The Top Buzzwords We’re Saying Goodbye to in 2025
We've all sat through meetings where someone dropped "let's circle back," "synergize," or (brace yourself) "let's take this offline" one too many times. At INBOUND this year, we decided to ask our community for their hot take: which buzzwords have overstayed their welcome?
From some of our favorite speakers to HubSpotters and attendees, here’s the tea on what business jargon they'd love to leave behind in 2024.
THE OVERUSED AND OVERSTRETCHED: KEEP IT REAL (NOT "AUTHENTIC" 😉)
- “Authentic.” — Jay Schwedelson
- “Strategic.” — Caleb King
- “Supercharged.” — Daniel Murray
These words started out strong, but somewhere along the way, they lost their ✨spark✨. Calling something “authentic” doesn’t make it real and “strategic” often gets slapped on everything from email campaigns to business briefs.
🚫 Why we’re over them: Be clear, be specific, and let your work speak for itself. Center on the actions and results, and skip the fluff. Show us how something is strategic and focus on words with real outcomes.
OFFICE LINGO FATIGUE
- “EOD, circle back.” — Sara Munro
- “Synergize.” — Cameron Adams
- “Attribution.” — Jen Spencer
You know the phrases: The filler words we love to hate and can’t seem to quit. They sneak into your Slack messages, meeting invites, and emails and make us sound more robotic than relatable.
As for “attribution,” if we’re going to talk about outcomes, let’s make it actionable instead of opting for a term that’s become a catch-all for anything analytics-related.
🚫 Why we’re over them: Clarity gets lost, it feels impersonal and overcomplicated. Plain language wins. Drop the corporate speak and call things what they are.
FORGET VAGUE AND FOCUS ON VALUE
- “Content.” — Kipp Bodnar
- “Quantity over quality.” — Caleb King
We’ve all been guilty of chasing more: more content, more leads, more metrics. But, quality should always come first. “Quantity over quality” isn’t a winning strategy, and “content” has become so broad it’s practically meaningless. When everything is content, it loses its focus, its purpose, and its impact.
🚫 Why we’re over them: Volume does not equal value and your audience doesn’t need more noise, they need something that actually resonates. Without defining what kind of content we’re talking about (and why we’re creating it), it’s easy to lose sight of its purpose.
AI OVERLOAD?
- “I hope that we can stop thinking about AI as a buzzword.” — Andy Pitre
- “I think AI is a buzzword now.” — Arjun Mahadevan
- “How do we use the AI?” — Emily Davidson
- “Come up with some more creative ways to say the word ‘AI.’” — Serguei Balanovich
It’s official: “AI” is everywhere. Over the past few years, AI has gone from an emerging technology to the centerpiece of nearly every marketing, sales, and tech conversation. But it’s started to lose some of its meaning. Using “AI” as a catch-all term fails to capture its potential.
🚫 Why we’re over them: Hype overshadows substance. When something feels like a buzzword, it acts more like a distraction, promising a lot but failing to deliver unless paired with real, practical use cases. And, it feels too broad. AI encompasses so many tools and technologies that the term alone doesn’t tell us anything. Be specific: don’t just say “AI-powered” but explain what it does and highlight the benefits (an AI chatbot that improves customer response times by 50%).
2025 is the year we leave these buzzwords behind and focus on language that works. The overall takeaway? Be specific, thoughtful, and clear.
Watch the full video below and let us know which buzzword you can’t wait to ditch next year:
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