If you spent any part of 2025 wondering what you were supposed to be doing… Welcome to the club.
(Seriously. Most of us. The whole year.)
AI changed everything. Then it changed again. Google did a thing. Then another thing. Everyone had an opinion on what you SHOULD be doing, what tools you SHOULD be using, what strategies were dead, and which ones were the future.
It was a lot.
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What separated the people who thrived from everyone else
But here’s what I noticed…
The people who seemed to actually thrive this year weren’t waiting for someone to hand them the answers.
They just… figured it out. Their way.
And it wasn’t just marketers. It was everywhere in 2025.
Beyoncé went to the Grammys in February and won Album of the Year AND Best Country Album… for a genre the industry told her she didn’t belong in back in 2016. She didn’t ask permission. She just made the album.
Simone Biles won the Laureus Sportswoman of the Year in April (again), and everyone wanted to know about the 2028 Olympics. Her response: “I want it to be my choice when I’m done.” Not the sport’s timeline. Hers.
And Taylor Swift spent YEARS re-recording her albums because she refused to let someone else control her work. And then in May, she bought back her masters. All of them. $360 million. Done. (If that’s not “I’ll handle this myself,” I don’t know what is.)
They may be different industries with different stakes, but it’s the same pattern…
…the highest performers are designing on their own terms, not waiting for the industry to tell them what they’re allowed to do.
Stevie Nicks has been telling us this for decades… Go your own way.
And that “I’ll handle this myself” energy showed up again and again in marketing this year.
So in December, we got curious.
We asked 19 marketers and experts one question about 2026.
(We didn’t ask for 2026 marketing predictions. They’re rarely helpful.)
You see, these are the people who spent their past year trying things, breaking stuff, failing and succeeding with tools, strategies and tactics. The people who’ve gone all in and have come out on the other end with conclusions (and more ideas).
So we asked them:
What’s the ONE thing from 2025 you’re taking into 2026?
And their answers can help you refocus your goals and plans.
19 battle tested marketing strategies for a successful 2026
1. “Remember that you can just do stuff.”
“In 2025, there were lots of thought leaders in the SEO and AI search space with lots of opinions.
Plus enough updates and new features and new browsers to make your head spin. Through it all, the thing that kept me grounded was that it’s all new, so you can test, iterate and learn for yourself. That is something I plan to run with in 2026.”
Crystal Carter, Head of AI Search & SEO Communications at Wix
When we’re working in a “no one really knows” world, Crystal’s point is the antidote to prediction addiction: treat 2026 as a lab, not a syllabus someone else wrote for you.
2. “The year of self-education, experimentation, and actually using your brain.”
“I’m reading books that challenge my thinking (The History of Intelligence, Thinking in Systems, and The Alignment Problem). I’m testing new tools (Google AI Studio, Nano Banana, and Profound). I’m reframing life and business challenges.
I’m also paying attention to user behavior in Search. How are we searching? Where are we searching? Everything’s changing, and nobody knows definitively how it will play out. It’s never been a more exciting time in our industry.”
Garrett Sussman, Director of Marketing at iPullRank
Instead of waiting for a definitive playbook, Garrett’s building his own mental model of how search and AI are actually changing. (That’s self-directed learning in action.)
3. “Every week is finals week!”
“AI isn’t saving me any time at all. I’m working 20% more than I used to. Why?
I’m investing more time in my skillset and my content. In 2025, I spent hundreds of hours researching, experimenting and testing AI methods, learning as much about AI as I can. Then I spent hundreds more hours writing, recording and training others on these methods. In 2025, I published more articles than I have in years. Beyond that, I gave 100+ presentations, mostly on AI-related topics.
Huge effort, but I’m glad to do it. I am avoiding the risk of becoming irrelevant. They say every day is a school day. Right now it feels like every week is finals week!”
Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and CMO at Orbit Media
4. “The year of focus.”
“Between work, personal life, hobbies, and side projects, I spread myself too thin this year. I thought I was doing all these things out of obligation, telling myself, ‘You’re lucky to even have these options, so you have to say yes to all of them,’ or, ‘You care about the kid’s school so you have to clear your schedule every chance you get,’ but I realized it wasn’t that at all.
I was doing all these things because I wanted to do them. But now I know what lights me up, I know what takes my focus away, and I know what I want to do more of. So I’m aiming for 2026 to be the year of focus. Cheers to thinking beyond the year of ‘yes,’ and embracing a year of ‘yes, but only if _____.”
Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro
Year of focus is another way of saying my terms, not everyone else’s expectations.
5. “Customer understanding, genuine product adoption, and customer-led operating models.”
“I walked into 2025 fully expecting the pendulum to swing back hard to the ‘move fast and break things’ era.
But founders (and a few thought leaders in our space) thankfully remembered quickly that acquisition and signups aren’t a business model. Everyone is so high on AI that I honestly didn’t expect the pendulum to swing back the other way so quickly toward customer understanding, genuine product adoption, and customer-led operating models. It’s started to renew my faith in tech.
