Podcast Summary: The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast

Episode: "6 Marketing Trends That Will Shape 2026"

Host: John Jantsch
Date: January 8, 2026

Main Theme/Purpose

In this solo episode, John Jantsch presents his annual “obligatory trends” forecast, sharing six major marketing trends he believes will shape 2026. Rather than focusing on shock-value predictions, John discusses evolving trends and core principles becoming more vital in the changing marketing landscape. The episode is filled with hands-on advice for small business owners and marketers seeking clarity, consistency, and actionable strategy for the coming years.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Local Advantage Just Got Louder

(Starts ~03:00)

Local SEO remains critical. Despite SEO’s evolving landscape, being discoverable at the local level is more important than ever.
Google Business Profile as an active channel.
- “Look at your Google Business Profile now…not as just a directory listing…but as a publishing platform.” (John Jantsch, 04:12)
- Add images, descriptions, services, pricing—use every relevant feature, and post regularly.
Don’t forget other local platforms. Participation on Yelp, Reddit, and local online forums further strengthens visibility.
Consistency matters. Weekly activity—getting reviews, posting updates, engaging on directories—is key.
Noteworthy Advice:
- “Whoever’s doing your marketing…there needs to be some thought about: Are we getting reviews, are we posting on Google, are we posting in other platforms?” (John Jantsch, 07:00)

2. Real is the New Viral

(Starts ~08:00)

AI-generated content is everywhere, and it’s making everything sound average.
Trust and authenticity will stand out.
- “If everything…sounds like it came from a robot, you’re going to have trouble standing out.” (John Jantsch, 08:20)
Share what only you can share—behind-the-scenes looks, honest stories, and client testimonials.
Push past comfort zones.
- “If you’re not sharing stuff that makes you a little uncomfortable, you’re probably not taking advantage of this trend.” (John Jantsch, 09:10)
- “All AI is trying to do is make us average. So the more you can think, how can I do something that nobody else in my space could do…that’s what you need to be focused on.” (John Jantsch, 10:10)

3. Mischief is a Marketing Strategy

(Starts ~11:20)

Memorability trumps convention.
- “You don’t need a Super Bowl ad to be memorable.” (John Jantsch, 11:30)
Think outside the box:
- Handwritten notes, quirky collaborations, pop-up events (like a lemonade stand outside your shop)—anything that gets people talking offline and can later be amplified online.
Embrace creative risks.
- “If what I’m talking about makes your accountant nervous…you’re probably onto something.” (John Jantsch, 12:05)
Schedule mischief. Do something offbeat once a quarter; tie it to local events or causes.

4. Retention is the New Acquisition

(Starts ~13:15)

Investing in existing customers is more impactful than chasing new ones.
- “It is much more expensive, much harder to get somebody who doesn’t know you to understand you and trust you than it is to get that person who’s had a great experience with you to continue to trust it.” (John Jantsch, 14:00)
Lifecycle marketing essentials:
- Focus on onboarding, upsells, reactivation, and referrals.
Quick wins hide in retention.
- “If you drop me into a business, those are some of the places where I could probably find some immediate quick wins.” (John Jantsch, 14:35)
Rethink budget allocation. Spend less on cold leads, more on serving and growing existing relationships.
- “What if you literally just said, okay, here’s 20%, my best customers, what else do they need?” (John Jantsch, 15:10)

5. The Rise of the Trust Broker (Micro-Influencer Evolution)

(Starts ~16:20)

Traditional influencer marketing is losing its impact.
True influence comes from smaller, highly trusted community leaders.
- “Big influencers…all the content looks like a commercial…But the niche creators, they really are trusted by their communities.” (John Jantsch, 17:00)
Build real partnerships.
- Seek out micro-influencers aligned with your brand and collaborate for long-term mutual value.
- “Find three or five of them who align with your values…build some real relationships. Don’t just go buy a post.” (John Jantsch, 17:50)
Look for engagement, not audience size. These collaborators often offer more affordable and authentic access to your target market.

