9 key marketing questions for a successful strategy in 2026

How can you ensure your marketing is successful in 2026? Discover the 9 key questions every professional should answer to design an effective strategy adapted to the new challenges.

We've already turned the page on 2025. It's behind us.

It's time to look ahead and take those early steps that will make 2026 THE YEAR for your brand and project . That's why I want to share 9 questions that I think you should analyze and be sure of which answers apply to your context, your target audience, your channels, and your strategy.

Don't let January pass without having clear answers and courses of action for each of them.

1. What worked and what didn't work in your strategy last year? And related to this, what did you learn from the past year that you can apply to the current one?

I know the temptation to consign 2025 to a distant memory is strong. For many, it was a complex, unpredictable, and at times even irrational year.

You're here and you're ready for another round... and it would be a waste not to take a moment to do an honest and thorough analysis of everything you implemented or sought to implement in favor of your project.

Did you try things you hadn't initially planned as part of your strategy? Are you clear on whether they worked or not? Looking back at what you did last year, it's worth running the simple exercise of indexing it in three columns: "What we need to do MORE of," "What we need to do differently," and "What we need to stop doing ." This is an excellent starting point for setting your sights on a promising future.

2. Do you have a clear understanding of the business objectives for this year and how your marketing efforts contribute to these objectives?

Marketing strategy shouldn't exist in isolation. It must be directly linked to business objectives and understand its role in achieving them . If the goal is to grow one of the business's verticals disproportionately compared to the others, how should you adjust the focus of your marketing strategy to reflect that strategic direction?

And it's not just about a percentage distribution of time and resources in your budget, but about knowing exactly, based on what you already know works for each component of the business and your understanding of the stage of the Product-Life Cycle in which those components are, what you are going to do in favor of which campaign, product, promotion, pricing strategy, etc.

If the company's goal is to serve a particular industry more, what market understanding efforts, knowledge of that industry's buyer personas, recognition of pain points and needs, competitor mapping, etc., can your marketing team bring to the strategy table?

It seeks to provide those insights that will ensure marketing continues to assume a highly strategic role … not only because it is a discipline that is our passion, but because there are no arguments against it: today more than ever, well-executed marketing is THE differentiator between a successful project and a resounding failure.

3. Who is your target audience TODAY? Not yesterday, not the day before. Do you recognize recent changes in their profiles? What does this mean for your strategy?

In the 1980s, defining your core consumers and understanding what motivates them to buy, how they relate to certain brands, and so on, was an exercise that had a fairly long shelf life. Today, things have changed, and people change at a much faster pace.

What was crucial yesterday for the emotional connection between a brand and its target consumer can become irrelevant in a matter of days, motivated by something as random as the viral spread of an Instagram reel.

Therefore, it is important that you take this transitional time between years to challenge your understanding and predispositions regarding what moves, motivates, and connects with your target audience… because the things you knew to be true a few months ago may be radically different today.

• How well do you know your current consumers?

• How much have they changed recently, from what starting point, and in what direction?

• With this in mind, can you anticipate where they are most likely to evolve as buyers?

• Can you anticipate the types of messages and actions that will make your brand connect with them?

If the answer is YES, it's time to get to work and start designing for what consumers WILL BE, not just what they aren't. If your answer, on the other hand, is NO, it's time to invest significant time and resources to better understand those who, at the end of the day, give you the benefit of their preference.

4. What data do I have? What data am I missing? How am I leveraging it to my advantage? Do I have a clear understanding of how I'm going to balance data-driven marketing with the magic that comes from emotion and authentic connections?

It's no longer justifiable to base your marketing decisions solely on instinct and gut feeling. In reality, it never was , but at least in the past you had the excuse that gathering market intelligence was a time-consuming and expensive process.

Today, the problem is different. Today, you're very likely to have TOO MUCH data . Therefore, it's crucial that you first and foremost clearly define WHAT of all the available data is truly valuable to analyze in order to gain a reliable and relevant understanding for your brand, product, or service.

