With use of AI in social media content creation accelerating, what role does human imagination and creativity play in the future of social content?

To answer that question I reached out to the top B2B social media marketers from leading B2B brands that we featured recently.

The answers I received point in a direction that I think is essential for any B2B brand thinking about how to differentiate in more meaningful and less mechanical ways. This is especially important since everyone essentially has the same AI tools available to them. When everyone has the same automated AI powered workflows for creating infinite social media content, how will any brand stand out? This post aspires to answers that question.

The context for human and AI powered creativity

AI adoption in B2B marketing is accelerating fast. According to TopRank’s 2025 B2B Influencer Marketing Report, 57% of B2B marketers currently use AI for content creation and research from Content Marketing Institute found that 53% are using AI for creative assets like images and video.

But there is a trust gap widening at the same time. While use of AI tools to create more social media content, it’s a race to the middle for many and buyers don’t trust. According to new research from Gartner, nearly half use generative AI tools to research vendors and products. At the same time, more than half say they have gotten misleading information from AI tools, and 69% rely on sales reps to validate what they found.

Volume and efficiency in social media content creation  is not necessarily closing that gap. Credible, original, human inspired content that inspires trust is what moves the needle.

That divide between content quantity and content quality is exactly where human creativity earns its place, especially on social media channels where attention is increasingly hard to come by and trust is becoming the great differentiator. To understand how, here are insights from 12 social media marketing pros from Adobe, HP Enterprise, Slack, Cision and more.

 AI amplifies. Humans originate.

The most consistent theme across the responses I received was a division of creative labor. AI can be very effective for expanding the scale, speed, and reach of a creative idea. Generating the idea itself still requires humans.

Jared Carneson, Head of Social Media at Adobe, made a case for human / AI balance effectively:

“Every breakthrough piece of social content starts with something AI cannot originate: a genuine point of view. AI expands what a creative vision can become, faster, at greater scale, across more surfaces, but imagination is still the source material. The human and AI partnership works because human creativity is not being replaced. It is being amplified.”

He pointed to Adobe Firefly: The Unfinished Film as an example of that amplification producing award-winning results.

Desirée Porcaro, Senior Director of Social Media at UKG, focused on what humans are best at:

“AI is accelerating content creation and helping us explore ideas, iterate faster, and bring concepts to life more efficiently than ever before. But human imagination is still what gives social content meaning, emotional resonance, and relevance. The subtle details that shape how content is received, cultural context, sentiment shifts, tone, timing, empathy, and instinct, are things humans are uniquely sensitive to. AI can help us move faster, but it’s people who understand the world around us deeply enough to create content that truly connects, builds trust, and inspires action.”

Emily Vonakis, Social Media Manager at RTX, described human creativity as the defining skill set for modern B2B marketers:

“I believe human imagination and creativity are becoming even more important in social media marketing. The most impactful social strategies come from understanding people, identifying meaningful narratives, asking better questions, and creating experiences that resonate in a genuine way. The future belongs to marketers who can leverage AI as a tool while still leading with strategic thinking, originality, empathy, and imagination.”

Emotional connection and cultural intelligence

A second theme that stood out focused on the unique human capabilities that AI has yet to match: emotional intelligence, cultural fluency, and the ability to create social media content that connects with a specific audience in a specific moment.

Renee D. Edwards, Director of Global Social Media and Digital Communications at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, focused on the power of human inspired emotional connection:

“Human imagination, creativity and connection remain the differentiating forces in social media marketing. In an increasingly AI-driven landscape, creativity and storytelling that sparks the imagination is what ensures brands stand out and capture the hearts, minds and attention of audiences.”

Mageida Sopon, Social Media Manager at Insperity, zeroed in on community as the proof point:

“AI can’t replicate human imagination and creativity. It is people who build community, generate bold ideas that become trends, and discover new ways of connecting that technology, for all its capabilities, has yet to reach.”

Katelyn Brower, Director of Social Media, Public Relations, and Events at First Advantage, raised a flag about what gets lost when B2b marketershand too much creative authority to AI:

“Balancing where AI comes into play is critical because you cannot lose sight of the creator in you. It is easy to spot when a social strategy is fully reliant on AI, and when teams do this, true engagement gets sacrificed, losing sight of what a successful social media strategy should be.”

Editorial judgment and creative instinct

Beyond emotion and empathy, several of the top social media marketing execs that shared insights pointed to something even harder to systematize: editorial instinct. The intuitive read on when a creative risk is worth taking, when the moment is right for a meme, or when a message needs something genuinely unexpected.

