20 Digital Marketing Trends Every Marketer Should Follow in 2026

If you want your business to stay savvy in the realm of marketing, then you should always keep up with the latest and greatest digital marketing trends. That way, your business will stay up to date and one step ahead of the competition.

So, are you ready to catch a glimpse of the top digital marketing trends in 2026?

In this article, you will uncover the most influential digital marketing trends in 2026 so you can spend less time researching and more time strategizing for the new year.

1. Invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Influencer Marketing

According to a recent Precedence Research Study, the global usage of AI in marketing is expected to be valued at $32.73 billion in 2026 and $217.33 billion by 2034.

Amongst the most popular AI trends for 2026, many brands are integrating algorithms and machine learning techniques into marketing strategies. These AI tools help with predictive analysis, offering highly personalized data and engagement opportunities. For example, AI for videos is currently on the rise because it helps marketers predict consumer trends without having to do it all by hand.  This results in higher conversion rates and purchases, with 75% of consumers being more likely to purchase from brands that deliver personalized content.

2. Add a Conversational Chatbot to Your Website

It is no secret that chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in the digital world. 63% of teens say they use chatbots, including about three in 10 who do so daily, according to a Pew Research Center study. The question is, will your company stay updated with the new generation, or fall behind?

However, chatbots are often easily perceived as robots to the user and can leave the conversation feeling a little ‘fake.’ Therefore, a must-follow digital marketing trend in 2026 is the addition of a more robust, human-like, conversational chatbot.

The perfect example of a conversational customer service chatbot is the one used by Amazon. For example, when a user clicks the “Get Help” button on an Amazon order, a friendly and engaging “Seller Messaging Assistant” chatbox will offer quick, easy-to-follow help.

When you utilize a chatbot like Amazon Lex and HappyFox Chatbot, you can mimic human conversations that rouse positive, friendly emotions. Doing so makes it feel like the user is actually talking to a person. This increases customer interaction, satisfaction, and overall experience.

3. Don’t Ignore Upcoming Platforms

Americans spend an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes on their phones per day, making it an opportunity to connect with potential customers and clients. We all know Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, but it’s important to stay relevant on other upcoming platforms.

For example, BlueSky, created by X’s previous founder, Jack Dorsey, has over 20 million users. Meta’s Threads, which also functions similarly to X, has more than 400 million users. In January 2026, Threads announced global availability of ads.

Advantages of Upcoming Platforms

Marketers who embrace emerging social platforms like Bluesky and Threads gain a valuable first-mover advantage, allowing them to build authority and visibility before these channels become saturated. Early adoption enables brands to shape authentic communities, test content strategies with lower competition, and achieve higher organic reach at reduced costs.

As these platforms refine their algorithms and user bases expand, marketers already established there are better positioned to capture attention, drive engagement, and future-proof their digital marketing strategies.

4. Create Non-Disruptive Ads through Native Advertising

Have you ever tried to watch a video on social media and have your content interrupted several times by ads? It is frustrating and detrimental to some businesses’ success. Deloitte and Google  AdMob ran a survey on gamers, finding repetitive disruptive ads caused 52% of respondents to quit their game entirely. The same study found that frequent gamers are three times more likely to extend sessions and make purchases after positive ad experiences.

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Unfortunately, the one trend that you do NOT want to follow in 2026 is having your ads blocked by ad blockers because consumers found them to be disruptive. Instead, it’s time to follow a new trend: native advertising.

Simply put, native advertising is a form of digital advertising where the ad is non-disruptive to the consumer. This is because it seamlessly flows with the content and design of the web page that it is published on. The ad is so disguised that consumers have a hard time distinguishing native ads from the content itself, making it blend in perfectly with its surroundings.

5. Prioritize Mobile-Friendly Content

In today’s digital world, smartphones and tablets are used for everything. Over 96% of the global population accessed the internet through their smartphones.

One thing is for certain: it is more important than ever to implement a mobile-first marketing strategy. Mobile-friendly websites and content are vital if you want to continue to increase your rank in search engines in 2026.

For starters, your website should be optimized to automatically adjust for a smartphone screen. Next, you need to make sure smartphone users can easily access all of the content on your website, just as they can through a laptop or desktop. Finally, you can even add accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to make your load speeds faster for smartphones.

6. Collect and Analyze First-Party Data

One of the biggest digital marketing trends in 2026 that you can expect to see is the cessation of use of third-party cookies. Many users are happy to say “good riddance” to cookies because it means stronger privacy protection.

Shift to First-Party Data

Due to this grand shift, you can expect a trend to form around the collection of first-party data. For starters, first-party data encompasses all of the data that is collected and stored in the software that your business owns. For instance, data may include:

• Purchase history
• Consumer behavior
• Digital interactions
• Product preferences

First-party data is extremely important to collect in the marketing world because it comes straight from the source of origin: your business’s very own software and systems. It highlights actual interactions your customers have had with your company.

