My Predictions for Smarter Marketing in 2026

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the annual tradition now, where I predict the future of marketing. And I'm so excited to dive into predictions. In this episode, I'm going to give a brief recap of what happened in the past five years, really, because there's a lot of patterns that are emerging which actually surprised me going back and listening to past episodes. So I'm excited to bring that to you today. But I promise you, 2026 is not the year for doing more. Okay? This, this is the year for doing what matters. And I want to talk about what matters for you, real life human doing marketing in your business in 2026, especially if you're tired of chasing trends. But first, a word from our sponsor, Riverside.

Andréa Jones [00:00:44]:
Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video, it is like chef's kiss magical. Making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click.

Andréa Jones [00:01:20]:
It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15 off your membership. Okay, my Ms. Cleo episode is here, y'. All. I love this episode every single year because it is one that I feel like I can really dig into patterns and share them with you from my perspective.

Andréa Jones [00:01:53]:
So this is your very first episode that you're listening to. Hi. Hello. My name's Andrea Jones. I'm a social media marketer turned marketing strategist. I've been doing this work for almost 12 years. And back in my day, when I started my business, it looked totally different. And even when I started content creating in 2004, which, by the way, was not cool, I was blogging in 2004.

Andréa Jones [00:02:16]:
It was a weird thing to, like, study how to, you know, edit HTML on a on your website. Like, total nerd moment. And I love being nerd, by the way. That wasn't a dis. But back in my day, things were so different than they are now. And I feel like I constantly have to adjust because the way I used to do Things was the hard way, y'. All. Okay? Like, literally, I remember a blogger.

Andréa Jones [00:02:40]:
Y' all remember Blogger? Blogger.com. that's where I started my blog. It was like before WordPress was like a big thing. And I was studying how to, you know, how do I write in a way that has a flow, how do I add images using HTML, how do I embed videos? Like, YouTube wasn't even a big thing back then. I don't even think YouTube existed back then. So you literally had to like upload a video to the server. Anyways, things are much different now. But I feel like sometimes those of us who've been in business for a while, been marketing for a while, even if you start googling, it'll give you the hard way first.

Andréa Jones [00:03:19]:
First. And so that's why I'm really excited for a lot of the changes I'm making. Because I literally want to say, okay, I understand the tough way of doing things, but there's a better way and I'm not going to be antiquated about it. Okay? Also, there's a lot of noise, specifically AI noise, in this industry right now. Every single marketing podcast is talking about AI. Every single business podcast is talking about AI. And I'm not saying AI is bad. In fact, me and Chatty have conversations nearly every day.

Andréa Jones [00:03:47]:
But what I'm saying, saying is that AI is not a replacement. It's simply a shortcut for some of the manual labor that we used to do before. But it literally cannot replace the humanness of it all, which is a comfort to me. But before I dive into the predictions, I do want to identify the five year pattern and why this matters, because I did not recognize this pattern until I went back through and listened to episodes. So in 2021, that was the episode I started with, though I think I did one in 2020 as well. In 2021, I talked about how because of the pandemic, y' all remember where we were in 2021, right? Because of the pandemic, there's been a huge surge in the desire to reconnect and to be human in this digital world, because we basically accelerated the digitization. Can I make that a word? The digits, digit. See if I can say it.

Andréa Jones [00:04:40]:
I can make it a word. The digitization of business, right? There are a lot of businesses who previously weren't that weren't on the Internet like that. And then the pandemic happened and we all had to be on the Internet like that, right? And so humanizing and reconnecting was the theme in 2021 and 2022 is about refinement and simplification and tightening up all of this humanization we did. 2023 was the year of community. And especially where I was in Canada was we had two weeks to crest a curb, turned into two years across the curb. Like we were all the way locked down up until 2023. I actually was digging through a purse the other day and pulled out our vaccination passport, which feels like an apocalyptic thing. Like we literally had to carry around a card and I had my laminated that showed that we got the COVID vaccine so we can go sit in a restaurant.

