Marketing is changing. We all know it. AI is reshaping the landscape of how we plan, position and promote software to businesses and consumers alike.
2026 will reward big ideas, not small, isolated wins on optimisation. It’ll benefit marketers who bring together a deep understanding of their customers, the feeling they elicit with their brand and of course the efficacy of the product that they’re selling.
That being said, marketing fundamentals will stay the same. Products are built to solve problems that exist. They’re designed to make life easier, faster and cheaper for businesses and consumers.
Our intention at Atlas in 2026 is to weave together the strands of channels, Google Ads, Meta, GEO into faster, bigger and stronger growth engines for our clients.
We’ll continually look farther outward, at metrics like influence and impact, not just SQLs and closed won revenue.
We’re unlocking new value, some early CRO tests are showing 500% + return on investments for our clients. Many of our clients have become the recommended solution in most LLMs. We’re leveraging new tools on visualising pipefluence, influence with paid media, often resulting in 2x - 4x of extra pipeline revenue attributed.
I’m looking forward to being on that journey with you.
What to expect from The Raise this year
The Raise newsletter is for B2B & consumer SaaS marketers, tech founders and enterprise leaders. We’re diversifying our content within The Raise this year to focus on industry trends, technical plays, founder & CEO interviews, and community spotlights. Coming up in 2026:
Coverage of our community partner events (Generate B2B Marketing Community’s July Summit, Tech Marketers Group and local KiwiSaaS meetups).
Exclusive “Learn” stories and data directly from Atlas Digital’s team of experts on the latest marketing insights across pay-per-click, organic, generative-engine-optimisation, creative, and conversion-rate-optimisation
Tech & SaaS Spotlights on NZ & AU community events and achievements
Video a major consensus builder for B2B buyers
Aisling McMahon; Travena Addenbrooke; Stephanie Munro & Praveen Das @ LinkedIn B2B Panel Auckland, November 2025
Recent research from LinkedIn highlighted video as a major consensus builder [think emotionally captivating, main character, thought-leader on camera]:
Video drives 5x more engagement on LinkedIn than other formats.
It delivers 95% message retention.
Authenticity wins: "selfie-style" videos see an 11% higher CTR
Aligning your brand with the entire buying committee achieves the best return on investment over time.
The biggest problem in B2B attribution isn’t last-click. It’s buyer misalignment.
Back in November, LinkedIn hosted an event that tackled a critical blind spot in modern marketing: we are often missing half of the buyer audience.
Their data revealed that decision-making power in B2B is split almost evenly between target buyers and hidden buyers.
"The job of B2B marketers is to help the buyer group agree"
If your attribution model ignores the "hidden" half of the room that controls the budget, your data is incomplete. So, how do you bridge this gap when 81% of B2B ads fail to gain attention?
Reflecting after the event, our Senior Growth Marketer Stephanie Munro said:
“Before we even talk to clients about attribution at Atlas Digital, we make sure both sides agree on: a) the strategy ; b) the audience, and c) the role each channel plays.
‘If we’ve aligned that LinkedIn is the right channel…it makes zero sense to judge it purely by ‘who clicked an advert today.’
And when you leverage our suite of pipeline influence tools, you finally get the full picture: the influence, the touch points, and the pipeline lift - not just the last interaction or platform-level attribution.
Anthropic launches Cowork to bring AI automation to non-coders
Claude Max subscribers will get first access to Cowork, described as a non-technical admin agent. According to TechCrunch, users give it access to a specific set of files and feed it prompts, getting it to do general productivity tasks.
Fortune reported that “the launch has also sparked concern among startup founders about the competitive threat posed by major AI labs bundling agent capabilities into their core products. Cowork’s ability to handle file organisation, document generation, and data extraction overlaps with dozens of AI startups that have raised funding to solve these specific problems.”
It remains to be seen whether the benefits outweigh the security and reliability risks (i.e. it deletes your files or acts maliciously…👾). But if you’re developing (or procuring) productivity software, consider Cowork a serious competitor.
Kindo school finance software raises $15m from Movac
Kindo is all-in-one software platform to automate the payments process for schools and families, so that it’s easier for parents to pay school-related expenses.
They’ve got a suite of features that fully digitise the parent-school interface, for example annual donations, lunch ordering, device purchasing, and fundraising.
For schools, their Xero integration and reporting insights enable them to reduce outstanding payments and ensure best use of funding.
The funding means Kindo can expand their NZ-offering, with international growth on the long term horizon, according to NBR. Congratulations 💥
KiwiSaaS US GTM Webinar
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