5 tips for a winning creative marketing strategy in 2025

Marketing is evolving at lightning speed. With new technologies popping up every second and consumer behaviors shifting, creative marketing strategies must also be nimble.

How will you engage audiences in 2025? Here are five cutting-edge tips that utilize the latest marketing trends and tools. Whatever the size of your business and budget, you can build a forward-looking marketing strategy to make the year ahead the best one yet.

A marketing strategy is the foundation of any successful business. It helps you:

A marketing strategy is your comprehensive and actionable plan for achieving your brand objectives. It includes an outline of your ideal customers, where they are, and their demographic and psychographic characteristics. Your marketing strategy should also contain a roadmap for reaching your ideal customers and turning them from prospects into buyers. This marketing toolbox may involve content creation, paid advertising, media outreach, and good old-fashioned networking.

In 2025, more than ever, your marketing success will hinge on adaptability and creativity. The marketing strategy examples, tools, and techniques discussed below will help you create a strategy that drives results.

Let’s get started!

Even if you’re a fully digital business, you can give your prospects and clients an immersive experience stimulating their senses. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are no longer out of reach for small businesses.

For example, you can create a fun AR filter for Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram. Keep it simple and make it related to your services or niche. Using a tool like Adobe Aero, you can make a virtual gallery of your portfolio—no coding skills required. You can also create VR presentations, AR ads, and AR tutorials. These are only a few ways to use AR and VR to give clients and prospects an immersive experience.

Here’s an example of how to use an AR filter at an in-person event to showcase a product:

Using AR and VR is a cool marketing strategy for a digital agency. It allows you to showcase your skills and portfolio in truly immersive and engaging ways.

With TikTok’s increasing popularity, short-form videos (under one minute long) continue to dominate. It’s no wonder other platforms are trying to catch up with the trend with Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Short-form videos are known for fast editing, dynamic transitions, and condensed storytelling. 

Short-form videos are snackable and shareable. They tend to get higher engagement rates. Another benefit: Once you get the hang of it, they’re easier to produce than long videos. If you’re not proficient in video production, consider using AI to make videos quickly.

Don’t worry, dancing is not required! In this example, an expert in psychology and AI promotes his business with short-form, educational videos:

If you’ve been posting short-form videos, try something new for 2025. Collaborate on content with another creative business. For example, if you’re a music composer, partner with a graphic designer to create a series of TikToks or Reels about the creative process.

Envato’s library of video templates is an excellent source of video templates for exciting transitions, special effects, sound effects, and music. Use them to make short-form videos crucial to your creative marketing strategy for the year ahead.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not the future; it’s here now. And AI technology is transforming marketing by making it easier than ever to produce promotional content. Because of this, AI has made it easier to create hyper-personalized ad creative. 

Personalization is essential because it boosts engagement and conversion rates. This means delivering tailored content that resonates with group or individual preferences. And in case you’re wondering, personalization doesn’t only apply to email marketing strategy. With the tools available, you can personalize other marketing materials and touchpoints. 

What is hyper-personalization? This video explains:

Successful marketing isn’t just about getting your message to as many people as possible. What’s more important is to build a community of fans who believe in you and are happy to support you. That’s the idea behind “1,000 True Fans” by Kevin Kelly. A true fan buys anything you produce. You can have a six-figure business with just 1,000 true fans spending $100 annually.

How do you get true fans? It’s essential to share engaging content. This includes live streams, webinars, polls, quizzes, gamified campaigns, shoppable Stories, tiles, and videos. With these interactive experiences, your audience can participate in your business’s narrative rather than just observing. Consider using social media management tools to manage all of your engagement via DMs or comments from different social platforms in just one dashboard

In this live stream, a career and leadership coach and author provides valuable content for free but also promotes his latest book and paid programs:

Because his free content is so valuable, people will subscribe to his channel and wait for his new uploads and live streams. During these live streams, people can ask him questions and get answers. He’s built a community of fans predisposed to buy his paid stuff.

You can also create engaging content that educates your audience about your products and services (ad even your brand merchandise):

Check out tools like Typeform to create quizzes and polls to get started. You can even turn Google Slides into a polling tool. On social media, each platform gives you the tools to create native polls and shoppable content. When planning your marketing strategy, it’s easy to focus on tactics and platforms, but remember to keep the idea of building a community of engaged fans at the heart of everything you do.

With the rise of micro- and nano-influencers, influencer marketing is now within the reach of a broader range of brands, not just those with big budgets to hire big names. The follower counts of these smaller influencers may not blow you away, but they have close-knit communities of highly engaged audiences. Known for their authenticity and niche expertise, micro- and nano-influencers are ideal partners for creative professionals and small agencies.

As an example, here’s a micro-influencer on Instagram who gets lots of engagement on their posts:

To help you find the right influencers, use tools like Upfluence or BuzzSumo. You can also check out the TikTok Creator Marketplace, Instagram’s Creator Marketplace, or YouTube BrandConnect for specific platforms. Another way to discover influencers to partner with is by searching social media platforms for your niche or topic. Pick the ones creating content that resonates with you and are already talking to the audience you want to reach. Make a shortlist of influencers to partner with as part of your 2025 marketing strategy.

Whatever marketing content you create, check out Envato’s massive library of assets.

We hope we’ve inspired you with these tips and examples of marketing strategies you can use to boost your brand in 2025. Don’t feel like you have to do them all. Pick just one or two ideas that appeal to your creative style and audience. Choose some “low-hanging fruit” or one you know you can quickly implement. Then, choose a “stretch” strategy requiring you to learn something new and go outside your comfort zone.

As you do so, you will need creative assets—stock photos, exciting fonts, video templates, and more! You’ll find them all at Envato, with its library of millions of assets you need to produce all your marketing materials. The best part is you only pay one fixed subscription price and get access to everything with a commercial license.

Remember, refreshing your marketing strategy is not just for the New Year. You can review your results, pivot, or try something new as you go along. Let 2025 be the year your business takes off! For more inspiration, see how Envato Tuts+ got 1.5 million YouTube subscribers and Grace Fussell’s tips on landing your first five clients.