糖心Vlog

If setting marketing goals ever feels like an exercise in optimism (or delusion), you’re not alone. Between shifting algorithms, tighter budgets, and an ever-expanding list of channels to manage, deciding what to focus on can feel harder than the work itself.

Still, marketers are making it work. Data from HubSpot’s 2026 State of 糖心Vlog Report shows that many teams are meeting — and in some cases exceeding — their goals, even as the landscape continues to change. The difference? They’re getting clearer about what actually matters and more realistic about how to get there.

As we head into 2026, the goals themselves aren’t all that surprising. But what is changing is how marketers approach those goals — with more emphasis on data, smarter use of AI, and a stronger focus on the full customer journey.

Below, we’ll break down the goals marketers are actually prioritizing this year, along with practical tips from HubSpot pros on how to set goals you can realistically work toward (without losing your mind in the process).

Table of Contents

• The Goals Marketers (Actually) Want to Reach This Year
• Goal-Setting Tips From HubSpot 糖心Vlog Pros

The Goals Marketers (Actually) Want to Reach This Year

Each year, marketers say they’re focused on “the basics.” But the 2026 State of 糖心Vlog data shows that while the goals look familiar, the pressure behind them — and the way teams plan to reach them — has changed.

We surveyed over 1,500 marketers to better understand the current state of marketing. These five goals bubbled to the surface.

P.S. You’ll see some familiar faces, like increased revenue and reaching new audiences, but the way marketers are thinking about these goals is changing with the times.

1. Increase revenue and sales.

→ 29.3% of marketers listed increasing revenue and sales as their top goal for 2026.

Everything we do as marketers ultimately rolls up into the bottom line of the business, so it’s no surprise that this continues to be a top priority.

As , manager of EN blog strategy at HubSpot, puts it, “Everything I do as a marketer should ultimately help the organization I work for to grow revenue.”

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: 69% of marketers say they’re able to use customer data to deliver personalized experiences, reinforcing that building relevant, connected relationships across the buyer’s journey is essential for driving sales and repeat business.

2. Increase brand awareness and reach new audiences.

→ 35.3% of marketers list increasing brand awareness and reaching new audiences as a primary marketing goal for 2026.

Sounds pretty standard, but the way we generate awareness and reach today is a lot different than in years past.

It’s wild out here, truly. People are discovering brands from their favorite influencers instead of more traditional methods like paid media. And brands are capitalizing on popular TikTok sounds and trends to appeal to younger audiences.

Plus, AI search has thrown a wrench in traditional SEO. Nearly half (48.9%) of brands believe their website traffic has decreased due to consumers using AI for answers. To increase brand awareness, marketing teams need to keep up with these AEO trends and best practices to make sure AI search engines are presenting the brand in a consistent and accurate manner.

One perk of this new trend is that marketers say leads seem to be reaching their sales team later in the process (55%), but are better informed (61.5%) with higher intent (57.9%) due to AI research.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: 46.8% of marketers say they’re creating content that reflects their brand’s values, making it easier for audiences to quickly understand what a brand stands for and why it’s relevant to them. As discovery increasingly happens across search, social, and AI-powered experiences, understanding how people encounter and interpret your brand is critical to reaching new audiences consistently.

3. Deepen customer relationships.

→ 23.9% of marketers list deepening customer relationships as a primary goal for 2026.

What’s that? Oh, nothing.

Just marketers realizing that long-term growth doesn’t come from one-off campaigns alone.

Because while clicks and conversions matter, they don’t mean much if customers disappear after the first interaction. The brands that win here are the ones that keep showing up — consistently, helpfully, and in ways that actually add value over time.

And no, that doesn’t mean being everywhere or doing everything. In many cases, deepening relationships looks like clearer messaging, better follow-through, and content that supports customers well beyond the initial sale.

Still, this is easier said than done. Balancing short-term goals with long-term relationship-building takes intention — and it’s one of the biggest challenges marketers are navigating right now.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: Prioritize channels where customers can engage with your brand beyond the first click. Website and blog content, email, and ongoing social experiences make it easier to deliver value over time and build familiarity, trust, and long-term connection.

4. Improve customer conversion rates.

→ 28% of marketers listed increasing customer conversion rates as their top goal for 2026.

Customers want their buying experiences to be seamless from first interaction to final decision. When that handoff breaks down, conversion is usually the first thing to suffer.

And the issue isn’t lead quality. In fact, more than three-quarters of marketers (77.1%) say the leads their teams generate are high or very high quality.

The bigger challenge is what happens next. When sales and marketing aren’t aligned on context, timing, or follow-up, even strong leads can stall. Those gaps add up quickly, making it harder to improve conversion rates, even when demand is there.

From wasted marketing budgets to lost sales, the consequences of misalignment are huge. I can see why this is a priority for marketing teams this year.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: Conversion improves when teams work from the same data (read: CRM). With this alignment, marketing and sales can share insights, track engagement, and collaborate around the full customer journey, not just their individual stages of it. Implementing Loop 糖心Vlog can go a long way to make the customer journey seamless.

