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Five B2B Marketing Themes for 2026 – Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast
By Lee Odden The current state of B2B marketing is at a pretty important crossroads. In an environment of infinite content and eroding trust, simply being “visible” isn’t enough.
To win in 2026, means moving beyond simply creating more content and showing up in feeds. It means better understanding the questions from the entire buyer group and delivering the most meaningful and credible answers where buyers are looking. It also means growing credibility such that your brand becomes the first choice before anyone ever contacts sales.
To help B2B companies go from being lost amongst a sea of sameness to becoming the best answer for their customers, we do our best to walk the talk by creating distinct and useful content. That perspective is a driving force behind the purpose of the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast: to help our audience of B2B marketers bridge the gap between blending in and becoming a Best Answer Brand.
This first Season of Beyond B2B Marketing kicked off featuring Ty Heath from the B2B Institute at LinkedIn and continued featuring conversations with accomplished, experienced and influential B2B marketing leaders from IBM, ServiceNow, Salesforce, LinkedIn, MarketingProfs, Pavilion, Bain & Company and more – many of the top B2B brands, practitioners and thinkers in the industry.
Out of those conversations, there are five themes that stand out to help define what it means to go “Beyond B2B.”
1. Reclaiming the humanity of B2B Marketing
According to research from Content Marketing Institute, 95% of B2B marketers are using AI-powered applications. There are many implications for this level of AI adoption from leveling the playing field of content creation to the mediocrity at scale of AI slop. In either case, the value of human craftsmanship has never been higher.
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs, says we should slow down to stand out:
“Don’t invite AI into the process too soon, because I think that’s when you’re going to get this sort of flattening of content, flattening of writing, mediocrity of thought.”
Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, says it well:
“People can tell when content was written by a person who cares versus content that was engineered to rank. We’re surrounded by sameness right now, so when a real human voice comes through, when there’s empathy, curiosity, even vulnerability, that’s what cuts through.”
Jon Miller, C0-founder Marketo, Engagio talked about the importance of human experiences against the backdrop of AI content:
“Human experiences… whether it’s a dinner or taking your best customers off to an event in wine country… where humans can actually engage and interact with other humans. That’s going to have an impact.”
Kathleen Booth, VP Marketing @ Sequell.io and previously with Pavilion, talks about one thing AI cannot recreate and that’s community:
“For a lot of brands where this (community building) all falls apart is they’re so focused on building the community and getting people in and then they don’t really have a good plan for what happens once you get there. And that’s really where the magic happens.”
When you prioritize human insight, you can build the kind …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
