2026 Marketing Predictions: 5 Trends That Matter for Small Businesses (and What to Do About Them)

The internet is noisier and more crowded than ever — and a lot less human than you’d expect. Bots have always been part of the web, but they’re no longer just search engines crawling your pages. With the rise of AI, bots that scrape sites to train language models have become far more common.

In fact, cybersecurity company Imperva reports that bot traffic now accounts for over 50% of all web traffic — meaning more than half of what looks like “visitors” might not be human. And in its antitrust trial, even Google admitted that its new AI Overviews have increased U.S. search queries by 1.5 to 2 percent. In other words: some of the “growth” we’re seeing in search volume isn’t from more people searching — it’s from AI building the search overviews.

If you’re a coach, consultant, or small business owner, this isn’t just tech trivia to file away for your next game night. It’s a reality that shows up in your numbers. Maybe your GA4 traffic dipped after the switch. Maybe your email list filled up with addresses — but some of them turned out to be spam or fake subscribers. Maybe your social posts get engagement, but not clients.

This doesn’t mean your business is broken. It means the rules of what winning looks like are shifting.

And here’s the good news: 2026 won’t reward the loudest marketers with the highest output. It will reward the ones who know how to find the signals that prove real humans are listening.

Because at the end of the day, data isn’t a scorecard — it’s a signal.

In this post, I’ll share five predictions for 2026. Not vague industry trends full of technobabble, but what actually matters if you’re a coach, consultant, or small business owner trying to build something sustainable in the middle of all this noise.

Prediction #1 – Traffic ≠ Trust/Sales

The Trend

Surface-level traffic numbers have always been shaky, but they’re getting worse. Bots can inflate pageviews, comments, and even form signups. Meanwhile, shifts in how analytics platforms count visitors can make your numbers appear to crash or spike overnight.

We saw this clearly when Google Analytics 4 replaced Universal Analytics. Many business owners thought their traffic had collapsed. In reality, GA4 was just more accurate — it stopped counting the same person across multiple devices as separate visitors. What looked like “less traffic” was simply a truer picture of reality of the multi-device ecosystem that exists now.

Google’s ad systems already use AI and machine learning to actively detect invalid traffic; as these systems improve, general traffic counts will likely reflect more real humans and fewer bots.

That doesn’t mean your marketing is failing — it means the measurement is finally catching up to give you a better idea of the real people coming to visit your site.

This is why knowing how your analytics tool counts users matters now more than ever. And it’s why smart business owners focus less on absolute numbers and more on patterns and trends over time. Because those patterns are the signals that show you what’s really happening — even when the numbers themselves shift.

Why It Matters

You don’t run a business to collect pageviews; you run it to connect with humans who eventually buy from you. Counting clicks or visits without context is like counting people who walked past your shop window — it doesn’t tell you who came inside, who tried something on, or who made a purchase.

The Daily Reality

This is where so many coaches and consultants get stuck. You’re told to measure likes, comments, or total visits — but if those numbers are padded with bots, they don’t tell you anything useful or can make your numbers look worse than the “industry standard” that’s likely five years old (or more) so you constantly feel stuck or overwhelmed.

If you’re a coach running Facebook ads, you might see reach numbers in the thousands. But if only a handful of people actually click through and book calls, that’s not traffic that matters.

If you’re a consultant blogging weekly, 1,000 site visits doesn’t mean 1,000 prospects. It might mean 700 bots, 250 casual readers, and 50 potential clients — and your job is to know which is which.

That’s where my ACT Framework™ (Awareness, Consideration, Transaction) comes in. Most metrics stop at counting traffic. ACT forces you to look deeper:

• Awareness — Who’s showing up?
• Consideration — Who’s engaging with your content?
• Transaction — Who’s actually converting?

When you measure this way, you can separate real humans from noise.