Andréa Jones [00:05:39]:
WTF. Anyways, so 2023 was the year of community and connection. We were emerging from this hyper digitized world into this kind of in person connection. And for me personally, that was when I launched the retreat. 2024 was the year of loyalty and trust. Are you already seeing this pattern here? Deepening relationships. 2025 was the year of experimentation and innovation. And halfway through the year, I changed my word to please playfulness.

Andréa Jones [00:06:06]:
Because all of this experimentation started to feel heavy. And there is a way to do this in a way that is light and joyful. And what I noticed from 2021 to 2025 is that these shifts weren't random. They're actually forming a cycle that I think will continue actually through the next decade. If I could be so bold to say that I think they're forming some sort of cycle. So we're going to crave. Here, here's my prediction of the cycle. We're going to crave more humanness as the world becomes more digitized.

Andréa Jones [00:06:43]:
The digitization of everything. I hope I didn't make this up. I hope this is a word. Anyways. The world is going to crave more human connection in a way that really emphasize the humanness of it all. Okay, so it's almost like a pendulum. The pendulum is going to go one way and go AI everything, automate everything. And then we're going to be like, but wait, we're human.

Andréa Jones [00:07:03]:
Like, we don't want to speak to robots, we want to speak to humans. So it's going to kind of have this refinement. So it's like experiment and grow and innovate, but then also keep things human and refined and then find that middle ground where we had this deep connection with our fellow human. Right? And so this kind of cycle is going to be integrated in the future. But I think 2026 is going to be pivotal for this integration, this advancement of technology and this Deep, deep craving. We have to for human connection. So, without further ado, here are my predictions for 2026. Prediction number one.

Andréa Jones [00:07:45]:
AI is going to become the backbone of everything, but not the boss. Okay? AI is going to literally be the backbone of all of our businesses, and it's already the backbone of all of our favorite tools. And at first it was irritating to me because some of these tools are adding AI where AI should not be. Okay? Like, we don't need AI everything. But I think this is part of that experimentation is that everything from asana to ClickUp to airtable to notion to YouTube comments, Amazon comments, Facebook comments, meta, AI and AI is the backbone of everything. However, I do not think it is the boss. I think it's everywhere. And it's going to help accelerate the humanness that is humans.

Andréa Jones [00:08:29]:
Okay? There's going to be a shift in AI use cases, especially content, where people want to see you using AI in a way that accelerates certain things, but they want it to sound like a human. Okay? They want to see the human behind the robot, essentially. And I think that originality is going to be even more important than ever. An originality that is flawed. Okay? We are past the age of perfect, and I've been talking about that specifically for years. But I think AI has also accelerated that desire because we don't want perfection. We want AI to help us with other things, like, oh, remind me of a task, or help me write this email, or, you know, connect this tool to that tool or help create this experience for me. But at the center of it all, we have to be human.

Andréa Jones [00:09:23]:
And one of the ways that I do this is in my emails. Y' all love my emails, right? My weekly nudge that I send on Tuesday, sometimes Fridays, because it sound like me, and I use personal stories. However, I use AI to write those, and I talk all about that in my big Inbox Energy course. But essentially, I use AI to help me write that in a way that speeds along my process, but is still very much me. And still to this day, AI does not sound like me. So I have to still tweak and edit and refine that process, but the process now is much faster than it used to be. So I will become the backbone, not the boss, is prediction number one. Prediction number two is that micro communities are going to replace broader audiences and going to become actually far more important than broader audiences.

Andréa Jones [00:10:17]:
And we see this just purely in the technology changes that are happening on the platforms. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are moving towards deeper, smaller communities. With very close connections as its base. We're creating a community ecosystem so that your community actually lives in multiple places, not on one specific platform. And I talked about this with my desire and my need to have this be the final year of the Mindful Marketing Lab. That program, as it was, started off as like a community program and I really kind of loved what it was. But I noticed especially now my community is in multiple places. They're not really in one central place.

