The Savvy Edge - June 5, 2025
Smart Marketing Moves for Navigating What’s Next
Staying ahead in marketing doesn’t just mean doing things better—it means doing the right things for the moment we’re in. That means adapting quickly to shifts in the market, not just optimizing last year’s tactics. A recent CMSWire article makes a strong point: the C-Suite cares less about tactical performance and more about how marketing is shaping market demand and driving revenue. And according to new Gartner research, CMOs who can’t keep up with market changes may be first on the chopping block. No pressure, right?
This week’s newsletter includes that reminder for strategic alignment, plus two other trends I’ve been thinking about: the rise of “agentic” AI tools built for specific purposes, and LinkedIn’s new B2B influencer guidelines.
Staying on Market Changes
This CMSWire article reminds marketing leaders that the C-Suite and boards shouldn’t be interested in tactical performance. They are interested in the market and how you’re influencing it to drive revenue.
According to a 2024 Gartner survey, nearly 60% of CEOs and CFOs believe that a CMO is most likely to face the axe for failing to adapt to market change, which is second only to failing to deliver promised results.
The tactics you used in 2020 are probably not the ones that will be most impactful in 2025.
The article wisely points out some ways to get ahead on the voice of the market:
Understand what the business actually needs
Build the capability
Deliver consistently useful content
And then show your C-Suite and your board how you’re doing that to drive revenue today and build demand for the future.
The Rise of “Agentic” AI for Specific Purposes
From a recent Forbes article on agentic AI:
“If you were building a factory to produce widgets, you wouldn’t rely on one general-purpose machine that “sort of” makes every part. You’d deploy a set of purpose-built machines—each designed to complete a specific task with precision, efficiency and reliability. You’d still need people overseeing the process, but the machinery would be tuned to the job at hand.”
With AI right now, we are mostly still in the early phases. Testing things out. Experimenting. Seeing what we can come up with.
But for AI to be truly successful, it needs to move beyond trial and error mode. It truly needs to save time and deliver value.
The article goes into more detail about how more specific agents will be able to do that.
I wonder though… marketers already have the potential for enormous toolkits based on all the solutions out there. Will that increase significantly with the rise of agentic AI? (By the way, spell check doesn’t like the word “agentic” yet, and I’m not sure if I do, either!)
LinkedIn’s B2B Influencer Guidelines
LinkedIn seems like it changes frequently these days. The platform recently released B2B influencer guidelines. I wrote about B2B influencing a few weeks ago. Here’s that post, if you’re interested:
As far as trustworthy B2B marketing goes, the article notes that LinkedIn and YouTube pretty significantly edge out Instagram, Facebook, X, and a trailing TikTok.
This isn’t surprising, when you really think about it.
But as LinkedIn becomes more saturated, mostly driven by trying to beat the algorithm and increasingly as a place for B2B influencing, it’ll be interested to see what happens next.
Let me know what you think of these topics. I would love to curate this newsletter based on what’s valuable to you!
— Laura