With that being said, you will want to develop a strong analytic strategy (which may include useful tools like Google Analytics and Google’s Privacy Sandbox) to help you harness as much first-party data from your website as possible.

7. Optimize Your Content for Alternative Search Engines

Speaking of privacy, there has also been a recent shift to alternative search engines that protect user search intent like DuckDuckGo.

In fact, DuckDuckGo’s tagline is “Privacy, simplified”. They claim to protect your information by providing ads based on your current search rather than your search history:

“​​We make our money from private ads on our search engine. On other search engines, ads are based on profiles compiled about you using your personal information, such as search, browsing, and purchase history. Since we don’t collect that information, search ads on DuckDuckGo are based on the search results page you are viewing, not on you as a person.”

With an influx of privacy-conscious users and a direction change towards alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Baidu, marketers should take their audience into consideration and optimize their content for other search engines.

8. Local SEO is the Way to Go

Localized SEO is and has been an integral part of the success of businesses around the world. In particular, if you operate a brick-and-mortar business, you definitely need to ensure all of your information is properly loaded into your Google My Business profile.

This will instantly tell your potential customers who you are. They can access the following at a glance:

• Hours of operation
• Location
• Website
• Pricing
• Product images
• Google reviews

Not to mention, this type of publicity will also boost your SEO and help your business rank on localized searches.

9. Obtain More Online Reviews

This next trend goes hand in hand with your localized SEO efforts and is a must-have if you want to score extra SEO points.

To really stand out as a business online in 2026, it is imperative that you have online reviews and testimonials to back up your products, services, and claims. In particular, you should strive to obtain star ratings and reviews on your Google profile. This promotes your business as credible and trustworthy in the public eye.

Incorporate a goal to receive reviews in your marketing strategy so you can continue to boost your local SEO.

10. Get to Know the Changes Coming to WhatsApp

WhatsApp has over 3 billion active users worldwide, making it one of the most used social messaging apps out there. Many businesses, like Adidas and Abercrombie & Fitch, use the app to communicate effectively with their team and clients!

With that being said, there are some exciting new features coming to WhatsApp in 2026. For instance, some new changes include:

• Web Voice Calls (Allows you to place calls without installing a desktop app)
• Web Group Calls (Could support up to 2 participants)
• Message Sharing (Can view messages shared before the participant was added to the group)

If you use WhatsApp for your business, you can definitely take advantage of these new modifications and improvements in the coming year.

11. Implement Schema to Boost Visibility

Schema markup is like giving search engines a backstage pass to your content and telling them exactly what matters. When you use schema, your pages can light up the SERP with rich results like FAQs, reviews, and product highlights that grab attention and earn more clicks. Pages with proper schema achieve 20-82% higher click-through rates and see a jump from 0% to 40% visibility in AI Overview within weeks, according to data from Schema App. Note that it’s important to check your schema for errors through tools like Validator Schema before publishing to avoid website issues.

It also helps AI-powered search engines quickly understand your brand, which increases your chances of being featured in AI answers and summaries. The payoff is better visibility, higher click-through rates, and less dependence on traditional rankings. As search gets smarter, schema becomes your secret weapon for standing out. In 2026, the brands winning search aren’t louder, they’re better labeled.

12. Explore AI Max

AI Max is Google’s cutting-edge AI enhancement for Search campaigns in Google Ads, designed to help marketers capture more relevant demand with smarter targeting, dynamic creatives, and automated landing page selection. It officially began rolling out in May 2025, initially in beta, and became broadly available to advertisers by early Q3 2025.

Unlike earlier automation tools, AI Max combines expanded search term matching with real-time creative and URL optimization so your ads can show for intent-rich queries you might not have explicitly targeted.

Because it layers on top of existing Search campaigns rather than forcing a new campaign type, marketers can keep control while benefiting from AI-driven reach and efficiency.

13. Stay Updated with Trending Content

Scroll TikTok and Instagram reels to see what resonates with audiences. For example, nostalgia-driven marketing is considered to be a high driver for 2026. In January, trends reminising 2026 took over the app. BBC reported that TikTok searches for “2016” surged by 452% within one week, and more than 55 million videos have been created using the app’s filter named after the year

Staying updated with trending content keeps your brand relevant, visible, and aligned with what your audience actually cares about right now. Search engines and social platforms reward freshness, meaning timely content has a higher chance of earning visibility, engagement, and shares. Trending topics also fuel stronger performance in AI-driven discovery, since models prioritize current, widely discussed themes when generating answers. Brands that move quickly can capture attention before the space becomes saturated, positioning themselves as leaders rather than followers. In 2026, winning digital marketing isn’t just about being evergreen; it’s about knowing when to join the conversation while it still matters.

