Navigating the Ever-Changing Landscape of the Marketing World
When I wrote this guide in February 2024, I built it on HubSpot's survey of more than 1,400 marketers. HubSpot has since published its 2026 State of Marketing, based on more than 1,500, so here is the guide rebuilt on the new data, chapter by chapter.
The headline trends
These are the five trends marketers say they are working on most in 2026:
- Using AI to create personalised content (48.57%)
- Making more use of automation (47.38%)
- Creating content that reflects brand values (46.84%)
- Updating SEO for changes in search (40.60%)
- Repurposing content across channels (35.08%)
Two of my 2024 picks held up: short-form video and brand values. Two did not make the list: I had flagged a possible comeback for virtual and augmented reality, and voice search. Neither appears among this year's top trends.
AI and automation
AI is now close to universal, with 86.4% of marketing teams using it in at least a few areas. The challenge has moved from adoption to proof: measuring marketing return on investment is the top challenge, named by 33% of respondents.
For a small firm, the practical lesson is to automate the repetitive work first (reports, follow-ups, scheduling) and count the hours saved, because that is a return you can actually measure.
Content
Short-form video was the format marketers most often named for the best return (48.6%). At the same time, 62.7% said the market needs more unique, human-centred content to stand out from the flood of AI-generated material. Those two findings point the same way: real people saying specific things, in short formats.
That is how our content engine works. You record a voice note, and it becomes posts, a newsletter and carousels in your voice. Nothing is published until you approve it.
Social media
For the first time in HubSpot's survey, Instagram passed Facebook as the platform most brands use (70% against 69.6%). Spreading yourself across every platform still makes little sense for a one-person business. Pick the one or two where your clients already spend time, and do them properly.
Search
Search changed the most. Google's AI summaries now answer many questions on the results page itself, and Pew Research found that people who saw one clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% for those who did not. Blogging still earns its place, but write about the specific questions you answer from experience, and expect fewer clicks per ranking than in 2024.
Privacy
Personalisation and privacy keep pulling against each other. From 16 December 2025, Meta began using people's interactions with its AI features to personalise the content and ads they see, rolling out in most regions. For a small firm, the safer path is to rely on information people knowingly give you, and to make opting out easy.
If you have no marketing team
Most of my clients are coaches, consultants and small professional firms, and none of them has a marketing department. The trends that matter for them are the ones that save time: automation, repurposing one piece of content into many, and a short list of channels done well.
And because content builds trust slowly, I pair it with targeted outreach to a clearly defined ideal client, which does not depend on the right person happening to see a post. If you want to see where your marketing hours go each week, the 10-Hour Audit is the place to start.
