Professional services marketers have made huge contributions to their firms in 2024 and have never been more important to the success of today’s law, accounting and consulting firms.
Whether communications or CRM, digital marketing or legal directories, the unstoppable rise of AI and LinkedIn, collaboration will be at the heart of activity for the year ahead.
The Professionals asked the best of the best for their thoughts and predictions for the year ahead. Here’s what they had to say.
A resurgence in storytelling
Laura Klysz, Global Head of Marketing & Communications, Simmons & Simmons
“Storytelling will see a resurgence in 2025 accompanied by bold creatives. The Jaguar campaign has split opinion, but my hope is it will inspire many marketers to do things differently, push boundaries and refocus on the audiences they want to reach and the conversations they want to have.”
Time to dust off marketing mix models
Douglas Millar, Head of Digital Marketing and Data, Harper James
“2025 will see marketers dusting off their textbooks to look once again at marketing mix models (MMMs). With increased privacy controls and ever-growing regulatory scrutiny over data use, marketers can no longer rely on previous attribution models to fully measure business impact and ROI.
“Today’s MMMs differ from their cousins of yesteryear, proving more granular insights in real-time and the ability to be combined with other measurement models.
“Generative AI’s use in marketing will continue to delight and frustrate marketers in equal measure. Teams that can realise the true potential of this technology by aligning, implementing and scaling it up will be clear winners next year.
“Will 2025 finally be the year of the B2B community creator? Brands have already dabbled here in the past but next year could see this channel becoming firmly part of the B2B mix especially online and through video.”
The end of Google’s dominance?
Andy Cullwick, Marketing Director, First4Lawyers
“Marketers can expect a Google slide in 2025. The overall online search market will decline, and Google will be capturing a smaller slice of it as their market share decreases. Marketers will also suffer more as zero click searches continue to increase due to the rise in AI results appearing in SERPS.
“TikTok will continue onwards and upwards. As video consumption increases, more and more people will turn to TikTok to find the answers to their questions. However, I suspect Bluesky will become the fastest growing social media channel of 2025 as more users shun X.
“AI will become a more dominant force in the world of user generated content. More marketers will be using AI to create avatars of people in videos.”
Web traffic from LinkedIn will fall
Tom Ash, Senior Digital Executive, Simmons & Simmons
“Hot take: I suspect most of us will see website traffic from organic LinkedIn content drop off, and the costs of buying advertising on LinkedIn will rise as a consequence.
“At the same time, I think the improvement in LinkedIn’s advertising products will help drive more ROI – sign-ups to flagship events, product demos, campaign engagement. Ok, maybe not that hot, but I’m quietly confident that it will happen.”
Growing legal directory submissions
Helen Foord, Chief Editing Officer, ELE
“We’re already seeing a lot of change in the directories world with firms investing more. This will continue in 2025.
“Part of this is because they are recognising the value of the data that sits behind the rankings, which we now have access to properly for the first time, but also the advent of AI-driven search now playing a big part.
“With algorithms across search and LinkedIn relying on AI, the credibility of sources is more important now than ever. Firms are noticing that these searches prioritise Legal 500 and Chambers as sources above others, and this is raising interest in submissions.
“So, for 2025, we will see growth in submissions, not a decline, and growth in firms using them to improve their online presence.”
The rise of employee-generated content
Kirsty Daniel, Senior Digital Executive, Simmons & Simmons
“More professional services firms will see the value of and embracing employee-generated content in 2025. It will mean a shift in the type of content law firms and professional services firms share.”
YouTube will replace traditional thought leadership
Eileen Donaghey, Donaghey & Chance
“There will be a heavier focus on YouTube and short-form video content rather than the traditional thought leadership pieces we are currently used to. If you look at how LinkedIn has shifted the platform to video this year, I think more people will start to embrace it in 2025.”
Do CRM differently
Simon McNidder, Promptr
“Professional service firms will start to realise that just buying a CRM database with loads of buttons and features doesn’t make BD any easier for the lawyers, solicitors, accountants and property professionals that aren’t confident. If anything, enforcing use of a complex system and the logging of business development probably puts another barrier in their way. Nobody hunts through a database for information that might or might not be there. Not twice anyway.
“If a firm’s objective is to see who-knows-who, understand the complex relationships with clients so they can cross-sell, or monitor referral and introducer networks, firms will start to realise there are many different ways to do this, some at a fraction of the cost and effort of traditional big CRM databases.”
Collaborate and embrace technology
Alex Blomfield, Motive Agency
“2025 is poised to bring significant changes for marketing and business development within professional services. AI-driven personalisation and automation are revolutionising opportunities, simplifying the delivery of high-quality content on a large scale. This comes with the challenge of keeping communications authentic whilst adopting the latest technology.
“As clients increasingly seek transparency and faster outcomes, business development and marketing professionals will need to collaborate more closely than ever over the next year and beyond. Organisations that embrace data analytics to identify opportunities and track progress will thrive. It is important to keep abreast of the latest technology as outdated systems and internal barriers could get in the way of progress.