Happy New Year, and here is to making this the best possible year to begin something. The first quarter will be a challenging stretch for businesses, as everyone waits to get back to life as it was before the pandemic. Even so, as consumers return to shopping in stores as normal, this is a good moment for business owners and retailers to revisit how they run things: reorganising staff, tightening up operational processes, or rethinking the marketing strategy.
Today we look at the digital marketing trends and the marketing trends of 2026 that can help you adapt your business and lift sales, whether you work in retail, food and beverage, beauty or services. Here are three trends that will help your business this year.
Marketing trends for 2026 worth adopting in your business
Let video widen your reach
Whether you market to consumers or to other businesses, there is no getting away from video this year. Just look at the explosive growth of short-form video apps such as TikTok, with more than 30 million and 120 million monthly users on Android and iOS respectively. Familiar platforms such as YouTube and Instagram Reels are pushing the video-watching habit along nicely too.
For many businesses, video still plays a major part in sales and marketing at every stage, because it opens up better and more engaging ways to reach customers, through influencers or through other campaigns. So if you have not tried a video strategy yet, 2026 is the year your business should set up an account and start making good material for your brand. Begin publishing strong content on your social media channels today and reach more customers, better than ever before.
User-generated content (UGC) and influencer marketing
UGC stands for User Generated Content: consumers or target customers creating and sharing content themselves. It is another form of word-of-mouth. Say you buy a pair of jeans and love them, so you photograph them for Instagram and tag the brand that made them. That is content creation, and your customers can spread the word in exactly the same way. The advantage is that people tend to trust this kind of content far more than advertising that comes straight from the brand.
There is research showing that consumers are 2.4 times more likely to trust content created by fellow consumers (UGC). That is especially true of KOLs (key opinion leaders) and influencers, the net idols and YouTubers as they are known in Thailand, who carry enormous sway when they present a product or service and can make yours a household name overnight. Newer brands and smaller shops that cannot afford a high-priced influencer or blogger can still adapt and run campaigns that encourage customers to make UGC of their own: inviting them to leave a review, or to take a photograph and tag the shop's page or Instagram account, all counts as user-generated content. This is one marketing trend business owners should start weighing up this year.
Retailers with front-of-house staff can also use their systems and a POS terminal to manage, award or redeem points in support of the various campaigns and UGC activities they may run.
Social media as your customer service and after-sales channel
Another important marketing trend for 2026 is putting social media to work as the medium for customer service, which becomes one of the norms this year, particularly on Facebook and Instagram. Combined with the ecommerce capabilities built into those platforms, customers can place an order and message you with questions in the same place, rather than going off to a website to dig out the information themselves.
Serving customers well on these channels is something you cannot afford to overlook, because research by McKinsey reports that consumers spend 20-40% more with companies and shops that have a presence on social media. Likewise, businesses that offer support on these channels see a churn rate 15% lower than those that do not.
On the consumer side, Gen Z would rather contact brands by DM (direct message), and a report from HubSpot in 2022 on consumer behaviour trends found that 20% of Gen Z and almost 25% of millennials contact shops and businesses directly through social media. If you have read this far and realised that your shop or business still has no social media presence, or no way for people to get in touch online, now is the time to build one and start supporting customers on your own channels, in step with consumer behaviour moving online.
Qashier, your business partner
Qashier's POS store management system suits restaurants, drinks outlets, salons and retail shops alike. It comes with a wide range of functions that make day-to-day work easier, and it is ready to use within moments of installation, a modern store management system that helps you run the shop efficiently. If you are interested in the product and want to push your business forward, get in touch for more details on Line Official: @qashier.th or call 02-544-0267