What Sustainable Marketing Looks Like in 2026

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Episode #392 details building a 2026 marketing plan focusing on POV and signature content to ensure sustainable strategy.

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
If your marketing plan right now is all vibes and like a little thought in the back of your mind that's like, I should post more then same. Hi. Hello. Welcome to this episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast where we're talking about how to build a 2026 marketing plan. And no, it's not about posting more. It's about creating a marketing strategy that works for you and your real life. Something that's repeatable and flexible as your life shifts and change and frankly, as marketing shifts and changes. So we're going to get to all of that and more in today's episode.

Andréa Jones [00:00:33]:
But first, a word from our sponsor. 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 in 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 [00:01:12]:
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. All right, so I want to set the framework for this episode because I feel like it's very easy for those of us on marketing, especially social media marketing, to be focused on what's happening, what's trending, the things that are happening in the space around us. And it can be very, very easy to be reactive when it comes to marketing. And there is a time and a place to be reactive. One of my rules of thumb is that about 10 to 15% of your marketing strategy can be reactive.

Andréa Jones [00:01:59]:
And what I mean by that is topical content, content related to the state of the world, content related to an upcoming holiday, a campaign that you're sharing, that sort of thing. But we want our marketing to be founded and based on something that is a little bit more sturdy than the things that are trending. And so this is why a lot of my marketing strategies start with your pov, your unique perspective, your unique point of view. When it comes to marketing, I want to see, why does this matter to you and why should it matter to Me, when I see posts on social media, the ones that I share, the emails that I forward to a friend, the websites that I post in my discord group, those are all things where I go, oh, this is good. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I see myself in this. Oh, that's interesting. That's fascinating. That's cringy, that's hateful, that's insightful, that's, you know, destroying or distraught.

Andréa Jones [00:02:57]:
You know, all of these things that I'm feeling are feelings. And so the very foundation of your marketing is based on that heart to heart connection that you have with your community and you have with your people. So one of the questions that I want you to think about as you're developing your marketing strategy in 2026 is what is something that you believe about your industry, your space, your niche, that you're willing to say out loud? What are the things that you're saying that nobody else is saying? Okay, what are the things? So, for example, for me, I am not afraid to say things like I do scroll on TikTok, or I take my phone with me to the bathroom and poop scroll. Or sometimes I open up the app and I stare at that little blinking cursor going, what the heck am I even doing right here? What am I supposed to say today? Or how they pay 52 card pickup with where all the buttons are and I log in and everything looks different. Right? I. I can say all of those things because those are experiences I have. And I can say all of those things because they're probably experiences you have had. And it kind of sets the tone for anything that I'm talking about.

Andréa Jones [00:04:01]:
I am one of you. Okay? Yes. This is my job also. I know intimately how frustrating it can be. And so I'm, I'm willing to learn it on your behalf. So then you can then go out there and do it yourself. Okay? So that's your unique perspective, your unique point of view. Another way that you can frame this is thinking about your community values.

Andréa Jones [00:04:28]:
So what is something that your company values that your community also values? So, for example, y', all, here in my space, in my community, we have busy lives. So traditional marketing advice, it don't work for us. Right? Like the. I'm going to just say this, but those of you who fall into this category, please know I'm not talking to you specifically, I'm generalizing here, but the married white man. I'm sorry to all my married white men out there who don't behave like this, but there are married white Men, marketers who have lots of support that some of us don't have, they have privileges that some of us don't have. So as a working mom with two children, who has to support her family, who also has creative outlets, who also likes to go outside and touch grass, sometimes the traditional marketing advice doesn't work for me. Like, I always reference Gary Vee in these moments because Gary Vee love him. His strategies, they're not baseless.

Andréa Jones [00:05:30]:
He knows what he's talking about. And also, I do not have Gary V. Time. I do not have Gary Vee nannies. I do not have Gary Vee money. So the way that I spend my time on social media, it's a lot different than Gary V. I have, you know, five minutes before daycare pickup to do something in my marketing. And so sometimes that looks different than whatever he has going on.

Andréa Jones [00:05:52]:
And that's how I teach marketing, is that your unique perspective is important when it comes to relating to your audience, your community. Right? So the foundation of a marketing strategy is deeply understanding your unique perspective. The second piece to your marketing strategy in 2026 is creating your main attraction. Your main attraction. Okay. This is what I call Signature Content. Nine times out of 10, when a business owner comes to me and they say, andrea, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels on social media, it's oftentimes because they're doing too much. The most, if you will.

