Digital marketing trends food and beverage brands cannot ignore in 2026
The specific 2026 digital marketing trends most relevant to food and beverage brands, prioritised for visual discovery and retail media coordination.
5 min read
Account-based marketing has continued shifting toward smaller, more carefully selected target account lists with genuinely deeper, more specific personalisation, reflecting a broader recognition that ABM's real value lies in depth and relevance, not the broader-reach approach it originally aimed to correct against.
Why smaller lists genuinely outperform broader ones
A smaller list allows genuinely deep research and personalisation per account — understanding a specific company's actual strategic priorities, key stakeholders and genuine pain points — producing far more relevant, effective outreach than a broader list can support with the same available resources.
- Deeper research per account produces more genuinely relevant, effective personalisation.
- Resources concentrated on fewer, higher-value accounts typically produce better return than spreading thin across many.
- Genuine relevance at the account level improves both response rate and deal quality.
ABM's whole premise was always depth over breadth — the 2026 trend toward smaller lists is really just the discipline catching up to what the strategy was supposed to mean from the start.
Practical execution requirements for this approach
- Genuine, specific research into each target account's actual strategic context and stakeholders.
- Personalised content and messaging reflecting that specific research, not a templated approach with a company name inserted.
- Close alignment between marketing and sales on the specific target account list and outreach approach.
Where AI genuinely helps this deeper approach scale
AI-assisted research and content personalisation can help scale the depth of account-specific work without requiring proportionally more manual research time, making genuinely deep ABM more achievable for teams with limited resources.
Frequently asked questions
How small should a target account list genuinely be?
This depends on your available resources and deal value, but the general principle favours a list small enough to genuinely research and personalise deeply for every single account on it.
Does this ABM approach work for lower-value deal sizes?
Deep, personalised ABM generally justifies its cost for higher-value deals — lower-value deals may be better served by a broader, less individually personalised approach.
How does this connect to the broader B2B marketing trends this series covers?
Directly, per our B2B marketing trends guide — depth and genuine relevance are a recurring theme across current B2B marketing evolution generally.
If you want help building a genuinely deep, effective ABM strategy, talk to our team.
The takeaway
Reduce your target account list size and invest the saved effort into genuinely deep, account-specific personalisation — this trend reflects a real, measured improvement in quality-over-quantity ABM execution, not just a fashionable framing shift.
Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.
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