It’s crystal ball time: here’s our annual summary of where we think digital marketing is going to go in the next 12 months. And this time we’ve got two big predictions for you, rather than several smaller ones.

(And we definitely can’t do three, because then you’ll think we’ve outsourced this post to AI 😉.)

It won’t be a surprise that we think AI will continue to challenge our longstanding ways of “doing digital marketing”. Consumers will become increasingly comfortable using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to help them with all manner of tasks from meal planning to holiday itineraries. 

This will narrow the window of opportunity for brands to attract leads through traditional content marketing. After all, a generic ‘10 meal planning tips’ blog post won’t be able to compete with a highly tailored AI-generated output for someone with two kids and a gluten intolerance. That’s why our first prediction challenges the idea of SEO as simply ‘optimising a website’.

However, the other side of this coin is that consumers will care more about their wellbeing, and about human connection, and you’ll see this reflected in our second prediction.

Prediction #1: ‘SEO’ will become ‘Everything Optimisation’

The ways that prospective customers discover your brand will become more fragmented in 2026. Google is, and will probably remain, the biggest discovery platform: even the rise of AI hasn’t managed to reduce its 90% share of the search market. 

However, even within Google, users are being encouraged to engage with AI Overviews and even switch over to using the search engine in its new AI Mode. This means reduced clickthroughs to your website as Google attempts to answer the user’s intent in full without sending them anywhere else. 

What should you do about this? Well, you can’t change the new direction of search, but you can pay more attention to the overall profile of your brand across the web. AI Search – whether within an LLM like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode – is heavily dependent on signals from across the web to help it predict the most likely pattern. In other words, it doesn’t go to your website to retrieve information, like a traditional Google search. It amalgamates all the data it can find on its topic to produce the output. 

So, if you sell ready meals to gluten intolerant customers, and someone asks for recommendations, you’re not likely to be name-checked if you don’t have a presence outside of your own website. AI Search will look at Reddit, Wikipedia, TrustPilot, social media sites, food industry sites and communities and more. That’s why SEO in 2026 can’t just be about what you do on your own website. You’ve got to curate a wider online presence for your brand.

Prediction #2: Consumers will have a short(er) term mindset

No-one can deny it’s been a difficult few years. The cost of living crisis has affected just about everybody, housing is just as unaffordable as ever and we’ve even got some military chap warning Gen Z they need to be ready to pick up their rifles to fight Russia. 

Perhaps it’s not surprising that younger consumers in particular are prioritising their present wellbeing over distant goals. This is arguably an entirely rational response to a world where traditional milestones like home ownership feel increasingly out of reach. British Airways recognised this when they overhauled their Avios points system to reward smaller milestones instead of larger, more distant goals. Giving members smaller, more regular rewards gives them more immediate recognition for their loyalty. 

“But I don’t run an airline”. Fair point, so how could your small business apply this principle? Think about how you can break down your customer journey into smaller steps that you can reward. If you run a hair salon, your loyalty scheme could offer a free product after two or three haircuts rather than a more expensive treatment after six or eight haircuts.

The point is that consumers want to feel good today, not just work towards feeling good eventually. This means rethinking how you deliver value through your products and services, structuring your loyalty schemes for more tangible wins, and designing customer touchpoints that create immediate moments of satisfaction.

The more consumers see AI integrated into their world, the more they need to feel connected to other humans. Your job is to show up in the right places, with the right message, for people who are making increasingly deliberate choices about what deserves their attention and their money. 

For more help with your 2026 digital marketing strategy, get booked onto one of our digital skills masterclasses, or talk to our team.