Andréa Jones [00:06:29]:
Y' all are on Instagram and Facebook and. And TikTok. You have an email list. You have a Facebook group, you have a podcast that you haven't posted to in a YouTube channel that's just getting no posts, no new updates. And you try to do all of that, and you do some here, some there, and you're like, none of this is really working. Okay? And that's because you're trying to treat them all equally. When your marketing content should have a hierarchy, a main attraction, the signature content piece is the one thing that you protect. It's the one thing that you do not miss.

Andréa Jones [00:07:03]:
So for me, that is my podcast. I don't miss podcast episodes. I cannot post on social media. I cannot send an email. I could Skip posting to YouTube. I could skip a lot of things, but my podcast has proven to me time and time again that it's the easiest for me to create and it's the easiest for you to consume. So it is like the chef's kiss joi of my marketing that other people don't have. You could take the same business model and have a business owner try to replicate my main attraction.

Andréa Jones [00:07:37]:
And it wouldn't work because my signature content works for me. You have to figure out the signature content that works for you. So consider a few things. Are you a talker or a writer? Or do you like visual content creation? Though if you can answer that question, that will help you determine what your signature content could be. If y' all couldn't guess. I'm a talker, okay? I like to talk through my thoughts. I like to share my concepts in a talk. It feels better for me to communicate this way versus writing.

Andréa Jones [00:08:06]:
I can write and I am a writer. However, talking is a lot faster for me. It's a lot more dynamic of a medium and I feel like I can show the levels of how I communicate much easier with talking. It's not that I can't write, I can. Just takes me a little bit longer. Do you prefer live content or pre recorded content? I have a client who thrives live, but the second it becomes prerecorded, she becomes stiff because she feels like she's not talking to anyone. She needs an audience. Me personally, I like prerecorded.

Andréa Jones [00:08:37]:
And this also fits into the season of my life. Currently, as I'm recording this, I have my oldest daughter homesick, and I'm shoving this in during a nap time, which she usually doesn't take, but she's sick, so we're taking advantage of it, right? So like, for me, prerecorded works best because I couldn't schedule this as a live, I would end up rescheduling it because I didn't know that my daughter would be sick home from daycare today. So prerecorded works for me. And then the other thing is I create my signature content, my main attraction, content as something that I can realistically keep going with as my life shifts and changes. So I've noticed since having kids that for me personally, my creativity comes a little bit more seasonally than it did before. I used to be pretty consistently creative, at least on a weekly basis. There may have been highs and lows within any given week, but I knew if I had to create content that week, even if one day I was feeling energetically low, I knew the next day I'd be feeling better. That has not been the case since having children, I'm finding my waves of creativity to be fleeting headbath sometimes.

Andréa Jones [00:09:43]:
And I am finding that I can have whole weeks where I'm like in a creative deficit due to the energy that's required to raise children. Okay. So for me, I have to be mindful of that. And that how that shows up for me is that my signature content is where all my energy goes. And then those weeks where I have more, I batch create other types of content. Okay, so what do we think about this strategy? Signature content? Hopefully you're getting, like, who relief from this. All right, now we're going to talk about what we do with the rest of everything. And I call this your supporting content.

Andréa Jones [00:10:23]:
If we think of this like a garden where, like, we've got our focal piece, right, Maybe it's like a nice, beautiful willow tree. And then the supporting content really fills out the garden, if you will. It's not necessary, but it adds flavor and context to what you're doing. And this is what I consider supporting content. Supporting content keeps people engaged, right? It points them back to that signature content piece. But, and this is an important and a big but with a capital B, it should not create all this extra work for you. So for me specifically, supporting content is my social media channels, okay? So when I post to social media, I post my podcast. You'll notice that Even going into 2026, I'm repurposing my podcast content even more than I ever have been.

Andréa Jones [00:11:13]:
Because y' all girl, raising a almost four year old and an almost two year old is a lot of work, okay? And so I need to repurpose the business out of my content, and so that's what I'm doing on social media. Same thing with my email marketing. I'm repurposing a lot of what I talk about in my program, in my membership into my email. Podcasts like this are getting turned into emails. Emails are getting turned into social media posts. If I'm out and about observing my day, those are now social media posts. I actually do not have the capacity to plan ahead on my social content like I used to because my life has changed and my business has evolved. Okay? So my supporting content fills in my garden beautifully.

