What Is the “New Marketing”? How to Stay Updated?
There are many people out there already talking about the “new marketing,” but with each article, opinion, or essay on the subject, it evolves a bit.
This is normal, as we are talking about something that is new. Everyone will have their own opinion on how the changes will happen, and that’s natural.
And it turns out that these opinions are, for the most part, just that: opinions. A data point here and there may support the conclusion being drawn, but to truly understand how the new marketing will be, we need to analyze several factors.
That’s what this article aims to do today. Instead of claiming with certainty what the new marketing will look like in 2025 and beyond, let’s try to understand the new ecosystem that is already emerging and see what has the potential for significant transformations.
To avoid wasting too much time here, the section below will give you a clearer idea of how this article will unfold.
Shall we go together?
How to Understand What the New Marketing Is? And How to Know What It Will Be Like?
First of all, we need to determine exactly what we mean by “new marketing.”
The marketing that is applied today, especially digital marketing, has innovative characteristics that are still not used by all businesses.
For instance, in our 2024 Lead Generation Panorama, we found that, on average, only 42% of the companies surveyed use some sort of sales CRM or lead management platform.
In the strictly B2B scenario, this number is slightly higher: 54%.
Sales CRMs were part of the “new marketing” push back in 2010 when these platforms started gaining attention due to HubSpot and Inbound Marketing.
Therefore, talking about “new marketing” also means talking about marketing that is happening now, and even some aspects that should have already happened.
What we understand as new marketing is simple. It presents a few key characteristics that we will explore further throughout this article. They are:
- It introduces entirely new tools that have never been seen before;
- It applies innovative techniques with the help of these tools;
- It does not ignore legacy techniques, methodologies, and tools;
- It is not confined to a single media or strategy;
- It focuses on data above all else, but also takes many risks;
- It is integrative, seeking to involve people and departments that were not accustomed to being consulted for marketing work.
These are the key features of new marketing as we understand it here at Leadster.
Throughout the article, we will aim to separate these categories by types of businesses, focusing primarily on digital marketing and those businesses that have some form of online presence—preferably at least a website.
With the concept established, it’s time to dive into data and opinions to understand how and when the new marketing will unfold.
🔎 Read also: Digital Marketing Strategies 2024 — The Old and the New
General New Marketing — How Does It Present Itself for All Brands?
Before we move on to specific points, we need to talk about some more general issues that will impact any digital marketing strategy in the coming years.
There are some points that are strategic, and thus more practical—that is, they are already beginning to be understood, organized, and even applied.
A clear example of this is the new ways of promoting content, such as “cuts,” which are gaining national attention due to their use in election campaigns, particularly by the São Paulo city hall.
A contrasting example is understanding what will happen with Google and SEO now that Google’s AI is already in operation.
In this case, it’s impossible to say exactly what will happen, and very few people have strategies in place right now to deal with it.
These are the kinds of issues we will address here in this section, in the following items. Keep reading to learn more:
End of Third-Party Cookies — by Dan Taylor, Google
In the article “Marketing is at an inflection point. Here’s why that’s an opportunity,” written by several Google executives, the biggest immediate concern is the end of third-party cookies.
This is a very urgent matter that needs to be addressed by the end of the year.
For those who don’t know, Google is going to remove third-party cookies from its products, including Google Chrome, apps in the app store, etc.
That means your ads on Google Ads will no longer rely on these cookies for targeting.
The strategy to resolve this, according to Gulin-Merle, is to implement first-party data collection strategies—those generated by your website, such as registrations, favorite products, most-read articles, etc.
To make this work well, you’ll need to review your brand’s link parameters today.
But Dan Taylor, VP of Global Ads at Google, points out another important issue: privacy as a value.
He says that people online are becoming increasingly concerned about their privacy, and those who take steps to improve it and communicate those measures will have an advantage over their competitors.
“This means that half of the customers are available—not just your customers but also your competitors’. Gaining and retaining these customers will require new relationships that are built, not bought, based on trust and a true exchange of value.” — Dan Taylor, translated with ChatGPT
The New Media is Everything, All at Once, Now
Anyone who watched the 2024 São Paulo mayoral debates surely remembers two things very easily.
The first is the slap José Luís Datena delivered against Pablo Marçal.
The second is the calm and natural way the candidates spoke about content being posted on social media at that very moment.
On one occasion, candidate Guilherme Boulos even mentioned that the fact-checking of one of his opponent’s responses had just been uploaded to his Instagram. And it had, indeed.
