It’s a new year, which means new lists of expected marketing trends for 2026. As many might expect, most of these lists involve AI in some way or another. And, yes, AI will likely be part of many strategies, at least for those who haven’t already adopted the technology based on the expected trends lists of 2025 and 2024…and even 2023.
While new technology and changing buyer behaviors might necessitate some strategy tweaks, the basic tenets of marketing don’t really change. Awareness, education, engagement, authenticity, conversion—these are all necessary, regardless of which year we’re living in.
With that in mind, we wanted to focus on these marketing mainstays and how the coming trends will assist you.
Search Marketing Trends
Getting your business found is priority number one. No one can make a purchase if they don’t know your brand exists. This is one of those unchanging parts of marketing that still somehow changes every year.
For years, Google was the go-to for getting your brand found online. The trends lately have shifted to social media and AI search tools. Does that mean you can relax your SEO strategies?
Absolutely not.
SEO and GEO Trends for 2026
With half of consumers using AI search and search engines returning AI overviews, structuring your SEO to account for AI is crucial.
By structuring your content to make it digestible for AI, such as using structured data and conversational content, you’re taking the first steps toward making your website searchable with AI tools. Continue using additional forms of content besides good copy, such as images, graphs, and video, and be sure to provide fresh content as often as you can.
This all sounds like a good SEO strategy, right?
Exactly.
Good SEO is good GEO.
Social Search Optimization
Younger audiences aren’t just turning to AI for answers. 41% of Gen Z users go straight to social media to find new brands, products, and solutions. To make sure your brand is visible, you must optimize all your social platforms for search.
How? By following these steps:
- Make sure branding is consistent across all platforms, including personal accounts if you use them for work at any time. Logos, colors, and company or brand bios should be the same so as not to spark any confusion.
- Use hashtags or important search terms in your company bio section.
- Verify all links and location information are correct. Make sure all links, whether on a LinkTree or your own link page on your website, are functional and lead to the right place.
- Use search terms, especially long-tail keywords, in your social media captions to help search engines and the search function within each platform find your brand and products.
- Tag and collaborate with any influencers, content creators, brand partnerships, or reviewers to make the most of other accounts’ social search optimization.
With great SEO/GEO and social search optimization, you’re almost there. You just need to do one more thing.
Online and Offline Directories
Verify that all directories have the latest information about your brand. If you’ve ever changed your physical address, website address, social media handles, logo design, or…well, anything else, any directories with old information could lead to consumer confusion and frustration.
With AI returning results from many of these directories, most notably Google Maps of course, any discrepancy could lead to a serious lack of trust.
Balancing Content Trends With SEO
What’s a marketer to do when social search requires longer captions with sprinkled search terms while consumers seem to only want to watch short-form videos?
Well, the most obvious answer is to create a mix of content to meet all your needs. It’s not as simple as that, though.
As trendy as short-form videos may be, you really need to go back to the basics when it comes to planning your content for 2026. And that means revisiting and revising your buyer personas.
Content Your Buyers Want
While short-form videos might sound like something only the young are consuming, the truth is that younger Millennials aged 25 to 34 make up 23% of TikTok users, and older Millennials and Gen X aged 35 and up make up 24%. So, yeah, people your age are on TikTok, no matter what your age may be.
Are those users consuming short-form videos your target audience, though? To know that, you must know everything you can about your buyers. What are their ages? Where are they located? How do they spend their time online? What are their most common objections?
The more you know about them, the more you know about the content they’d prefer to consume when it comes to the product or service you’re selling. For ecommerce CPG companies, sure; short videos win the day. For B2B brands? They don’t want to see you on TikTok at all! They want to read your latest case study and see white papers on how you save their companies money.
So far, this just sounds like every other year’s trend, right?
Introducing Search Terms
Now, as discussed in the previous section, social search is growing increasingly important. Here’s where the latest trends affect your content. Whatever content types are trending with your specific buyers, you must continue to work for social search optimization.
Whether this means longer captions on short videos, long-form videos with links to your website for more information, white papers and case studies—whatever the content you post to your social media platforms, make sure your buyers can find it when they go looking.
The Continued Importance of Personalization
Ah, here we have one of those marketing strategies that just doesn’t change from year to year: personalization. Well, except the demand for it does keep growing, with more than 71% of consumers expecting it now.
And here’s the thing: AI can help, but it can’t do the whole job for you.
Smart AI Use for Personalization
Most of your marketing tools offer in-depth information about your buyers. Social media trackers know who’s engaging, email marketing platforms track open rates and interactions, websites know who’s visiting which pages.
AI can help you map that information to better understand your customers, which in turn helps you personalize the experience for each one.
Keeping Personal in Personalization
Using AI to help you personalize buyers’’ experiences cannot be a set-it-and-forget-it task, though. Even the very best prompts can return false information and disseminate lackluster personalization.
Humans—you—must be involved in every step, from verifying the data for accuracy to putting a personal touch on the final delivery. Customers will notice if something feels out of place.
The real 2026 marketing trend here isn’t the use of AI—it’s maintaining the human touch.
Keeping It Real
Perhaps you’ve noticed a theme thus far, and that’s authenticity. Yes, more companies will turn to AI this year to help with marketing tasks and strategies, but there is one thing you still can’t prompt AI to do. You can’t prompt them to be human.
Only 17% of consumers trust AI enough to complete a purchase through AI. They’ll use AI tools to research and start their journey, but when it comes time to pull out their wallet, they want their control back. They want to compare prices and brands and reviews, and they want to do it on their own to avoid any potential mishaps.
There’s still a disconnect between marketers and consumers when it comes to AI. While 85% of marketers think consumers like AI interactions, only 37% of consumers say they do. If you’re using AI chatbots and content—anything consumer-facing, really—you’re still alienating a large percentage of consumers.
It’s crucial to keep your customer interactions as authentic as possible. Make sure humans have the final touch on anything before it’s released for public consumption. Once you lose a buyer’s trust, you may not ever recover it.
The most successful CMOs and Fractional CMOs will understand this balance in 2026, and your marketing and sales will thrive as a result. If you’d like to talk more about AI and authenticity in your marketing, reach out any time.
