6 Marketing Trends That Will Shape 2026

0:00Hey, if your 2025 marketing felt more like a scramble than a system, well, you're not alone. You stayed busy, clients showed up, but you're not sure why it all worked. And that uncertainty is risky. You can't build a predictable business on hope. Without a clear strategy, you're just throwing tactics at the wall, and that can get expensive fast. That's why Sarah Nay, our CEO at Ductate Marketing, is opening a few strategy-first calls for service-based business owners. These one-on-one sessions are for those who already have clients, but know their marketing lacks clarity, consistency, and direction.

0:36In the call, you'll pinpoint exactly where your marketing is breaking down and see whether the strategy-first approach can help you build a system that your business can actually run on in 2026. Sponsor Limited, book yours now at dtm.world slash faststart. That's dtm.world slash faststart.

1:09Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantz, and no guests today. I'm going to do a solo show. I'm going to do the obligatory trends show. I'm going to talk about six trends that I see coming in 2025. The thing about trends is they are not necessarily all earth-shattering things you never thought of or you never saw coming. A lot of them were just developments. The things that we've been talking about for a while, but maybe they're here now, or maybe they've gotten louder, or maybe they've gotten bigger. So I don't expect this is going to be the crystal ball of things you never thought about, but I do want to talk about things that I think we should be focused on.

1:49So I've got six of them. I'm going to list them, talk about them, and maybe give you a couple ideas what to do about them. So, number one, if you're a local business, a lot of people are moaning right now about the idea that SEO is going away and that there's all kinds of new acronyms that are cropping in. And there's no question, it's changing, it's evolving. But the local business is still really going to be dependent. I mean, AI is not necessarily going to replace all of the search volume for that local plumber, for that person that's really, they're looking at your reviews. They're looking at you showing up on maps.

2:27That's going to be with us for a while. So I would actually say it's going to get louder. So the local advantage is something that you really want to take advantage of. So instead of thinking about like, what are all the new things I need to be doing? Just double down. Look at your Google business profile. In fact, if you haven't touched it for a while, this is like your warning sign. Look at your Google business profile now today, not as just a place that's a directory listing with your phone number, but as a publishing platform. Google gives you so many opportunities to put stuff there, images, descriptions, services, pricing, anything you want there.

3:08They have the ability for you to schedule appointments, for people to text you. Take advantage of all of those elements that make sense for you because Google is paying attention. And lastly, they have posts, what they call posts now. So you imagine the blog post where you can actually put posts now into your Google business profile. And that's just all activity. That's all data that gives more keyword searches. Now, there's a lot of other things that have to happen. I mean, your reviews are extremely important there as well. You can't just optimize your profile and hope people find it. There's a lot of activity that needs to go on.

3:42You certainly need to be doing things on your website that validate. You need to have, as I said, reviews that are coming and validating and proving that you are an authority. But that opportunity to really double down on your Google business profile is something that if you are a local business, definitely treat that as a living asset. I mean, not just that, but other platforms. They're going to pull from Yelp, like them or not. They're going to pull more things even from places like Reddit. So the more that you can participate at the local level in pretty much any conversation that's going on online, all of that's kind of adding to the soup now of what's going to have you show up in local search.

4:22And so this isn't something that you do once a quarter, once a year. This is something that you want to be adding to a weekly routine. Whoever's doing your marketing or whatever you're doing in marketing, there needs to be something, some thought about, are we getting reviews? Are we posting on Google? Are we posting in other platforms that other directories that would help us get seen in us? Real is the new viral is what I'm going to call this one. So, you know, AI can write the next blog post in 10 seconds. So we can argue whether or not it's very good. It's definitely gotten better at that.

4:56But if everything starts to sound from your organization like it came from a robot, then I think that you're going to have trouble standing out. So the idea that publishing real, honest, behind the scenes or showing your process instead of just pitching your promise, that's the stuff that, well, hey, I can't do. I mean, that's unique to you. Nobody else can actually copy that. And that shows more than ever, I think, that idea of trust, authenticity, real people. Those are elements that I think are going to become more and more important. And frankly, I always tell people, if it feels a little uncomfortable, like you're used to in marketing, just saying, here are the features of our product or our service.

5:41If you're not sharing stuff that makes you a little uncomfortable, you're probably not taking advantage of this trend. And to some degree, some of the stuff that you're posting might not be worth posting if it doesn't have a little bit of that in there. Tell stories that only you can tell. Have your clients tell stories about you that only they can tell. Show, as I said, behind the scenes. Highlight people in your organization. Use customer stories. Don't use stock photos if you can help it. That's all we're trying to do is not be average. And all AI is trying to do is make us average. So the more you can think, how can I do something that nobody else in my space could do, the stuff I own, the stuff that's truly me, that's what you need to be focused on.

6:26Hey, if your 2025 marketing felt more like a scramble than a system, well, you're not alone. You stayed busy. Clients showed up, but deep down, you're not really sure why it all worked. And that uncertainty is risky. You can't build a predictable business on hope. without a clear strategy, you're just throwing tactics at the wall and that can get expensive fast. That's why Sarah Nay, our CEO at Ductate Marketing, is opening a few strategy-first calls for service-based business owners. These one-on-one sessions are for those who already have clients, but know their marketing lacks clarity, consistency, and direction.

7:02In the call, you'll pinpoint exactly where your marketing is breaking down and see whether the strategy-first approach can help you build a system that your business can actually run on in 2026. The Sponsor Limited, book yours now at dtm.world slash fast start. That's dtm.world slash fast start. All right, number three. I can't remember I stole this idea from somebody, but the idea of mischief as a marketing strategy, doing something that's outside the box. That is, you know, this maybe old school. Even those are the types of things that I think you want to swing the pendulum back the other way.

