5 Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2026 Artwork

Marketing Sucks

Marketing Sucks is the podcast for business owners who are looking for practical, fun, and strategic ways to get noticed online, and don’t want to sit through 30 minutes of filler to get to the good stuff.

Each week, Grind Social Media + Co founder Amanda Casinha sits down with the industry’s most interesting and unconventional ad experts, funnel developers, content creators, and changemakers to explore their off-the-beaten-path strategies and experiences in the world of marketing and business — and dig into real stories of failures, strategies, and how they got their jaw-dropping results.

All Episodes

Marketing Sucks

5 Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2026

December 02, 2025 • Amanda Casinha-Ginther • Episode 86

In this spicy episode of Marketing Sucks, Phil and I talk about the 5 marketing trends you can’t afford to ignore in 2026. Note: the trends covered in this conversation aren’t short-lived fads that’ll die out by April. If you ignore these major shifts, you WILL be left behind.

Tune in as we dig into how the CEO brand effect is changing buying behaviour (and what this means for your personal brand), why raw content is massively outperforming polished, and how to optimize your marketing strategy for an AI-driven world.

Marketing sucks. Let’s learn together. Hit play to discover:‌ ‌

How to build trust with your audience in just a few minutes a week
The micro-marketing and community-led strategies that’ll have big payoff in 2026
How to become a trusted source for AI search so you stay visible

Please rate, review, and subscribe!

Timestamps:‌ ‌

00:12 Intro

02:29 CEO & personal brand effect

06:04 Sharing your story

08:28 Microinfluencers & community-building

15:31 Finding microinfluencers

21:23 Unsh*ttification of brand marketing

26:28 Being more real

29:11 AI-driven visibility & GEO

32:58 Community-led growth & brand ecosystems

37:45 Recap & action items