14. Rank in Position Zero

In 2026, the best marketing trends are increasingly focused on optimizing content for AI Overviews, where search engines synthesize answers instead of simply ranking links. To get content pulled into AI Overviews, marketers must prioritize clear entity-based writing, concise answers, first-hand insights, and structured formatting (headings, bullet points, definitions) that AI systems can easily parse and trust.

This approach differs from a traditional featured snippet, which pulls a single excerpt from one page—AI Overviews now aggregate, summarize, and cross-reference multiple authoritative sources. Featured snippets aren’t entirely a thing of the past, but their visibility and click-through value are declining as AI Overviews dominate the top of the SERP. Winning in 2026 means shifting from “ranking a page” to training AI models to recognize your brand as a reliable source of truth.

15. Voice Activation is the Way of the Future

In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that there are over 80 million Alexa users. Worldwide, about 8.4 billion voice assistants are in use, showcasing just how popular voice-activated digital assistants have become in recent years.

Voice search is rapidly becoming an integral part of people’s daily routines, which means you might want to consider optimizing your content for voice-activated searches in 2026.

Optimize for Voice Searches

One way to optimize content for voice search is to choose long-tail keywords that relate to common questions that people may ask their voice assistants.

Furthermore, it is useful to note that the average voice search result is between 25 and 30 words long because Google prefers quick and concise answers to questions. However, the results are often cherry-picked from long-form content that is above 2,000 words in length.

“Alexa, add this trend to my digital marketing strategy in 2026!”

16. Engage Your Audience with Gamification

It’s no secret that VR, AR, and online gaming have increased in popularity. So, why not incorporate these engaging features into your digital marketing strategy?

This concept is known as gamification. This captivating digital marketing trend is used to increase user experience, interaction, engagement, and even customer loyalty through the form of games.

For example, a business can incorporate a “spin-the-wheel” game on its website that will offer first-time visitors a promotion or discount if they choose to play. Not only does gamification tap into the user’s emotions, but it also provides a new and exciting avenue to offer incentives, promotions, and other information.

17. Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)

You already know how valuable reviews and testimonials submitted by your users can be for your brand awareness. Along these same lines, all forms of user-generated content, or UGC, are extremely beneficial to businesses.

Think of it like word-of-mouth. The more people like your brand, the more willing they will be to tell their friends about it. When it comes to UGC, it’s the same concept – but in a digital form instead!

UGC can range from online reviews, videos of people using your product, images posted by users on their own social media accounts, etc.

For instance, if you own a clothing boutique, a fan of your clothes might post a photo of themselves wearing a new dress that they bought from your shop and then hashtag or @ the name of your business in the comments section. This will provide you with free, organic, and positive advertising!

The more you can encourage and harness the power of UGC in 2026, the better brand awareness you will receive.

18. Go Green with Green Marketing

Green marketing, or eco-marketing, is a marketing strategy that centers a portion of, if not all, advertising around environmental sustainability. For instance, green marketing can promote sustainable manufacturing or the use of recycled and renewable materials in products.

As greater importance on sustainability, climate change, and environmental sensitivity is sweeping across the globe in 2026, consumers are placing a higher value on environmentally-friendly practices. In fact, according to a Northwind Climate and Ceres study, two-thirds of Americans say they’re willing to pay more for products that are made with sustainable or environmentally friendly materials.

19. Utilize Google Lens for Image Search

Voice searches aren’t the only revolutionary type of search people are going to be using more in 2026. Image search is also growing in popularity.

For starters, ​​Google Lens is an image search engine created by Google that can recognize and then search objects found through your camera app. A great example of this is when you hover your camera over a barcode on a product, and a link pops up that will direct you to the product online.

In 2026, Google Lens will let users look up landmarks, buildings, paintings, books, plants, animals, products, events, and so much more – all through a photo captured by your camera. It’s always a good idea to make sure your products and promotional materials are compatible with these modern forms of searches, so you can keep up with the trend as well.

20. Consider a Top Tier Digital Marketing Agency

As you enter 2026, you might be overwhelmed by all of the new technological advances that are coming your way. You might even be asking yourself, “How on earth am I going to set up my digital marketing strategy to take advantage of all of these new opportunities? Which ones should I focus on?”

This is where a digital marketing agency comes into play.

Year after year, you research the newest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) regulations, the top social media trends, the most recent automation systems, and the list goes on. However, when you have a skilled digital marketing agency on your side, they will do all of the hard work for you!

And the best part? Digital marketing agencies are equipped with an entire team of content creators, copywriters, SEO strategists, web designers, and industry experts. That way, your business will always stay up-to-date and follow the best digital marketing trends in 2026.

Partner with an Award-Winning Agency in 2026

When you choose to partner with a top agency like Chatter Buzz Media, we will help you develop a solid digital marketing strategy that will help your business keep up with the latest and greatest trends coming your way in 2026.

Contact us to learn how our team of digital marketing experts can propel you into the future of content marketing!