The state of recruitment marketing in 2026

Recruitment marketers are being asked to do more, with the same budget or less, for leadership teams that don’t always share their view of what matters. That is the picture from our 2026 survey of in-house marketers at recruitment agencies, run with The Lonely Marketers community between August and October 2026.

Respondents range from solo marketers to directors leading teams of up to ten, at agencies with anywhere from a handful of consultants to 500. They told us what their leadership has asked them to prioritise, where they would focus their own marketing strategy, how confident they feel across their channels and how they are using AI.

Not everything they told us is a challenge. Almost half say their market has improved over the past year, most budgets are holding, and marketers are more confident with AI than the wider conversation suggests.

Key findings

These are the headline findings from Paiger’s 2026 survey of recruitment agency marketers, run with The Lonely Marketers community.

• The market has split in two. 46% of recruitment agency marketers say market conditions have improved on a year ago, while 31% say they have worsened. Every marketer expecting a budget cut works in a market that has worsened.

• Marketing and leadership rarely agree on priorities. Only 15% of recruitment agency marketers listed the same top three priorities as their leadership team. Client acquisition is the one priority both sides put at the top, chosen by 54% of each.

• Teams are small and remits are growing. 92% of recruitment agency marketing functions have three people or fewer, and 46% are a team of one. 31% of leadership teams want marketing to lead AI adoption across the whole business.

• Marketers are confident with AI, but wary of what leadership expects from it. 62% of recruitment agency marketers rate their personal AI confidence at 4 or 5 out of 5. Their main concern is inflated expectations of output, not the tools themselves.

• LinkedIn and content are the strongest channels; AEO and paid are the weakest. 58% of recruitment agency marketers feel confident delivering LinkedIn organic and content marketing, compared with 25% for AEO and 17% for paid search.

  
  

1. A market split in two

Conditions vary widely from one agency to the next. Almost half of marketers say their market has improved on a year ago, while nearly a third say it has worsened.

Budgets follow the market closely. Across all respondents, 54% expect their budget to grow or stay flat over the next 12 months. Every expected cut sits with a marketer whose market has worsened, and nobody in an improving market expects to lose budget.

The biggest challenge shifts with the market too. In worsening markets, marketers mostly point to leadership: a CEO with the wrong priorities, priorities that keep changing, and limited understanding of what marketing can do. In improving markets, the most common answer is capacity, which is a problem of growth rather than decline. One head of department describes a growing team, a steady budget and a newly hired RevOps lead who will help join up marketing and sales data.

2. Marketing and leadership want different things

Only 15% of marketers listed the same three priorities as their leadership team. The one area both sides put at the top is client acquisition, chosen by 54% on each side, in a market one team lead describes as rich in candidates but short of clients. For agencies looking for new clients further afield, we cover recruitment agency growth in the US market separately.

Leadership leans towards visible output: podcasts, PR, pitch decks and website projects. None of the marketers chose podcasts, PR or pitch decks for themselves. Marketers lean towards foundations instead. CRM rises from 23% of leadership lists to 54% of marketers’ lists, driven by messy data, audiences that can’t be segmented and no reliable way to track marketing-qualified leads.

When marketers explain the gap, it comes down to who gets a say. One director’s biggest challenge is sales leadership “deciding the solutions rather than asking marketing”. Another marketer describes a CEO “with wrong priorities”, and a third says leadership are “reactive rather than proactive and struggle to stick to a strategy plan”. Leadership alignment is the most common challenge overall, named by 46% of marketers, ahead of capacity at 38%.

Proving value is part of the same problem. One head of department’s biggest challenge is “trying to show ROI and trying to showcase capacity limits to SLT”.

3. Small teams, wider remits

Almost every marketing function in the survey is small. 46% of respondents are the only marketer in their business, and another 46% work in a team of two or three.

The remit is growing faster than the team. 31% of leadership teams have asked marketing to lead AI adoption across the whole business, not just within marketing. That is a sign marketing is being taken seriously at board level, even where resource hasn’t caught up. Others are starting from scratch: one head of department is the first marketer their business has hired and has been asked to put the foundations in place.

Capacity is the result. 38% name it as their single biggest challenge, describing “too many jobs to get done, too few hands and minds to complete them” and a business “with big vision” whose marketing team is “too small to match the growth they want to see”. One solo marketer feels they are doing the work of a more senior manager while also handling the day-to-day admin.

Events show the tension clearly. 46% of marketers want to prioritise them, because they offer something tangible that AI-generated content can’t. One director describes them as a great business development tool and differentiator. But they are labour-intensive, and one solo marketer expects to drop events next year because they are too much work for a team of one.

