Marketing in 2026: 3 Simple Shifts to Grow Your Business with Clarity, Focus, and Purpose

Speaker A: If you feel like marketing keeps getting more complicated, more platforms keep popping up, and you're not sure where to focus your time and energy on anymore, this episode is going to help bring you some clarity. Because marketing in 2026 isn't about doing more. It's about focusing on the right things to do. And I am so excited to help you, as a faith Led founder, figure out what that means. Welcome to the Faith Led Founders Podcast, the show for Christian entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to grow a successful without the overwhelm. Um, I'm Lauren, a marketing strategist and business coach with over a decade of experience helping businesses simplify their marketing and build systems that create real growth. So if you're ready, grab your coffee and let's dive in. Welcome back, everyone. So in last week's episode, we talked about the difference in being good at, uh, what you do. You know, you are a service provider and a business owner. You have great skills and you have a great service. But what is the difference between being good at it and being known for it? And what that really came down to was visibility. So visibility is so important when it comes to growing your business and building a profitable business. But visibility without strategy creates burnout and wasted effort. And we don't want that. So today I want to talk about and kind of walk you through the three types of marketing that you need to be aware of as we move into 2026. And I know quarter one is done, but the marketing landscape for small business owners has shifted drastically and that's only going to continue on. And so we're going to talk about this and what I'm seeing in the market, and this isn't going to be a deep dive. I want to give you that warning ahead. We're not going to dive into the weeds about this, but it's really meant to help you focus your energy in the right direction so you can focus on marketing that's actually going to work for your business. That is going to be so important. You, you don't want to waste your time and energy on things that are not going to bring you clients. Now, the first type of marketing that small business owners really need to focus on for 2026 is problem matching and messaging. Now, what marketing used to be was kind of just a list of your services talking about what you offer. But, uh, what we really want to do now is to clearly communicate across all platforms, whether it's on your website, maybe you have a YouTube channel or a podcast or social media, you need to clearly communicate what problem you solve, who you solve that problem for, and why your approach matters. It is more important than ever to clearly communicate. You guys, we are living in a time. It's really interesting from a, from a business perspective. It's very interesting because we're living in a time where consumers really are more informed than ever. They're highly inundated every day with ads, with content, with businesses and services, and they have so much distrust. We have the highest record of consumers that just don't trust businesses. Like corporations, businesses have failed them again and again. So it's really important now more than ever that we get really honed into our messaging. And problem matching is one of the best ways to do that. And that's why, you know, I do this deep work with my clients is who is the very specific client that you want to come into your business, and what is that problem that they're bringing to your business and that your business solves? And then we work through, you know, kind of what your unique identifiers are, and that starts to point out to your ideal customer why your approach matters, why your business compared to others. And so it is more important now than ever that you crack down on your messaging. And once your messaging is clear and you know what problem you solve, the next question becomes, how do people actually find you? This is disability, which we talked about in the last episode. Now this leads me to the second type of marketing you need to be thinking of for 2026, and that is creating content for AI. AI is here and it is not going anywhere. You guys pre AI, your consumers, your ideal client was searching for information on Google. They would type in therapist near me or how to grow my small business or how to fix my marketing. And Google would give them, um, a few blog posts or websites that address to this concern or this question. They would click through two or three websites and depending on services price and um, kind of the look of a business's website, they would make a choice. Now that isn't happening. And what I'm not saying is your website isn't not important anymore. It is still very important. But how we go about building that website and the content on that website is changing dramatically. So what is happening now with consumers? We are already seeing a huge shift in consumer behavior is consumers are going to ChatGPT, Gemini Claude, Google AI, and they're searching on these, in these AI search engines instead of Google. So if they're landing on your website, those chances are going down. Now maybe they'll click into your website really quick to make sure that you are a true viable business. But a lot of consumers are having conversations with Google AI ChatGPT and they're learning about your business and your services and they're making a choice from those search engines now. Which is why we need