I will make a hypothetical analogy with sports , which is a space where data is definitely overused to reach conclusions that confuse chance with causality:

A soccer match between the Mexican and US national teams is coming up, and it's going to take place in Moscow. Weeks before the match, analysts on a television network are discussing the upcoming game, and one of them starts saying things like:

“ Historically, in the 19 matches between these two countries since 1974, the United States has won 37.4% of the time, Mexico 54.9%, and 17.7% have ended in a draw. Furthermore, in every instance where they have played in countries that were part of the Soviet bloc, Mexico has won by a two-goal margin. Additionally, when the US goalkeeper has a Germanic surname, as is the case this time, the first goal has always been scored within the first 15 minutes. ”

Another analyst replies:

“ I did an analysis of the physical performance of the players on both teams, measuring their speed, shooting accuracy, and dribbling ability. The average score for the Mexican team is 46/100, while the US team's score is 88/100 . I also just found out that the Mexican team's star striker is having problems at home due to infidelity and has been very unmotivated and hasn't been showing up for the friendly matches. In fact, it's likely he won't even travel with the team to Russia for that reason. ”

If you had to bet on who will win this match based on the available data, which contribution from the two commentators would you consider most useful in making your decision?

• Someone who only goes by emotion would probably say, "We're going to win 5-0 because we're awesome and the gringos don't know anything about football!"

  
  

• The person who goes by the useless data presented by the first analyst would bet that Mexico will win the game by a two-goal difference and score the first goal in the first 15 minutes of the game... and won't even notice that if you add up the percentages of games won or drawn presented by the analyst, they exceed 100% (did you notice that?).

I'm not saying it's certain in this hypothetical scenario that the United States would win the game, but anyone using the correct and most valuable data available would surely conclude that this scenario is the most likely.

Having said this, and reiterating the importance of not improvising but rather exploiting the available information, I also want to acknowledge that an approach that ONLY takes into account an analysis of the data that you have readily available and that focuses on the track record of your brand/product, can be limiting .

Returning to the sports analogies: if your football team has played 30 games and hasn't won a single one, it would be very easy to conclude that they will lose the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

The data tells us so… but that's where your creativity, changing the rules of the game, daring, and taking risks can make all the difference .

If a brand has had a historical sales growth of 5% annually for the last 10 years, it would be very easy to think that the most you can aspire to in the following year is a similar growth... because relying only on data can make it tempting not to change anything and just follow the trend.

But under this logic, it's highly unlikely that your efforts and tactics will be designed to amaze, exceed expectations, and inspire wonder. If you're not careful and let internal data drive your project, your efforts will tend toward inertia… and inertia is predictable .

It's equally important to look outward, to see what signs and opportunities might arise or what you can predict within the current context. You have to listen to your customers and those who aren't yet your customers. You have to look at your competitors, and the most difficult thing of all: you have to see the gaps and understand their potential . You have to find those spaces where there's no data yet because no one has thought to be there, but where you can see signs of the potential for greatness that exists.

In this sense, listening to your customers' feedback is important and valuable… but I must tell you that it can also be limiting . Because while my intention is by no means to minimize the incredible value of incorporating feedback from the most precious components of your value chain—your customers—into your strategy, it is worth inviting you to reflect on the following:

The renowned music producer Rick Rubin, in an interview on 60 Minutes, said, “The public doesn’t know what it wants. The public only knows what it has seen before.” Following the same line of reasoning, the following quote is commonly attributed to comic book and novel author Alan Moore: “It is not the artist’s job to give the public what it asks for. If the public knew what it needed, it wouldn’t be the public. It would be the artist.”

What data regarding the acceptance of the MacBook laptop might have given Steve Jobs the insights to create the first iPod and thus start a revolution in the use of and dependence on mobile devices? Famously, Jobs created the need for a product and amazed the public with a response no one expected… but make no mistake, it wasn't just a stroke of luck.

