Planning ahead: Key considerations for developing your 2026 strategy

Planning for the year ahead is nothing new for marketers, but something about 2026 feels different. AI is changing things... fast, budgets are being squeezed even more, and consumers continue to raise the bar.

For the best chance of success this coming year, marketers need to be clear on three things: what genuinely worked this year and why, where they want to go next, and how they can stay flexible without feeling like they're constantly starting over. In this article, we’ve pulled together insights from marketing leaders who are already tackling these challenges. 

Starting with reflection

Before heading into 2026, it’s important to take a step back and look at what’s actually happened over the past year. It may sound obvious, but it's something that's often overlooked, especially when feeling the pressure.

It's easy to get carried away with new goals and ideas without really understanding what made a difference. Livia Bernardini, CEO of Future Platforms, highlights the importance of reflecting: "Every effective plan begins with reflection. Looking backwards before looking ahead helps set the direction and make sure we are on the right track… Reviewing performance should go beyond dashboards and KPIs; it requires listening to customers, frontline teams, and partners to surface insights that data alone might miss."

This matters even more after a year where many brands have had to work harder with less resources. And as Megan Dooley, head of PR at TAL Agency, points out:
"Setting new goals without reviewing performance and findings is like navigating blindfolded."

A review doesn't need to be complicated, but it should involve more than pulling together a few reports. It should help you get a feel for:

• What drove business results, and what didn't
• What factors contributed to said results
• What's worth scaling, tweaking, or dropping altogether
• What customers and frontline teams are seeing that the data might not show
• How the market has changed

When looked at like this, it stops being a tick-box exercise and actually becomes a useful tool for decision making. 

Setting realistic goals for 2026

Once you've done your reflecting, the next step is deciding where you want to go. This is where you work out how to balance all the exciting ideas with what's actually doable. As Dooley explains: "The most successful marketing plans start with a clear strategy that is ambitious yet still achievable and realistic. Setting unrealistic expectations for marketing is demoralising for both the team and the client."

Big goals may sound impressive, but they aren't always the ones that properly support the business. Dooley adds: "Whether the outcomes are based around growth, awareness, or conversations, the metrics need to align with business goals or inform strategic decisions, otherwise they're merely vanity metrics."

One of the biggest risks in planning is overload – especially when every Tom, Dick, and Harry wants their priorities included. Focusing on a few key areas that really matter will make the whole plan more manageable. And instead of setting everything in stone for the year, breaking plans into quarterly checkpoints lets teams chop and change when the market, trends or budgets do. As Dooley says: "Breaking the roadmap into quarterly reviews allows room to respond and adapt to external changes, assess strategy and reflect on how outcomes measure up to intentions."

Creating a plan you can actually deliver

Knowing what you want to achieve is one thing; having a plan you can actually deliver is another. And for many organisations, complexity is what trips them up. Bernardini recommends a more modular approach: “Some are global and fragmented, others local and hyper-complex… When things get complicated, I often use what I call the ‘island model’; attaching budget to specific improvements that all ladder up to a strong, shared customer value proposition and north star.”

These “islands” act as building blocks. You can progress one, pause another or change the order without derailing the whole plan. It’s a way to keep teams moving rather than waiting for everything to be perfect.

“A good plan should remain fluid, reviewed quarterly, transparent across teams… so you can pivot quickly if the market, technology, or economics demand it.”

This approach also makes it easier to protect everyday activities while still making room for testing new ideas. Bernardini notes: “Divide your plan and budget to keep the engine and brilliant basics running efficiently, while reserving space for experimentation.”

Flying in formation

Agility gets mentioned a lot nowadays, but it really just comes down to having clarity. Hilly Husnain, marketing manager at Puresport, puts it perfectly: “Agility comes from clarity. Clarity comes from structure. Structure comes from systems. Systems come from data.”

At Puresport, this translates into a set of filters that guide every decision: “Before any task, every person on the team asked themselves three questions: Does this align with our brand values? Does it align with our mission? Does it align with our strapline, For the Long Run?”

If the answer is yes, they move quickly. Working this way meant that even their smallest, cheapest campaigns became some of their most effective – because the whole team was “flying in formation”.

Spotting new opportunities

With everything changing so quickly, spotting new opportunities needs to happen regularly, not just once a year. Bernardini suggests starting with moments of friction: "New opportunities tend to hide in friction, the moments where customer experience or operational flow starts to break down. Mapping those points of tension across your ecosystem can reveal unmet needs and adjacent growth areas."

She also recommends paying attention to the edges – underserved audiences, underperforming markets, or emerging behaviours that haven't hit the mainstream yet: "Beyond friction, it’s worth looking towards the edges; underserved audiences, underperforming locales, or unexpected use cases that sit just outside the core. These are often where early signals of change appear.”

Anthony Cooper, company director at Clarient Global, agrees that it's important to keep an eye on things: “Staying ahead means monitoring emerging opportunities and backing your plan with data-driven research”. He suggests tracking market trends, monitoring social media and auditing the media landscape. “This ongoing intel acts as an early-warning system, helping you craft timely messages and lead the conversation instead of just reacting,” he adds. 

Let the tools assist, but keep the human touch

Trust is becoming harder to earn – and even harder to keep. As AI content grows, consumers are becoming more sceptical, not less. Cooper explains: "Marketing leaders face a future where trust and authenticity are more critical and more challenging… With audiences becoming increasingly sceptical amid the advent of AI-generated content and deepfakes, maintaining credibility has become more paramount than ever."

The answer isn't to avoid AI, but to use it responsibly: "Let the tools assist, but keep the human touch."

Bernardini echoes this: "By 2026, the challenge won't be access to AI, it will be adoption discipline… The opportunity lies in using AI to simplify, personalise, and accelerate experiences without losing human warmth or brand integrity."

Final thoughts

A good 2026 strategy isn’t about predicting the future; it's about setting yourself up well for whatever happens. Reflection, clarity, flexibility and curiosity all matter. And as the leaders here show, the best plans will be the ones that remain focused and adaptable, giving teams the confidence to move fast without losing their way. 

If you want to start planning ahead for 2026, the CIM planning marketing campaigns training course provides a comprehensive overview of how to plan your marketing campaigns and optimise digital marketing channels.