Sabrina Barekzai, Director of Social Media Strategy at Slack, talks about data vs human discernment:

“AI can’t replace editorial judgement or discernment. So much of social media marketing is creative and editorial-led. Yes, we focus on data and insights, but sometimes you just need to post the trending meme because you just know it will perform well. AI can’t replicate that intuitive feeling. Discernment is part of what makes us human. It’s more important than ever for marketers to test and learn based on their own editorial judgement and not rely on AI just yet.”

Amanda Gebhard, Associate Director of Enterprise Social Media at Boston Scientific, said that even AI companies are recognizing this gap:

“I actually think human-led creativity is more important than ever for social content. AI pulls from existing material, and most AI-generated content still reads pretty generic and flat. Creativity requires imagination and some level of risk taking, and the best social content reflects back on its audience through subtle, implicit signals that LLMs aren’t very good at picking up yet. Creative storytelling driven by real people is becoming a strategic differentiator. Even the AI companies recognize this, since many are hiring people or agencies to do this work.”

Kirt Zimmer, Senior Manager of Social Media Marketing at Marvell Technology, talked about the value being a little “off” in a human way:

“When a message lands with an audience, it’s usually because of an intellectual or emotional connection that is almost never born from generic content. AI is great for strategic direction, organizing complex thoughts, or even a first draft, but its default setting is pretty boring. Inject your quirky, cheeky or intriguing perspectives if you hope to stand out in a sea of blandness. In other words, be human.”

The rise of  human media

A third thread that that came up focused on the argument that the proliferation of AI-generated content is making human generated content even more in demand.

Marc Meyer, Head of Social Media at Revvity, has a name for what is emerging:

“Ironically, I think AI is accelerating the desire for more human based interactions. I’m willing to coin a new term: ‘human media.’ This revolt is in direct response to the notion that AI generated content is filling a creative void. It is in the sense of quality and speed, but not originality. Not in what makes some designs iconic and memorable. The rise in AI seems to be having a positive impact on H2H communications, or at least it’s increasing the desire for more human-to-human interactions. We can see and smell AI in terms of content creation and discovery, and most of us don’t like the taste.”

Meghan Meeker, Director of Social Media at Cision, also advocated for the “weird” in human generated content:

“As marketers, we know our audiences are growing weary of AI slop. Before AI, they were growing tired of clickbait, obvious advertisements, and being sold to every time they scrolled. Authenticity is becoming more and more important as AI usage in marketing increases. People are craving authenticity, vulnerability, humanity, and transparency in the content they consume. So while AI can and should be a tool in every marketer’s toolbox, human imagination and creativity is paramount right now. Make the weird stuff. It might just get your brand noticed in a sea of sameness.”

Lisa Marcyes, Global Head of Social Media at Cohesity, made the same case with proof. AI is already woven into her daily workflow, including analytics, copywriting, ideation, competitive research, and even building avatars for recurring content. Despite that robust workflow, the ideas, though, still originate with humans:

“The ideas that actually stop people mid-scroll still come from humans. We created a drone show over Las Vegas that looked so real people thought it actually happened. We put a fainting goat in a ransomware video because sometimes a little chaos lands a serious message better than another corporate explainer ever could. AI didn’t come up with either of those. A creative team that deeply understands its audience did. Over the years I’ve found the content people actually remember makes them feel something. It surprises them. Makes them laugh. Makes them uncomfortable. Makes them feel seen. We still need humans for that.”

More than ever, creativity is the competitive edge in B2B social media

The data tells one story, and these social media marketing pros confirm it. AI is a genuine force multiplier, and the B2B marketers who ignore it are leaving productivity on the table. However, in a world where AI can generate content at industrial scale, the scarcest resource in B2B social media is originality.

What separates B2B social media content that earns attention from content that fills a feed is still a human question: Does this resonate? Does this surprise? Does it reflect something real about the audience?

According to our State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026 Report, 78% of B2B marketers say interactive and experiential content increases repeat engagement, yet only one-third regularly build it into their campaigns. The opportunity is wide open for brands willing to lead with imagination and use AI to accelerate execution.

In Best Answer Marketing, the trust system depends on exactly this kind of originality. Credible voices, authentic storytelling, and content that earns engagement rather than just filling a queue are what build the brand signals that matter across channels, including the AI-powered tools that now shape how buyers discover and evaluate expertise.

The marketers who will lead in this environment are the ones who treat AI as a creative accelerator. These twelve voices from some of the world’s top B2B brands make clear that the line between what AI can do and what humans bring is holding, and that line is where brand differentiation lives.

The post B2B Marketing Experts on the Roles of Human Creativity and AI in Social Media Marketing appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

Google I/O 2026 confirmed what we’ve been preparing for at TopRank Marketing: AI Mode is now the dominant search experience, reaching over a billion monthly users with queries growing fast. The traditional blue-link search result is no longer the primary way buyers find information on Google.

