We’re living in strange times...
Never before has buyer behaviour changed as rapidly as it has over the past couple of years.
Attention spans are shorter, trust is harder to earn and decision-makers now have more control over how, when and where they engage with brands.
Here are the key shifts we believe every B2B business should be making to improve their marketing in 2026, built on advice from a proven B2B marketing agency tactics.
Keep it short, keep it sweet
The transition to treat corporate buyers more like their consumer counterparts has been a long-standing trend in B2B marketing, and this year is no different.
However, how to reach B2B buyers is shifting.
There’s been a consistent shift showing that today's B2B buyer is digesting content in shorter chunks and across more platforms than ever before!
We’re sure you’ve noticed it yourself.
LinkedIn feeds are starting to mimic other social medias, and your content strategy should be built to cater to this.
Flamingo's take:
In 2026, B2B marketers looking to improve their marketing should be focusing on cutting through the digital noise with smaller, bitesize content.
And if you haven’t already stopped sending lengthy marketing emails all about you, now really is the time to cut them down by 75% and lead with what you can do for them, with a strong call to action.
Rethink your first impressions
B2B buying behaviour has been steadily shifting away from traditional paid advertising and towards self-directed research.
Your audience places far more trust in brands they ‘discover themselves’ and choose to invest their time into, as opposed to the first ad presented to them in a search result.
This behaviour is evolving again.
AI is quickly becoming people’s go to destination to search for answers, recommendations and insight on the internet.
While this type of research may not be truly “organic” in the traditional sense, it feels significantly more authentic and unbiased than paid advertising.
An oxymoron for 2026 that seems to ring true is that the businesses who rely too heavily on paid promotion alone risk being overlooked.
Rather than producing content purely to rank for keywords, brands need to create clear, concise and authoritative content that answers real questions... the kind of content AI tools are more likely to recommend.
Flamingo’s take:
To improve marketing in 2026, businesses should optimise their content not just for search engines, but for AI discovery too. Focus on clarity, credibility and usefulness over promotion.
Another handy tip is to make sure you’re updating your website regularly; you’re getting frequent Google reviews and you’re winning the odd award too! These three things will help you stand out to ChatGPT.
People like people
A common mistake in B2B marketing is to focus too much on the organisation rather than the people.
People don’t buy from logos; they buy from people they trust.
LinkedIn continues to reward personal profiles with greater reach and engagement than company pages. Buyers are far more likely to stop, read and interact with content shared by a real person.
Throughout 2025, we saw first-hand how building a strong personal presence for founders, directors and senior leaders has driven meaningful engagement and fostered quality conversations for our clients.
One client saw a 41% increase in impressions comparing the first half of the year with the second. The strategy we went with was to focus on posting more humorous, personal and insightful content, resulting in a lot of extra eyeballs on their account.
And what’s rather unsurprising is this boost in personal promotion translated to a 21% increase in impressions for the company profile.
Your social strategy should use personal profiles as the primary distribution channel, with the business brand supported through consistent messaging, visual identity and clear calls back to the company.
Flamingo’s take:
In 2026, companies should showcase their best assets... their people. Always remember, we are all human! So as much as you want to keep talking about your products and services, sadly a dog in the office, or the cakes one of the team made to celebrate an anniversary will outperform your ‘product’ post time and time again!
Focus on quality, not quantity
For a long time, B2B marketing success has been measured by volume: more leads, more downloads, more contacts added to the database. But volume alone rarely translates into revenue.
A smaller group of contacts who regularly engage with your content is far more valuable than a large database of inactive leads. Yet many businesses continue to spread their efforts too thinly, trying to appeal to everyone instead of nurturing those already showing intent.
That database of thousands or tens of thousands might need some tending to.
One campaign we ran for a client to just a dataset of only 20 contacts from 10 different companies resulted in 6 responses, 2 calls and over £160,000 of quoted work!
Remove inactive contacts and focusing campaigns on people who consistently open emails, engage with content or return to the website time and time again. These are the contacts most likely to convert when the timing is right.
Flamingo’s take:
To improve your marketing in 2026, you should be focusing on the opportunities that already exist.
Partnering with a B2B marketing agency like Flamingo can help you identify these opportunities and improve your marketing accordingly.
Replace processes, not people
AI is rapidly becoming embedded in B2B marketing, but its role is often misunderstood.
The goal is not to replace (as mentioned above, your best asset) people, creativity or strategic thinking.
Instead, AI should be used to replace repetitive processes that drain time and slow teams down.
Tasks such as data analysis, content repurposing, reporting and campaign optimisation can all be enhanced through AI, freeing marketers to focus on strategy and decision-making.
Flamingo’s take:
In 2026, businesses should treat AI as a productivity tool to help their in-house talent do what they do best.
Got an email campaign that needs to go live but data needs segmenting? Let AI deal with the data while your creatives deal with the creative tasks.
It’s so easy to spot marketing generated by AI. Don’t fall into the trap of ‘it’s cheaper, we can save costs, it’s quicker’ because the personalisation and creativity you’ll get from a professionally trained human who lives and breathes marketing, will far outperform anything AI can create for you.
Make your marketing count in 2026
The common theme running through all of these changes is simple: effective marketing is not about doing more; it is about doing the right things, more intentionally.
In 2026, successful B2B marketing will be built on clear strategy, human connection and consistent execution across channels. It will prioritise trust over interruption, quality over volume and systems over short-term tactics.
If you want to sense-check your current marketing approach or start building a strategy that will carry you confidently into 2026 and beyond, book in a 60-minute marketing strategy with our Managing Director today.
In the meantime, see what some of our clients have to say about our marketing in 2026.
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We’d love to offer you 60 minutes of our time to find out more about what you do for your customers and show you how we would tackle your marketing (and messaging) to drive the best results. We’ll spend up to 60 minutes on Teams where you can share what you’re doing marketing-wise and we can give you some ideas, feedback and suggestions of additional things to throw into the mix.
You can watch the video below to find out more.