Over the last five years, the business world has undergone a more dramatic transformation than it did in the entire decade before. Just as companies were adapting to permanent shifts in workplace dynamics, consumer behavior, and global economics — all sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic — generative AI emerged. This delivered a shock to business comparable to the internet revolution of the 1990s.
Companies that once led the digital transformation now face an unexpected reality: their hard-won advantages are evaporating as competitors leverage AI to match the capabilities of much larger, better-funded teams.
The playing field hasn‘t just leveled. It’s been completely redrawn.
Through months of market research focused on customer needs, HubSpot uncovered how growth-driving teams are responding to this new environment. They’re abandoning linear playbooks in favor of go-to-market strategies that operate in an infinite Loop — a continuously adapting cycle of learning, experimenting, optimizing, and scaling.
A 2025 study of 1,800 brand professionals (including marketers, advertisers, content strategists, brand specialists, and GTM decision-makers) identified key tactics that brands are using to get ahead in the eye of dramatic tech transformation. These insights form what HubSpot calls The Loop Marketing Landscape.
3 Takeaways from HubSpot’s Loop Marketing Landscape Report
1. Brands must document clear brand positioning.
This may sound pretty obvious, but it’s far from a given. While every marketing textbook harps on the importance of documenting a unique value proposition (UVP), HubSpot found that only half (51%) of global marketers actually have one.
The remaining 49% revealed the following:
- 39% say, “We have a general idea, but it’s not formally documented.”
- 8% say, “We have multiple competing value propositions depending on who you ask.”
- 3% say their brand completely lacks brand positioning (documented or undocumented).
Why It Matters
When you compare overall goal attainment (in the past year) across respondents, 52% of marketers on goal-exceeding teams had a clearly defined and documented UVP. Only 36% of teams who just hit their targets (without regularly exceeding) did. And just 24% of respondents who regularly missed their goals did.
The connection is clear: If your own teams can’t articulate what makes you valuable, your customers won’t get it either. Misalignment across marketing, sales, product, and leadership can quickly lead to inconsistent messaging in the market.
How to Build a Brand Identity That Grows With You
Every brand identity should amplify how your business uniquely solves for the customer (and outshines the competition). Respondents with clearly documented brand positioning leaned into the following best practices when developing and refining their own:
- Competitive research: If you have a limited customer base or don’t yet have access to the customer data you need, start with competitor research (like 25% of global marketers HubSpot surveyed) to learn what and what not to do from high- and low-performing brands in your space.
- Customer data analysis: 48% of US respondents (and 97% of non-US respondents) leverage accessible customer data to build positioning statements or value propositions based on the needs and opportunities of target groups with the highest buying potential.
- Monitoring hard analytics: 31% use web data, like social media analytics or site engagement, to test, monitor, and validate content that tests new messaging, value propositions, brand mission statements, brand aesthetics, or other parts of their brand identity.
- A/B or multivariate testing: A/B or multivariate testing enables teams to create two or more alternative brand identities for the same audience to see which one “wins.” While this is greatly dependent on the tools you’re working with, 11% of US marketers and 38% of non-US marketers still use it for refinement or validation steps.
- Regular audits and refinement: 64% of respondents whose teams regularly exceed goals say they make time to audit and refine their brand identity at least every five years (with 34% saying they do it at least every two years).
In the Loop framework, brand positioning becomes the anchor that every iteration loops back to.
2. Brands need to create personalized customer content.
While most global respondents use some form of personalization in their marketing or advertising content, 50% aren’t going any deeper than inserting a name, company, or address token.
Only 25% said they segmented audiences by easy-to-find demographics, such as gender, country, or industry. And only 15% were segmenting or personalizing content tailored to the buyer personas (groups or targets) most likely to buy their products.
Why It Matters
Let’s face it. Contact tokens are cute, but they aren’t captivating.
As marketing teams gain broad access to generative AI, basic personalization is no longer a differentiator in the market — it’s the standard. What actually moves customers to take action is content that speaks directly to their needs, motivations, and buying behaviors.
The correlation to performance is striking:
- 93% of respondents on goal-exceeding teams reported using some form of basic to advanced personalization techniques in their marketing, compared to 49% of respondents on teams that simply meet their goals.
- Half of respondents on those goal-exceeding teams also say their brand uses at least one form of advanced personalization or segmentation.
- Further, 56% of respondents on goal-exceeding teams report more than a quarter of their monthly content leverages some form of personalization or segmentation, compared to 26% of respondents on teams that do not regularly exceed goals.
How to Get Personal
You can’t create tailored content without first knowing who you’re speaking to and where they spend their time.
Of the respondents with personalization tactics in motion, basic demographic data (43%) and shopping habits (36%) were most valuable to them when determining:
- Who to target for the best purchasing opportunity.
- Which channels to target them on.
- What types of content will resonate most with them.
Once you’ve built out buyer personas for your target audiences, start identifying the channels they use and what types of affordable, personalized or segmented experiences you can provide to them.
Two channels that respondents said their brands regularly use for personalized or segmented content were email (61%) and paid media, such as website or social ads (47%).
In the Loop model, personalization is how brands learn in real time, feed insights back into the system, and refine the next iteration of content.
3. Brands are diving into channel diversification.
The web landscape is always changing and evolving, particularly with the expansion of generative AI. As new channels emerge and gain virality, others can drop in effectiveness or ROI within weeks or months.
HubSpot’s survey found that:
- 73% of global respondents say they use three or more distinct marketing channels (e.g., email, ads, social platforms, video, SEO, AEO, podcasts, influencers, etc.).
- This experimentation is ramping up even more in the US, where 56% of respondents say their brands have over five marketing channels, compared to one-third of global respondents.
Why It Matters
It‘s easy to see one channel doing well and become complacent, thinking you can just lean into it forever. But that’s not how today’s world works.
In the past 12 months, for example, web brands that invested most of their resources in SEO experienced significant ROI downturns when Google’s AI Overviews unexpectedly led to 60% fewer search result clicks to other websites.
That’s likely one of many reasons why 48% of respondents now say their brand allocates more than one-fifth of its budget to channel experimentation and diversification.
Where to Expand Next
When looking at the data, these channel expansion opportunities stood out the most:
- 79% of respondents dabble in some form of paid brand amplification across multiple channels (although each brand’s investment may vary).
- 74% of global respondents leverage influencers or brand partnerships (particularly on channels their marketers are less familiar with).
- Most marketers on goal-meeting or -exceeding teams are building or experimenting with some type of online community.
Diversification ensures that if one part of your Loop falters, the rest of your strategy stays in motion.
Getting in the Loop
As brands adapt to a world where AI accelerates the pace of change, the businesses that win are those that can continuously learn, adapt, and refresh their strategy.
That’s the power of Loop Marketing: it turns growth into a perpetual cycle rather than a one-time roadmap.
Teams that consistently exceed their goals aren’t relying on static playbooks. They are:
- Unifying their teams around clearly documented value propositions.
- Embracing the customer data they have at their fingertips.
- Leaving critical time for experimentation and channel expansion.
- Using AI to optimize workplace efficiency while still amplifying human-driven creativity that makes their brand relatable and unique.
That’s the next era of marketing.
To learn more about these findings and how to build a strong Loop Marketing playbook, read the full report here.