New behavioral data from Google shows the average search query is now triple the length of a traditional search, follow-up conversations are up 40% month over month, and one in six searches are already multimodal. Buyers are exploring, deciding, learning, planning, and creating through AI search, and the content that shows up in those moments is authoritative, expert-led, and structured to be cited.

Google’s own guidance for AI search optimization confirms that the tactics circulating in the market, including chunking content, LLMS.txt files, and manufacturing mentions, simply do not work. What does work is exactly what Best Answer Marketing is built around: unique, non-commodity content backed by original research, genuine thought leadership, and credibility signals that AI systems recognize and reward.

For B2B brands still optimizing for clicks, the window to adapt is narrowing. For brands already building topical authority and trust across channels, this moment is a significant advantage.

The latest search update from Google I/O overhauls the search experience, are B2B marketers ready?

The good news is that at TopRank Marketing, we’ve been adapting to changes in search for over 25 years and Best Answer Marketing is a system built for this exact moment.

When Google I/O 2025 announcements dropped last year, we wrote that the old SEO playbook of chasing rankings was being replaced and that AI-powered search represented a fundamental change in how customers discover, consume, and interact with information. At the time, AI Mode was new, agentic capabilities were just starting to be introduced, and how those changes would impact B2B marketing was still being sorted out.

A year later, the Google search experience is on track to change completely. The impact on content strategy could be game changing but the go forward is clear.

“All search is now AI search.”

At Google I/O 2026, Google pretty much confirmed the end of 10 blue links in search. In their place is an AI-powered experience that is built around synthesized answers, autonomous information agents, and generative user interfaces that can be created on the fly. Google is evolving the search experience from discovery to fueling decisions across the buyer journey.

“It’s not about showing up on the page one of Google. It’s about getting referenced inside of an AI answer… Zero-click search is just a simple example of that, where they’re not going to your website… The playbooks that we used to use just don’t work anymore.” –  Jon Miller, Co-Founder Stealth AI Start-up, Co-Founder Marketo

With the days of attracting website traffic from ranked links and clicks coming to an end, say hello to the age of zero click marketing – which is also the name of a new book by Amanda Natividad and Rand Fishkin.

In addition to search interface changes, Google has also released behavioral data showing how people are using AI Mode in the U.S.. Customer centric data is at the core of Best Answer Marketing and this user behavior research is informative about what kind of content strategy will be required for B2B brands to be visible, trusted and chosen in line with how buyers use AI search.

Marketers at B2B companies that have been investing in credibility, trust, and structured content built to be cited by AI are already seeing gains in visibility, brand preference and pipeline growth from AI search. But for B2B brands that are still optimizing around traditional organic click-through, understanding these changes are essential for your marketing roadmap.

To help B2B marketers who are still working to understand and prioritize how to be visible, relevant and effective in this AI powered search environment, this post will drill down into what has changed, what the behavioral data tells us, and what B2B brands should do next.

What did Google I/O 2026 actually announce?

There were several compelling announcements about search made at Google I/O 2026 including:

• A change from ranked lists to an AI-mediated experience.
• More conversational, multimodal search interface
• Scaled AI Mode to over a billion monthly users
• Launched continuous Search Agents
• Enabled Generative UI to build custom interactive apps on the fly

Google’s VP of Search Elizabeth Reid described the I/O 2026 announcements as “the next step in bringing together the best of a search engine with the best of AI.” So what do these changes mean?

Simulation

A reimagined search interface

The search box has been completely rebuilt for the first time in 25 years. With the implementation of these changes it will expand dynamically to support longer, more conversational queries, accept multimodal inputs including text, images, files, and video, and provide AI-powered query suggestions that go beyond autocomplete. The added functionality might turn some Google users off, but for others, it opens doors to next level capabilities for researching solutions, identifying resources and providing the information needed to make confident decisions.

AI Mode at scale

Just one year after launch, AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter. AI Overviews now reach 2.5 billion monthly users. The traditional blue-link search results we’ve all known and loved for so many years are no longer where the majority of the Google search experience is happening. As I mentioned above, all search is now AI search.

Search agents

Your B2B customers can now use the Google search interface to create, customize, and manage AI agents that work in the background 24/7, scanning the web to monitor topics, synthesize changes, and deliver updates. Instead of a list of links, these agents will return a synthesized answer with recommended actions. The age of agents as a secondary audience to humans will be facilitated by the search agent feature.

Generative UI

Google search is now planning on making it possible for users to build custom interactive experiences on the fly in direct response to what your customers are asking or searching for, from visual explainers to stateful mini apps that users can return to over time. For example, buyers will be able to tell Google to create a comparison table of features between vendors right within the search experience. I’ve been using Manus to do this for a year and it can be incredibly helpful.