Andréa Jones [00:11:03]:
It's more of a feeling. And I think that ecosystem is going to be even more important to businesses and brands is how do we tap into creating and nurturing micro communities in ways that feel good for our community, but also feel good for us too. So I mentioned Instagram and TikTok. Well, Instagram has broadcast channels. This is something that has existed for about two and a half years now, maybe three, no, two years. And broadcast channels are like many email newsletters, right? Within Instagram. And TikTok just released their bulletin board feature, which is literally the exact same thing. So TikTok is having this moment where they're like, oh, this is successful for Instagram.

Andréa Jones [00:11:43]:
Let's emulate this model. Right? And I think that that is a good sign because it shows how users, the end user, the people using the app. I hate using the word user, but anyways, the consumer, us using the app, the product, the way that we're using the app is through product, private conversations, not public conversations. Okay? We're craving intimacy in marketing. And this is not new. This is not something new that I've predicted. I predicted this two years ago and last year, but now we're seeing the tools catch up to this prediction through things like broadcast channels and through things like bulletin boards. However, I do still think email lists play a huge role in this as well.

Andréa Jones [00:12:29]:
It's not just social, it's a marketing and community ecosystem. And even the very definition of social media to me is it's going to change over the next couple of years. I don't even know if we're going to use the same words because of the way that every platform is becoming almost this like micro community ecosystem, which I find fascinating. That's prediction number two. Micro communities are going to be more important than broader audiences. Prediction number three is that there is going to be more focus on content systems. And this is one that I'm going to plant my flag in. Y' all will see me talk about this until the end of eternity, probably because I've been talking about it.

Andréa Jones [00:13:11]:
But now I have more use cases and we have way more tools to make this a lot easier. So because of the pandemic, because of the digitization of everything, uh, we had this insurgence, this flood of creating content because we actually, frankly, had more time. We were displaced as, like globally in the sense that we were locked in, locked down. And even when things became quote, unquote safe again, we were nervous to participate outside of our, you know, mobile devices. Well, now we're well past that. But we cannot keep up with kind of like this content creation machine that we started in the pandemic. And so people are burnt out. I cannot tell you how many one on one calls, consulting calls I've had with small business owners and content creators who come to me because they're like, listen, I'm doing the most and my business is doing okay, but I'm not okay.

Andréa Jones [00:14:14]:
And I'm afraid to stop because if I stop, I feel like my business is actually going to fail. Okay? And so this is a fear that a lot of business owners have right now. And the solution is content systems. It's not about posting more. And that consistency does not mean posting more. It's creating a content system to where you have an anchor, a signature piece of content that is not suffocating, but actually helps you thrive and show your business in a positive light and then build that ecosystem in such a way that everything else supports that signature content piece. Okay? And this is going to be on the rise coming forward. I have seen a resurgence in people doing more long form content, which I adore.

Andréa Jones [00:14:59]:
More blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos. And I also see consumers wanting more blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos. However, they are more discerning than ever. We collectively are more discerning than ever because we don't want to sit down and read a blog post and halfway through realize that it's AI generated. Generalize bs. Like, if we're going to listen to a podcast, read a blog Post, watch a YouTube video, we want perspective. And this is what I talked about in the last episode. That is as people, as a human humanity, we want context.

Andréa Jones [00:15:34]:
We don't need information. We need to understand how the information matters to me, okay? Why do I care about this? Why should I care about this? And that's a question that every single business owner needs to be asking as they head into creating content in 2026. Think about your people and ask yourself, not what do they need to know, but why should they even care? How does this even change their perspective at all? And that will switch you from feeling like you're producing content for the sake of producing content, to actually creating consistent content system that is sustainable for you to continue with over time. Right? So prediction number three is going to be the rise of sustainable content systems. Prediction number four is all about earned trust and earned trust in such a way that you're not chasing trends. And this one should be like a relief to you. So I want to talk a little bit about what earned trust means. And this goes back to referral business.

