New Year’s Resolutions SMEs should make to improve their marketing in 2026
Happy New Year! All of us at Shaw Marketing Services hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and are ready and raring to push your business forward in 2026. To help you do this, we wanted to share what New Year’s Resolutions you should make to improve your marketing this year.
Marketing is critical to business success in all sizes of business, and January is a great time to commit to doing more and better in the year to come. SMEs often neglect their marketing, as they are so busy with other parts of their business. We really understand this, as looking after your customers is critical, however without marketing, new customers won’t be able to find you, and when your current client base isn’t buying, you could get into trouble.
To thrive, SMEs should double down on their inherent strengths—agility, local presence, and personality—while using technology to handle the heavy lifting.
Here are a few ways that SMEs can improve their marketing in 2026, without taking up too much time from building the business and creating happy customers.
Make a plan of action for your marketing in 2026
Review your last year, your current customer base, your struggles and successes from 2025 and decide what you’d like to improve for 2026.
Identify any quiet periods, or strong months which could have been leveraged better and make a plan for marketing campaigns which can support you.
Look at the marketing you did last year, what worked well and what didn’t and focus on the strongest channels or campaigns.
Also review your website, social media channels and how you’re communicating with your clients and identify improvements which can be made.
Once you know what you want to do, break down the tasks into manageable chunks and schedule when you will do things, when you need to start promotions and have a calendar or document to work from which lists the actions, the dates to start and finish tasks and the person responsible for them.
Find out more about marketing planning
Stop hiding behind your logo and start showing the humans behind the brand
Research shows that as AI becomes more prevalent, consumer trust in “corporate” messaging is hitting record lows. People don’t want to buy from a faceless entity; they want to buy from the person who understands their problem. SMEs can do this well, as the owner is usually the face of the business, the expert in their local area, niche and is able to dominate that niche if they do it right!
Photos and video content is key to unlocking this personalized, human marketing, especially on social media and you don’t have to have a big budget to do it. Interestingly, the rise in AI generated videos has made raw, authentic, human-led video the most valuable asset a business owner can possess.
When planning your marketing in 2026, experiment with natural short-form video on platforms like TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts to introduce yourself, share insights into your day, promote your products or services and position yourself as an expert.
Here are a few ways you can use video.
- Let people see “Behind-the-Scenes”: Once a week, film a 60-second “unfiltered” video. Show a project in progress, explain a mistake your team made and how you fixed it, or answer a common customer question while walking through your office.
- Use video in the Sales Process: Instead of a 10-page PDF proposal, send a 3-minute personalized video explaining the “why” behind your solution. This builds a 1-to-1 connection that a static email never can.
- Prioritize Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Don’t hire an actor. Put your lead technician, your head of design, or yourself in front of the camera. The “vibe” of 2026 is expertise over production value.
If you struggle with video, photos can work too, especially with little quotes from your team integrated into them.
Embrace being a “local” business
Many SMEs want to expand their reach outside of their core area and compete with the national companies, but with the lack of trust in corporations, people want to engage with real people who are experts in their local area. SMEs can dominate their area in a number of ways.
Large corporations struggle with local nuances, but SMEs are on the ground experiencing things with their client body. In 2026, SMEs should leverage Hyper-Local SEO and Google Business Profile (GBP) to improve visibility, dominate their niche and stand up to the big-brands.
You can do this on your website, social media channels and your Google Business Profile (GBP).
Don’t just list your services. Post weekly updates to your GBP and social media channels with photos of your team at local landmarks, mention local events you’re supporting, and use “Neighbourhood-Specific” keywords across your content.
This will help with traditional search engines and AI search engines (like Google’s AI Overviews) as they prioritise businesses that show deep, verified local activity. A local plumbing company that posts a video of a repair in a specific well-known location will often outrank a national franchise in that area.
Build a Small but Mighty Community Around Your Brand
SMEs win by being human, accessible, and relatable — advantages big brands struggle to replicate.
Focus on community-led growth by partnering with “Nano-Influencers” (people with 1,000–5,000 highly engaged followers in your town or industry). A recommendation from a local community leader or a complementary business (e.g., a real estate agent recommending a local house cleaner) is worth more than 10,000 cold impressions. Trust is the scarcest resource in 2026. “Peer-to-peer” marketing is the only channel that is effectively “AI-proof.”
Go to networking events, support local charities, support other businesses online and offline and become as visible as you can. Build your local network, get to know people and drill down into what matters to your community, to become the go-to person in your niche and in your area.
Not only is this helpful from a point of view of being easy to find online, but it also reduces travel time, sets up meaningful referral partners and cheerleaders and makes running the business easier.
You can also create a WhatsApp or Facebook Group for your most engaged customers, to give them special treatment and encourage repeat purchase and loyalty. Encourage user‑generated content with simple prompts or challenges, use video to answer potential customers’ questions and genuinely support your community.
This is not a fast way to generate sales, and has its limitations in terms of scale, but for most SMEs their local community has enough to offer to make their business a success. It’s worth the time and effort! A loyal micro‑community becomes your unpaid marketing engine — and it’s far cheaper than paid ads.
Explore how AI can take some of the pressure off you
The new tools can take some getting used to, but can really help streamline processes, save time and improve customer service. Look into what’s taking up too much of your time and the jobs that you’re struggling with, which is taking you away from looking after your customers and investigate whether there’s an AI tool that could help with it.
For example, you could use an AI chatbot to handle 24/7 basic inquiries (hours, pricing, booking). But, ensure that as soon as a query becomes emotional or complex, it swaps to a real person.
Could AI help with reports or data analysis which is taking you too long? Could it repurpose old content, segment your audience and help you to personalize correspondence?
There are lots of helpful facets of AI that an SME can lean into, without losing their personal touch.
Consult the marketing experts
You can use a marketing agency in a number of ways to support you with marketing in 2026, depending on your needs, budget and skillset. Having a marketing expert on hand to help out, on a regular basis, with a campaign, or just to brainstorm and plan, could really make a difference to improving your marketing.
Shaw Marketing Services are marketing experts on the Costa del Sol and can help you in the following ways –
- Brainstorming – meeting to discuss what you need and generating ideas for you and the team to implement
- Marketing Planning – creating a valuable document which examines your needs, objectives, competition and strengths and weaknesses and proposes a list of actions to implement in 2026
- Public Relations Campaigns – increasing your company’s visibility through media relations, influencer marketing, events, collaborations and partnerships
- Social Media Management – taking the stress and time of social media off your plate to allow you to focus on what really matters
- Marketing Training – offering training to improve your team’s skills and enable you to take on more of the marketing role with confidence
Contact us to discuss how we could best help you to improve your marketing in 2026.