January is great for planning.
Mid year is where we find out whether those plans still make sense.
Not because the strategy was wrong, but because the environment has changed. Customer behaviour moves on. New opportunities emerge. Platforms evolve. And this year, AI has accelerated that process faster than most marketers expected.
Somewhere over the last six months, many marketing plans have acquired a handful of AI initiatives, a couple of new tools and at least one webinar nobody remembers signing up for.
However, the fundamentals haven’t changed nearly as much as the headlines would have us believe. Businesses still need visibility. They still need credibility. They still need a steady flow of enquiries from the right audience.
The challenge is that the route between customer and business is becoming more complicated.
Prospects may discover you through Google listings. They may discover you through an AI Overview. They may ask ChatGPT for recommendations, find one of your LinkedIn posts, subscribe to your newsletter or click on a paid ad.
Increasingly, they do all of those things.
That’s why a mid-year review feels particularly valuable in 2026. The question isn’t whether you should embrace every new development. It’s whether your marketing priorities still reflect how people discover, evaluate and trust businesses today.
In this article, we’ll explore the areas we believe deserve a closer look before the final quarter arrives:
- Is traditional SEO still enough?
- How important is visibility in AI search?
- What do LinkedIn’s changes tell us about content discovery?
- Does email marketing deserve more attention?
- What should marketers know about Google’s AI Max transition?
- Are your KPIs still measuring the right things?
- Where can automation create genuine value?
- And perhaps most importantly, how do you decide where to focus when everything appears to be changing at once?
Traditional SEO Isn’t Dead. The Search Journey Has Changed.
Earlier this year, we published our guide on How to Choose Digital Marketing Channels, exploring how different marketing activities work together to support business growth.
One of the central themes of that article was that discovery is changing, and no single channel wins on its own.
SEO supports content.
Content supports authority.
Email supports retention.
Paid media supports demand generation.
Six months later, we’d stand by every word of that advice.
What has changed is the environment those channels operate in.
For years, marketers have focused on improving rankings, attracting qualified traffic and converting visitors into customers. It wasn’t always easy, but the journey was reasonably clear.
Today, that same prospect might begin their research in Google, see who is recommended in an AI Overview, continue it in ChatGPT, validate your expertise on LinkedIn, check your reviews and only visit your website once they’re already convinced you’re worth talking to.
The evidence suggests this isn’t a niche behaviour anymore. BrightEdge reported that AI Overviews appeared in more than half of searches in multiple sectors during 2025, helping explain why many businesses are seeing changes in click-through rates despite maintaining strong rankings.
That doesn’t mean SEO matters less.
If anything, it matters more.
The businesses appearing consistently in AI-generated answers tend to have the same foundations that have always underpinned strong SEO. They publish useful content. They demonstrate expertise. They earn credible mentions and maintain a strong digital presence.
The difference is that a Google listings are no longer the only way customers discover expertise. Search is becoming one part of a much broader discovery journey that increasingly includes AI platforms, social content, reviews and recommendations.
In many ways, that’s not a new challenge.
It’s simply a new way of evaluating the same qualities.
This is something we’ve touched on in several recent articles, including Bot Traffic: What It Means for SEO and AI Search , 5 Ways to Strengthen Your Online Credibility and Digital Presence, Why SEO alone is no longer enough. Visibility today increasingly depends on three things working together: being easy to find, easy to understand and easy to trust. Strong rankings still matter, but they’re increasingly part of a wider digital presence rather than the whole story.
“Ranking well is still valuable. The difference is that customers now have more ways to discover expertise than they did even a year ago. Visibility has become a broader conversation.”
“Ranking well is still valuable. The difference is that customers now have more ways to discover expertise than they did even a year ago. Visibility has become a broader conversation.”
Before Reviewing Tactics, Review Your KPIs
Whenever customer behaviour changes, measurement needs to change alongside it.
One of the challenges many marketing teams face today is that their reporting still reflects a world where Google was the dominant starting point for almost every buying journey.
Most leadership teams still care about the same outcomes they cared about two years ago: revenue, pipeline, customer acquisition and growth.
What has changed is the number of touchpoints influencing those outcomes.