There are some really smart teams who’ve recognized this, and they’re the ones who’ll be making the faster, braver decisions in 2026.”
Gia Laudi, Chief Strategist at Forget the Funnel
6. “Understanding what someone is trying to achieve, why, and when they choose a product or service.”
“One of the clearest lessons I’m taking from 2025 into 2026 is how consistently returning to Jobs to Be Done sharpened my work. JTBD is about understanding what someone is trying to achieve, why, and when they choose a product or service.
It’s not new to me, but this year reinforced its importance as competition continues to rise and brands are keen to stand out. Using it as a framework helps you focus on delivering actual value throughout the customer journey and move away from quick tactics toward focusing on the humans behind it all. That’s the mindset I’m deliberately taking into 2026.”
Daphne Tideman, Growth Advisor and Consultant at Growth Waves
7. “Stay grounded and lead nuanced conversations.”
“One big thing I’m taking into 2026 is a strongly renewed focus on soft skills.
With all the volatility in 2025, from traffic instability to the broader identity crisis our industry is navigating, the ability to stay grounded and lead nuanced conversations has become so, so important. And! The more experimental things keep getting, the more being able to influence and get buy-in matters.”
Bianca Anderson, Founder at Stellar Search Signals
Bianca is describing what leadership research keeps finding. When leaders create psychological safety and make it okay to experiment, people take smarter risks and bring more original ideas.
8. “Marketing is much more about product than I’ve ever previously believed.”
“My new theory is that marketing is much more about product than I’ve ever previously believed. In 2026, I want to validate a theory — that slight product improvements are far more impactful than massive marketing improvements.
I.E. Making your product 10% better (whatever “better” means in your category and to your customers) will result in 5-10X the business impact that a 10% improvement in marketing reach, resonance, or engagement would have. That’s not to say marketing isn’t valuable; it is. And it’s often far less invested-in than product, which makes it a big opportunity.
For many companies, product improvements take years to roll out (especially physical goods), so marketing’s the only opportunity. For others (especially new and small businesses), not enough people are even aware of the product they offer for product improvements to make much difference. So yeah, lots of caveats, but the underlying theory remains, and 2026 is when I want to try it out for my three companies.”
Rand Fishkin, Sparktoro
9. “Embrace automation and augmentation through AI to get more done.”
“The most important thing that I’m taking into 2026 is the importance of having an open mind to augmenting everything. Every month in 2025 I came across a new tool, new use case, or new way of leveraging AI to be more efficient and effective.
Whether it’s an AI tool that can take my podcast and turn it into a bunch of different assets like Distribution.ai, whether it’s Wispr Flow helping me narrate things more effectively, whether it’s Fathom in the ability to use recordings of calls to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks, or simply using Gemini, replete with ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude to do things that would have taken me months if not hours in the past.
There’s no question that the biggest lesson for me is to always assume that something can be automated instead of assuming that it needs that human touch. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a TON of value in the human touch, but there’s no question in my mind that in 2026 we all need to embrace automation, augmentation through AI to get more done.”
Ross Simmonds, Founder at Foundation Marketing
Notice that even his embrace of automation is self-authored. He’s not saying AI will replace us. Instead, he says, “I decide what gets automated so I can spend my best energy where it actually matters.”
10. “Adaptability is key.”
“Don’t fall in love with ideas – fall in love with change. The new era moves fast, and yesterday’s solution may already be outdated. Staying open, adaptable, and willing to try again is how we stay relevant.”
Yahel Oren, Senior Data Scientist at Limy AI
11. “Doubledown on skepticism.”
“The distance between what gets funded and what actually works has never been wider.
The incentive systems, the top-down AI mandates every company seems to introduce, the metrics we optimize for, the stories we tell ourselves, they’re decoupled from outcomes.
What makes this hard to talk about is that the useful stuff and the bullshit are the same technology.
We’ve built tools that are simultaneously revolutionary and unreliable so we oscillate between hype and dismissal, when the truth requires holding both. What we need for 2026? Healthy skepticism.”
Juliana Jackson, Cloud Director, Data Science @ Jellyfish
12. “Build for bots. Create for humans.”
“I’ve been telling clients—and will continue to tell them—to build for bots, but create for humans. Your infrastructure should emphasize technical SEO and enable discoverability across all organic search surfaces, from traditional search engines to emerging “AI engines.”
“This means using JavaScript wisely, writing lean, semantic HTML markup, and avoiding code spaghetti. Everything about your content—from UX to informational content to highly commercial product descriptions to completely transactional pages—should be designed for people.
That means clear organization, high information density, no keyword-stuffed filler, and effective “chunking.” None of this is revolutionary or easy, but it works.”
Ian Lurie, The Digital Marketing Nerd
13. “Standing out isn’t reckless. Blending in is.”