What to Do in 2026

Benchmark against what’s normal for you. Don’t panic if GA4 numbers suddenly dip (or whatever platform you use). You probably saw this when GA4 replaced Universal Analytics: one person on four devices used to be counted as four people. Smaller numbers often mean cleaner numbers.

Track behaviors that prove humans are on the other side. Page scrolls, form completions, repeat visits, clicks on specific CTAs — those are often signals AI scraping can’t fake in the same way (or it leaves easily cleaned up evidence behind, more on this below).

Use benchmarks as a living guide. Revisit them annually (or sooner if you’re building up your benchmarks). Adjust your “normal” as your ecosystem matures, instead of comparing yourself to arbitrary industry averages over your reality.

Takeaway

In 2026, growth won’t come from chasing more traffic. It will come from stewarding the signals that prove a real person moved closer to working with you — and designing your system to measure those signals across the full journey.

If your GA4 numbers dip, don’t panic. Smaller doesn’t mean worse — it often means cleaner. And if your reach looks impressive but sales aren’t moving, that’s a signal to dig deeper into your ACT journey.

Because at the end of the day, you don’t need more noise. You need more humans. And data isn’t a scorecard — it’s signals you can follow to understand the human behavior on the other side of the screen.

Prediction #2 – Beyond SEO — Why Presence Matters More Than Clicks

The Trend

Google’s AI Overviews are reshaping search. Instead of ten blue links, people now get a synthesized answer at the top of the page — sometimes without ever needing to click through. At the same time, Google’s long-standing 7–11–4 rule still applies: it often takes 7 hours of exposure, 11 touchpoints, and 4 different locations before someone is ready to buy.

That’s why Google has kept expanding the types of results it shows — videos, FAQs, maps, shopping results, snippets in addition to the AI Overviews. And why the industry keeps coining new acronyms to market what is ultimately based on core traditional SEO practices: AIO (AI Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), “Search Everywhere Optimization.”

The truth? They all point to the same thing: make your ideas easy to find, easy to reference, and worth repeating across channels and formats.

Why It Matters

Search isn’t just about clicks anymore. It’s about presence and earned placement as someone whose authority Google trusts enough to include it in one of the search display options. Your content might show up in a snippet, a video carousel, or even cited in an AI-generated answer. People might feel like they “know” you before they’ve ever landed on your site.

The Daily Reality

You can’t control if someone clicks. But you can increase your odds of being seen and trusted:

• If there are video results for something highly relevant to your business, make a video targeting ranking for those terms.
• If FAQs are showing, answer them clearly on your site and use the FAQ data markup (or ask your web developer to get it set up for you if your SEO plugin doesn’t provide this option).
• Publish content that’s quotable, original, and easy for AI to cite.
• Decide whether you want to block or allow AI bots from crawling or training on your site. If you block them, you protect your IP but lose citation opportunities. If you allow them, you may get fewer clicks, but more visibility.

Additional context to help you make the right choice for you about allowing/not allowing AI crawling on your site:

AI models don’t usually pass off your work as their own — but they also don’t consistently give credit. Google’s Gemini is the most citation-friendly right now, while others like GPT and Claude only cite when specifically asked or when browsing.

That means the real question is: do you want your content discoverable in those AI-driven touchpoints, or would you rather protect it from being ingested at all? Blocking AI crawlers keeps your IP better protected but limits your visibility. Allowing them increases your chances of being cited — but also increases the risk that your frameworks show up paraphrased without your name attached.

There isn’t one “right” choice here. It comes down to where your value lies: the uniqueness of your ideas, or the way you deliver them.

For coaches and consultants, this is what “search everywhere” really means: don’t chase every acronym worried you’re not doing enough. Focus on being visible in the places where your best-fit clients are actually looking — and show up in multiple formats so they encounter you across those 7–11–4 touchpoints.

What to Do in 2026

Design for multi-format visibility. Don’t just write — create videos, audio from those videos, FAQs, and content that’s quotable and consumable in multiple formats.