Andréa Jones [00:11:57]:
I'm repurposing, repollinating all that beautiful content, and I'm doing it in the fastest way possible, which for me is getting my assistant to help shout out to Jammy. Jemmy is awesome. She keeps the trains running, but she is the reason that I can continue on with the work that I'm doing. Okay? All right, so that supporting content. Now I want to talk about your attraction strategy. And I'll go back to my garden analogy for this, because your attraction strategy to me are the bumblebees. There are pollinators. They bring more dynamic, more people into the garden.

Andréa Jones [00:12:36]:
They're like the promoters, right? You know, like when you go. I just remember this when I went to Las Vegas. Oh, gosh, this was like 17 years ago now. Anyways, went to Las Vegas with my girlfriends. We're having a blasty blast. But to get into clubs, there are literally these club promoters out on the streets saying, handing out flyers, saying, here, the club is over here. If they had not done that, we would not have gone to that club. So your posting is the club.

Andréa Jones [00:13:03]:
Okay? People won't know about the club if you don't tell them about the club, though. You need the promoters. The promoters tell people about the club. And so sometimes we think they're the same thing. Sometimes we think that just because the club is there, people will find it and they will love it. And that's not necessarily the case. We need the promoters to tell people about the club. So posting is not automatically an attraction strategy.

Andréa Jones [00:13:25]:
There is an exception that I will talk about about. The exception are certain placements, like Instagram Reels, TikToks, Facebook Reels. They are discovery engines, and they can find new people for you. But for your marketing ecosystem to work as a whole, generally speaking, we need some other attraction strategies. So I ask you, where do your people hang out? Where do they spend time? Go to there? Okay, so, for example, I like podcast guesting because I'm a talker. And honestly, I love a good Q and A moment. Throw me into any sort of Q and A moment. I'm a happy girl.

Andréa Jones [00:14:01]:
So for me, I could be on unlimited podcasts, essentially and be happy. Now, I will put the asterisk on that and say my time has been limited. And so this is actually probably the least that I've been on podcasts in the history of my business. However, that beautiful work is still running for me because podcasts are evergreen. I have people going back and listening to episodes from years ago and still finding me. So you're planting the seeds now. So to be able to coast when you need to, finding attraction strategy that's aligned and sustainable is the key here. Something that you're not dreading.

Andréa Jones [00:14:35]:
So, also me, I'm an introvert. People are surprised by this, but I've been saying lately that I'm a social introvert, meaning I like people. I like talking to people, just in small doses. I been hanging out with my friends a lot in person, which is nice. And then I go home and crash, and then I probably need like a day or two before I can like people again. That's just me. Even if I only Hung out with someone for an hour. I need like 24 hours before I can hang out with other people.

Andréa Jones [00:15:02]:
I just need to recharge. I'm not the friend who's like, let's hang out Friday, Saturday, Sunday. That's a no for me, dog. Okay, so think about the attraction strategy that works for you. I like asynchronous podcast guesting. I like DMing on social media, especially a voice. DM love it of networking events. I do them because I have to and because I know it works for me, but I could not do them maybe more than once or twice a month.

Andréa Jones [00:15:28]:
Okay, so something that you don't dread, but that works for you. Last two things I'll talk about on this topic. One is marketing metrics. This is the M word that nobody likes, but if you don't measure it, you can't fix it. Okay? And there's so many times where people come to me and they say, andrea, I feel like I should be doing better. And that's in air quotes for those of you who aren't on my YouTube channel and watching my videos. If you hear it, you hear the air quotes. I feel like this isn't working.

Andréa Jones [00:15:59]:
That's a feeling, not a fact. Okay, I'm saying this with some tough love. We need to actually track in a measurable way if things are working or not. I don't want you to spiral because you feel like it's not working. And typically when people say this, they're looking at followers and maybe comments. And that's it. And that's two of the five metrics that I teach when it comes to metrics that matter. We want to measure your social media success, your marketing success, in a fun, tangible way without feeling like you're not making progress.

Andréa Jones [00:16:32]:
And typically we choose metrics that match our goals. Hey, we're not obsessing over vanity metrics. So, for example, for me, right now, I'm not necessarily focused on community growth. I'm focused on community depth. So what does that mean? I'm actually tracking intangible metrics right now. Things like the quality of comments. Okay, I don't freaking care if I get a thumbs up emoji. But if someone says, omg, I saw your talk, I loved it.