“I’ve been allergic to the sea of sameness in B2B cybersecurity marketing for years – but in 2025, AI-generated content pushed it from boring to intolerable.
When everyone can produce “good enough” copy at scale, differentiation stops being about volume and starts being about taste. What I’m taking into 2026 is a ruthless return to basics: emotional clarity, human writing, and brand choices that actually stand for something.
At Grip, that means hiring writers and thinkers with taste, borrowing unapologetically from B2C storytelling, and remembering that fear shows up in language – and great brands don’t write scared. Standing out isn’t reckless. Blending in is.”
Vicki Michaeli, VP Marketing at Grip
14. “Empower others.”
“We’re not just running A/B tests any more. We’re empowering others to run A/B tests.
This year I’ve spoken to people in Experimentation from Vinted, Hellofresh, Preply, American Express, Condor, Easyjet, Mediamarkt, Kaufland and Moonpig. And the biggest challenge those brands are facing is: how do we get more teams and people to test independently? We focus 80% of our energy first on teams that are willing to experiment.
Aligning with leadership, sharing knowledge, using gamification and fun, to help teams share actual challenges they are facing.”
Lucia Van Den Brink, Founder of WIE & Experimentation Consultant
15. “Expand your strategies beyond Search.”
“Smart Google Ads practitioners are exploring opportunities to expand their strategies beyond Search.
Google Search Ads are still awesome, but there are so many other interesting ways to scale your business through YouTube, audience targeting, and more. I’ve seen this work with small and large businesses alike, B2C and B2B, and I’m excited to continue testing new tactics with my clients in 2026.”
Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach at Inside Google Ads
16. “Focus on the humans behind the screens.”
“Our Emotional Targeting framework is relevant now, more than ever.
As the race to using the most AI tools ramps up, we focus on what really matters: People. The future of marketing isn’t about drowning in numbers or shiny software, it’s about human connection, understanding real intent and your customers.”
Talia Wolf, Founder of GetUplift
As AI gets better at the what and how fast, the advantage shifts to the people who deeply understand why humans choose, when they decide, and what they actually feel.
17. “Designing my work around my actual energy, not my theoretical capacity.”
“This year I stopped pretending I could operate at the same pace, intensity, or mode every day. And I started structuring work around when I do my best thinking versus my best executing, and protecting those modes as much as possible. I can’t have my ideal daily structure because of time zones and fixed commitments, but I can theme my days and categorize work so I find my flow faster.
Right now that looks like meetings in the morning, with afternoons reserved for focused work that’s batched per day (ops/finances/admin, marketing, product, content creation, research/strategy). It’s on my calendar so my team knows what to expect and when to set non-urgent deadlines.
The key part is not over-scheduling. I only pick 1-2 things to move forward in a day, and define what ‘move forward’ means either the day before or right in the morning.”
Arielle Johncox, CEO of Balsamiq
18. “Finding new ways of measuring the opportunity and competition.”
“Finding new ways of measuring the opportunity and competition for businesses on YouTube.
We’ve developed some new metrics and methodologies which have completely changed the way we determine which ideas are most worth pursuing, and which topics and keywords to optimize them for. This is going to be the foundation of our strategy work in 2026!”
Phil Nottingham, Founder @ Organic Video. Strategist. Producer. Speaker.
19. “Work with people.”
“One thing significantly that I am so going to do more of – WORK WITH PEOPLE. As a black female we can be a bit headstrong with doing everything ourselves. And actually since hiring a VA for PPC Live and allowing a good friend to help me with getting sponsors for PPC Live, my anxiety with everything I have to get done has dropped significantly.
I keep saying if you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far, do it with people! So I need to start putting that in practice even more. It is something I have tested and isn’t as expensive as my mind thinks it to be.”
Anu Adegbola, PPC Mindset Coach. Founder of PPC Live
Your 2026. Your marketing strategies. Your call.
Crystal is running with experimentation. Andy is investing in himself. Amanda is protecting her focus. Gia is betting on customers. Ross is leaning into AI tools.
Each one figured out what they’re carrying into 2026.
And none of them asked for permission. They decided.
There’s research on this.
Self-determination theory shows that autonomous decision-makers (people who figure things out for themselves rather than waiting for permission) outperform in uncertain environments. Consistently.
(If you want a rabbit hole, look into Deci & Ryan’s foundational work on motivation and autonomy.)
So what do you do with this?
- Test and learn for yourself. Less consensus. More data.
- Run your own experiments. Keep what works. Ditch what doesn’t.
And stay obsessed with humans.
AI isn’t going anywhere. But neither are your customers.
The tools get smarter. The person deciding to buy from you… still human. Emotional. And making decisions based on how they feel.
Design 2026 on your terms.
2025 may have been the year of “What the hell am I supposed to be doing?”
Let’s make 2026 the year you answer that question for yourself.
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