Make your ideas citation-worthy. AI doesn’t invent credibility; it borrows it. Publish content that proves your depth of expertise and originality.

Balance AI crawling trade-offs. Decide if your strategy is about visibility (allow) or IP protection (block).

Remember the long game. Exposure without a click throughs still moves someone closer to knowing, liking, and trusting you.

Takeaway

In 2026, SEO isn’t just about ranking. It’s about presence. The coaches and consultants who thrive won’t obsess over acronyms — they’ll focus on making their ideas visible, findable, and referenceable across multiple touchpoints. Your job isn’t just to chase clicks. It’s to be seen, cited, and trusted long before the click happens.

Prediction #3 – Build Communities, Not Chase Vanity Metrics

The Trend

One of the longest-running myths in online business is that bigger is always better. Grow a giant list. Rack up tens of thousands of followers. Chase page view milestones. But here’s the truth: size alone has never guaranteed sales.

A bloated list of 5,000 disengaged subscribers can drag down your deliverability and drain your energy. Meanwhile, a curated list of 200 engaged, best-fit people can sustain a thriving business.

In 2026, the businesses that win won’t be the ones flexing the biggest numbers. They’ll be the ones intentionally curating and nurturing communities of people who actually belong there.

Why It Matters

A bloated list isn’t just inefficient — it’s risky. Every disengaged subscriber drags down your deliverability, because inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook watch how people interact with your emails. If too many ignore or delete them, your future messages are more likely to land in spam or the promotions tab. That means the real humans who do want to hear from you might never see you at all.

And then there’s the stewardship angle. Most email platforms charge based on list size or send volume. Keeping thousands of names that never open or click means you’re paying to store and email people who aren’t listening. That’s not growth — that’s waste.

By curating a community of people who actually engage, you protect deliverability as an asset and steward your resources wisely. It’s not about chasing the biggest audience — it’s about making sure the right people get your best energy, attention, and ideas.

The Daily Reality

I learned this the hard way when one of my opt-in forms was hit by a wave of bots. Within weeks, my open and click-through rates plummeted. When I looked closer, I found email addresses with random strings of numbers and joke names like “Bill Gates” and “Mickey Mouse.”

Those subscribers weren’t just useless — they were actively hurting me. They made my list look bigger while dragging down engagement, damaging deliverability signals, costing me money, and obscuring the real signals from the humans who actually cared.

Cleaning my list, setting up automations to flag suspicious signups, and regularly pruning cold subscribers brought my deliverability and email engagement levels back up. More importantly, it restored my ability to see and serve the humans who actually wanted to hear from me.

And you don’t have to wait for a bot attack to take action. Beyond cleaning fake signups, there are simple ways to keep your deliverability strong:

• Authenticate your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) so inbox providers know your emails are legitimate.
• Segment your list so your most engaged subscribers hear from you most often.
• Make unsubscribing easy, so people who aren’t a fit quietly step out instead of dragging your engagement down.
• Keep your promises. Align your subject lines and content with what people signed up for (i.e. not clickbait), so your emails remain relevant and welcome.

What to Do in 2026

Focus on engaged humans, not raw numbers. A list of 500 that’s 80% engaged beats a bloated list of 5,000 where only a handful care.

Practice email hygiene. Use automations to flag or filter suspicious signups, and regularly remove cold subscribers to keep deliverability strong.

Don’t fear “small.” The right 200 humans can build a thriving, profitable business.

Measure engagement over size. Treat your audience as a community, not a vanity metric. Track who opens, clicks, and takes the next step — not just how many names you have on a list.

Takeaway

In 2026, the businesses that thrive won’t be the biggest. They’ll be the ones that are small but mighty — honing their lists, stewarding real human relationships, and protecting deliverability as an asset. Because in a world full of inflated vanity metrics, quality will always carry further than size.

