The Year in Review – the year in Marketing

The bulk of Marketing-focused content this year involved generative AI. There was no way to get around it; it permeates everything marketing. How we write, how we build campaigns, how we design strategy, and, most importantly, what vendors are building into their solutions.

In my review, I’ve tried to focus on what was different and what stood out, and when I look back at everything I wrote, there was an underlying truth: Marketers can’t ignore AI, but they also can’t throw it in the mix without a clear plan. Maybe that plan involves a lot of experimentation, but there’s still a plan.

Will 2026 be different for Marketing? Or will we be stuck in the same traffic jam, trying to figure things out? It will take some digging to find the brands and tech vendors doing really innovative things, but I’m up for the challenge.

The website will remain a valuable asset for B2B brands for some time, Cunningham said, but they will need to evolve. “How can you simulate what it’s like to be a customer? How can you provide an enriched experience that they’re not going to go somewhere else?”

Why? Brands are repeatedly told they need to invest in answer engine optimization (AEO) because that’s how customers find them today. And of, yeah, the website is now obsolete. But it’s not that simple. In fact, it may not be accurate at all. At least, that’s what recent research from 6sense found. When are buyers engaging with brands, how, and when? Well, you’ll have to read the article to find out.

My argument is that in Marketing Ops, while you may get your start being an expert in HubSpot or Marketo or whatever platform, if you really fall in love with it, you start to look at ‘how do I build out all these capabilities across all these technologies to enable a buyer journey that’s focused on the success of the outcomes we’re looking to achieve as a business?’ And my argument is that you’re a product manager, and your job is to stitch together lots of different products.

Why? All the conversation in the martech world has been about go-to-market (GTM) engineering. But we’re not sure if it’s really just another way to say a specialized RevOps or MarketingOps role. What we do know is that it is not the future of marketing ops. It’s one type of martech specialization, whereas to lead marketing ops, you need a more well-rounded skillset, and that is the GTM product manager.

We’re not taking ChatGPT and just spraying it across our products, but we’re taking a methodical approach to making sure that the tool, as we implement it, is helpful and not considered cheating by the teacher or disrupting the education process, but actually enabling it and helping to accelerate it.

Why? This piece isn’t strictly marketing-related. But it’s a conversation that needs to happen. AI literacy is essential in our schools today. If we aren’t educating our youth on the proper use of it, how will they adapt when they enter a workforce that demands it? This piece discusses effective education and the responsible use of generative AI in the tools educators teach with.

Having content plus data, plus the ability to use AI to actually build and develop and generate content, essentially delivers a new way of consuming, creating, and delivering content and experiences that matter. And so when we think about the transition we’ve made from a content management platform to where we are today as an adaptive experience platform, what puts the adapt into the mix is that every experience should be generated for the person that is consuming it in real time, so that it’s relevant at that point in time.

Why? Contentstack is the first to acknowledge that what they said is a bit provocative, that doesn’t mean the intent behind the statement isn’t accurate on some level. Websites as we build them today will not survive in the coming years. We need to re-evaluate what we build, for whom, and how it will work. And that means re-evaluating how content management systems need to evolve to support context management. These are fun times for content management systems providers.

What I see more and more is that the best brands are building community amongst their customers. So, as opposed to it just being, ‘let me tell you what we do,’ and you can buy it. It’s let’s invite you in. I’ll teach you things that better your life, that are sort of broadly in the service of what we do, and I’ll connect you with all our other customers in a wonderful community, and you start to build loyalty and trust amongst that group.

Why? One way brands can differentiate themselves is to provide learning experiences for customers and other key audiences. Thinkific pivoted to provide the learning platform they needed. Was it the right choice? Are brands ready to build great learning experiences that don’t equate directly to revenue? We’ll have to check in this year and see. My hope is yes, but budgets and resourcing issues may prove otherwise.

We wanted something that was a little bit more generic, because we didn’t want to ring fence what people would actually build. And then we wanted people to experiment. And I think that’s the thing that I’m most struck by in general with App Gen, is that all of a sudden there are people who were not developers, who now can actually go and experiment, and don’t have to pay an agency $20,000 to go and build that contest app that they wanted. And so that’s where I get very excited because I think that there’s going to be all kinds of things we just never even envisioned that they end up using the platform for.

Why? The addition of a generative app tool in the Webflow platform is another sign of how content management is evolving to create better interactive experiences for customers that do visit the website. Sure, you could build those apps on Lovable or with Claude Code, but why would you bulk up your martech stack when you could have both in one platform? Less tools to manage, one place to manage your brand assets, a seamless experience – what more could you ask for?

Brinker and report co-author Frans Riemersma, founder of the MartechTribe, believes the industry is entering a period where both old and new systems will exist. Their argument is that the old systems can’t go away because they have the existing business logic (ie data structures, processes, rules, customer experience). The goal then becomes to first augment these systems with AI, then replace them. Also, although AI agents can adapt to needs on the fly (customer, employee, etc), they still need to be balanced by consistency for the business overall.

Why? This is not the latest version of The State of Martech report, but it’s important to go back and read the findings before you dive into the new edition. Marketers keep adding more and more tech to the stack to get the AI capabilities they think they need to stay competitive, but too many are not prepared for what they are getting into. Curious to see how much has changed since this report came out? Stay tuned.

I propose we stop worrying about personalized website experiences and focus on improving messaging and ensuring a lot of content is available to answer a visitor’s questions and feed the LLMs. Then, add a conversational interface that can provide more information for specific questions that are too detailed or nuanced for the website.

Why? At the beginning of 2025, brands were still obsessed with personalizing their website and still not doing it very well. Now we’re at the end of 2025, and what have we learned? Maybe personalization doesn’t really matter at all.

If 2024 was about experimenting for the sake of experimenting, this year must be about putting actionable plans into place and actively testing and adapting to find the best way to leverage AI. The HubSpot study found that 54% of marketers feel overwhelmed by the prospect of implementing AI tools into their processes and workflows.

Why? 2024 was supposed to be the year of experimenting with generative AI, and 2025 the year to start putting real strategies and plans in place. But according to HubSpot’s State of Marketing report at the time (i.e., January 2025), many marketers felt overwhelmed. I don’t think much changed in that respect this year. Too much AI coming too fast. All tools and tech, with little strategic thought or process. Hopefully, 2026 will bring better outcomes for marketing teams.