The “query fan-out” capability Google shared last year, where AI Mode issues multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and synthesizes the result, has now evolved into a full agentic system that can function autonomously on behalf of buyers. Google’s own AI optimization guide confirms that both query fan-out and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) continue to play an important role in its core search ranking systems, which means foundational content authority still influences what gets cited.

As TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez reported, this change means that “searching the web” will increasingly be performed by AI agents instead of humans, with people focusing on acting on the information that those agents find and provide. The notion of agent as an audience has traction as of late. Adobe’s Marissa Dacay calls this the New ABM “agent based marketing” and Forrester has been talking about B2A “business to agent” strategy.

How are people actually using AI mode?

Behavioral AI Mode trend data Google shows several important changes:

• The average query is triple the length of traditional search
• Follow-up queries have grown by over 40%
• Non-text (multimodal) searches are rapidly increasing.

This proves that content must be structured to directly answer ‘What’ and ‘How’ questions instead of optimizing solely for specific keywords.

The fact that the average AI Mode search query is triple the length of a traditional search query means people are no longer worrying about the right way to write their questions, they’re just asking. This is proof that keyword-based content strategies are no longer aligned with how buyers now search.

“Full-sentence, contextual, nuanced questions are the new input standard and the art/science of delivering answers to those questions is what B2B marketers need to master in order to stay relevant.”

Follow-up behavior means buyers are not asking one question and leaving. They’re going deeper, exploring related angles, and continuing the conversation. B2B brands that own only a narrow slice of a topic may drop out of consideration at the second or third follow-up.

The top first words in AI Mode queries are What, How, I, Is, and Can. The top keywords are Information, Identify, Find, Explain, and Summarize. Together, these signals point to a evolved search experience beyond keywords to one that is built around questions and explanations. Content that answers “what” and “how” directly, with clear definitions, frameworks, and expert perspective, is the content AI Mode is designed to surface. This is exactly the formula used by Best Answer Marketing’s integrated strategy.

Delivering content experiences beyond text is more important than ever. According to Google’s research, more than one in six AI Mode searches are now non-text (multimodal), and image input is up more than 40% month-over-month since launch. This makes visual and multimedia content essential for B2B content strategy in an AI powered search environment. Again, this aligns with BAM, experiential content to be specific.

According to the AI Mode usage report, Google organizes what people are doing in AI Mode across five behavioral modes:

• Explore (Top of Funnel, TOFU)
• Decide (Middle of Funnel, MOFU/Evaluation)
• Learn (Ongoing Buyer Education)
• Do (Planning and Execution)
• Create (Content Production)

For B2B marketers, these modes are well aligned to the buyer journey and each provide useful insights for how you approach content. Let’s take a look at each:

Explore: Brainstorming-related queries are growing 30% faster than AI Mode queries overall. Google’s data shows that people are coming to AI Mode to discover new ideas and explore open-ended concepts, not just to find something they’ve already defined. B2B buyers do the same at the earliest stage of problem identification before they know what category of solution they need. TOFU brand content must take this exploratory, open-ended mode into account vs. the basics of informational keyword intent.

Decide: Searches beginning with “which” have increased 40% faster than AI Mode queries overall. In B2B, “which platform,” “which provider,” “which approach” are the kind of evaluation-stage queries where trust signals, comparative content, and credible third-party validation has a big influence on visibility.

Learn: AI Mode is being used for professional development and deep-dive learning extensively. A lot of B2B buyers behave the same way in how they build competency in a category before evaluating vendors. Brands that produce educational content, from original research to expert/creator/influencer-led explainers, can become the source material that AI Mode draws from during these learning sessions.

Do: Planning-related queries in AI Mode have grown 80% faster than AI Mode queries overall in the past six months. Google says AI Mode’s Canvas tool is being used for complex, multi-step structured planning tasks. B2B brands that publish structured, actionable content such as step-by-step guides, decision frameworks, and templates can become the source material or best answer for those planning sessions.

Create: Image creation queries in AI Mode have more than tripled since the start of this year. B2B buyers are increasingly using AI Mode as an active productivity tool. Modular, repurposable content that AI can incorporate into creation workflows can create a visibility opportunity that most B2B brands have not even considered yet.

How does the Best Answer Marketing help B2B brands adapt to Google I/O search changes?

The Best Answer Marketing (BAM) framework was built on the premise that buyer behavior evolves and the technology that buyers use to  find, evaluate, and trust content will also change. Today, those changes are largely due to AI.