Prediction #4 – Original, Sustainably Created Content Will Stand Out in a World with AI

The Trend

AI has lowered the barrier to flooding the internet with content — but it hasn’t raised the quality. Fake experts are churning out “PDF farms” and low-value courses they barely understand themselves. One of the fastest-growing schemes right now is Master Resell Rights (MRR): you buy the right to resell someone else’s course, then make money convincing others to do the same. The only person who truly wins is the original creator, while the market gets flooded with identical content promoted by people without the depth to deliver real value.

I’ve seen it firsthand. A few years ago, I was hit with five different ads — from five different people — all selling the exact same iPhone photography course. Same course. Same ad script and video. Same graphics. It left me wondering: who among them actually had the credibility and expertise to teach photography or support their students? The truth was, none of them had likely created the course at all. They’d simply bought the rights and were pushing it as if they did. That’s what these schemes look like in the wild: a flood of sameness that erodes trust and makes real expertise harder to spot.

In 2026, the challenge isn’t how to keep up with the flood — it’s how to rise above it. Your best-fit clients and customers have seen “miracle offers” before. They’ve bought the digital product that overpromised and underdelivered, and now they’re more cautious and harder to win over. The way forward isn’t more consistency for its own sake — it’s showing up with content that carries your originality and fits your real capacity. That’s what earns trust in a skeptical market.

Why It Matters

Your best-fit clients are coming into 2026 more skeptical than ever. They’ve been burned by surface-level products and promises that didn’t deliver. They’ve seen the same course or similar ebook promoted by dozens of “experts” who all sound the same.

That skepticism has consequences. It means that slick funnels and relentless posting won’t carry the same weight they once did. What cuts through now is content with depth, that enables discernment, and showcases originality. And the only way to keep producing that kind of work long-term is to pace yourself according to your real capacity.

Because the truth is, burnout kills more businesses than obscurity ever will. Bots don’t get tired, but humans do — and your staying power comes from aligning your marketing with what you can actually sustain.

The Daily Reality

I’ve seen this in my own rhythms as I’ve learned to work with my brain and body. Some days, I have the energy and bandwidth to create a lot — like the time I drafted and published three blog posts and started a fourth in one sitting. Other weeks, I don’t. And that’s the point: I don’t force myself into daily output just to appease an algorithm by posting for the sake of posting.

Instead, I focus on creating long-form, high-quality assets when I have the capacity. Those pieces keep working long after they’re published — showing up in search results, building topical authority, and feeding my ecosystem in a way focusing on social posting.

That’s the opposite of what I saw in those iPhone course ads. Flooding the internet with sameness doesn’t build trust; it makes buyers more skeptical. What builds trust is showing up with work that carries your fingerprint — even if it’s less frequent.

What to Do in 2026

Invest in originality. Don’t just repeat what’s already out there. Publish perspectives, frameworks, and stories that reflect your lived expertise.

Align with your capacity. Work in bursts when energy allows, and focus on long-form assets that keep working even when you’re offline.

Resist the churn. Don’t fall into the trap of “daily consistency” if it burns you out. Sustainable rhythms that produce quality content beat forced output.

Earn trust through depth. Your audience has been burned before. The way to win them isn’t with hype — it’s with substance and staying power.

Takeaway

In 2026, you won’t beat the flood of AI-generated sameness by trying to outproduce it. You’ll beat it by being human: original, thoughtful, and sustainable. Capacity trumps fake consistency, and quality earns trust where empty promises have eroded it.

Prediction #5 – Marketing Measurement Is The Thing That Makes This Work

The Trend

As analytics, ad platforms, and AI evolve, surface numbers will keep shifting. GA4 consolidated people across devices and filters more known bots, so many sites saw “lower” numbers — but truer ones. AI Overviews add touchpoints that don’t always produce clicks. Email providers lean harder on engagement to decide inbox vs. spam. In 2026, the businesses that move confidently won’t be the ones with the most traffic — they’ll be the ones with the clearest signals.