What was admirable about this example was Jobs' ability to see beyond what his customers were telling him . It was understanding the context and the trend toward mobile devices; it was seeing what the emergence of formats like MP3 and platforms like Napster and LimeWire told us about the future of music consumption and other formats.

Just as Henry Ford famously said , “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said they wanted faster horses ,” Jobs’ genius and inventiveness lay in knowing how to read the signals that were not as direct and obvious as customer feedback and product performance data.

Here's another example:

The Tecate brand was filming a commercial with Sylvester Stallone, built on insights into how masculinity is traditionally associated with certain behaviors easily attributable to the movie star. And yes, all the situations they presented were funny, they were in line with the brief, and they conveyed the intended message. They were comical… nothing out of the ordinary.

And suddenly the actor kept failing to pronounce the word "BOX" correctly. They tried recording it over and over, but they just couldn't get the actor to pronounce it right. They finished filming, and to resolve the situation, they even considered doing a voiceover with someone else saying the word "BOX" correctly (I heard that version; it was terrible).

But Franco María Maggi was in the room and he said, "That's how we're going to get him out, by saying BAX."

What data could have motivated one of my mentors to give the green light to this campaign? It was a fortuitous moment that almost didn't air because the original creatives hadn't planned it and considered it a very poor execution. There were no justifications or market acceptance data for Franco to give the green light, but his understanding of authenticity and emotional connections led to the most memorable and successful campaign for that beer brand. He wasn't sure. He didn't have hard data that said, "This is a low-risk bet," but he had a great understanding of Mexican culture and its target consumers, and he felt the risk would be worth it.

He was not wrong.

What data will you include in your decision-making process?

Which data will you not even look at because it will cloud your vision?

How much will you listen to and trust your feelings, and how much will you trust your understanding of the audience?

How many and which of your decisions will you make with a cool head versus those you will risk out of motivation to impress?

5. Which channels will be used for my brand, what priority should they have, and what are my objectives? Do I have a useful channel mix map?

Previously, you could count the available channels for your brand on one hand, and your budget allocation across channels was very easy to determine. Today, it's not just a mix of channels, but a mix of efforts for each channel.

If you're still creating a budget that's divided into ATL, BTL, and DIGITAL only, you have a lot of work to do... and not just because you have to double-click on traditional media, but because there are endless possibilities in the digital realm.

• Which platforms will you use?

• Within each of the platforms: what efforts? organic? paid? of what type?

• Will you only use your own accounts or will you do any kind of collaboration and/or earned digital media?

• Will you use content creators on your channels? Influencers?

• Only your own channels with efforts 100% linked to your brand?

• How will you drive traffic from one point to another and how will you manage it from the top of your funnel, all the way to purchase and repurchase?

• Which channels will you invest the most in for each stage of the funnel?

• What messages resonate more on your own social network, whatever it may be, than on a website and/or on the channel of an authoritative third party?

At the end of the day, I haven't met a single brand with an infinite budget, so it's important to clearly establish where you will focus your resources in order to achieve what objectives, with what type of campaigns, returns, and expected results.

6. What will my key metrics be and how will I use them in my decision-making processes?

Returning to the topic of the importance of knowing what data you will use and value in your decision-making, it is important to be very clear regarding specific objectives, with specific tactics and therefore, evaluated with specific metrics.

If you are clear about the need to implement an Awareness campaign, for example, it would be counterproductive to take the number of leads converted into qualified leads as the acid test of the success of that effort.

Marketing efforts have different lead times and imperfect attribution rules… knowing this makes it much more relevant to understand that not all efforts can be measured as successful or unsuccessful with the same variable (for example, Cost Per Conversion).

Having clarity on what is important to measure in what instance and documenting it will also equip you to justify and value each of the efforts in a fair, planned, pre-agreed and premeditated manner.

And also, be careful with vanity metrics.

