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A New B2B Marketing Playbook for Building Best Answer Brands
By Lee Odden B2B marketing hasn’t been on easy street this past year and I think we all understand that zero-click search, AI Overviews, and large language models have our full attention in how they’re changing the way buyers discover, evaluate, and trust brands.
Research from 6sense reports that 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during their buying process and Gartner predicts search engine volume will drop 25% this year, due to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.
At the same time, while awareness of these AI-driven challenges and opportunities has increased, there’s still debate. Is traditional SEO enough? Or do AEO and GEO need to be layered in as distinct tactics? Can “more content” still win, or has the proliferation of AI-generated content already diluted the impact of content overall? With all of that in combination with paid placements to soon show up inside of AI experiences, it’s easy to see that disruption in search is far from over.
In a time where answers are increasingly chosen and summarized by AI, B2B brands need to earn their position as the most probable best answer. That means more than optimization tactics. It means building credibility, consistency, and consensus.
From visibility to belief
Search is now multi-channel (71% of B2B buyers consume content across three or more channels before engaging with a vendor – Demand Gen Report) and multi-modal (67% of buyers consume multiple content formats during early and mid-stage research – NetLine).
Buyers validate decisions across search engines, social platforms, communities, analysts, influencers, peers, and increasingly, AI powered platforms that synthesize all of those signals. For B2B brands, the challenge goes beyond being easy to find. The challenge is about being trusted across that ecosystem of content discovery.
“Strong B2B brands are those that stand for something and can tell a clear story through the lens of buyer questions that need answers.”
It’s tempting to see that as a mechanical SEO exercise, but it’s certainly more. Creating consensus is an intentional effort to create continuity of story and signal so that every member of a buying group experiences a credible, relevant narrative they can trust and believe in.
As Brian Solis has shared on the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast,
“Audiences can tell when content is engineered to rank versus created with empathy, perspective, and intent.”
Traditional SEO has already emphasized quality signals ala E.E.A.T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust). And with AI-powered answer engines, the distinction is even more important because AI powered search raise the bar even further on many of these same signals: trust, credibility, and recognizable brands.
The way forward for B2B marketers is to move beyond the idea of a single channel campaign and toward tapping into a system designed to build belief where it matters. It is about tapping in to a marketing operating system that can orchestrate a brand transition from blending in to becoming a Best Answer Brand.
Introducing a new B2B marketing playbook
To help B2B companies make that transition, we developed The Best Answer Marketing Playbook. Informed by more than a decade of work with enterprise B2B brands …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
