PR Industry Trends for 2025: What Startup Founders and Small Business CEOs Need to Know

The media and public relations landscape continues to evolve at breakneck speed. As we navigate through 2025, several key PR trends are reshaping how businesses communicate their stories and connect with audiences. Our job is to track, learn and engage with these trends on behalf of our clients and future clients.

We have written on, and our founder has spoken on, the future of PR and why startup founders and small business/enterprise CEOs need to rethink what they understand to be PR.

Today, the role of PR is expanding. Our responsibility for the full scope of success has expanded. PR is no longer enough.  

Creating owned content for a brand

Here's what startup founders and small business leaders should know to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to PR – strategy and execution.

AI-Powered Personalization at Scale

The democratization of AI tools has transformed how businesses approach personalized communications. Today's media outreach requires hyper-personalization that goes beyond basic mail merges. Smart PR teams are using AI to analyze journalist preferences, timing patterns, and content affinities to craft pitches with significantly higher success rates.

For small businesses, this means investing in tools that help you understand not just who to pitch, but precisely how and when to approach them for maximum impact.

However, there is a caveat: refraining from using AI to do all things, which can reduce the ability for your PR efforts to positively impact search visibility.

Micro-Influence Networks Over Celebrity Endorsements

The pendulum has swung decisively away from celebrity mega-influencers toward authentic micro-influence networks. Audiences are increasingly trusting smaller, niche voices who demonstrate genuine expertise and authenticity in specific domains and tend to have higher quality engagement.

Younger demographics, like Gen Z, are moving away from platforms and influencers where paid endorsements come off as inauthentic – they can see through it – and Millennials and Gen X are following suit, although they tend to be influenced by heavy, repetitive ad campaigns.

Smart businesses need to focus on building relationships with networks of micro-influencers who collectively reach their target audience across multiple touchpoints rather than betting big on a single high-profile partnership.

Moreover, smaller budgets need to be stretched and used more strategically, making micro-influencers more attractive.

Audio-First Content Renaissance

The audio ecosystem has expanded far beyond podcasts to include social audio, voice search optimization, and interactive audio experiences. Businesses that develop distinctive audio branding and content strategies are capturing attention in environments where visual content can't compete.

Audio also offers founders and CEOs the opportunity to dive into and create unique new media content that can be searched and discovered for greater effect.

For resource-constrained startups, audio content offers a high-impact, relatively low-production-cost channel to develop thought leadership. An example is offering a series of blog posts via audio so that they’re easy for people to listen to on the go.

Community-Building Over Media Placement

While traditional media placements still matter, building direct community relationships has become equally important. Smart businesses are creating owned content platforms and community spaces where they control the relationship with their audience.

Communities create the opportunity for higher quality, ongoing, direct-to-consumer engagement that can result in loyalty and allow rewards to fans and followers. They can also be a great way to get direct feedback through surveys and polls, offer coupons and discounts and more.

An example is a company’s Facebook page or a group page for customers. The key is to prompt conversations, answer questions and allow the community to run the show. A great case study is Aldi’s Aisle of Shame Facebook group, which is run by fans who share their finds, product use ideas, recipes and more.

This shift requires thinking about PR not just as media relations but as community relations – developing a long-term strategy for continuous engagement rather than one-off announcements.

Creating Owned Content & Community

With changes in search, content is still key to helping prospective customers search and discover your business or product while also offering content for posting and sharing on social channels.

Developing a branded blogzine for your brand can create following and grow fans while also presenting the brand as an expert on all relevant topics related to the brand – a destination to visit over and over.

One example we love is Elf Cosmetics’ blog. While the content allows customers to get tutorials, advice and more it also offers searchable content that will bring in potential new customers who come to the brand through search.

Another benefit is its ability to develop community through authentic engagement.

Collaborative Content Creation

The line between PR professionals and journalists continues to blur with both sides facing resource constraints. Forward-thinking businesses are finding success by approaching media relationships as true collaborations – providing not just quotes but comprehensive, ready-to-publish content packages, data visualizations, and multimedia resources.

While the pandemic opened the door for PR agencies to produce broll packages that could be used by television stations, post Covid stations went back to preferring to produce their own original story content.

However, we still recommend that our startup and small business clients embrace creating video and audio packages for media – especially for demonstrative products and services. While larger market stations may not use these packages, smaller markets will, and it opens the door for digital outlets to offer stories in the form that people most prefer – video.

Moreover, media outlets can then share the video story on their social channels for amplification.

What This Means for Your Business

The most successful PR strategies in 2025, and in the future, blend technological sophistication with human authenticity and original storytelling. While AI tools and analytics have become essential, they work best when complementing rather than replacing relationship-building skills.

For resource-constrained startups and small businesses, the key is strategic focus rather than attempting to cover all channels. Identify where your specific audience gets information – think in niches – build deep relationships in those spaces and by building communities, and develop distinctive, valuable content that serves their needs and helps new customers search and discover your business, product or service.

The businesses that will win the PR game in 2025 are those that view communications not as a promotional megaphone but as an ongoing conversation with their most important communities.