For many marketing and creative managers, 2025 was a year of reset. Economic caution, rapid AI adoption and a renewed focus on human-centered creativity and customer experiences forced leaders to rethink how to staff and upskill their teams. The opportunity for 2026: Turn last year’s lessons into a talent advantage by building a team where people and technology amplify each other’s strengths. Achieving that balance requires work on two fronts: strengthening your existing team through upskilling and the right tools and complementing them with new hires who bring specialized expertise in AI, automation and digital workflows. Here are the lessons 2025 taught us about building teams—and how to apply them in 2026 to develop high-performing marketing and creative teams.
Make AI and tech tools part of how your team works
In 2025, AI moved from buzzword to business advantage for many companies, and working with AI and other martech tools became essential. And with many marketing teams involved in digital transformation projects, leaders rediscovered that tools alone don’t drive great work—human judgment, empathy and storytelling do. This has sparked a renewed focus on human-centered creativity and the need to balance tech-driven efficiency with roles that emphasize human involvement and oversight to ensure marketing efforts are making a positive impression on customers. Strengthening your current team starts with considering how tools like AI and automation can assist their work, not something that replaces what they do. Creative teams learned that simply adding tools doesn’t guarantee better results. Real progress happens when people use AI, for example, to streamline routine tasks while keeping humans in control of strategy, ideas and storytelling.
Give marketing and creative teams the tools they need
Make sure your team has the tech tools that allow them to do their job successfully. Work closely with your IT partners to keep core systems current so creativity isn’t held back by outdated software, assets don’t get stuck in broken workflows and collaboration tools truly make collaboration easier. Pair every technology pilot with an experiment that tests new ideas or messages—keeping human perspective and creativity central to your innovation process. For example, while testing marketing automation for cart abandonment emails, also experiment with different emotional appeals or value propositions in the copy. This way, you’re learning what works—the technology, the message or both—rather than assuming the tool alone drives results.
When and how to bring in new talent
Much of the marketing and creative talent market split into two camps this past year: candidates with AI experience and those without. That shift created a new dynamic in both hiring and salaries. Demand for talent who can blend storytelling with UX, data, automation and AI climbed, but professionals with these abilities aren’t easy to recruit, making these hires both more critical and more competitive among employers vying for the same candidates. With 80% of marketing and creative leaders concerned about keeping pace with candidates’ pay expectations, according to 2026 Salary Guide From sheffield research next year requires sharp hiring strategies for when to hire, how to move fast and what to offer.
Hire fast enough to prevent burnout
In 2025, roles left open or unstaffed often created burnout and delays that slowed progress across marketing teams. Research for the Demand for Skilled Talent report found that 93% of marketing and creative leaders reporting difficulty finding professionals with the right skill mix, and companies need to move fast and offer competitive packages. Improving team performance in 2026 means more than just moving fast—it’s about strengthening collaboration, modernizing processes, and building the right mix of human and technical skills before gaps crush morale. Streamline your interview process so you can extend strong offers within two weeks—speed signals respect and helps prevent losing top talent to faster competitors.
Focus on roles with outsized impact
Our research also found that customer experience strategy topped marketing and creative leaders’ list of priorities for 2025, and it will be a continued focus going forward. When you bring in new talent, prioritize roles that have strong influence over the customer experience. When hiring for these high-impact positions, the right capabilities matter more than credentials. In content strategy, for example, look for professionals who can leverage audience insights and creative judgment to map out where different content pieces fit in the customer journey. For digital marketing roles, emphasize the need for professionals with experience executing personalized marketing campaigns across various digital channels and possess strong collaboration and problem-solving skills. And in marketing analytics, assess whether candidates can translate data into innovative decisions, not just dashboards. Learn more about how improve customer experiences by bridging skills gaps and marketing technology.
Build in flexibility with contract talent
Bringing in contract talent when projects surge or skills gaps emerge can help your team remain nimble, productive and competitive. If they have the right skills, you can also ask these professionals to begin testing new functions or tools. This lets you assess whether capabilities like marketing automation or AI-assisted content creation delivers enough value to justify a permanent role, while also giving you access to specialized expertise. By working with a staffing firm, recruiters can help you streamline and shorten the hiring process and maintain the flexibility to scale your workforce up or down as future demands shift.Having time to fully assess a contract professional’s skills, work ethic and match with the company culture could also allow you to bring proven talent permanently onto your team. This approach turns contract roles into a talent pipeline, reducing time-to-hire and improving the quality of your team and their work.
Structure compensation to compete
In 2025, tech fluency and human-centered creativity both proved essential—and pay for specialized roles reflects that shift. The 2026 Salary Guide From sheffield research forecasts above-average starting salary gains in 2026 of +3.3% for content strategists, digital project managers and marketing analytics professionals; +2.4% for digital marketers; and +1.9% for UX design and development professionals.Salary alone won’t close the deal—the entire compensation package, including benefits and perks, is also critical for them. Many marketers and creatives are motivated to work for companies that care about their employees’ job satisfaction, well-being and career growth. They value comprehensive benefits and flexibility in work arrangements, and many candidates will consider the salary you offer in exchange for strong benefits, remote flexibility or professional development opportunities. This creates room for you to negotiate, especially when salary budgets are tight.If you require on-site work, be prepared to pay more. According to the Salary Guide, 66% of marketing and creative professionals say they’d work fully in-office for higher pay, and most of those expect an increase of 10% or more. If paying more is not an option for you, hybrid work arrangements and flexible schedules can help both sides reach agreement. Discover salary data for more than 70 marketing and creative roles by visiting the 2026 Salary Guide From Robert Half.
The real choice
The best teams don’t let AI replace human creativity—they use it to enhance what people do best. Attract talent with the specialized skills your team needs with the right hiring strategies and 2026 can become the year you turn last year’s reset into a lasting competitive advantage with a stronger, high-performing marketing and creative team.