🇧🇷 It’s from Brazil! — “Desmarketize-se: the new marketing doesn’t look like marketing,” by João Branco
This strategy isn’t necessarily new: Manu Gavassi did the same thing on Big Brother, when she created content about the clothes she wore in the confessional and even her campaigns to garner votes, which were integrated with what she said.
What this shows us is that the new marketing has no home. What you produce on YouTube can be divided into cuts and used across several other channels, such as reels, ads, and even YouTube Shorts.
The article you publish on your blog can become a video, which turns into cuts, which turns into reels, which turns into posts, and so on.
This is how the new marketing will be, and this is how it has been. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!
“In the Google Media Lab, we made a commitment: we don’t present a media plan to any partner that doesn’t have integrated paid, owned, and earned media components. We talk about everything together, the way users actually experience it.” — Dan Taylor, Google
AI as a Partner for Creatives
When AI first emerged, the first thought that came to marketers’ minds was a rather scary one: from now on, we are obsolete.
But this thought quickly transformed into another: will creatives lose jobs? Yes, but in companies that have not yet understood the true purpose of AI in creativity.
Humans have an advantage that AI does not have. Trained creatives will always be able to deliver better work than Artificial Intelligence if they want to and try.
Always. This is a human guarantee. It’s not because we are “smarter” than AI, but because our intelligence is holistic, while AI’s is stochastic.
Speaking of stochastic, the article below brings its concept along with the limitations and opportunities that AI offers.
▶ What is Artificial Intelligence and How to Apply it to Your Business
Because of this intrinsically human characteristic, we can go beyond what is expected of us. This is one of the definitions of creativity, by the way.
AI cannot go beyond what it has been programmed to do. So, the results it delivers may be similar to those of a human, and even better. But the guarantee that the result can always be better than AI is only with a good creative.
It is in this context that AI arises. In this article itself, it was used extensively for research. I, as the author, already knew quite a bit about what I was going to talk about. But AI managed to deliver specific articles that expand on the subjects I want to address.
“Play with AI. It’s like raw clay. AI can help you create almost anything you imagine, but it needs creative people to play with and shape it, in order to reach its full potential.” — Robert Wong, VP at Google Digital Labs
Is the Future Quantum?
This one might surprise you a little: have you heard about quantum marketing?
Don’t worry, it’s not coach talk or new-age magic. Quantum marketing is just a term to describe the research on how marketing will evolve once quantum computing becomes more accessible.
And this is close to happening. According to McKinsey, the quantum computing market could be worth up to R$ 3 billion by 2030!
The key indicator of the inevitability of quantum computing is the way it is carried out, and the extreme demand for energy that AI systems and data centers require.
The quantum computer operates not through bits, which exist only as 0 or 1 in a binary system, but with qubits, which through quantum superposition can be both 0 and 1 at the same time.
And this completely transforms the reality of computing, mainly by increasing processing speed.
It’s still early to talk about how quantum marketing will be, but it’s important to keep it on your radar!
The New Marketing — Analyzing Specific Ways to Apply It
Alright: we understand that the new marketing presents challenges in general opportunities, and we even went beyond 2025 to understand quantum marketing, which is still to emerge.
But these issues are quite generalized. The new marketing goes much further than that. To reach that beyond, we need to analyze specific questions.
Here, we’ll focus on understanding how:
- The future of marketing in e-commerce;
- The future of B2B marketing;
- The new marketing of services;
- The new marketing on social media.
All with plenty of references and even some examples of new marketing being applied today.
It’s important to understand the holistic nature of new marketing. Strategies can be applied in an interdisciplinary manner and work much better.
This is the true path to the future. But let’s discuss each of these points individually.
The New Marketing in E-commerce
Marketplaces definitely lead in terms of new marketing strategies. In fact, they are so consolidated in the market that the trend is for independent e-commerce to become more and more niche.
This division is one of the main points shaping new marketing.
You’ll see large-scale actions and strategies in brands like Magalu and Mercado Livre, for example, which are already breaking down the barriers between digital and physical.
Amazon started this revolution by standardizing the marketplace format and fast delivery.
Innovations peaked during the pandemic when buying online and receiving from a local store the same day became the standard in metropolitan areas.
Then came experiments with smart lockers, allowing you to buy a product online and pick it up at a physical location in the city. The idea didn’t have very wide adoption, though.