6. Be the Answer

(Starts ~19:20)

SEO is about being genuinely helpful and answering real questions.
- “Being helpful has always been in style.” (John Jantsch, 19:45)
The intent behind your content matters more than keywords or traffic volume.
Modern content strategy:
- Answer questions, solve problems, and be a resource, not just a brochure.
- “Our content needs to be today… useful, helpful; gets to the point of somebody saying, okay, yeah, you get the problem that I’m trying to solve.” (John Jantsch, 20:25)
Users want answers, not sales pitches.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“All AI is trying to do is make us average. So the more you can think, ‘How can I do something that nobody else in my space could do?’—that’s what you need to be focused on.” (John Jantsch, 10:10)
“You don’t need a Super Bowl ad to be memorable.” (John Jantsch, 11:30)
“If what I’m talking about makes your accountant nervous…you’re probably onto something.” (John Jantsch, 12:05)
“Retention is the new acquisition…That’s where the real money is.” (John Jantsch, 13:35)
“Being helpful has always been in style.” (John Jantsch, 19:45)

Timestamps for Major Segments

03:00 — The Local Advantage Just Got Louder
08:00 — Real is the New Viral
11:20 — Mischief is a Marketing Strategy
13:15 — Retention is the New Acquisition
16:20 — The Rise of the Trust Broker / Micro-Influencer
19:20 — Be the Answer

Final Thoughts

John wraps up the episode by urging listeners to finish 2025 strong or set themselves up for success in 2026 by integrating these trends into their strategies. His overall message: focus on authenticity, foster community trust, do the real work of engagement—online and off—and be relentlessly helpful.