Why It Matters

Everything we’ve talked about so far depends on one thing: your ability to see what’s actually happening.

When I said traffic ≠ trust ≠ sales in Prediction #1, measurement is what lets you separate the human behavior from the bot noise inside your marketing ecosystem. That’s the whole point of my ACT Framework (Awareness, Consideration, Transaction). Most metrics stop at raw traffic, but ACT forces you to measure the real signals: who’s showing up, who’s actually engaging, and who’s moving toward a purchase. Without that lens, inflated traffic looks like growth when it’s really just noise.

When I said presence in search results matters more than clicks in Prediction #2, measurement is how you recognize the value of impressions, citations, and multi-format touchpoints that warm people up before they ever land on your site. The more consistently you show up in their world, the more trust you’re building subconsciously. That’s the essence of Google’s 7–11–4 rule: it often takes 7 hours of exposure, 11 touchpoints, and 4 different locations before someone is ready to buy.

In other words, 7–11–4 is just another way of describing your marketing ecosystem. With the right measurement systems in place, you can see which content assets are actually doing that work — which ones are showing up across formats, which ones are earning citations, and which channels are pulling the most weight. That’s how you stop guessing where to show up and start focusing on the touchpoints that move people through your ecosystem.

When I said build communities, not chase vanity metrics in Prediction #3, measurement is how you listen to the other half of the conversation with your list — even when people aren’t hitting reply. Open rates, clicks, and unsubscribes are all signals of how your community is responding, and they help you keep your deliverability strong so the people who do want to hear from you keep getting the chance.

Prediction #4 was about creating original content at a pace you can sustain. Measurement is what tells you which pieces keep compounding — so you don’t burn out on the social media hamster wheel. That’s where my ARC framework (Amplify, Revise, Cut) comes in. With clear signals, you can amplify the assets that are gaining traction, revise the ones that are close, and cut the ones that aren’t serving you. Pair that with a Repurposing Rubric, and you’ll know exactly which high-performing pieces are worth spinning into other formats — giving you consistency without forcing constant creation.

Every thread in this series ties back here. Measurement is the piece most people don’t talk about — but it’s the one that makes sense of the chaos. It’s what turns surface numbers into real insight, so you spend less time second-guessing and more time focusing on the work that actually connects with real people.

The Daily Reality

For most small business owners, measurement is the part that gets pushed to the back burner (if it’s even on your radar at all). You post content, run ads, or send emails — and then check whether the numbers “feel good” or “look right”. But without context, those numbers can be misleading.

I’ve seen this play out countless times with clients. A campaign looks like it’s working because reach is high, but when we dig in, the clicks don’t translate to calls. Or someone panics because their traffic “dropped” in GA4, when in reality it was just filtering out bots or consolidating multiple devices into one user, providing a more realistic picture of the people actually coming to their site. On the flip side, I’ve had clients realize that the small handful of blog posts or podcast episodes they created months ago are still quietly pulling in qualified leads — because the measurement made it visible.

This is where benchmarks change everything. When you know what’s normal for you, you stop chasing arbitrary industry averages that could be 5–10 years old — long before AI Overviews, bot filters, and today’s realities. Benchmarks make your work motivating instead of discouraging, because they give you a clear baseline to improve against. They help you leverage the assets you’ve already created and the signals your audience is already giving you, instead of jumping to the next bizfluencer program that promises to be the silver bullet.

Imagine you’re a consultant debating whether to jump on TikTok because “everyone” says it’s the fastest way to grow on social. When you look at your own benchmarks, it turns out your blog posts are consistently drawing in qualified traffic (i.e. leads and buyers) from search, and your email list is also converting at a healthy rate. By seeing what’s normal for you, it becomes clear that doubling down on blog content and list growth will deliver far more than chasing a new platform from scratch. Benchmarks give you clarity to invest in what’s working — not just what’s trendy.