4. Confident with AI, wary of the expectations

AI is already part of the day job. 77% of marketers use it for content generation and the same proportion use it for data analysis and insight, with use spreading into reporting, candidate matching and campaign optimisation.

Marketers are shaping their own approach rather than waiting for vendors. 31% are mostly building custom solutions internally and a further 46% combine custom builds with off-the-shelf tools. One team lead builds in-house so they “don’t get caught out waiting months for platforms to update”. Only 15% are still deciding on an approach.

Building in-house carries costs that are easy to underestimate, though. Every model or platform change means the build needs maintaining, and in a team of one that falls to the marketer. Tools that work well for a handful of people can struggle to scale as the agency grows. And without the agency’s own market and data behind them, home-built tools tend to produce generic results, the same problem marketers already worry about in AI-generated content. We cover this in more detail in how to build a social media scheduler using AI, and why recruitment agencies outgrow it.

Confidence is higher than the wider conversation suggests, though it is stronger in marketers themselves than in the teams around them. Even so, 31% name AI tools as one of their biggest skills gaps.

Their concerns are less about the technology than about how leadership will read it. One team lead worries that boards expect AI to save more time than it does, and want more output without more resource. Another fears CEOs will think they can “sack us all and Claude it”, and a director names redundancies in marketing as their biggest concern. Others worry about content becoming “repetitive and generic”, about GDPR and bias in candidate matching, and about AI that makes things faster for the agency rather than better for candidates.

What would help most is learning from each other. 77% chose peer learning such as community roundtables, ahead of training courses at 62%.

5. Where marketers are strongest

Marketers are most confident in the channels they work in every day. 58% rate their confidence at 4 or 5 out of 5 for LinkedIn organic, and the same proportion for content marketing, a strength that extends to consultants’ own profiles, which we cover in our guide to building a recruiter personal brand. Email and CRM, and events, follow at 50%.

AEO is the clearest mismatch. 31% of marketers and 23% of leadership teams have it in their top three priorities, yet only 25% of marketers feel confident delivering it and 31% name it as a skills gap. CRM shows a similar pattern: it is the joint most common marketer priority alongside client acquisition, and 38% name marketing automation and CRM as a skills gap.

Paid media is the biggest gap of all. 62% of marketers name it as a skills gap, and paid search has the lowest confidence of any channel. Some are pulling back from paid altogether after poor returns, including one director who says LinkedIn paid never delivers a good return on investment.

What this means

The common thread is a gap between what marketing is asked to deliver and what it is set up to deliver. Closing it is a job for both sides.

For agency leaders

• Ask marketing what it would prioritise before setting the list. Marketers are pointing at CRM and data because campaigns, segmentation and reporting all depend on them.

• If AI is expected to absorb workload, agree what it will replace, not just what extra it will produce.

• Agree up front how marketing’s contribution to client acquisition will be measured. It is the one priority both sides share.

For marketers

• Use client acquisition as common ground. Frame CRM and data work in terms of the clients it will help win.

• Protect what is already working, such as LinkedIn, content and events, and close the AEO gap deliberately rather than spreading effort across every channel.

• Learn from peers. 77% say community and peer learning would do more for their AI skills than anything else.

You’ll find more on marketing for recruitment agencies, including guides and community events, on our recruitment marketing hub.

Frequently asked questions

What are recruitment agencies prioritising in marketing in 2026?

Client acquisition is the top priority for both marketers and leadership teams, named by 54% of each. Marketers also rank CRM projects (54%) and events (46%) highly, while leadership teams are more likely to ask for podcasts, PR and website projects.

How big are recruitment agency marketing teams?

92% of recruitment agency marketing functions have three people or fewer, and 46% of marketers are the only marketer in their business.

How are recruitment agency marketers using AI?

77% use AI for content generation and the same proportion for data analysis and insight. 62% rate their personal AI confidence at 4 or 5 out of 5, and 77% are building their own AI solutions or combining custom builds with off-the-shelf tools.

What is the biggest challenge for recruitment agency marketers?

Leadership alignment is the most common challenge, named by 46%, followed by capacity at 38%.

Are recruitment agency marketing budgets growing?

54% of recruitment agency marketers expect their budget to grow or stay flat over the next 12 months, and 23% expect a cut. Every expected cut is in an agency where market conditions have worsened.

About the research

This research was carried out with The Lonely Marketers community, a network of in-house recruitment marketers. Responses were collected through an online survey between August and October 2026, from individual contributors, team leads, heads of department and directors.

All responses are anonymous and quotes are attributed by role only. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number, so some totals may not add up to exactly 100%.

To cite this research, please credit “Paiger, The state of recruitment marketing in 2026” and link to this page.