Andréa Jones [00:16:35]:
So as business owners, referral business typically is like our best kind of business. But it can feel a little unpredictable because sometimes we're just waiting around for people to refer us. But those referrals are great because basically someone else is validating you and verifying you before sending you along to someone else. So if someone sends me a referral client, that client has intrinsic trust in my offer because someone else vouched for me. Okay? This is possible in marketing. You don't have to wait for earned trust. And in fact, I think this is where the intersection of sales and marketing is going to be going to become even more important, because sales and marketing are two separate entities, but they are codependent. Like, you can't have one without the other.

Andréa Jones [00:17:24]:
They are symbiotic, if you will. And so how this is going to work in the marketing perspective is you're going to have relationship driven visibility. Relationship driven visibility is going to outrank and outperform every single time, any sort of trend that you try to chase. Okay? Unless you have a massive budget or a lot of time to chase trends and spaghetti, throw out the wall and something will stick. It can work. This is why that strategy of like post 8 to 10 TikToks a day actually does work, because something's going to work at the end of the day. But my people, y' all listen to this, you don't have time for that. So your time is better spent on building relationships versus building or creating eight to ten TikToks a day.

Andréa Jones [00:18:11]:
Okay, I'm just going to say it that way. So here's how it works. In practicality, this is borrowing audiences. Okay? So guests speaking on podcasts, guests speaking in communities, guest blogging, guest writing, basically borrowing someone else's audience, someone who already has a community that trusts, trust them, knows them, likes them. You're going to build a relationship that with that person. And it does require a relationship first so that they can trust you enough to say, yes, you can speak to my people. And now you have more people willing to hear about your offers. Okay, podcast Guesting and borrowing audiences is one of this, one of these ways.

Andréa Jones [00:18:50]:
Another way is through testimonials, having your clients and customers talk about the work that you do. This is third party praise. We love to pat ourselves on the back. I'm so awesome. But it's going to be even more important going forward that other people pat you on the back as well. And this is also perceived earned trust. So sometimes other publications like pr, this can be great. It has a perceived trust factor built into it.

Andréa Jones [00:19:20]:
So for example, I was interviewed for a BBC article. There is a perceived value in that because the BBC does not just choose any old person to produce content for their publication because they also want to have authority in their space. Right. So there is a vetting process. They found me, they reached out to me and said, hey, can we interview you for this thing? I was featured on the their radio show and, and they wrote a whole article about rage baiting, which I did a podcast episode on, that has perceived trust from that. So I can put on my website BBC. Okay, there's some perceived proof that I have some sort of authority in marketing at the very least. Okay, so that's prediction number four.

Andréa Jones [00:20:05]:
Earned trust is going to outperform any sort of luck that you hope the algorithm blesses you with. Now the last and final prediction is prediction number five, which is all about seasonality in marketing. And this is something that is hard for me personally because I love a good rinse and repeat moment, like set it and forget it. However, marketers are starting to plan in cycles and seasons, not in a day to day frequency. So here's what I mean by that. When we think about, even when I think about this podcast, for example, I produce podcasts every single week. And there are moments in time, especially when I was pregnant, where I would batch record episodes. I would do like you know, 20, 30 episodes at once and then take a break and release those episodes each week and they'd be on different topics and that sort of thing.

Andréa Jones [00:21:02]:
However, what I've noticed in the past two years is that there's a seasonality into how, how you as consumers want that content. And there's an urgency in your marketing being aware of the season that everyone is going through collectively. And this is a symptom of having basically being connected globally through the power of the Internet. This has never happened before. Like you had your local community and you had news from your local community and then maybe you'd hear news from around the world. You know, let's go back 20 years ago, you'd see stuff that would pop up, but it doesn't really affect your day to day life now. It feels like there is a constant urgency to be very present in what's happening now. This can create a negative effect on you as a business owner to feel like you have to speak up to everything that happens now.