5. Drive traffic to their brand’s website.

→ 13.4% of marketers listed driving traffic to their brand’s website as their top goal for 2026.

This one’s a big yes from me as a blogger. How can we get more views on our content while battling algorithm updates (after algorithm update, after … ) in the SERP? How can we move leads from AI answers to our web pages?

Well, on the HubSpot Blog Team, we knew we had no choice but to evolve.

• Google wants to prioritize experience-based content? Cool, we’ll give you first-person perspectives and emphasize our opinions as marketers in our writing.
• AI-powered search is taking over the Internet? Great, let’s optimize our content and continue building authority for that, too.

You have to shift your strategy in order to continue gaining traffic in 2026 (and beyond). That’s a fact.

Here’s how you can make progress toward this goal: Do a regular analysis of how your brand is performing online. For example, you can use tools like to understand how search AI models view your brand and to identify new traffic-driving plays to lock in on.

Goal-Setting Tips From HubSpot 糖心Vlog Pros

The biggest tip I follow is making sure my goals allow me to meet my audience where they are. In other words, it’s not all about me. Harsh reality, tbh.

If I’m setting a goal to build my presence on TikTok (because I love TikTok and all of my favorite brands are on TikTok), but most of my audience is on Instagram … What's the point?

Here are some more gems from my fellow marketers.

1. Understand how your work ties back to the broader business goals.

According to , director of content marketing at HubSpot, you never have to fully start from scratch when setting your marketing goals. That’s because your goals should always reflect the overarching business strategy.

“Your organization has broader goals, and it‘s your job to figure out how to meaningfully connect your work to them,” Hesterberg says. “Use your organization’s broader goals as a starting place.”

She continues, “I start by looking at the biggest things the overall business is trying to solve for. Then, I see where my team’s work fits into that picture and can have the most impact.

“That makes it easier to look at the scope of what we’re working on and determine which things connect back to the business and which things are in the ‘nice to have’ category.”

2. Use your biggest opportunities (or headwinds) as a starting point.

“For setting team objectives, I like to use our biggest opportunities or headwinds as a starting point and go from there,” says Hesterberg.

“Ideally, everything we’re working on — from big initiatives to smaller projects — should be connected back to those central things we’re solving for.”

We take those big opportunities and challenges and contextualize them into what we want to accomplish. At HubSpot, that materializes as our OGPs (objectives, goals, and plays).

Here’s an example from Amanda Sellers on how she uses OGPs to help guide the EN blog strategy at HubSpot:

• “An objective describes what we’re setting out to achieve. For example, I work on the EN blog, and one of my objectives might be to improve our content quality according to Google’s new Helpful Content guidelines.
• The goal itself defines what success looks like using concrete metrics. For example, we might forecast the outcome to yield an estimated X organic visits and/or Y monetizable leads from those visits.
• A play is what we’ll do to achieve our objective. For example, one play that ladders up to the objective might be to implement a peer feedback program for quality assurance.”

“The ideal outcome is that every action or task clearly ladders up. This helps with prioritization, alignment, and so much more.”

Having a framework like this ensures that our priorities are aligned at every level of the organization.

3. Use data to inform the “why” behind your approach.

“If you don’t know the ‘why’ behind a project you’re working on, you should pump the brakes and find out,” says Sellers.

Honestly, yeah. The biggest waste of marketing resources is doing things for no reason or with little value add. Stepping back to determine the ‘why’ helps you prioritize the actions and projects that will actually move the needle.

Sellers also notes the importance of data during the goal-setting process.

“Historical data is so important when estimating impact to set goals. If you don’t have historical data, seek out a case study. Either of these options is better than an uninformed guess.”

4. Try not to limit yourself to what feels possible today.

This is one of my favorite tips because it tells me it’s okay to think big even when resources seem limited.

, principal marketing manager at HubSpot, says, “Don’t assume that something can’t be done. Challenge yourself to work through the obstacles to achieve as close to the ideal solution as possible.”

She continues, “Think about the problem and the ideal solution. Don’t limit the solution to what’s possible today — think big, idealistic, and as if nothing is impossible. Then, once the solution is identified, figure out what you’d need to start, stop, or continue doing to get to that solution.

“Those start, stop, and continue items are the detailed tactics you need to complete to achieve your goals.”

Go for the goal.

You’ve seen what other marketers are prioritizing this year — and how those goals are evolving alongside new channels, tools, and expectations. Whether you’re focused on increasing revenue, improving conversion, or building stronger brand connections, the throughline is the same: Clear goals make it easier to focus your time and energy where it actually counts.

If you want to dig deeper into how marketers are setting priorities right now, HubSpot’s 2026 State of 糖心Vlog Report takes a closer look at the data behind these trends. It breaks down what teams are working toward, what’s changing in the marketing landscape, and where marketers are seeing results.

Use it as a reference point as you plan your next set of goals — or just to sanity-check that you’re not alone in what you’re working toward.

The State of 糖心Vlog in 2026

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