With the right benchmarks, you can filter any new strategy, trending tactic, or shiny platform against what’s actually working for you. That means less guessing, less wasted energy, and more confidence that your marketing ecosystem is growing in the right direction. (And if you’re in a season of Scaling or Momentum, a choice you could be making could be whether or not to expand your platform presence, in which case you can use your data from the others to inform what you bring to the new one.)

Measurement isn’t about dashboards and vanity charts. It’s about noticing the patterns that show you where real people are leaning in, and using that clarity to decide what to amplify, where to cut back, and how to steward your energy wisely. It’s not about having data for data’s sake, but having the data you need to act with confidence.

What to Do in 2026

Define your human signals. Pick 3–7 actions you can measure that prove a person — not a bot — is on the other side. Things like form completions, repeat visits, replies, calendar bookings, or purchases.

Map your journey. Use a framework like ACT (Awareness, Consideration, Transaction) to identify 1–3 measurable signals at each stage. This makes it clear where people are moving forward — and where they’re stalling out.

Benchmark against yourself. Stop chasing outdated industry averages. Establish what’s normal for you right now, and revisit those benchmarks quarterly (or more often if you’re growing quickly).

Filter new tactics through your data. When a new platform, tool, or strategy pops up, ask: does this support or distract from what’s already working in my ecosystem? Use your benchmarks as the filter.

Tighten your data hygiene. Add simple guardrails like bot filters on forms, list-cleaning automations, and authenticated domains for email. Protecting your signals keeps your data trustworthy.

Use ARC to prioritize. Once you see the signals clearly, you can Amplify the assets that are working, Revise the ones that are close, and Cut the ones that drain energy without producing results.

Repurpose strategically. Apply a Repurposing Rubric to stretch high-performing content into new formats (turn a blog post into a video, a video into an email series, etc.). This keeps you visible without requiring constant creation.

Forecast forward. Turn your benchmarks into a simple forecast: if you usually convert 5% of consult calls, then you know how many calls you need to hit your revenue goals. Forecasts give you a map instead of a rearview mirror.

Takeaway

In 2026, the businesses that thrive won’t be the ones chasing every new tactic or drowning in dashboards. They’ll be the ones who use measurement as their filter — defining the signals that prove real humans are engaging, setting benchmarks that reflect their reality, and letting those insights guide where to show up and what to create. Measurement isn’t about tracking everything. It’s about listening, learning, and focusing your energy where it matters most.

If this feels like the piece you’ve been missing, I’ll share a few ways I can help you get your measurement system set up for 2026 in the conclusion below.

What These 2026 Marketing Predictions Mean for Your Business

The online world is only getting noisier, and much of that noise isn’t even human. Bots inflate the numbers, AI overviews cut clicks, and schemes flood the market with surface-level content. But that doesn’t have to discourage you — it can actually be an advantage. Because the more crowded things get, the more value there is in being clear, consistent-within-your-capacity, and grounded in measurement that shows you where real humans are engaging.

That’s the throughline of all five predictions: you don’t win by being the loudest, you win by being the most attuned. Data isn’t a scorecard — it’s a signal. And the businesses that thrive in 2026 will be the ones who know how to read those signals and respond wisely.

If you’re ready to get your own measurement system in order for 2026, here are three ways I can help you move forward:

• Mini-Ecosystem Design Lab (DWY): In a focused strategy session, we’ll map your marketing ecosystem together, identify the right signals to track, and leave you with a plan that fits your capacity. Perfect if you want clarity before committing to a bigger build.
• Done-for-You Measurement Sprint (DFY): In 90 days, I’ll set up a tailored measurement system for you — so you know exactly what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus next without drowning in dashboards.
• Not ready yet? Join my list using the form below for ongoing updates like these predictions and deeper dives into building a sustainable, measurable ecosystem — so when you are ready, you’ll already have the groundwork in place.

Because the truth is, you don’t need more noise. You need more humans. And the right measurement will help you find them.