This summary captures the energy, insight, and action-oriented advice from John Jantsch, serving as an essential reference for anyone planning their 2026 marketing strategy.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Hey, if your 2025 marketing felt more like a scramble than a system, well, you're not alone. You stayed busy, clients showed up, but deep down you're not really sure why it all worked. And that uncertainty is risky. You can't build a predictable business on hope without a clear strategy. You're just throwing tactics at the wall and that can get expensive fast. That's why Sarah Nay, our CEO at Ducktape Marketing, is opening a few strategy first calls for service based business owners. These one on one sessions are for those who already have clients but know their marketing lacks clarity, consistency and direction. In the call, you'll pinpoint exactly where your marketing is breaking down and see whether the strategy first approach can help you build a system that your business can actually run on in 2026. The sponsor limited book yours now at DTM World fast start. That's DTM World slash fast Start. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jantz and no guest. Today I'm going to do a solo show. I'm going to do the obligatory trends show. So I'm going to talk about six trends that I see coming in 2025. And the thing about trends is they are not necessarily all like earth shattering things you never thought of or you never saw coming. A lot of them were just developments, the things that we've been talking about for a while, but maybe they're here now, or maybe they've gotten louder or maybe they've gotten bigger. And so I don't expect this is going to be the crystal ball of things you never thought about. But I do want to talk about things that I think we should be focused on. So I've got six of them. I'm going to list them, you know, talk about them and maybe give you a couple ideas what to do about them. So number one, if you're a local business, a lot of people are moaning right now about the idea that SEO is going away and that, you know, there's all kinds of new acronyms that are cropping in and there's no question it's changing, it's evolving. But the local business is still really going to be dependent. I mean, AI is not necessarily going to replace all of the search volume for that local plumber for that person. That's really they're looking at your reviews, they're looking at you showing up on maps. That's going to be with us for a while. So I would actually say it's going to get louder. So the local advantage is something that you really want to take advantage of. So instead of thinking about like, what are all the new things I need to be doing, just double down. Look at your Google Business Profile. In fact, if you haven't touched it for a while, this is like your warning sign. Look at your Google Business Profile now today, not as just a place that's a directory listing with your phone number, but as a publishing platform. Google gives you so many opportunities to put stuff there. Images, descriptions, services, pricing, anything you want there. They have the ability for you to schedule appointments, for people to text. You take advantage of all of those elements that make sense for you because Google's paying attention. And lastly, they have posts, what they call post now. So you imagine the blog post. Well, you can actually put posts now into your Google Business Profile and that's just all activity, that's all data that gives more keyword searches. Now there's a lot of other things that have to happen. I mean, your reviews are extremely important there as well. You can't just optimize your profile and hope people find it. There's a lot of activity that needs to go on. You certainly need to be doing things on your website that validate. You need to have, as I said, reviews that are coming in, validating and proving that you are an authority. But that opportunity to really double down on your Google Business Profile is something that if you are a local business, definitely treat that as a living asset. I mean, and not just that, but other platforms, they're going to pull from Yelp, like them or not, they're going to pull more things even from places like Reddit. So the more that you can participate at the local level in pretty much any conversation that's going on online, all of that's kind of adding to the soup now of what's going to have you show up in local search. And so this isn't something that you do, you know, once a quarter or once a year. This is something that you want to be adding to a weekly routine. Whoever's doing your marketing or whatever you're doing in marketing, there needs to be something some thought about are we getting reviews, are we posting on Google, Are we posting in other platforms that that other directories that would help us get seen in those real is the new viral is what I'm going to call this one. So you know, AI can write the next blog post in 10 seconds. So we can argue whether or not it's very good. It's definitely gotten better at that. But if everything starts to sound from your organization like it came from a robot, then I think that you're going to have trouble standing out. So the idea that publishing real honest, behind the scenes, showing your process instead of just pitching your promise, that's the stuff that, well, a I can't do. I mean, that's unique to you. Nobody else can actually copy that. And that, that shows more than ever, I think that idea of trust, authenticity, real people, those are elements that I think are going to become more and more important. And frankly, I always tell people if it feels a little uncomfortable like you're used to in marketing, just saying here's, you know, here are the features of our product or our service. If you're not sharing stuff that makes you a little uncomfortable, you're probably not taking advantage of this trend. And to some degree, some of the stuff that you're posting might not be worth posting if it doesn't have a little bit of that in there. Tell stories that only you can tell. Have your clients tell stories about you that only they can tell. You know, show, as I said, behind the scenes. Highlight people in your organization. Use customer stories. Don't use stock photos if you can help it. That's all. All we're trying to do is not be average and all AI is trying to do is make us average. So the more you can think, how can I do something that nobody else in my space could do? The stuff I own, the stuff that's truly me, that's what you need to be focused on. Hey, if you're 2025, marketing felt more like a scramble than a system. Well, you're not alone. You stayed busy, clients showed up, but deep down you're not really sure why it all worked. And that uncertainty is risky. You can't build a predictable business on hope without a clear strategy. You're just throwing tactics at the wall and that can get expensive fast. That's why Sarah Nay, our CEO at Ducktape Marketing, is opening a few strategy first calls for service based business owners. These one on one sessions are for those who already have clients but know their marketing lacks clarity, consistency and direction. In the call, you'll pinpoint exactly where your marketing is breaking down and see whether the strategy first approach can help you build a system that your business can actually run on in 2026. The sponsor limited book yours now at DTM World slash fast start. That's DTM World slash fast start. All right, number three. I can't remember I stole this idea from somebody. But the idea of mischief as a marketing strategy doing something that's outside the