Traffic still matters. Rankings still matter. Conversions certainly matter. The challenge is that customers are now discovering businesses in more places and through more interactions than traditional reporting was designed to capture.
Now that prospects are discovering your expertise through AI tools, communities, social platforms and review sites before they ever reach your website, these traditional metrics only tell part of the story.
We’ve looked at this in our recent article, Marketing KPIs with Search Beyond Google, which looks at how marketers can adapt measurement frameworks for an increasingly fragmented search landscape.
One of the questions we often ask during strategy reviews is a simple one:
Do your KPIs reflect how customers actually buy?
For some businesses, the answer is yes. For others, the answer is “I’m not sure they do any more”
A prospect may have interacted with your expertise several times before they ever complete a form. They may have encountered your brand in AI search, consumed thought leadership content on LinkedIn or searched specifically for your company after seeing you referenced elsewhere.
Traditional reporting often focuses on where someone entered your website. Increasingly, the more valuable question is what happened before they arrived.
That doesn’t mean abandoning the metrics you’ve always used. It means expanding the scorecard.
Alongside traditional SEO and PPC metrics, marketers should increasingly consider:
- Branded search growth
- Lead quality
- Pipeline contribution
- AI search visibility
- Engagement with thought leadership content
- Customer retention
- Lifetime value
The objective isn’t to replace traditional KPIs.
It’s to add context.
Because if visibility is changing, measurement has to evolve with it.
Content Has Never Been Easier to Create. That’s Not Necessarily Good News.
One of the side effects of AI is that creating content has become dramatically easier.
Unfortunately, consuming content hasn’t. How you differentiate is changing.
Your audience still has the same number of hours in the day, which means marketers are competing harder than ever for attention.
This is why so many organisations are discovering that simply producing more content isn’t delivering the results it once did. The internet doesn’t need another generic article explaining what AI is. It doesn’t need another LinkedIn post listing five productivity tips that everyone has already read three times.
What it does need is expertise.
Google has been remarkably consistent on this point. Its guidance continues to focus on helpful, people-first content regardless of how it was created. In other words, AI isn’t the problem.
Generic content is.
The businesses cutting through the noise are usually contributing something AI can’t easily replicate: practical experience, original observations, customer insights and real-world examples.
That’s one of the reasons we continue to talk about credibility and authority so often. As AI-generated content becomes easier to produce, signals of genuine expertise become more valuable.
In our article 5 Ways to Strengthen Your Online Credibility, we discussed how trust signals, expertise and consistency help businesses stand out online. Those principles matter even more today because your audience is no longer the only one evaluating your content. AI systems are increasingly helping customers discover information, compare providers and assess expertise. In many cases, they’re making those assessments long before someone reaches your website.
The good news is that most organisations already have the raw material they need.
✅ Customer conversations.
✅ Project experience.
✅ Lessons learned.
✅ Industry observations.
The challenge isn’t creating content.
It’s sharing something worth paying attention to.
That’s becoming increasingly important because the same trend is now influencing social platforms as well.
What LinkedIn’s Evolution Tells Us About the Future of Content Discovery
Keeping on the topic of content, if you’ve been scratching your head over LinkedIn performance this year, there’s probably a reason.
We’ve regularly seen thoughtful posts written in ten minutes outperforming polished corporate content that took days to produce. We’ve also seen organisations with sizeable followings struggle to generate meaningful reach while smaller accounts continue to grow.
At first glance, it can feel a little random.
The reality is more interesting.
LinkedIn appears to be moving in the same direction as Google, ChatGPT and many other discovery platforms. The objective is no longer simply to show people content from accounts they follow. Instead, platforms are increasingly trying to identify content that is genuinely relevant to an individual’s interests and professional needs.
Research from LinkedIn analyst Richard van der Blom suggests that the platform continues to evolve towards an “Interest Graph” model, where content relevance plays a larger role in distribution than network proximity (your connections) alone.
If that sounds familiar, it should.
▶️ Google is trying to surface the most useful answer.
▶️ AI search tools are trying to surface the most credible sources.
▶️ LinkedIn is trying to surface the most relevant content.
Different platforms. Similar destination.
