Where I Think Marketing Is Heading for the Rest of 2026

We’re already well into 2026, and rather than putting together another list of marketing trends, I wanted to look at what I’m actually seeing day to day.

Through client conversations, campaigns, new business discussions and simply looking at how my own way of working has changed, there are a few areas that I think will shape the rest of the year.

AI will become about efficiency, not novelty

AI is the obvious place to start.

I use AI pretty much every day now, but increasingly I’m finding its biggest value isn’t asking it to write something for me. It’s what happens behind the scenes.

Research, analysing information, developing briefs, interrogating ideas, creating workflows and removing repetitive tasks.

For me, that’s where AI gets interesting.

I think we'll see more marketing teams move away from experimenting with individual AI tools and start properly building AI into how their teams operate.

The question will become less about whether you're using AI and more about whether it's actually making your marketing function better.

Human content becomes more valuable

This might sound contradictory, but the more AI content we see, the more valuable genuinely human content becomes.

You can already see the same styles appearing everywhere. Similar LinkedIn posts, similar imagery, similar language and similar opinions.

It all starts to blend together.

I think we'll see brands become much more comfortable putting real people at the centre of their marketing again.

People with opinions. People with experience. People who don't necessarily speak in perfectly polished corporate language.

AI can help create the content, but there still needs to be a person behind the thinking.

Search is becoming a completely different challenge

I've spent years thinking about Google rankings, SEO, keywords and website traffic.

I'm now increasingly thinking about a different question:

What happens when someone asks AI about your business?

If someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini for the best companies within your industry, does your brand appear?

If they ask a question relating to your expertise, is your content influencing the answer?

That's a very different challenge from traditional SEO and I think we're only at the beginning of understanding what it means for marketing.

Being discoverable won't just mean appearing on page one of Google anymore.

Localisation needs to go further

Working across different international markets has probably changed my thinking on this more than anything else.

I've seen how differently audiences respond to messaging, creative and brands depending on where they are.

Yet localisation can still sometimes mean taking the same campaign, translating the copy and pushing it into another country.

That's not really localisation.

Understanding culture, behaviours, humour, buying habits and even how people use different platforms needs to become part of the strategy from the beginning.

You can have a global brand without having exactly the same marketing everywhere.

Brand matters

Finally, I think we're going to talk much more about brand again.

Marketing has become incredibly measurable, which is obviously a good thing.

We can analyse CPC, CPL, ROAS, conversions and almost every stage of a customer's journey.

But sometimes I think we become so focused on what we can measure that we forget to ask a much simpler question:

Will anyone actually remember us?

Performance marketing can put you in front of someone.

A strong brand gives them a reason to choose you.

I don't think it's a case of brand versus performance. The strongest businesses need both.

Technology will change. People won't.

If I had to sum up where I think marketing is heading for the rest of 2026, it would probably come down to the balance between technology and people.

We'll have better AI.

Better automation.

Better data.

Better targeting.

But ultimately, we're still marketing to people.

The brands and marketers that get that balance right will be the ones that stand out.

And that's certainly what I'll be focusing on for the rest of 2026.