It's pretty much impossible to stay fully up-to-date on everything happening and changing in the marketing world.
In the last 15 to 20 years, we've gone from creating newspaper ads, to TV commercials, to influencer marketing and user-generated content, embraced several trends that came and went, and now, we use AI to help us stay efficient. We’ve come so far.
Things keep changing rapidly, as they always have, perhaps even faster now with the latest tech developments, and adaptability is still a marketer's greatest asset. How will marketing look in 2026? Different from what it did in 2025, that's for sure.
To help you get started, we’ve put together a list of six trends we foresee will have an impact on marketing next year.
The shift toward buyer autonomy has accelerated dramatically. According to research by Gartner, Inc., 61% of B2B buyers prefer an overall rep-free buying experience. Even more striking: 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach (you know, those “did you forget something?” emails, for example). The message is crystal clear – buyers want control, and they want it on their terms.
Some people predict that AI-assisted reps will guide people through websites, questions, demos, and the entire buying process.
This means prospects are becoming more and more autonomous and don't want to speak with your sales team right away – they want to speak to them when they're ready. In the meantime, they're consuming your content: reading your blogs, checking out your LinkedIn posts, exploring materials you've made available. This is precisely when having freely available, ungated content becomes critical. If a prospect is just learning about your brand, asking them to hand over personal details in exchange for every piece of content might be pushing too hard. Let them explore first. Build trust before you ask for the sale.
The data is unequivocal: 45% of consumers would stop supporting a brand if they found out it was inauthentic. Even more compelling, 82% of consumers say that authenticity is necessary to build brand loyalty (source: zippo).
What does this mean for your brand? Polished feeds and corporate messaging aren't going to cut it anymore. People want to see the human side of your brand. And they want to hear real customer stories, not sanitized testimonials, but genuine outcomes. This is why earned media thought leadership (non-promotional articles published on websites that are not owned by you) and personal brands on LinkedIn are becoming ever so important.
In an age of AI-generated content and deepfakes, genuine human authenticity has become your most valuable competitive advantage. Lean into it.
AI tools are making it easier to generate subject lines, body copy, and variants at scale. This sounds great in theory, but it risks flooding inboxes with low-quality, repetitive outreach if you’re not careful. Inbox providers are already using machine-learning-based filters that evaluate engagement and complaint patterns, so mass-produced content with poor engagement is more likely to be flagged as spam or relegated to the "promotions" tab, or directly to Spam.
The lesson? AI can help you scale personalization, but it can't replace strategy. Think of it this way: your email strategy in 2026 should feel like a conversation between friends, not a broadcast to thousands of strangers. Personalization, timing, and respect for the recipient's attention are the new fundamentals.
Ten years ago, Microsoft conducted a study finding that humans have a shorter attention span than goldfish – a mere 8 seconds. Well, that was before TikTok, so you can imagine how it is now! But you get the point: everyone is fighting for viewer attention, which means more color, faster pace, tons of movement. On top of that, add the fact that we're wired for quick dopamine hits. This should mean short-form content all the way, right?
Not necessarily. While we've been consuming tons of short-form content, research on the effects of that consumption has emerged. There's talk of "brain rot” from endless scrolling and quick hits. To counteract this, there's been a growing appetite for long-form – people are craving substance and depth alongside the dopamine.
So which one is the winner? The answer is: both.
Short-form content like the snappy videos, quick tips, and carousel posts we got used to still dominate in capturing initial attention. However, when prospects are ready to go deeper, they're actively seeking long-form content: in-depth guides, comprehensive case studies, webinars, and thought leadership pieces.
The winning strategy is using short-form content as the hook and long-form as the depth. Use short videos and punchy posts to stop the scroll and spark curiosity. Then guide engaged prospects to longer content that builds trust, demonstrates expertise, and moves them closer to a decision. This combination respects both the reality of shortened attention spans and the genuine desire for substance that emerges once interest is piqued.
From simple prompts like "ChatGPT, tell me which survey research platform is best" to sophisticated AI agents joining the market, the way buyers discover and evaluate products and services is fundamentally shifting.
Discovery is no longer visiting a search engine. Now that LLMs are fully integrated into our routines, content has to be optimized for the now-called “generative engine optimization”. This is where marketing fundamentally shifts. AI is becoming the new gatekeeper of buyer decisions – from LLMs evaluating options, summarizing reviews, and comparing features, to AI agents completing purchases on the customer’s behalf.
The implications for brands are numerous, but to mention only one, a recent study by researchers at Columbia University and MyCustomAI revealed something important: AI agents deployed on ecommerce marketplaces behave in predictable ways, favoring certain products over others or preferring specific buttons and site layouts. This raises ethical questions, as one can imagine.
For B2B marketers, the implications are clear: your features and unique differentiators need to be machine-readable and easily accessible across your website, blog, comparison platforms, and third-party data sources. Your messaging needs to shift from "why our brand is great" to "how our product/service solves this specific problem". You need to ensure your strengths – performance metrics, design elements, service quality – are clearly articulated and embedded in the very places where AI agents look for information.
As digital content becomes quick, easy, and free to create (thanks to AI), its perceived value will tend to diminish. Anyone can produce an ebook, a long-form blog, or a white paper with AI-assisted tools, and with little substance. Another strong reason for the analog comeback is the digital fatigue we’re facing – as mentioned in point 4, we’re experiencing brain fog, along with other consequences, from constantly being online. These reasons, plus some nostalgia involved, make a strong case for “physical content” to come back.
And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Offline products have the potential to become a trust signal again. You’ve probably seen that every artist has come out with vinyl editions alongside their Spotify launch, wired headphones are back in fashion, disposable cameras are all the rage, and even content creators have begun physically shipping their newsletters. Businesses have sprung from this new need and market demand, and, as the trend is projected to continue, more brands are expected to jump on the “good-old-days” train.
Marketing in 2026 demands both continuity of 2025 practices and evolution and adoption of new ones. Self-service resources, authentic storytelling, and value-driven content remain essential – but they're being executed through new channels and powered by new technologies. AI is reshaping how buyers discover and evaluate solutions in a world that is still deciding where it stands with AI.
Above all, always remember, marketers are here to solve real problems for real people.