2026 content marketing trends: the top 3 things you need to know

Over the course of 2025, there’s been an important shift in content marketing. The industry’s becoming overloaded with cookie-cutter content that’s easy to ignore, and savvy marketers are responding with bold, outside-the-box campaigns that are sure to grab their audience’s attention.

The rapid evolution of content marketing is set to continue through 2026, too. So what are the biggest challenges you’ll face? And how can you adapt to make sure your content continues to get results?

Three trends you need to watch out for in 2026

• Quality will remain king when it comes to high-performing content
• Human and AI-generated content will be a careful balancing act
• Your audience will move away from traditional search engines

Quality will remain king when it comes to high-performing content

CMI’s 2026 B2B Content and Marketing Trends Report shows that content relevance and quality was the biggest factor that improved the effectiveness of B2B marketing over the past year. In fact, 65% of respondents who rated their marketing as highly or somewhat effective in the last 12 months listed it as a key reason why. And having the right team skills and capabilities was just behind at 59%.

It’s clear that marketing effectiveness in 2025 was driven by content quality and the people that make it happen. And that’s set to continue into 2026, as marketers look for ways to help their brand stand out.

Increasing your content’s quality means looking at everything you do, and figuring out how to take it to the next level.

Personalisation needs to go beyond ‘Hi [Name]’ and promote an authentic and human understanding of the person you’re writing to. Thought leadership content needs to convey genuinely original, expert ideas. And organic and paid ads must be bold, provocative, and impossible to scroll past.

Human and AI-generated content will be a careful balancing act

We can’t talk about content marketing trends for 2026 without acknowledging the role of generative AI.

According to CMI’s report, of the B2B marketers whose organisations use AI-powered marketing applications, 89% are using content creation tools for generating or optimising written content. And while 87% of that group have seen an improvement in productivity, only 39% have seen an improvement in content performance.

The conflict between performance and productivity will be a major theme throughout 2026, with CMI’s report finding the two top challenges content marketers are facing are creating content that prompts a desired action (40%) and resource constraints (39%).

This highlights the biggest battle for content marketers going into 2026 – whether to focus more on human or AI-generated content.

AI content is faster and cheaper to produce, so for those with the biggest resource constraints, it can be incredibly appealing. When you can create content in a fraction of the time it would usually take, you free up more hours to strategize and develop creative ideas that will grab your audience’s attention. However, it’s unlikely your AI-generated content will stand out itself, particularly as spaces become more saturated with it, so you’ll have to be strategic about exactly when and where you use it.

Human content generates far more leads, so for people wanting to maximise engagement and conversions, it’s well worth the extra investment. While research into the exact numbers is still in its infancy, one study found human-generated content had 5.44x more traffic than AI-generated content. So, if you have a high-value campaign on the horizon that you’re banking on generating good leads, having human-written content is a must.

In reality, content marketing in 2026 is likely to involve a mix of human and AI-generated content. Your success will depend how strategic you are about when to use each method. It’s still humans who make business purchasing decisions, so human-to-human content remains the most engaging tool in your belt.

High-value assets such as case studies, thought leadership articles, gated content, personalised ABM, and organic and paid ads will benefit the most from a human touch. And you can use AI-generated content to buy you the time you need give those assets the attention they deserve.

Your audience will move away from traditional search engines

Generative AI isn’t just changing how content marketing is written; it’s changing how it’s searched for. More and more people are using large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT instead of traditional search engines, so you need to know how to create content that AI finds and trusts.

The shift towards zero-click search means generative engine optimisation (GEO) is becoming more important for ensuring your content is understood by AI and used to inform summaries and responses to user prompts. If you collect feedback from new business leads about how they discovered your brand, you might have already noticed that people are beginning to be sent to your door after a conversation with ChatGPT. And that will become more normal as time goes on. That means you need to begin optimising your content for LLMs sooner rather than later, and get your brand into AI’s ‘consciousness’ ahead of your competitors.

It’s not just GEO you need to think about though, even people who are still using traditional search engines are changing the way they search. For years now, people have been using natural language to search with voice assistants like Siri and ‘Hey Google’. Over time, and with growing use of LLMs, it’s bled into written searches, too.

For example:

20 years ago, if you were looking to buy a new games console, you might have searched “PlayStation 2”

10 years ago, you might have searched “Xbox vs PlayStation”

5 years ago, you might have searched “Does Xbox or PlayStation have better games?”

And today you might search “Should I get an Xbox or a PlayStation if I like playing platformers?”

Search terms are getting longer and that means long-tail keywords will become even more important in your content. If you can find the right phrases to optimise for, you can reach a higher volume of the specific audience you’re targeting.

Enter 2026 with the confidence to thrive

If you’re looking to improve the quality of your content in 2026, build your understanding of where human-written content will deliver the most impact, or learn how to create content that AI finds and trusts, we can help.

Get in touch today, and we can talk about your specific needs.