We’re in the middle of the biggest shift since the dawn of digital marketing—the Marketing Renaissance.
You’ve likely seen declining results from traditional digital marketing tactics. This trend began taking shape as early as 2015, yet we’ve continued to lean into strategies that were developed when the internet was new.
Now, after a slow 10-year decline, it’s inevitable. The digital marketing strategies that worked a decade ago are no longer enough. We must adapt to a new environment where marketing looks more pre-internet than early-internet.
3 Pillars of Digital Marketing Today
After years of analyzing the decline of digital marketing results, experimenting, and testing new ideas, I’ve found three pillars of marketing that will dominate the next decade:
🔹 Authority Ecosystems – Thought leadership, content, and brand positioning that make you the go-to expert in your space.
🔹 Omnipresence Marketing – Being visible everywhere your audience hangs out, rather than relying on a single channel.
🔹 Customer-First Growth – Building an experience that makes customers want to stay, refer, and engage—because customer retention is the new acquisition.
I’m (mostly) leaving behind the strategies that have dominated the last 20 years. Consumers behave differently and technology is changing as you read these words. We need to adapt if we want to stay relevant.
With that in mind, here are seven strategies designed specifically for the new Marketing Renaissance. They build on these three pillars and provide some actionable tips that will help you reignite your marketing results.
7 Digital Marketing Strategies That Drive Growth Today
1. Blogging, but With a Twist
Blog traffic is declining, no question. But that doesn’t mean the business blog is dead.
Google doesn’t need your content to rank—it already knows the answers. But thought leadership? That still has power. Your blog is your intellectual property. Make it a library of ideas people can’t get anywhere else.
Your blog should share your value proposition, brand messaging, and methodologies. When potential customers visit, they should be able to browse your latest articles to understand whether you’re a good fit for their needs.
Rather than writing SEO articles for search engines, create content that shares your experience and expertise. Use your blog to house your best ideas and thought leadership. Both search engines and AI will use this type of content as source material for their own content.
If your content relates to a high-volume keyword, optimize it. But as a thought leader, you’ll be creating new ideas, and many of your best search terms won’t exist yet. Don’t let that slow you down. Optimize for the idea or concept you’re sharing, and back it up with examples, stories, and your own expertise.
Your blog also becomes source material for your own channel content. Recycle and multiply its impact by distributing your ideas in various formats, lengths, and styles.
- Create new content and update old content on your blog. Optimize for SEO if there is a relevant keyword.
- Republish and recycle. Use your content in an email newsletter or in your LinkedIn newsletter. Create videos and podcasts around the same message, using the same stories and research.
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Develop a workflow for repurposing or republishing blog content on other platforms. (Keep it simple so you can implement it each time you publish.)
2. Social Media: Be There or Be Square
If your audience doesn’t see your content on their favorite social media platforms, it’s as if you don’t exist. Worse still, if you don’t create content that feeds the algorithm, the platform will throttle your posts and limit your reach.
Ideally, you need to be everywhere your audience is, but realistically, you can only create quality content for a few channels. I recommend choosing one social media platform where you can have the biggest impact. If you’re B2B, that may be LinkedIn. For B2C, Instagram may be your best option. Then, play to the algorithm so your content gets the exposure it deserves (and the impact you need).
- Find the channels where your audience hangs out.
- Create daily posts (at least a few times a week).
- Create a strong brand by staying on message and creating thought leadership in your space
- Treat these platforms as CRMs. Your goal is to build a loyal audience and/or community on each platform.
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Schedule time each day to engage on your chosen social media platform. Aim to publish one post a day.
3. Create Partnerships and Collaborations
Build relationships with influencers, partners, and media outlets to expand your reach, increase credibility, and drive revenue growth. When someone introduces you to their audience, it’s a vote of confidence, and you earn immediate trust from their followers.
Here are a few ideas for partnerships:
- Cohost webinars or events, sharing the load of time-intensive branding plays
- Co-create surveys or studies, leveraging both brands’ strengths to produce authority content
- Affiliate and revenue-sharing partnerships, with each brand promoting the other’s products or services
- Joint ventures or product collaborations, allowing deeper integrations or bigger projects
- Social media engagement, with each brand commenting on and elevating the other’s social media presence
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Find a brand that serves the same audience as you and brainstorm partnership ideas that could benefit both brands.
4. Create a CX Advantage
As bots take over outreach and customer service, customer experience (CX) is the last great differentiator. In the pre-internet era, businesses grew by delivering incredible customer experiences—and if we want to stand out, we must return to that model.
Happy customers drive sales, retention, and referrals. It’s worth the effort to create a memorable customer experience.
