5 Things That Will Influence Your Startup's Growth in 2025

In 2025, we will see emerging trends and changes in marketing and sales—here's what you can expect.

So, fellow growth enthusiasts,

We are heading straight into 2025, which means it’s time to look at the things that will influence your growth strategies.

This will bring a huge opportunity with it.

After spending 7+ years helping startups grow and now working at an accelerator, I’m seeing more and more startups gearing up toward these points and changing their strategies.

But let’s look at how you can leverage these trends to achieve more growth in 2025.

Creating Trust Will Be One of Your Biggest Challenges

According to this statistic, there were 150 million startups worldwide, which translates to 137,000 startups being launched daily in 2024.

Thanks to the rise of technologies like no-code and AI, this number will probably grow significantly in the coming years.

This means it won’t get any easier, fellows.

Beyond the question of how to stand out in this endless stream of startups, there’s the question of how you create trust — how you convince potential customers that your solution is the right one for them.

While analyzing growth strategies in these newsletters, I’ve noticed more and more “faceless” startups. By “faceless,” I mean startups where I don’t see images of the founders, don’t read testimonials or customer feedback and don’t come across (success) stories.

When it comes to their product, they often push me straight to a demo call or demand my payment details as soon as I try to test their tool.

So, tell me — why should I trust you?

Starting in 2025, it’s time to rethink this approach. And with more and more startups following this soulless strategy, there are more opportunities for you to stand out, right?

Ask yourself these questions:

• How can I create trust?

• How can I be perceived as an expert?

• How can I design a funnel that doesn’t require payment details right away?

• How can I create genuine testimonials?

• How can I reduce friction, like skipping the demo call, to onboard users faster?

• …

It all starts on your website. Spend more time building your “About Us” page. Show your face. Tell your story. Explain why you’re the right person to trust. Highlight success stories early on and demonstrate how you take customers from Point A to Point B.

But this also extends to your overall strategy. Build meaningful partnerships within your field with complementary products.

And so on. Relationships will become more important than ever in this soulless, crowded world of endless startups.

AI Search Will Be Your Biggest Growth Lever

We don’t need to discuss how AI will develop or the opportunities it will bring to your content efforts.

What will be a huge factor in 2025, however, is AI-powered search.

Let’s look at a statistic from FirstPageSage:

With a 3.2% market share, ChatGPT has almost caught up with Bing in the search market. If we take into consideration the hundreds of other AI search tools, the total market share is likely much higher—probably around 6%, as this article from Morningscore suggests.

And think about this: it was virtually nonexistent before ChatGPT’s launch in 2022.

Now imagine what will happen in the upcoming years.

But to leverage this for your business, we need to dive a bit into how AI search works.

AI search engines leverage advanced natural language processing (NLP) to grasp context, semantics, and user intent, going far beyond simple keyword matching.

Understanding the Context

AI search engines prioritize content that closely aligns with the intent behind user queries. Forget about simple checklists and focus instead on providing explanations of how things actually work. For example, if your solution is a social media tool and you aim to be found under the term “how to build a personal brand,” don’t just list the steps; dive into the actual strategy behind it.

Create In-Depth Content

Building on the previous point, when outlining the strategy, make sure to cover every detail. In-depth articles provide enough information for AI to deliver comprehensive answers to all angles of a user’s query.

Focus on Quick Answers

Your pages should include FAQs, “How it Works” sections and simple explanations of how to take users from Point A to Point B. This not only gives you an advantage in traditional search engines like Google (which favors featured snippets) but also helps AI understand your solution and summarize it effectively for users.

So, when writing for AI, think of writing for a human. Identify the core intent behind a search query and focus on clarity and readability. Use bullet points, whitespace, and simple sentences to break down complex information into digestible pieces.

Sales Funnels Will Change Dramatically

Thinking back to the start of my career, the entry point to the sales funnel was often creating an ebook or a checklist, running a bunch of ads on it, and generating hundreds of leads at a very low cost per lead.

But over the years, people have evolved and are no longer willing to give away their contact information for mediocre digital resources.

Meaning: the sales funnel has changed.

The new era of sales funnels aims to give users an immediate glimpse of your tool and lead them straight to their "aha" moment.

How?

With interactive funnel entries and demos of your tool—testable without even logging in.

Take Softr, for example. They showcase this approach directly on their homepage:

Source: Softr

Or buzzabout.ai, which we broke down in the first issue:

Source: buzzabout.ai

Another example is Mindpal, a startup we previously featured:

Source: Mindpal

These strategies go hand in hand with my first point. With the overwhelming number of startups, the key is to lead your users immediately to a point where they can see the value of your solution.

The easiest way to achieve this is by letting them test your tool without additional effort.

And this is what a sales funnel will look like in 2025.

Want to Succeed in Social Media in 2025? Focus on Video

Since the rise of TikTok, things have changed.

Every platform is pushing video: more engagement, more impressions, more clicks.

Even LinkedIn. Consider these statistics:

• Video posts on LinkedIn get five times more engagement.

• LinkedIn video views grew by 50% year-over-year in 2022, and this trend is expected to continue.

• LinkedIn launched native video recording in 2022, making it easier to create and share short-form content. This format is resonating with users, with LinkedIn reporting a 23% increase in video engagement for videos under 30 seconds.

This trend will only continue to grow in 2025.

Because video is the only format that creates trust by connecting directly to your personality—letting people see your expressions and body language.

(But if you don’t want to step in front of a camera, welcome to Substack 🤓)

Show the Raw, True Stories

Authenticity will play an even bigger role in 2025.

2024 was the year when the marketing landscape was flooded with AI tools designed to help you create content. Tools that, for example, turn your long-form content into automatic reels or transform a single image of you with a voiceover into a video.

Like this video shows:

While these kinds of videos will be used more and more—and every tool will strive to look better, more polished, and more professional—one thing is missing:

Authenticity.

With that in mind, the real standouts in 2025 will come from raw, original content that connects to the emotions and needs of your target audience.

Content in 2025 should include:

• Tell the story of how you created your brand.

• Sharing your honest opinions, even if they don’t please everyone.

• Showing your learnings.

• Sitting in front of a camera without a script.

And make content that connects on a deeper level.

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Hi, I’m Andreas. Over the past 7+ years, I’ve worked with startups at every stage—from building MVPs and securing funding rounds to creating 8-figure sales pipelines. My greatest passion has always been crafting growth strategies and driving success without spending a dime. Now, I’m on a mission to help you do the same by sharing the most effective zero-cost growth strategies for your startup.