Of course these changes are relevant for B2B content in general, but they are also impactful for fast growing content categories like B2B thought leadership. According to our own research in Answer Engine: The State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026, 35% of marketing leaders say AI and GenAI platforms are changing how content is discovered, trusted, and acted upon. Separately, 32% of B2B professionals now report discovering thought leadership through GenAI tools. Those numbers are undoubtedly even higher now than when we fielded the survey.

It’s also worth noting that Google’s own guide to optimizing for generative AI search, published May 2026, validates this direction directly. The distinction between what works and what doesn’t in AI search optimization is important. Google’s recent AI search optimization best practices explicitly identifies the AEO and GEO tactics that do not work for its AI search features, including creating LLMS.txt files, chunking content, rewriting copy for AI systems, seeking inauthentic mentions, and overfocusing on structured data. BAM was not built around these kinds of shortcuts. There’s no shortage of confident advice without data in the SEO industry, so balance what you hear from both Google and SEO experts with strategies informed by data, experience and real-world measurable impact.

There are best and worst practices with all kinds of marketing. In this case, Google has confirmed what does work and those best practices happen to align with each BAM pillar below.

Data Informed: Answer the questions buyers are actually asking

The shift to triple-length queries means buyers are no longer translating their questions into keywords. They are asking whatever is on their mind. The top AI Mode query intents (What, How, Explain, Identify, Summarize) can help define a content brief as clearly as any keyword research tool. The important thing is that credible content is in demand from buyers and industry publications that influence buyers as much as LLMs.

“The content that we find that’s really valuable is the content that’s based in proprietary data and actually has a really strong foundation for saying something different in the industry.” – David Rowlands, Head of Product at B2B Marketing & Propolis

BAM’s Data Informed pillar draws on customer surveys, CRM data, audience research, and original research to identify the specific questions buyers need answered. That process now directly maps to the question structures AI Mode is built to handle. Brands that have invested in genuine buyer question research have a content architecture AI Mode can work with.

Integrated Strategy: Depth and Coherence Win Follow-Up Conversations

The 40% monthly growth in AI Mode follow-up queries is the behavioral proof for why topic cluster depth and coherent narrative orchestration matter. A buyer asking about data center optimization, then following up on differentiation strategies for cloud service providers, then researching Xeon Scalable performance benchmarks, then exploring Intel Select Solutions, will cycle through multiple related pieces from brands that have built out that full topic ecosystem. And brands that haven’t, will simply fall off the radar.

As we shared in last year’s Google I/O post, B2B buyers are no longer using Google alone, sourcing information across LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, and GenAI platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT. BAM’s Integrated Strategy pillar aligns brand, demand, and lead generation content goals into a unified plan with consistent narratives across formats and channels. BAM focused topical coverage across the buyer journey is now a prerequisite for relevant AI Mode visibility.

Trust System: Credibility determines who gets cited in the decide stage

The 40% faster growth in “which” queries should place the Decide mode at the center of a B2B brand’s AI Mode strategy. When a buyer asks AI Mode “which cybersecurity solution for fintech should I consider,” the brands that get chosen in AI powered answers are those with the strongest credibility signals.

“GEO builds on great SEO tactics. It does not replace it. So, structure and clear answers and credible authorship make content easier for systems to extract data and information and reuse that.” – Kelsey Voss, Principal Marketing Analyst at EMARKETER

Google’s AI optimization guide draws a direct line between what it calls commodity content, common knowledge that could come from anyone, and non-commodity content, unique expert and experienced takes that go beyond what is generally known. Google also warns that seeking inauthentic mentions provides little benefit and that its systems are designed to reward genuine, high-quality content. BAM’s Trust System is built to produce exactly the latter through:

• Original or proprietary research
• Thought leadership from named practitioners
• Influencer content
• Earned media coverage

Our Answer Engine research found that 97% of B2B marketers agree thought leadership is critical to full-funnel success, and 35% say original research is significantly more valuable than AI-generated content for building trust and authority. The E-E-A-T principles Google has championed for years carry even greater weight when AI Mode is selecting sources for decision-stage recommendations.

Experiential Content: Multi-format, structured, and built for AI recommendations

The multimodal growth data makes the case for visual and multimedia content investment even more concrete. One in six queries are now non-text, with image input up 40% month-over-month, and image creation queries tripling. Since AI Mode is increasingly a visual experience, B2B brands publishing only text-based content are putting themselves at a significant disadvantage.

Also, the 80% faster growth in planning queries and the Canvas planning tool show that structured, actionable content is what AI Mode draws on for the Do behavioral mode. Google’s generative UI capabilities create even more opportunity for impact: Search can now build interactive experiences directly from web content. BAM’s Experiential Content pillar, which addresses both format richness and content structure for AI citation, responds directly to this and extends what we outlined last year as the need to create content structured for AI parsing and repurposing.