Andréa Jones [00:21:56]:
And so this is why I want to refocus our energy into seasons and not a daily grind. I've been talking a lot about this in relation to artists as well, because I think content creation is an art that we're discrediting. So when artists create something, think you're a T. Swift, Lizzie's Taylor Swift as an example. When she's producing an album, we have no expectation that there are new songs released every week. She goes into her creation mode. She produces the album, she does a launch campaign for the album, then she does a tour to promote that album and then the cycle continues. And I think that cycle is actually quite sustainable.

Andréa Jones [00:22:36]:
When we think about creating content, there are going to be seasons where there is a high output, where you create, launch, show up more, and then there's going to be seasons where there are low outputs, where you rest, regroup, and actually study what's working. And I think this planning your content around seasons and not arbitrary seasons, but the actual seasons that you as a human go through, the seasons that your community goes through in the seasons that the world goes through globally, could actually build a system that's not fragile and frail and doesn't crumble. The second something changes in the world because you have a reliable seasonal system that helps with this and doesn't matter if the algorithms change or you move that to another platform or attention spans are changing because everything about this creates more reliable structure. Not just for you as a business owner and the content creator, but for your community as well. Their expectations are shifting as well. Listen, I love this conversation around attention spans and I talked about this in the last episode, but I want to continue that here because I don't think we have shorter attention spans. We've literally never consumed as much content as we're consuming now. As a humanity, as a collective, as the human experience.

Andréa Jones [00:23:55]:
I wake up and check my phone. I check all my emails, my social channels, everything. I will watch tv, Netflix, the kids. My girls are really into Mickey Mouse on Disney plus right now. I'm scrolling on my phone. I like reading books and I even read books on Kindle on my phone. Everything about my experience is consuming digital content. I always like this story, but y', all, we can't even go to the bathroom without taking our phones with us so that we can scroll while we're pooping.

Andréa Jones [00:24:28]:
Okay? I'm just saying we've never consumed content in this fashion before. So it's not about creating more content. It's about creating bingeable content that when someone discovers you and they like what you have to say, they're stalking the hell out of everything that you do. And that is the strategy for the future. So with that in mind, I want to talk about what this means, like, for a real person, because y' all know, these predictions, they sound great at all in theory, but some of y' all go. Okay, Andrea, now what? So here's a few things that I want to kind of leave you to percolate on as you're Planning out your 2026. I want you to only have one signature channel. Just one.

Andréa Jones [00:25:15]:
One thing. That is your ride or die. That is your Bonnie to your Clyde. That is your Mickey Mouse to your Minnie Mouse. That is. This is getting silly. That is your Batman to your Robin. Like, this is your channel.

Andréa Jones [00:25:31]:
And we're gonna focus in on depth, not volume. Okay? And having that perspective, that is. How do I give context to my people? Not more information, but context. How do I contextualize this content in a way that my ideal client, customer, whatever community member, understands, accepts, enjoys, and is thrilled by this content? Okay, So I want you to really focus in on that and then also select one of the predictions from this episode and start working on it now, because that's going into 2026. You don't have to do all of them now. Pick one channel, contextualize it for your people, Go deep, not wide, and decide how you want to add seasonality into your business in a way that really leans in to your energy. So the question then becomes, what can I stay rooted in? And I want to talk about this for me personally, because the season that I'm entering in my business and in my life, too. But this is a business podcast, so we'll focus on the business is 2026 is going to be a big transition year for me.

Andréa Jones [00:26:54]:
I am restructuring my business. This has already started. I told y' all that this is the final year of the Mindful Marketing Lab, which I'm very excited about. I'm restructuring my offers to align with what I see is happening in business and in marketing, and I'm choosing steadiness over speed. For a long time in my business, I called myself a social media manager, social media marketer, because that's. That's where I come from, that's my world. But to be honest with you, I've always talked about marketing ecosystems and the challenge of kind of pigeonholing myself as a social media manager is there's an assumption on how I treat things like trends or timely content, and I don't treat it the same way as other social media managers or marketers. And so I'm reorganizing my work, my time, my offers to really reflect on that.

