I meant to publish this last week, but between building Creator Gigs Africa and digging through survey data, Monday felt like the right time to finally share this.
Over the first two weeks of Q1 2026, we surveyed 400+ professionals across two groups:
- 200+ GTM strategists & engineers
- 200+ marketers across different industries
The goal was simple: Understand where marketing focus and budgets are heading in 2026.
Here’s what we found.
1. Content Creation Budgets Are Going Up
We asked GTM strategists:
“What are you (or the brand you work for) doing with your content creation budget in 2026?”
- 73% said they are increasing their content creation budget
- 21% said they are maintaining their current budget, and
- 5.3% said they are not investing in content creation at all
This tells us that nearly 3 out of every 4 GTM teams believe content will play an even bigger role in growth this year.
2. Where Creators Fit in the Customer Journey
Next, we asked marketers:
“At which stage of the customer journey do you use influencer/creator collaborations most often?”
- 67% use creators for awareness (Top-of-Funnel) — tapping into audiences creators have already built trust with
- 25% use creators to influence faster decision-making and purchases, and
- 8% use creators to test or validate customer interest
Which means a great deal of change has occured.
Creators are no longer just about reach — they’re increasingly becoming part of the buying journey.
Inference: What Is This Data Really Saying?
Two things are happening at the same time:
- Content budgets are growing, not shrinking, and
- Creators are becoming infrastructure for many brands, not just experiments.
GTM teams are betting on content in 2026, and marketers are leaning heavily on creators to do what brands struggle with most: build trust quickly and at scale.
Most teams still deploy creators at the top of the funnel, but a growing number are pulling them closer to revenue — influencing decisions, accelerating purchases, and validating demand.
The implication is clear:
Brands that treat creators as a side-channel will fall behind. Brands that operationalize creators as part of their GTM strategy will compound faster.
And this shift is happening now — not later in the year.