MultiChannel Visibility: Owning discovery across all five behavioral modes

The five AI Mode behavioral modes that Google’s research has outlined: Explore, Decide, Learn, Do, and Create don’t all happen through the same content format or channel.

• Exploration now happens through open-ended brand and thought leadership content.
• Decision happens through comparative, validation-heavy content.
• Learning happens through educational long-form and research assets.
• Doing happens through structured, actionable formats.
• Creating happens through modular, repurposable content.

TechCrunch reported that these changes will probably decimate Google referrals to publishers which are already suffering due to AI Overviews. We addressed this trajectory last year in the context of zero-click search experiences – this is now the dominant reality. Our Answer Engine research shows 33% of marketers say reliance on too few channels limits their success, and buyers now use an average of 10.2 channels during a purchase journey (McKinsey). BAM’s MultiChannel Visibility pillar was built to drive discovery across the full range of formats and channels that align to each buyer mode.

Unified Analytics: Measuring What Matters in an Agent-Driven World

As AI search removes the direct click as the primary performance signal, the metrics that matter now must change toward AI citation rates, brand mention share, topic authority signals, and pipeline influence. Tracking those metrics across disparate sources requires an analytics infrastructure well beyond a standard dashboard.

BAM’s Unified Analytics pillar brings together disparate data sources in an AI-powered data warehouse, with visualization tied to full-funnel outcomes: TOFU brand, MOFU demand, BOFU revenue. In a world where AI agents are doing the searching on behalf of buyers and buyers are using AI Mode across the five distinct behavioral modes outlined by Google, unified measurement is really the only reliable way to know whether a content program is working.

The window for B2B brands to adapt is narrowing

Google confirmed the new Search interface is rolling out now. Generative UI will come this summer. Information agents and mini-app building will follow for subscribers first, and broader free access after that. As TechCrunch noted, there isn’t much time left for publishers to adapt. That includes B2B brands publishing content with the expectation of attracingt, engaging and converting customers.

The behavioral data Google shared makes this sense of urgency compelling. Triple-length buyer questions are now the norm. Follow-up conversations are becoming more common. And multimodal search is growing fast. The five behavioral modes that define how buyers use AI Mode are active now, and brands that build content strategies around them are positioned to create authority and choice preference for AI systems and humans alike. Those choice preferences compound over time.

Last year we said that embracing a Best Answer Marketing strategy was the path for B2B marketers to move beyond simply being found to becoming the indispensable answer customers are looking for, no matter how or where they search. A year later, Google’s behavioral data confirms that is exactly where the search experience is heading.

“Building brand credibility and consensus across channels through integrated content experiences is how B2B companies go from blending in to becoming Best Answer Brands.”

If you’re ready to tap into the best answer system, let’s start the conversation.

The post All Search Is Now AI Search. Here’s What B2B Marketers Need to Do Next appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

But podcasts for B2B audiences can offer something blogs never could. They fit into the parts of your audience’s day when looking at a screen isn’t an option. The smartest B2B brands aren’t choosing between the two. Instead, they’re doing both.

And if you’re not convinced yet, We’ll let the data tell the story.

B2B Podcasting: 20 Stats that Make the Case

These statistics come from five different research reports, all released in the last year. When you look at all five together, the picture is clear: podcasting for B2B audiences hasn’t even begun to peak, and B2brand content is the next frontier.

Podcast Listenership Keeps Growing

Podcasting is a growth medium. More people are listening now than ever before. But what’s truly impressive is how many listeners are new to the medium. Even though podcasts have been around since the early 2000s, they’ve only recently reached a true mass market audience.

Source: Edison Research

1. An estimated 158 million Americans are monthly podcast consumers, up from just 46 million in 2015. (1)
2. Weekly podcast consumers now number 115 million. (1)
3. Since 2015, weekly time spent with podcasts has grown by 335%. (1)
4. 40% of the U.S. 12+ population has consumed a podcast in the last week. (1)

Podcast Listeners Are Demographically Valuable

Okay, so millions of people are listening to podcasts. But are these people a worthwhile target audience for B2B marketers? Fair question. Not every massive audience is the right audience. Plenty of platforms boast huge numbers and deliver underwhelming results. So before you get too excited about 158 million monthly listeners, let’s talk about who those people actually are.