Andréa Jones [00:27:49]:
And I've told this to my mentees in my pro mentorship program. I still firmly believe services are the way to go, even though I'm a content creator and I love creating content. To actually make this into a full time gig, you have to produce a lot more content than I'm doing right now. And this is it. This is a good amount for me. Like, I produce a lot of content and it's a good amount for me. And so for me personally, services just makes more sense for me. Okay.

Andréa Jones [00:28:18]:
And I think this is the thing that people don't talk about when you, when you hire a coach, when you join a business program, when you follow someone online and you follow their, their kind of strategy, it's from their perspective. So they could say all day, oh, Instagram's the best, Instagram's the best. And then if you log into Instagram and you're like, I hate it here. But you signed up for an Instagram course, you're going to be like, well, now I feel like I have to try it because I paid for it and that's not me. Right? That's not the way that I want to show up in the world. If you log into Instagram, you go, you hate it here. I'd rather do LinkedIn. My goal is go, okay, sure, yeah, I love LinkedIn too.

Andréa Jones [00:28:50]:
Let's try that out. I don't want to pigeonhole anyone into anything. Anyways, so the season that I'm entering in in my business and is to find ways to support my people in discovering what works for them and discovering it in a way that is simpler and smarter. Because, y', all, I've done it the hard way. Nothing wrong with that. But we have so many tools I can fast track this and so many shortcuts to do that with. So every year in this episode, I share my word of the year and my word of the year for 2026 is rooted. I think I said it a few times in this episode already, but it's rooted, Rooted.

Andréa Jones [00:29:26]:
And I usually use a dictionary thesaurus to kind of choose my word of the year because I started with alignment, which I had a few years ago, like synergy. I played around with that word. And it's not that exactly. It's rooted. And I in my mind envision this potted plant that needs to be re repotted. And that's how I feel right now. I feel like a potted plant where it's thriving, but the roots can't go anywhere else because the pot is too small. So I'm taking myself from one pot, putting it in a bigger pot, adding more soil so that my roots can spread out and grow and I can thrive even more.

Andréa Jones [00:30:07]:
Rooted to me is not just the roots. It's choosing the atmosphere of the soil. It's making decisions from a place of practicality and not chaotic nonsense. It's about depth, it's about boundaries, it's about stability. It's about returning to the version of me that feels really, really good. And it means that my business systems are evolving, my writing style is evolving, my home life is evolving, my boundaries are evolving. My creativity is about like, everything is being taken from this pot that was too small for me and going into a pot that fits me a lot better. So what does this mean for you? Well, there's a few changes coming up.

Andréa Jones [00:30:51]:
One, the podcast is changing. I know, I just changed the name. You just changed the name. That's okay. I will talk about that in a future episode. But the mindful marketing era is at an end. A natural, A natural chapter ending. I'm still here, so we're just repotting that plant.

Andréa Jones [00:31:10]:
And then I also have a brand new offer that is launching this Friday, Black Friday. Now, if you're listening to this, before Black Friday, you go to onlinedrea.com/ you're just going to see the wait list page. However, on Black Friday, I am launching your marketing shortcut. It is designed to help you market in a way that feels grounded, true to you. And yes, I can use my word of the year. Rooted. That's all. I'm going to tease about it for now.

Andréa Jones [00:31:42]:
What a tease. Make sure you sign up for the waitlist. If you haven't online dre.com shortcut to make sure you're on the list that you can hear about your marketing shortcut first. If you are in the mindful marketing lab, you already get it, okay? So please don't buy it. I will have to refund you, which I can do. But you know, we don't want to waste everybody's time. Um, so don't buy it, you already get it. If you're in the Mindful Marketing Lab, I'll be sharing that as well.

Andréa Jones [00:32:09]:
And the rest of y' all will get it on Black Friday. And then next week I will talk more about what it is so you can make that decision and see if you want to come on in and join us. For now, that is it for this episode of the podcast. Make sure you follow us, rate, subscribe, review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify too. Helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcast. And that's all because of your support. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.