9 top marketing trends to look out for in 2026
- Laura Toy
- Dec 29, 2025
- 7 min read
Discover the top marketing trends that I’m seeing businesses and startups look to adopt and put budget behind in 2026.
As we enter 2026, business owners face a busier, data-driven and tech-led marketing landscape now more than ever. To succeed, business owners must create systems for their customers. Systems that blend strategy, brand storytelling and effective AI martech together.
As a Marketing Consultant, I work with small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs to achieve this outcome. We move away from tactics to build coordinated foundational strategies for sustainable growth. In this article, I’ll break down the 9 top marketing trends to look out for in 2026. I’ll also give some guidance on how this can apply to your brand and business as you plan ahead for the next year.
9 top marketing trends in 2026
Marketing will be the valued player on the budget sheet
In 2026, we’re able to measure accurate impact of marketing when done a clear plan. This has credibility of the role of Marketing over the last 12 months particularly. Every one of the trends shown below will prove why Marketing is here to stay in the 2026 financial budget.
Growth marketing is the hot ticket
With more ways to measure growth and impact, the pursuit for these marketing skills grows in demand. Growth marketing is a data-driven, experimental approach to the entire customer journey. It focuses on measurable sustainable growth through continuous testing from awareness to advocacy. This is much different to the traditional approach which focuses on acquisition.
This could include testing emails, landing pages and channels in one customer journey. Some measures may include ‘Customer Lifetime Value’. This can identify the sustainable value of each customer incl. retention and repeat sale.
In 2026, more marketers will be developing growth marketing systems tailored to target customers instead of testing separate tools. To ace the next year, businesses and entrepreneurs should be looking for Marketing partners that can build growth marketing systems. Embrace these tools and get excited about what they can do to make your business even more successful.
SEO meet AEO, blogging is back
For a long time, blog writing was a hopeless exercise. 'SEO is dead' made the rounds each year. But I’m here tell you that blogs (including this one) are worth putting back on your to-do list. The emergence of AEO (AI search results) has blogs ranked as high value estate in the marketing plan. AI agents are not some FBI officers wearing sunglasses. They scan the internet for sources based upon a key search term to collect and curate the most relevant information to feedback to a user. This may be on a search engine like Google or an AI LLM model like ChatGPT.
The AI agent is your primary target audience, your customer is secondary
This means that when you’re writing a blog, think about your customer and the AI agent bringing it to them. Your headings, titles and sections structures should make it easy for AI to scan. AI will review whether content quality is relevant, credible and trustworthy. If they believe it is, they will share with the user. Then your user decides to click through. Your customer journey will need to consider the role of AI agents in your plan.
Human-first creative builds trust to combat AI slop
Ok we've seen our fair share of fake videos and pictures like the one below. 2025 has been the year of second guessing everything we see on the Internet. We would describe this fake content as AI slop.
AI slop is low quality AI generated content or output with little to no human effort. "Slop" (or "AI slop") was the 2025 Word of the Year by both Merriam-Webster and Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary. And we’re seeing it everywhere. A recent study estimated that more than half of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are AI-generated.
And this doesn’t come without its consequences. According to Forbes, 28% of U.S. Adults say they worry that AI systems don’t have their best interests in mind. This emphasises that trust is fast becoming the new currency of competition.
Businesses should not rely on AI as a substitute. Hiring creative resource is vital to advertising products or services. We're not discouraging from experimenting with AI creative. But you need a strong design eye at least who can be in the control room. If you're not careful with AI use, it can erode trust with your customers on what they can believe and buy into. Not to mention the ethical implications, like bias which the image above shows when asking for a 'newsreader'.
Practical tip: Consider the value of humans promoting your product. This can be an influencer talking to your customer. Or staff working hard behind the scenes. Either way they will strengthen connection with your customers. They can be your internal influencers at the top of the funnel on their own social medias.
A lot of startups are adopting this and building brands from within that customers want to be a part of. These people will know how to do it best and your customer will match or even exceed their investment.
Human-centred media is the MVP
This moves us onto the growing nature of human-centred media. We see a growing number of individuals grow their own platforms and build trust in their given topic. These can be trade newsletters or business growth communities. And platforms like Substack, Beehiiv and Circle are helping to enable it. Many of these communities have sponsorship and partnership opportunities for businesses. This is valuable media real estate for businesses. You can get right in front of customers further down the funnel with someone they trust.
Practical tip: Identify the humans building trusted communities in their space. Consider the role of this in your marketing and business plan for the year ahead. Additionally, when there is a match, jump into it early whilst trust in this space is on a high.
The role of AI in Marketing needs to be transparent and purposeful
Human-first is the priority. But AI can be the co-pilot. Especially when you are one person and have plenty of other to-do’s to carry out. It’s about being efficient, but effective. This would fit within the ‘martech’ category of your budget sheet. Think about the tools you adopt to make your marketing operations more effective. This will leave you to do the hard work as the pilot to be creative and strategic.
Practical tip: Here are some AI tools that can support your marketing.
SEO optimisation: Clearscope, Surfer SEO
Social media management: monday.com
Email personalisation: Beehiiv,
Customer service: Manychat
Personalisation is a given
In 2026, the growing access to data, touchpoint and insight is continuing. You're hyperaware of your buyer’s profile and their journey to your product/services. With that comes the opportunity to be more targeted than ever.
And guess what? Your customer is in on it too, as they should be. We will see savvy brands customise their offer to specific buyer characteristics. Tactics such as assessment quizzes will become more common. Helping customers to feel seen and heard by businesses.
Practical tip: Consider how you can reach your customer with exactly what they need over the next year. How can you personalise your offer, your customer journey, your marketing. You can consider this in your research and planning, using my free Planning guide.
Brand marketing has its budget line, but it has to come with a measurable return
The value of brand has re-emerged in a crowded marketing space. Customers crave honesty over clever interruption. In and amongst the flashy performance advertising, comes the fight for attention. Put the mistrust of AI content on top of that, and customers are switching off to traditional methods.
In 2026, brand trust will become the hottest differentiator for small businesses. In 2026, investing in your brand’s personality, values and proof will be worth every ROI performance marketing penny you ‘lose’. Customers want to know who’s behind the brand, the story behind the operation and the people that make it what it is. Storytelling, reviews and behind-the-scenes content could help build stronger communities and repeat clients.
Creating brand solutions that 'deinfluence' and ‘deadvertise’ to your customers
We are in a world where the noise and intrusive ways to get customer’s attention continue to grow. We'll see more brands support customer’s escape from it all. This may seem counterintuitive but this is the future to building positive brand and customer experiences.
Practical tip: Consider how you may do this or bake it into your plans. This could be partnerships with content creators promoting a way of living. Or advertising in a non-intrusive more ethical way. Or find real-life spaces to build your product or service into. There's plenty of ways to connect with your customer meaningfully.
2026 is the year of purposeful marketing
This offers so many opportunities for the year ahead. It should excite business owners and those that are a party of one or two. Take these trends and tools away and focus on doing a couple well within a thought out plan.
If you need any further support planning your marketing, you can visit my free guides in the links below.
Want to build some of these trends into a tailored marketing plan? Contact laura@lauratoy.com for your an initial free consultation call to discuss your business goals.
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