1. Monthly podcast consumers skew higher-income: 47% earn $75K+, compared to 43% of the general U.S. population. (1)
2. Weekly podcast consumers are more likely to be college-educated, and are disproportionately business owners (18%) and homeowners (56%). (1)
3. 68% of 35-54-year-olds consumed a podcast in the last month, making it a powerful vehicle for reaching one of advertising’s most valued demographics. (5)

Podcasts Are a Trusted Information Channel

We live in an era of chronic skepticism. B2B buyers are drowning in content, ignoring ads, and tuning out brands that talk at them instead of to them. Important distinction, no? The brands cutting through in 2026 all have one thing in common: they’re credible. Podcasts are one of the most direct paths to becoming that trusted, go-to resource for your audience. They don’t just reach buyers. They build the kind of familiarity and authority that actually moves decisions.

1. Americans find podcasts 23x more trustworthy than social media. (2)
2. Nearly a third of U.S. adults, 32%, now get news from podcasts, up from 22% in 2020. (3)
3. 69% listen to in-depth explainer-style content. (3)

Podcast Fans Are Devoted Listeners

Can we all agree that most digital content gets seconds of your audience’s attention before they scroll, click away, or get distracted? Podcasts are built differently. While the rest of the internet is fighting over fractions of a minute, podcast listeners are showing up and staying.

Edison Research

1. Listeners spend nearly 1 hour per day with podcasts. (2)
2. Weekly podcast consumers collectively log 773 million hours per week. (1)
3. Podcast fans, those who rate their own engagement 5 or higher out of 10, spend over 9 hours a week with podcasts, nearly four hours more than casual listeners. (1)
4. Smart TVs, now in 75% of U.S. homes, are driving in-home podcast listening, proving the medium is no longer just for commuters. (1)

Video Is Expanding the Medium

We’ve come full circle here, folks. Many podcasts have essentially become video-forward talk shows. Is it innovative? Is it still “radio?” Is this change increasing listenership? Viewership? Those are questions for another blog.

Here’s  the thing: the demand is undeniable. Netflix even has a dedicated category for podcasts now. Most of the shows I listen to now offer a video feed, and the benefits are obvious. Seeing a guest’s reaction or a host’s body language creates a level of intimacy that audio just can’t match. It also provides extra real estate for brand recognition and better ad placements.

I would argue this shift specifically helps B2B brands because their products are often complex or intangible. When a product is difficult to visualize, video humanizes the abstract. It turns a faceless service into a personal partnership.

Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast

1. More than half the U.S. population, 51%, has ever watched a podcast. (1)
2. On a monthly basis, video podcast consumers now make up 37% of the U.S. 12+ population. (1)
3. More than 1 in 4 Americans, 26%, watched a video podcast in the last week. (1)

The Business Case for Podcast Advertising

If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you know they’re often infested with ads (Anyone listen to iHeartRadio podcasts?). But what medium isn’t these days? The good news is the vast majority of listeners are okay with this since the content is technically free. And that goodwill translates.

More and more listeners are purchasing products after hearing these ads.

You have to meet your audience where they are, and this is where they are. So the question isn’t whether podcasting belongs in your B2B marketing mix. It’s whether you can afford to leave that touchpoint on the table.

1. 97% of spoken-word audio on digital platforms is ad-supported, compared to only 47% of music content. (4)
2. 44% of listeners purchased a product after hearing a podcast ad, up from 34% in 2020. (1)
3. 88% of weekly podcast consumers say ads are a fair trade for free content, and 68% say they don’t mind hearing them. (1)

Don’t Be (Pod) Cast Aside

Podcasting isn’t “nice to have” anymore. It’s where your buyers already are. And getting started with Podcast Marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming when you have the right partners handling sponsorships, guest sourcing, production, and promotion.

While you’re at it, do yourself a favor and queue up the Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast. Lee Odden and some of the sharpest minds in B2B marketing cover everything from AI disruption and transformation to the importance of creativity and storytelling plus everything in between.

If you’d like to learn more about how to build a podcast for your B2B brand that positions you as the go-to resource in your space, we can help.

Sources:

1. The Podcast Consumer 2025, Edison Research
2. The State of Podcasting, iHeartMedia
3. Podcasts and News Fact Sheet, Pew Research
4. Share of Ear, Edison Research
5. The Infinite Dial 2026, Edison Research

The post Podcasting for B2B Brands: 20 Stats that Make the Marketing Case appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

It used to be that outsourcing your marketing meant finding the villager with the loudest voice and wittiest turn-of-phrase to walk the lanes hawking your wares.

Needless to say, marketing has evolved. And with that evolution, navigating the various services available for B2B marketing has become increasingly complex.

While the ultimate goal of being heard above the crowd remains the same, the path to reaching that goal requires strategically employing the right content marketing services.

We’ve compiled a list of services ranging from content strategy to analytics to help you understand how each of these services works and how they help your brand be the best answer for your customers.

AI has changed content marketing. Here’s what it can’t change.

AI tools have made content faster and cheaper to produce than ever before. But when everyone can publish more, publishing more stops being an advantage.