7:44You don't need a Super Bowl ad to be memorable. Things like a handwritten note, like who does that anymore? Things like a collaboration that just is awesome, but doesn't make any sense. Pop-up lemonade stand outside of your shop. Anything that gets people talking offline can be amplified online. And that's really what you want to start thinking about doing. If there's any accountants listening, forgive me. If what I'm talking about makes your accountant nervous, they're like, why would you do that? You're probably onto something. This isn't just once a year thing. This is something maybe once a quarter.

8:24You ought to be thinking about what's our street team approach. What's something we're going to do? maybe tie it to a local event or a cause. But again, make it weird. Maybe it's offline because that's going to really allow people to amplify it. Okay. Trend number four. And this isn't a trend. You remember I talked about that idea at the very beginning. The earliest shouldn't be a trend, but retention is the new acquisition. It's always mattered. That's the idea behind the marketing hourglass is that after the sale, try, buy, I repeat, refer our stages of the marketing hourglass, the customer journey that we need to be focused on because that's where the real money is.

9:07That's where the retention is. It is much more expensive, much harder to get somebody who doesn't know you to understand you and trust you than it is to get that person who's had a great experience with you to continue to trust it. So life cycle marketing, like what happens onboarding, all the upsells, reactivation, referrals. This is where money is hiding in most businesses. In fact, I say it all the time. If you drop me into a business, those are some of the places where I could probably find some immediate quick wins. If you're still spending 90, even less, 80 % of your budget, chasing people who've never heard of you, cold leads, outbound research.

9:51I mean, flip that around. What if you spent that kind of money on getting people who already knew you to buy more for me? What if you literally just said, okay, here's 20 % of my best customers. What else do they need? What else could I make? What else could I offer as a service? How could I offer a premium option of my service so that they would just buy more? So it's not just simply a matter of a marketing play to get referrals. It might actually be a product play. It might be a business strategy play to say, how could I actually take advantage of the fact that I've got these loyal customers that love me so much, they'd spend more money if I gave them the opportunity.

10:30Number five. So we've been talking about influencer marketing forever, but I think there's a new version of that. And I'm going to call them a trust broker or a micro influencer. Big influencers, you've probably seen them on Instagram and TikTok and things. It's kind of losing steam. I mean, all the content looks like a commercial for a lot of them because it is. They're promoting some product that they were paid to promote to their large audience. Who knows if they're even using it or if they even like it. And I think people have gotten burned by that. So thinking in terms of smaller niche creators, might be podcaster, might be somebody that's on YouTube.

11:09They really are trusted by their community. As you can see, they may not have a large following, but they have a lot of engagement. Those folks are quietly driving a lot of purchase behavior. And the beauty of it is typically a lot more affordable, right? They don't have the 10 million followers, so they really can't get the 10 million follower price. So find three or five of them who align with your values, with your audience, right? And build some real relationships. Don't just go buy a post. Think in terms of ways that you can cross-promote in ways that you could actually promote something they're doing, that they could promote something that you're doing.

11:50Think long-term relationship, not just, hey, do a TikTok video for my product. Really get creative about that. And I think you'll find that more than advertising, far more than advertising, you will get a return on that investment if you choose the right ones and you put into work to create the right relationships. Okay. Number six, this probably is related to SEO. It definitely is related to SEO. I'm going to call this be the answer. So search is changing. That's not just about ranking for key search terms anymore. I'm not suggesting that those aren't important today, but we had a lot of blog posts that were written specifically to rank for a certain term, there was no intent in that.

12:38In other words, people, you got a lot of search traffic, but it wasn't your ICP. They weren't buyers. You got no business out of it. So the idea of chasing that today, I think people have realized, well, why would I do that? But being helpful has always been in style. And guess what? The AI tools, Voice search, wherever search engine results come from today, people are asking questions. They want to know how to do things. They want to know how to solve problems. They want to know how to fix things. They want to know what stuff costs. And so a lot of your content today needs to be about answering questions.

13:16Instead of a digital brochure, I mean, people are going to skip over your site. Who needs that? You're here to sell me something. When's the last time you wanted somebody to sell you something? But do you want people to help you? Do you want people to have the answer? Do you want people to seem to get the problems that you're trying to solve? That's what our content needs to be today. That's always been useful content, but I think it's actually people that have been producing that for a long time. I think they're actually being rewarded for that content because it is useful, helpful, gets to the point of somebody saying, okay, yeah, you get the problem that I'm trying to solve.

13:57All right, that's my six trends for 2026. The local advantage just got louder. Real is the new viral. Mischief is a marketing strategy. retention is the new acquisition, the rise of the trust broker, and finally be the answer. So depend upon when you're listening to this, either finish out 2025 strong or let's go kick it in the tail for 2026. Again, appreciate you dropping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and let me know if I see you out there on the road one of these days.

14:42Hey, if your 2025 marketing felt more like a scramble than a system, well, you're not alone. You stay busy. Clients showed up, but deep down, you're not really sure why it all worked. And that uncertainty is risky. You can't build a predictable business on hope. Without a clear strategy, you're just throwing tactics at the wall, and that can get expensive fast. That's why Sarah Nay, our CEO at Ductate Marketing, is opening a few strategy-first calls for service-based business owners. These one-on-one sessions are for those who already have clients, but know their marketing lacks clarity, consistency, and direction.

15:18In the call, you'll pinpoint exactly where your marketing is breaking down and see whether the strategy-first approach can help you build a system that your business can actually run on in 2026. The spots are limited. Book yours now at DTM.world slash faststart. That's DTM.world slash faststart.