box. That is, you know, this may be old school even. Those are the types of things that I think, you know, you want to swing the pendulum back the other way. You don't need a Super bowl ad to be memorable. Things like a handwritten note like, who does that anymore? Things like a collaboration that just is awesome but doesn't make any sense, pop up lemonade stand outside of your shop. Anything that gets people talking offline can be amplified online. And that's really what you want to start thinking about doing. If there's any accountants listening, forgive me if what I'm talking about makes your account nervous. They're like, why would you do that? You're probably onto something. This isn't just once a year thing. This is something maybe once a quarter. You ought to be thinking about what's like, you know, our street team approach. You know, what's something we're going to do? Maybe you tie it to a local event or a cause, but again, make it weird. Maybe it's offline because that's going to really allow people to amplify it online. Okay, trend number four, and this isn't a trend. You remember I talked about that idea at the very beginning. The earliest shouldn't be a trend, but retention is the new acquisition. It's always mattered. That's the idea behind the marketing hourglass, is that, you know, after the sale, drive by, repeat refer, are stages of the marketing hourglass. The customer journey that you, we need to be focused on because that's where the real money is, that's where the retention is. It is much more expensive, much harder to get somebody who doesn't know you to understand you and trust you than it is to get that person who's had a great experience with you to continue to trust it. So life cycle marketing, like what happens onboarding, all the upsells, reactivation, referrals, this is where money is hiding in most businesses. In fact, I, you know, I say it all the time. If you drop me into a business, those are some of the places where I could probably find some immediate quick wins. If you're still spending 90, all right, even less, 80% of your budget, chasing people who've never heard of you, cold leads, you know, outbound research. I mean, flip that around. What if you spent that kind of money on getting people who already knew you to buy more from you? What if you literally just said, okay, here's 20%, my best customers, what else do they need? What else could I make? What else could I offer as a service. How could I offer a premium option of my service so that they would just buy more? So it's not just simply a matter of a marketing play to get referrals. It might actually be a product play, it might be a business strategy play to say, how could I actually take advantage of the fact that I've got these loyal customers that, that love me so much they'd spend more money if I gave them the opportunity? Number five. So we're all talking, we've been talking about influencer marketing forever, but I think there's a new version of that and I'm going to call them a trust broker or a micro influencer. You know, big influencers. You've probably seen them on Instagram and TikTok and things. It's kind of losing steam. I mean it all the content looks like a commercial for a lot of them because it is. They're promoting some product that they were paid to promote to their large audience. Who knows if they're even using it or if they even like it. And I think that's really, I think people have gotten burned by that. So thinking in terms of smaller niche creators, might be podcaster, might be somebody that's on YouTube, they really are trusted by their communities. You can see they may not have a large following, but they have a lot of engagement. Those folks are quietly driving a lot of purchase behavior. And the beauty of it is typically a lot more affordable. Right? They don't have the 10 million followers, so they really can't get the 10 million follower price. So find three or five of them who align with your values, with your audience. Right. And build some real relationships. Don't just go buy a post. Think in terms of ways that you can cross promote and ways that you could actually promote something they're doing that they could promote something that, that you're doing. Think long term relationship. Not just, hey, do a, do a TikTok video for my product. Really get creative about that. And I think you'll find that more than advertising, far more than advertising, you will get a return on that investment if you choose the right ones and you put in the work to create the right relationships. Okay, number six, this probably is related to SEO. Definitely is related SEO. I'm going to call this be the answer. So search is changing. That's not just about ranking for key search terms anymore. I mean those, I'm not suggesting that those aren't important today, but we had a lot of blog posts that were written specifically to rank for a certain term. But there was no intent in that. In other words, people, you got a lot of search traffic, but it wasn't your icp, they weren't buyers, you got no business out of it. So the idea of chasing that today, I think people have realized, well, why would I do that? But being helpful has always been in style. And guess what? The AI tools voice search. Wherever search engine results come from. Today people are asking questions. They want to know how to do things, they want to know how to solve problems, they want to know how to fix things. They want to know if stuff costs. And so a lot of your content today needs to be about answering questions instead of a digital brochure. I mean, people are going to skip over your site. Who needs that? You're here to sell me something. When's the last time you wanted somebody to sell you something? But do you want people to help you? Do you want people to have the answer? Do you want people to seem to get the problems that you're trying to solve? You know, that's what our content needs to be today. It's always been useful content, but I think it's actually people that have been producing that for a long time. I think it's actually, they're actually being rewarded for that content because it is useful, helpful, gets to the point of somebody saying, okay, yeah, you get the problem that I'm trying to solve. All right, that's my six trends for 2026. The local advantage just got louder. Real is the new viral. Mischief is a marketing strategy. Retention is the new acquisition, the rise of the trust broker, and finally be the answer. So depending upon when you're listening to this, either finish out 2025 strong or let's go kick it in the tail for 2026. Again, appreciate you dropping by the Duct Tape marketing podcast and let me know if I see you out there on the road one of these days. Foreign. Hey, if you're 2025, marketing felt more like a scramble than a system. Well, you're not alone. You stayed busy, clients showed up, but even you're not really sure why it all worked. And that uncertainty is risky. You can't build a predictable business on hope without a clear strategy. You're just throwing tactics at the wall and that can get expensive fast. That's why Sarah Nay, our CEO at Ducktape Marketing, is opening a few strategy first calls for service based business owners. These one on one sessions are for those who already have clients but know their marketing lacks clarity, consistency and direction. In the call, you'll pinpoint exactly where your marketing is breaking down and see whether the Strategy first approach can help you build a system that your business can actually run on in 2026. The sponsor limited book yours now at DTM World Fast Start. That's DTM World slash Fast Start.