Andréa Jones [00:16:59]:
I want more. Hello, that is a great comment. So for me, I go, that's a success comment. I don't want 10 thumbs up emojis. I want one person saying, I made an impact and a difference in their life. You see how that's different? Secondly, metrics that matter Generally, people are measuring the wrong thing. And so I want you to measure the right thing. And usually that has a lot to do with those intangible metrics.

Andréa Jones [00:17:24]:
The business owners that come to me that are burnt out typically aren't even considering intangible metrics. Like, was this fun for me? Did I have time to work? Did I like creating this? Did it give me the result that I was looking for? Like, we're just looking at followers and maybe comments and going, this didn't work. But if you were consistent and you got a client from it, who cares how many followers you got? Who cares how many comments you got? You got a client from it. That's actually what you wanted. So that's actually what we're going to track. All right. Last thing I'll talk about is energy, budget and seasonalities of all of this. And this is something that is brand new to my framework.

Andréa Jones [00:18:02]:
And so I'll take a moment here to invite you to join me for my Mindful Marketing Playground class. We'll be building out our marketing playbook for 2026. You can join me live for this three hour workshop on January 20th starting at 11:00 Eastern Time. Typically, these workshops are only available for the members of the Mindful Marketing Lab. However, the lab is not open right now, so the only way you can join this is if you buy a pass to the class. Okay. You can go to onlinedre.com playbook and get access to the class. It's a one time fee.

Andréa Jones [00:18:38]:
You'll get access to the three hour session and you'll also get access to our coworking session afterwards as well. You'll have the ability to get my eyeballs on your playbook as well as build it out for 2026. It comes with a workbook and the recording as well if you're not available to make it live. But one of the things that I've adjusted in 2025's workshop and in this year's workshop is the concept of an energy budget and having seasonality to your marketing. And this is something that I had to learn the hard way by having children. Now, I've taught this before in an abstract way because I've had clients that had seasonality in their businesses, but now I've lived it. Okay. So for example, there are some weeks where my energy is at a 2 all week long.

Andréa Jones [00:19:21]:
Those weeks I'm just doing the podcast. I literally don't have it in me to do anything else. That 2 out of 10 energy that I have go straight to the podcast, everything else. I actually have work to do. So that's what I'm going to do. Okay. The weeks where I have like 10 out of 10, I'm going for it. I have so much energy.

Andréa Jones [00:19:39]:
I batch create social media posts, I'm recording extra videos, I'm making my YouTube video that week because I only promised myself this year. I'm only make one a month and I'm finding new ways to repurpose and I'm getting ahead on my work. Okay. I used to be able to do that very consistently and then I had kids in my life, was like, ha ha ha ha ha, no. So what does that look like for you? And then also the seasonality of your business. So it's not just the seasonality of your life. So what's happening in your personal life, but there's a seasonality to business as well. Right now we're coming out of an economic depression, recession, downturn, A lot of businesses are hurting, but other businesses are thriving.

Andréa Jones [00:20:23]:
And so I also talk about the seasonalities of business. There's moments in your business where you're exp. Experimenting because it's time to change things up and try something new. There are moments in your business where you need consistency, doubling down on what you know works. There are moments in your business where you need to reap what you've sowed. You have. You're very busy, you're doing the work. And there are moments in your business where you need to rest, reflect and reset and focus in on analyzing what you need to experiment on next.

Andréa Jones [00:20:55]:
These are the seasons of business that are necessary for you to go through. And I wish I could tell you that it's the same for everyone. But some of you go through all of these in one month. Some of you go through them in a calendar year. Some of you take a couple of years to go through all of these. So it's not a one size fits all thing. But recognizing that you have a seasonality to your life and your business is key to actually figuring out what a marketing strategy looks like for you and, and actually carving out space to experiment because you, you actually have to as a leader and a business owner. So with that in mind, I hope this gave you a lot to think about for your 2026 marketing plan.

Andréa Jones [00:21:31]:
Join me for the Playbook workshop. I like to call these workshops too, because I always make a joke. It's not a watch shop, it's not a webinar. It's a workshop. We're actually working on stuff together. It's interactive. There's Q&As, there's homework. I have a workbook.

Andréa Jones [00:21:46]:
You get the recording after, so come on in and join us. It's $97 for that three hour session, plus you get the CO working after. I'll see you then. And I'll see you in our next episode. Make sure you rate and review us on Apple podcasts. And Spotify helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. And that's all because of your support. I'll see you next week with a new episode.

Andréa Jones [00:22:04]:
Bye for now.