It’s 2026 and you're still sitting on the marketing sidelines. You know you should be doing something to drive leads, sales, and growth but you're not sure where to start. Every option feels overwhelming, and that "I’ll do it later" list is now a mile long. Your feed is full of ads from everyone else and you’re just feeling like it’s all a bit much.
If that sounds familiar, it might be comforting to know you’re not alone. The bad news is that you still have to do something about it because that situation isn't going anywhere unless you get moving.
The good news is that you don’t need a complicated strategy. You just need a place to start and a simple process to follow.
Naturally, we've done some of the work for you with a 1 week action plan.
Here's how to kickstart your 2026 marketing in one focused week.
Step 1: Set Clear Goals (Day 1)
Before you launch a single ad or write a single post, you need to know what you're aiming for. Be specific. Do you want:
- 20 new leads a month?
- 15% more sales from existing clients?
- To grow your email list by 1,000 people?
Pick ONE goal to start. Then reverse-engineer what it takes to get there. No fluff. No vanity metrics. Just real, measurable outcomes.
Be realistic about what your goals should be. If you’re starting from scratch and haven’t been doing any marketing for the past 3-6 months, then setting a goal of 20 new clients in the first month may be not be achievable. Start with a goal to grow your list, to get your offer in front of 1000 new prospects, or book 10 sales calls.
If you’ve been advertising and growing your list, or your brand visibility, then increases in revenue and client numbers make more sense.
It helps to make your goals specific, ensure the results can be measured, make them relevant to your overall business goals and set a deadline.
Step 2: Revisit Your Client Persona (Day 2)
Marketing that works always starts with a clear understanding of your ideal client. You know, the people you REALLY want to work with. What are their pain points, frustrations, desires, and decision-making habits? If you haven't updated your client persona in a while, now's the time.
Grab our free AI powered Client Crystal Ball to generate a detailed client persona in minutes: orbitmarketing.au/clientgpt
Step 3: Review What Worked (and Didn’t) in 2025 (Day 3)
Look back at the past year. What campaigns brought in leads or sales? What totally flopped? Get brutally honest. No marketing is a waste if you learn from it.
Open your insights, Google Ads dashboard, social stats, email open rates in your CRM and spot the patterns. If you’re running online ads and not using some kind of metrics dashboard or reporting, now is the time to start!
Look at what kind of ads got the most traction, best click through rates, highest return on ad spend, best cost per lead, or highest number of leads. Look at what headlines you used, offers we best received, whether still images or vides worked best and which platform got you the outcomes you really wanted. Did your education content, or direct calls to action perform better? Don't give your self analysis paralysis, but dive deep enough to gain some valuable insights.
Step 4: Plan Your Funnel (Day 4)
Leads don’t magically appear. You need a system. Call it plan. Or a funnel. Whatever you call it, it's essential if you want profitable advertising and marketing.
And relying on referrals is a dangerous game of home, it's not a plan. Or a system. Or a funnel... More on that next week.
Map out your basic funnel:
- Awareness (Top of the funnel) This is the broadest part of your sales funnel and is all about creating awareness. Think of content like blogs, social media posts, emails to reactivate your exiting database if you haven’t been in contact for a while. Content that highlights the challenges you know your ideal client is facing, and the kids of solutions available.
- Engagement (Middle of the funnel) This is where we start to build lists, build trust and specifically draw attention to what it is you’re selling. Focus on content that genuinely helps people solve their problems, free downloads, webinars, custom GPT’s (like the persona builder we gave you in step 3) 5 or 7 day challenges. Explainer videos, testimonials and results or case studies help here too. These are all genuinely helpful and position you as an authority. It’s helpful to remember, you’re not necessarily selling your knowledge, you’re selling the implementation of a solution, so don’t be afraid of teaching people too much. There is almost nothing they can't find online anyway. You want your content to clearly show them what can be done, and make it easy for them to ask you for help to make it happen faster and more effectively that they could do it themselves.
- Conversion (Botton of the sales funnel) This is where you turn all those views and downloads into sales. Use email and SMS marketing, retargeting ads and sales calls to offer quotes, proposals and strategy sessions where you can close the sale. Every now and then it helps to use a price driven incentive to encourage a few more prospects to make that final decision.
Even a simple 3-step funnel is better than winging it.
Step 5: Build Your 7-Day Marketing Action Plan (Days 5–7)
Now you know the basic steps, here's a simple launch pad to get you moving:
Day 5:
- Pick your top goal
- Finalise your ideal client persona
Day 6:
- Choose one offer to promote. Offer doesn’t mean discount. Your offer may be your free offer like the webinar or custom GPT. Or it may be your core product if you’re marketing to the bottom of your funnel via email and SMS. Either way, pick one offer at this stage.
- Map out your funnel for promoting that specific offer.
Day 7:
- Write your first email or social post
- Set up one Facebook or Google ad
- Schedule it to go live
That's it. There's no need to overcomplicate it, you can review the results and start to refine things in the coming weeks. For now, you just need to make a start.
Bonus Resource:
Download our free 2026 Marketing Playbook, including our AI-powered Strategy Builder, to help you plan the entire year in under an hour: orbitmarketing.au/marketingplaybook
Final Word:
You don’t need a full-time marketing team to grow. You just need momentum. Action builds clarity. And clarity builds results.
Don’t let another month slip by. Set your 2026 marketing in motion today.
If you do feel like you need support to create a plan and get it rolling, book a call with me and let's chat. I’d love to be the reason 2026 is your year!