7. What is my level of preparedness to adapt to change and to respond to uncertainty or possible periods of crisis?

If 2025 caused you anxiety and made you revisit your deepest beliefs only to realize that even the most fixed ideas are prone to obsolescence , I have bad news for you: there is no sign that the speed of change and its related uncertainty will speed up in 2026.

The well-worn phrase “change is the only constant” will continue to be overshadowed by the speed of that constant… and that is why it is important that you take some time to reflect on the installed capacity to operate in times of uncertainty, adapt the team and its functions decisively and quickly, and even have the capabilities to handle moments of crisis efficiently and effectively.

Your company needs to instill in its DNA the ability to quickly adapt to change … and reflect this in all the documents, manuals, and procedures that govern its daily operations.

I was recently at a quarterly meeting of a multinational company that honors me by giving me a seat on its Board of Directors, and we were talking about the purpose and reason for being of the company.

Without giving away too much information due to its confidential nature, the way the value proposition was constructed had a planned obsolescence embedded within it and sent the wrong message to customers and collaborators.

As a Board, we pointed this out and requested that the company's key strategic documents be modified to broaden its scope of action and not limit its reason for being to something that sooner or later will cease to be relevant.

By making this change, which might seem merely cosmetic at first glance, we triggered a portfolio reorganization, a focus on organizational transformation, and a series of decisions that are now preparing the company for the future… because they had the ability to prepare their adaptation to change.

The concept of adapting to change is also often linked to the ability to face and address a crisis, and it is my responsibility to invite you to ensure your ability to respond and prepare to deal with the most likely ones .

And it's not just about softening an inevitable blow, but about developing the ability to capture those moments of crisis to turn the most loyal customers, the best served customers, and those you turn into your brand ambassadors... all because you were prepared to capture the opportunity component of a crisis.

8. How will I differentiate myself from my competitors? Do I have a clear understanding of my differentiated value proposition?

Related to the previous point where I briefly discussed the value proposition, I want to tell you that it never ceases to amaze me how supposedly strategic documents in many companies are nothing more than a pretty poster in the reception area .

It is a shame that elements such as mission, vision, values, purpose and value proposition are treated with such disdain that they are nothing more than lines that sound very nice and that an intern made to tick off a pending task.

The companies and projects that will stand out in 2026 are those that have a clear understanding of how they will compete and present themselves as a more attractive solution or alternative than the rest.

Don't let the foundational documents for your success become mere decorative elements in a lobby. Your strategy must be well-established and presented. The organization behind it will have to champion those components of the value proposition that are most relevant to it… and move forward.

9. How can I have more fun?

You have a LOT of work ahead of you. 2026 has only just begun, and your challenges are immense.

You'd better find ways to keep your work and your daily life fun... because if all goes well, you'll be doing it for a long time.

With a bit of luck, the right strategy, and a touch of talent, you'll succeed. But the important thing is:

• HOW did you experience that adventure towards success?

• Did it fill you with pride for a job well done?

• Did it satisfy your achievement needs?

• Did it make you smile or maybe laugh?

They say that if you love your work and are passionate about it, you'll never work a day in your life. I think that's an idea we should all strive for. Seek to have fun, to nourish yourself, to achieve fulfillment… because the business result is important, but it's not everything. Your physical and mental well-being deserves to be enjoyed.

Are there any other key marketing questions?

With these 9 key marketing questions, I believe you can start 2026 well on track toward developing and implementing successful marketing efforts. Are these the only 9 questions you'll have to answer? I'm sure you know the answer is a resounding NO… but my intention is to give you a solid foundation to build upon.

2026 could be a great year for your project, and if we can do anything to help it succeed, we'd be happy to. If our content serves this purpose, subscribing to our newsletter is a great way to stay up-to-date. Or perhaps you'd like to follow our podcast ? Or if you'd like us to join you and get to work on your project, get in touch. We're here to help .