- Optimize onboarding & the user experience.
- Turn customers into advocates by encouraging UGC, testimonials, and case studies.
- Build a referral program and a system for consistently asking for them.
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Set up a “delight” sequence for new customers (a surprise bonus, onboarding video, or follow-up check-in).
Looking for a Customer Success Methodology that optimizes onboarding, adoption, and retention? Check out the PULSE Framework.
5. Monetize Your Content
The cost of advertising is skyrocketing, and organic reach is shrinking. The solution? Make content an asset, not just a lead magnet.
While this may seem like the ultimate in gated content, it can serve a strategic purpose as lead generation becomes more difficult. By monetizing your best content, you can build a list of buyers, people who perfectly fit your ICP and are ready to invest.
This solves two issues that plague lead-generation efforts. First, consumers resist sharing their email addresses for content they believe they can find for free. And since their inboxes are filled with low-value “engagement” content, they don’t want yet another subscription. Second, lead magnets often pad your list with people who don’t fit your ideal customer profile.
Here are some strategic ideas for monetizing your content:
- Create Premium Memberships & Paid Newsletters. People will pay for high-quality, actionable insights.
- Build Micro-Products & Courses. Sell templates, playbooks, or a low-cost entry product to drive demand and build an audience.
- Launch paid workshops and events to teach your best how-to content.
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Identify one piece of content you can turn into a micro-product or members-only resource.
6. Create Demand (Instead of Just Capturing It)
Most digital marketing strategies today are reactive. We compete for customers in a specific niche. If you have a new solution or strategy, you can create new demand.
Content Marketing Institute did this when they promoted content marketing as a core digital marketing strategy. HubSpot did it when they developed inbound marketing. This approach requires work—you must create the problem before you can sell the solution. But if you can do it, you’ll own the category.
- Category Creation → Position your brand as the only solution to a specific problem.
- Education-Based Marketing → Teach your audience why they need your product before they search for it.
- Challenger Positioning → Take a strong stance against outdated industry norms to attract like-minded buyers.
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Write a polarizing LinkedIn post or email that challenges a popular industry belief. Once you see traction, turn that momentum into a movement.
7. Invest in Brand Storytelling (The Real Moat)
In a competitive marketplace, your brand identity is your best defense. If your brand is forgettable, you’re replaceable, but if you create a distinct voice or message, you’ll stand out like a red stain on a white shirt.
- Develop a Signature Brand Voice → Be recognizable, not just another generic B2B brand.
- Emphasize Thought Leadership Over Clickbait → Content should educate, entertain, or inspire—not just rank in Google.
- Create “Must-Consume” Content → Build assets that people seek out every week (like a weekly newsletter, podcast, or LinkedIn series).
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Write a “why we exist” brand manifesto—what’s the ONE big idea your brand fights for? When it comes to brand manifesto, Zappos is still my favorite! Use theirs as an example.
How to Leverage AI for Scale
AI is a tool, not a takeover. The best marketers will use AI to scale, not replace, their creativity. When creating your marketing, it’s important to treat AI as a partner. By combining the strengths of humans and AI, you can create creative campaigns that are unforgettable.
A good example is content creation. AI can speed up research, outlines, and repurposing, but you need human creativity for storytelling. Ideally, you should start an AI work session with your own ideas. Let AI help you refine and organize your thoughts and even write the first draft. But you need to edit carefully, adding your stories, experiences, and examples to humanize the content.
AI chatbots and predictive analytics can enhance customer service without losing personalization, but you should always provide a way for people to reach a human.
Where AI can make the greatest contribution is data analysis, reporting, and personalization. For instance, let AI tools rewrite content for different segments of your audience. Or ask it to analyze your analytics reports and recommend strategies for improving results.
🚀 Tactic to implement today: Test an AI tool (like ChatGPT or Perplexity) to speed up one part of your workflow—but edit it with your unique perspective.
Final Thought: The Next Decade Belongs to Those Who Adapt
We are living through the Digital Renaissance—a marketing shift unlike anything we’ve seen in the last 20 years.
The good news? You can future-proof your business by adopting the digital marketing strategies I’ve shared today.
- Create content for your brand, not Google.
- Be present and strategic on social media.
- Leverage partnerships and collaborations to grow your audience.
- Create a CX advantage.
- Monetize your content to generate customers, not just leads.
- Create (real) demand.
- Invest in a memorable brand identity.
And, of course, leverage AI for scale. Digital transformation is a never-ending process, and now, we’re all integrating AI into our operations. Don’t resist it. Lean into it—and let me know if you need help.