For marketers, we believe that this is actually good news.
The answer isn’t posting more frequently or chasing every algorithm update. The opportunity is becoming clearer about what you want to be known for.
Businesses that perform consistently well on LinkedIn tend to share a common trait. They have a clear point of view and a defined area of expertise. Rather than commenting on everything, they focus on the topics that matter most to their audience and build authority over time.
It’s the same pattern we’ve already discussed in search and content marketing. Different channels, same underlying direction towards expertise, relevance and authority.
Algorithms are becoming increasingly effective at recognising expertise, rewarding relevance and filtering out generic content.
Which means marketers need to think less about volume and more about authority.
“The brands that stand out aren’t necessarily publishing more. They’re becoming known for something.”What Does This Mean For Your Visibility in AI Search?
This brings us to one of the most important marketing questions of 2026.
Not: “Where do we rank?”
But: “Are we part of the answer?”
For years, marketers have built strategies around keyword research. We identify the terms people search for, create content around those themes and optimise for visibility.
That remains important.
What has changed is how people ask questions.
A prospect researching a supplier today may never type a traditional keyword into a search engine. Instead, they might ask ChatGPT to recommend providers, use Google’s AI Overview to understand a topic or ask Perplexity to compare solutions.
The question is no longer just whether your content ranks.
It’s whether your expertise is being surfaced when those conversations happen.
This is where Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) enters the conversation.
Despite some of the more dramatic headlines, GEO isn’t replacing SEO. In fact, most of the businesses performing well in AI search have been doing many of the same things that have always contributed to strong organic visibility.
✅ They publish helpful content.
✅ They demonstrate expertise.
✅ They earn trusted mentions.
✅ They maintain strong digital footprints.
✅ They build credibility over time.
The difference is that AI systems are becoming another route through which that expertise is discovered.
Earlier this year, we explored this concept in Prompt Research and the Future of SEO. Rather than focusing solely on keywords, Prompt Research looks at the questions people ask AI systems and evaluates whether your organisation appears in the resulting answers.
Keyword research tells us what people search for.
Prompt Research helps us understand how AI interprets those questions and which sources it trusts enough to reference.
That distinction is likely to become increasingly important over the next few years.
Not because SEO is disappearing.
Because visibility is expanding.
Does Your Newsletter Deserve More Attention?
Email marketing occupies a strange position in digital marketing.
Every few years someone declares it dead. Every few years it quietly carries on generating leads, nurturing prospects and driving revenue.
At this point, email deserves some sort of lifetime achievement award for surviving predictions of its demise.
While algorithms, platforms and search experiences continue to evolve, your email database remains one of the few audiences you genuinely own.
▶️ Google can change how search works.
▶️ LinkedIn can change how content is distributed.
▶️ AI platforms can change how information is discovered.
▶️ Your email list remains yours.
That matters more than ever.
The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) continues to report email as one of the highest-performing digital marketing channels in terms of ROI. Not because it’s new or exciting, but because it supports something that remains incredibly valuable: relationships.
Relationships build trust.
As marketers review priorities for the second half of the year, it’s worth asking whether email is being used strategically or simply operationally.
Are you sending newsletters because they’re on the marketing calendar? Or are you using email to educate prospects, nurture opportunities and reinforce your expertise? There’s a significant difference.
The strongest newsletters don’t just communicate updates – they help audiences solve problems.
In a world where attention is increasingly fragmented, that remains a powerful advantage.
Email Marketing in 2026: Beat the Inbox Noise
What Google’s AI Max Update Tells Us About Paid Media
AI innovations don’t only affect SEO activity.
Google is also continuing its move towards AI-managed advertising.
If you’re currently using Dynamic Search Ads, certain automated ad features or broad match targeting, Google will begin migrating those capabilities into a new AI-powered campaign framework called AI Max from September 2026.
In practical terms, Google wants its AI to play a bigger role in deciding which searches trigger your ads, what messaging is shown and which landing pages are used.
For marketers, this doesn’t mean giving up control entirely. However, it does mean that campaign success will rely even more heavily on strong conversion tracking, quality landing pages, clear messaging and effective measurement.