Today, we see new marketing being shaped and tested in such actions. We can also highlight:
- Smart storefronts with AI;
- Automated post-purchase email flow with AI;
- Shopping app for personalized experience;
- In-house payments;
- Content creation;
- Influencer Marketing partnerships;
- Same-day delivery;
- Ads on every possible platform, including event sponsorships, product placements in soap operas and reality shows;
Among many others.
Niche E-commerce as a Model
One of the clearest points of new marketing for e-commerce that we’re already seeing happen is the transformation of independent e-commerce into niche centers for products that wouldn’t sell as well without marketing.
Think of a clothing brand like Bolovo. It’s alternative enough to be recognized not just for its products, but for its entire journey up to this point, its launches, its concept.
And that calls for well-done marketing, especially on YouTube and social media.
The issue is that with distribution scattered across marketplaces, these brands wouldn’t have the same success they have in their niche.
And to remain in this niche, it’s necessary to work on content and do it well.
This is new marketing in the reality of e-commerce. Selling products is the main concern for those in marketplaces. Independent e-commerce sells ideas, causes, lifestyles, and work styles.
And speaking of work styles:
The New B2B Marketing
B2B marketing has been transforming a lot because it needs to constantly evolve.
Unlike the B2C reality, B2B marketing is much more complex and involves multiple strategies — including Inbound and Outbound — to achieve the best possible results.
In fact, this is the new B2B marketing: one that has a strong focus on data and employs as many digital transformation tools as possible.
But at the same time, the new B2B marketing needs to draw a lot of inspiration from brand-building strategies naturally employed by B2C.
More than just focusing on performance all the time, new B2B needs to understand that there are many touchpoints that the brand can’t bypass.
This is because the decision-making process is now much more in the hands of the consumer. And with the rise of SaaS startups, it seems that they’ll retain this power for quite some time.
We conducted a study on the future of B2B consumers, and in it, we present this graph showing which B2B marketing resources are on the rise and which are declining. See below:
Notice how more innovative strategies that involve less brand interaction are on the rise: user reviews, forums and communities, free trials, independent consultant recommendations, among others.
And not only are they rising, but four out of the five best-performing strategies give almost all the power to the consumer.
If someone saw a product in a Gartner report, for example, and became interested enough to research it in forums, and then did a free trial of the product, there was almost no direct interaction between brand and consumer.
And you’ll only know this consumer when they become a qualified lead by trying the product. They might have known you for months without any direct interaction.
The only data you have is this: the lead converted to a free trial. Welcome to the Dark Funnel era and the new B2B marketing, where product development shapes its success as much as direct marketing.
The New Marketing of Services
There’s an entire category of service-based companies entering the market with full force right now: freelancers.
With the explosion of the internet and digital marketing, it’s much easier to start a business and simply offer to ten clients what you used to do as an employee at a company.
Because of this massive influx of new freelancers — many of them creatives, consultants, but also in many other categories — personal and humanized marketing in services has become even more popular.
You notice this difference when analyzing social media from companies that don’t show a “face” in their marketing. Everything looks very basic, with a basic vibe, and with basic results.
This is also driven by the growth of Influencer Marketing and the great popularity of videos as the dominant content format on the internet.
So, the new marketing of services takes everything we’ve talked about so far into account, but with an extra appeal to humanizing strategies, working with brand ambassadors.
The New Marketing on Social Media
Social media is also changing and already changing a lot. Today and for the future, the focus is on interaction and immersion.
In fact, this is what Kotler himself defines as Marketing 6.0, though he brings a view more focused on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
These two resources, although experiencing a new renaissance with the launch of Meta’s smart glasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban, are still developing slowly, with prohibitive costs for most consumers.
Anyway, today we already have some of these immersion features, especially post-pandemic. Social media has ceased to be just a place where you chat with friends — it has become a central hub of your life.
If you want to know what a new place is like before you go, you go to Instagram. If you don’t know where to go, you go to Instagram and scroll through the feed until you find it.
The new marketing needs to take this into consideration, understand this reality of social media usage, and base its work on it to flow better.
So, what do you think of the new marketing? How do you think it will be?
As you can see throughout this article, saying “new marketing” doesn’t mean much practically today.
I hope that with the examples we’ve provided of what is already happening and with the market information we’ve covered together, everything has become clearer!
And if you want to understand how we here at Leadster are working on the new marketing, access our Open Benchmark by clicking on the banner.
Thank you for reading! See you in the next article.