to problem match and we need to create content that solves real problems that your consumers might be searching for. So we don't want to chase trends, we don't want to just write willy nilly blogs anymore. If you're, if you have a blog on your website, you want to produce content across all of your platforms, across all of your um, website that is helpful, it's searchable and it's educational content that's going to be things like the pot, um, podcast, blog posts, SEO content that speaks specifically to the questions that the consumer is asking. And that's something that is called ae. Oh, big fancy term. You don't need to stress about it. That's what I'm here for, is to coach you around that, to help you build out messaging that speaks to your audience. But that is why it's going to be very important moving forward to get clear on your problem matching. What problems does your business solve and why does your service matter to the user or to the consumer? My apologies. And so this is going to kind of lead to my third tip that you need to be thinking of and focused on moving forward for 2026. Consumer behavior is changing. Consumers are at a point where they have high levels of distrust and so they are looking for businesses, service providers and products that build trust and community. And we cannot do that as a business owner when we are stretched thin half heartedly producing content on several platforms, 2026 is really the year to be focused on less platforms and higher quality content. So rather than chasing trends and trying to be on every new social media platform that um, is birthed and created and chasing all of these trends on these platforms and these algorithms. That's going to be something that can wear you out and make you feel super overwhelmed and it just might not be what grows your business. I want you to reflect on what social media platforms are easy for you to produce content and with. Where are your ideal clients actually spending their time? Are they looking for your services on Instagram? You know, I led marketing for an orthodontic office and Instagram wasn't where we got leads. You know our, the moms and the kiddos that came into our practice, they weren't looking for braces on Instagram. So things like a website, um, a YouTube, a podcast, those things might be more viable to move the needle forward when it comes to increasing your revenue and building your business. And so I want you to reduce the amount of platforms that you are trying to take on no matter what stage of business are. If you're just starting out, start off small and highly focus on one platform. Now, if you have been in business for a long time, you are profitable, but you're just trying to refine and get a better whole hold on your marketing. I want you to assess where are your leads coming from, what is the highest yielding of revenue growth for you, and I want you to focus on those platforms and the other ones can take a backseat at least for six months. So this is a six month commitment to, uh, go all in on less platforms. Um, what this is going to do, it's going to create help, um, you focus on creating depth, build trust and build community on those platforms to grow your business. And when you can do that, that is going to connect back to being visible on AI search engines because your messaging is going to be clear across those few platforms rather than having mixed messaging on multiple platforms. So I hope today's episode was really helpful for you. There is a lot changing with marketing your small business and it's really exciting because I think now more than ever it is a great time. If you are in a startup phase or you are making a big push for growth, if you can do this right, this is a great opportunity to really get ahead of the curve and grow your business. So I want to wrap up today with leaving you with a few reflection questions and just highlight the three things that we talked about. So number one, problem matching and messaging is going to be so important. What I want you to think about, and this is your reflection question, is, does your marketing talk about what you do or does it talk about the problems your audience is trying to solve? That is going to be very important. M How clear can you get on your messaging across those platforms and what problems do you specifically solve? How specific can you get with that? Number two, we need to focus on creating content for AI. It's here. The AI wave is coming. So your reflection question is, if someone searched for the problem you solved today, would your business show up with helpful content? Now, if the answer is no, we need to do some deep work to really shift all of the copy on our website. The way that we approach posting on social media platforms, we need to address those very specific problems because that's what AI is looking for. And the third, highlight the third thing that we talked about for 2026 marketing is we are in an era of less platforms, high quality. We need to build trust with our consumers if we want to grow our business and we need to create community. So your reflection question is where can you simplify your marketing so that you can focus all in on creating better content rather than more content? This is going to be something that blesses you. It's going to be something that helps you slow down, feel controlled in your marketing and really gain momentum. Less is more. And so I hope that you guys have a great day. I look forward to connecting with you guys back on the podcast next week. Bye.