Marketing

Search has changed, and so should your audience personas. Your audience searches across Google, ChatGPT, Reddit, YouTube, and many other channels. Knowing who they are isn’t enough anymore. You need to know how they search. Search-focused audience personas fill gaps that traditional personas miss. Think insights like: Where this person actually goes for answers What …

The post How to Build Audience Personas for Modern Search + Template appeared first on Backlinko.

If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that AI is no longer just a side tool. It’s the engine running campaigns and reshaping how people discover brands.   At the same time, platforms have declared war on the “click.” We’re seeing an aggressive push for native conversions, where the goal isn’t to drive traffic to the website but to close the deal right in the feed.  That shift toward “frictionless” experiences, combined with the saturation of AI-generated noise, has forced another […]

Everybody wants smoother workflows and fewer manual tasks. And thanks to AI models, automation is at the center of conversations in marketing departments across all industries. But most rarely get the results they’re looking for. According to Ascend2’s State of Marketing Automation Report, only 28% of marketers say their automation “very successfully” supports their objectives. …

The post How to Automate Marketing With 8 Simple Workflows appeared first on Backlinko.

Marketing budgets aren’t collapsing in 2026, but they are making a shift. That’s the part many teams miss. That distinction matters. Rising media costs, weaker attribution, privacy changes, and AI-driven search shifts have created real pressure, but the data shows budgets are still moving into marketing. They’re just moving with more intent. Our latest NP […]

Marketing is moving faster than most teams can keep up with. Users expect answers immediately. They jump across channels before they ever land on your website. Search results summarize key points before they show links. AI Overviews and other LLMs give people clean, structured answers that used to require a full research session. This change […]

You’ve likely invested in AI tools for your marketing team, or at least encouraged people to experiment. Some use the tools daily. Others avoid them. A few test them quietly on the side. This inconsistency creates a problem. An MIT study found that 95% of AI pilots fail to show measurable ROI. Scattered marketing AI …

The post 7 Marketing AI Adoption Challenges (And How to Fix Them) appeared first on Backlinko.

Creating an official brand subreddit is one of the hardest marketing spaces to get right. Why? Because it’s hostile ground for traditional brand messaging, with some of the internet’s snarkiest users watching every move. But if you strike the right balance, the payoff is huge. Just look at r/fidelityinvestments. This brand subreddit has grown into …

The post How to Build a Brand Subreddit: Full Setup Guide (+ Examples) appeared first on Backlinko.

Good business to consumer marketing (B2C marketing) is the lifeblood of any consumer-facing business. Even Apple, the best-known and most valuable consumer electronics company in the world still invests heavily in B2C digital marketing and advertising. Here’s a brief look at some of the trends driving the shifting B2C market: In this guide, I’ll dive […]