AI Max feels like the next logical step rather than a dramatic change in direction. The role of paid search specialists isn’t disappearing. If anything, strategic thinking is becoming more valuable.
▶️ Understanding customer intent still matters.
▶️ Building compelling offers still matters.
▶️ Creating effective landing pages still matters.
▶️ Measuring outcomes still matters.
The mechanics evolve. The fundamentals remain remarkably consistent.
In many ways, that’s a theme running throughout this entire article.
Whether we’re talking about SEO, content, LinkedIn or paid media, the technology continues to change. The businesses that perform best are usually the ones that combine strong marketing fundamentals with sensible use of emerging tools.
A Common Theme Is Emerging
By this point, a pattern should be becoming clear.
We’ve talked about SEO, content, LinkedIn, AI search and paid media. On the surface, they may appear to be separate topics. In reality, they’re all being influenced by the same underlying momentum.
The platforms themselves are changing rapidly, but the businesses benefiting from those changes are often doing remarkably similar things.
✅ They understand their audience.
✅ They communicate clearly.
✅ They demonstrate expertise.
✅ They create genuinely useful content.
✅ They build trust over time.
In other words, they’re getting the marketing fundamentals right.
That’s encouraging because while technology continues to evolve, the principles of good marketing remain remarkably resilient.
The tools may change. The customer journey may become more fragmented. The algorithms may become more sophisticated.
However, businesses that consistently help customers solve problems and communicate their expertise clearly are still the ones most likely to earn visibility.
Which raises an interesting question.
If authority and expertise are becoming more valuable, how can marketers use AI and automation to strengthen those advantages rather than simply create more noise?
That’s where things start to get really interesting.
Automation Is Moving Beyond Efficiency
For the past couple of years, most conversations about AI have focused on productivity.
❔ How much time can we save?
❔ How many repetitive tasks can we automate?
❔ How quickly can we produce content, analyse data or summarise information?
Those are all worthwhile questions, and most marketers have already found ways to save time using AI. Drafting content, analysing reports, summarising meetings and creating campaign assets have become part of everyday workflows in many organisations.
The next wave of AI isn’t really about helping you complete individual tasks faster. It’s about helping you manage entire workflows more effectively.
This is where AI Agents enter the picture.
Don’t worry, we’re not heading into science fiction territory just yet.
Think of an AI Agent as a digital assistant that can work through a sequence of activities on your behalf. Rather than simply answering a question, an agent can gather information, organise tasks, monitor developments and help coordinate actions across multiple systems.
Today, that might mean helping with research, project management or reporting.
Tomorrow, it could mean assisting with more complex decision-making.
Imagine asking an AI agent to monitor competitor activity, identify changes in search visibility, review campaign performance and provide a weekly summary of opportunities. That’s the direction many of these tools are heading. Not replacing marketers, but acting as increasingly capable assistants that help teams focus their time where it adds the greatest value.
This is one of the areas generating the most excitement among AI futurists because it moves AI from being a tool you use into something that actively assists you.
We’re still some way from handing the marketing budget to an AI Agent and heading to the pub. Thankfully.
However, the direction of travel is becoming increasingly clear.
For marketers, the opportunity isn’t simply doing more with fewer resources. It’s creating more space for strategic thinking, creativity and customer understanding while technology handles a greater share of the administration.
Of course, none of this removes the need for governance. As we discussed in AI at Work and Shadow AI, organisations still need clear policies, sensible guardrails and a strong understanding of where human oversight remains essential.
The opportunity is enormous. So is the responsibility that comes with it.
Keeping One Eye on the Future
One of the challenges facing marketers today is separating meaningful change from temporary excitement.
Every week seems to bring another AI announcement, another platform update or another prediction about the future of marketing.
Some will matter. Many won’t.
The real challenge is understanding which developments have the potential to change customer behaviour.
When it comes to AI, it’s very easy to focus on what the technology can do and forget to ask whether customers actually want to use it that way. We believe that a focus on customer behaviour beats tech advancements for tech’s sake every time.
That’s why we’re paying close attention to developments such as Google’s continued AI expansion, emerging AI Agent capabilities and the growing discussion around advertising within AI platforms.
