and ChatGPT). They must adapt their content to favor the formats that get the most algorithmic juice and viewership (such as native video and expert-driven feeds). Or, if they don’t, they “risk steadily eroding reach and ROI year-over-year.”

I recommend more than what the LLM suggests. That’s easy, surface stuff. Don’t get me wrong: it’s good to focus on new channels, content formats, and budget allocations. But it’s important to go deeper. Marketers and business owners need to be strategic, and double down on the fundamentals, or they’ll miss out entirely.

It all starts with understanding your target market. Knowing every aspect of how your target buyer thinks and feels about your product/service is critical. It’s not just about crafting a compelling message, or making a video, or placing it in the right channel; it’s about delivering it to the right people in the right places at the right time, based on how they think and feel about their decision process.

The one constant that’s critical in marketing is keeping the buyer in mind. For example:

• Have their decision-making patterns shifted?

• Who/what influences their decision-making now?

• What are they currently using that you want to disrupt or displace, and how are you going to allay their fears of changing their processes?

In the B2B world, decision-making changes and shifts over time. It’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of how decisions are made for your products and services.

When every pillar of digital marketing—search engines, email, social media, and ad space —faces dramatic, quantifiable change, it’s the companies that don’t adapt their marketing to this new reality that will fail.

Don’t be that company.

If you’re not sure how to deal with all this change, let’s talk.