How Marketing Will Completely Change in 2026

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Business, Marketing, Careers

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neil and Eric break down their biggest marketing predictions for 2026, covering SEO’s rebound, AEO reality checks, AI workflow automation, community building, in-person events, and why switching costs now matter more than product market fit. Recorded on Christmas Eve, this episode dives into how agencies, SaaS companies, and enterprise brands should adapt as AI accelerates feature parity and channels evolve. From go-to-market engineers to owned communities, this conversation is a practical roadmap for marketers planning the year ahead. Key takeaways: • SEO and AEO will coexist, not replace each other • In-person events and community will outperform algorithms • Switching costs beat features in modern SaaS Chapters: (00:00) Christmas Eve kickoff (00:30) SEO uncertainty and recovery (02:12) 2026 marketing predictions (03:26) Go-to-market engineers (05:40) AEO vs SEO reality (08:44) Community strategy mistakes (10:45) AI product market fit shifts (13:29) Switching costs over features (16:20) Final 2026 outlook

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, guys, it's Christmas Eve.
0:02.4	Neil's in Vegas.
0:03.0	He doesn't have his microphone, but it doesn't matter.
0:05.0	We're here to record.
0:06.0	We're here to bring the value.
0:07.0	It doesn't matter if someone's sick, someone's having a baby, someone's traveling.
0:12.0	We make this podcast happen no matter what.
0:15.0	So, Neil, I thought it might make sense for us to also talk about predictions for 2026 too because we did,
0:23.3	we kind of did a review for the last episode.
0:25.2	I think it's good to maybe talk about trends or predictions that we see for the next year.
0:30.3	Yeah.
0:30.5	And some of them I'm already starting to see towards the, you know, November, December of 2025.
0:36.1	And we know they're going to carry in.
0:37.3	Like one of the big things that know they're going to carry in.
0:43.4	Like one of the big things that we saw is in the agency world, there was a slowdown because of SEO. And what I mean because of SEO is the uncertainty of SEO and AI and what's going to
0:47.5	happen. So if you look at 2024, a lot of agencies were impacted who were performing SEO,
0:54.0	2025 as well to some extent, not as bad as 2024.
0:58.6	The second half was much better.
1:00.7	But if I look at Q4 of 2025,
1:04.4	honestly, a lot of companies are getting back into SEO,
1:07.1	and they're like, oh, it's not dead.
1:08.8	It's still a valid channel, and they're doubling down on it.
	...

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