Our recent articles on Google’s latest AI initiatives and the future of ChatGPT advertising explore these topics in more detail, but the broader point is straightforward.
▶️ Customer journeys are becoming more fragmented.
▶️ People are discovering information through more sources, more devices and more interfaces than ever before.
▶️ Search is no longer confined to search engines.
▶️ Research is no longer confined to websites.
▶️ Discovery is happening everywhere.
That doesn’t mean marketers should chase every new trend.
It does mean they should understand the trends that have the potential to affect their customers.
The organisations that adapt most successfully tend to strike a balance between curiosity and discipline. They’re informed about what’s changing without becoming distracted by every new shiny object.
So Where Should You Focus?
This is where many marketing teams overcomplicate things.
When faced with rapid change, the temptation is to keep adding.
Another platform. Another campaign. Another dashboard. Another AI tool. Another report.
Before long, marketing teams find themselves working harder without necessarily moving any faster.
If we were reviewing a marketing strategy with a client tomorrow, we probably wouldn’t begin by discussing channels.
We’d begin by discussing priorities.
❔ Has the business changed direction?
❔ Have revenue targets changed?
❔ Has customer behaviour changed?
❔ Has the competitive landscape changed?
Only after answering those questions does it make sense to discuss tactics.
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is treating every new development as an additional task. More often than not, the better approach is to step back and reassess what deserves attention with a what shall we stop, start and continue exercise.
Some activities may warrant greater investment.
Others may need refining.
A few may no longer justify the effort at all.
As a framework, consider reviewing your marketing activity against the outcomes you’re trying to achieve.
The goal isn’t to do more marketing.
It’s to make sure the marketing you’re doing reflects how people discover, evaluate and trust businesses in 2026.
So, in Summary …
One of the biggest risks facing marketers in 2026 isn’t moving too slowly. It’s trying to do everything.
Every week brings another AI announcement, another platform update and another prediction about the future of marketing. Most won’t have a meaningful impact on your business.
Reviewing your marketing priorities halfway through the year isn’t about tearing everything up and starting again. It’s about recognising that the environment has changed and making sure your strategy changes with it.
The fundamentals remain remarkably familiar. Businesses still need visibility. They still need credibility. They still need meaningful conversations with the right prospects.
What’s changing is how prospects find you.
Throughout this article we’ve looked at AI search, LinkedIn, content, email marketing, Google Ads and automation. On the surface they may seem like separate topics. In reality, they’re all pointing in the same direction.
▶️ Algorithms are becoming better at identifying expertise.
▶️ Customers are becoming more sophisticated in how they research suppliers.
▶️ Trust is becoming a stronger differentiator.
▶️ Authority is becoming more valuable.
The marketers who thrive over the next six months won’t necessarily be the ones chasing every new platform, tool or trend. They’ll be the ones who understand what’s changing, recognise what still matters and re-focus their energy accordingly.
Perhaps that’s the most useful outcome of any mid-year review.
Not everything deserves your attention.
Knowing what does is where the real advantage lies
At WSI Digital Advisors, we help businesses cut through the noise of an increasingly complex digital world. Together, we identify the priorities that will have the greatest impact on your goals, create a clear roadmap for growth, and help you implement it with confidence to improve visibility, build credibility and generate more opportunities online. Contact us for a conversation to find out more.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Marketing Priorities
Is SEO still worth investing in?
Absolutely. SEO remains one of the most effective long-term visibility strategies available. The difference is that SEO now sits within a broader visibility ecosystem that includes AI search, content authority and digital credibility.
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) focuses on improving the likelihood that AI-powered search systems understand, trust and reference your content when generating answers.
Is AI-generated content bad for SEO?
Not necessarily. Google’s guidance continues to focus on content quality, usefulness and expertise rather than how content was created. The challenge is standing out in an increasingly crowded content landscape.
Does email marketing still work in 2026?
Yes. In fact, many marketers are rediscovering the value of owned audiences as organic reach becomes less predictable across other channels.
How often should marketing priorities be reviewed?
At a minimum, quarterly. However, periods of significant technological change, such as the current AI transition, often justify more frequent reviews.