According to the AI-First, Buyer-Ready: the New Era of B2B Content Marketing report from 10fold, 91% of marketers are increasing content output, and nearly half are producing three to five times more content than they were in the previous year, with the majority (75%) operating on budget increases of just one to ten percent.

More content being developed with the same resources has created an undifferentiated, noisier market.

B2B audiences in particular have little patience for content that doesn’t earn their attention quickly. The content marketing services that matter most right now are the ones that help your brand build that kind of credibility and differentiation across a long buying cycle.

Why B2B companies need content marketing services

B2B buying cycles are long and involve a whole host of stakeholders. This means that B2B marketers have to map out and maintain ongoing relationships with buyers across a range of job titles and decision-making influences. This degree of in-depth engagement means utilizing an array of content types across several platforms and touchpoints to guide customers along the buying journey. If you think that sounds difficult, you’re not alone.

According to CMI’s B2B Content and Marketing Trends, the top three content marketing challenges are:

• Creating content that drives a desired action (40%)
• Resource constraints including time, people, and budget (39%)
• Measuring content effectiveness (33%)

Notably, these challenges look nearly identical to those from previous reports. These aren’t new problems, and more technology hasn’t solved them. The gaps are still fundamentally about strategy, expertise, and execution — which is exactly why the right agency partnership matters.

The case for B2B brands to outsource content marketing

Bringing in outside expertise is one of the most direct ways to close those gaps. Not only does this free up your team to focus on big-picture strategy, it also ensures that specialized work is being managed by marketers who are immersed in the latest trends, techniques, and analytics within each specific area of content marketing.

Among B2B marketers who improved their content strategy effectiveness in the past year, the single biggest driver wasn’t new technology — it was strategy refinement, cited by 74% of respondents. New technology implementation came in second by a broad margin, at 51%.

In other words, tools amplify good strategy. That’s precisely where a qualified B2B content marketing agency partner makes all the difference.

8 popular B2B content marketing services

Content Strategy

In B2B marketing, a well-defined content strategy is crucial because it aligns your content with your business’s objectives and the needs of your audience. It ensures that every piece of content – whether a blog post, a white paper or a social media update – serves a clear purpose.

Why it’s popular: Top-performing marketing teams cite having a documented content strategy among their top keys to success.

What AI can and can’t do here: AI can accelerate keyword research, gap analysis, and competitive audits. What it can’t do is tell you why your audience is skeptical of a particular message, or recognize that a trend in your category is already saturating before you’ve invested in it.

A B2B marketing agency’s content strategy offerings may include:

• Audience research: Identifying and understanding the target audience, including their needs, challenges and content consumption behaviors.
• Content auditing and analysis: Reviewing existing content to determine what’s working and what’s not.
• Strategic planning: Developing a comprehensive plan that outlines the types of content to be created and identifying the business goals of each piece of content.
• SEO: Incorporating search engine optimization strategies into content creation to improve visibility in search engine results and attract organic traffic.

Competitive Content Analysis

A competitive content analysis evaluates what types of content are being published and what topics are being covered by your competitors. This enables you to identify trends and gaps in the content coverage within your industry.

Why it’s popular: A competitive content analysis helps marketers make data-backed decisions about content development and SEO strategies

What AI can and can’t do here: AI tools can crawl, catalog, and surface gaps faster than any human team. Spotting an opportunity in the data and knowing whether to act on it are two very different skills. That call requires market experience and audience understanding that no tool can shortcut.

A B2B marketing agency’s competitive content analysis offerings may include:

• Competitor identification: Determining who your direct and indirect competitors are.
• Content inventory: Cataloging and assessing the content of your competitors.
• Content performance evaluation: Measuring the engagement and performance of competitors’ content to understand what resonates with the audience.
• SEO assessment: Analyzing competitors’ content for SEO effectiveness and SERP rankings.
• Content gap analysis: Identifying topics and questions that competitors have not adequately covered.

Concept Development

Effective concept development aligns with your overall business objectives, addresses the needs and challenges of your target audience, and differentiates your brand in the market.

Why it’s popular: This is the leading challenge cited by B2B marketers, with 57% reporting difficulty creating the right content for their audience.

What AI can and can’t do here: Generative tools are good at remixing what already exists. It can’t tell you what’s frustrating your buyers, that nobody in your category has addressed yet. That requires listening to real people, and it’s what makes the difference between cookie cutter content and truly helpful content.

A B2B marketing agency’s concept development offerings may include:

• Concept ideation: Developing a range of concept ideas, drawing from industry trends, audience needs, and business objectives.
• Strategic alignment: Ensuring that the developed concepts align with your brand’s values, voice, and business goals, as well as with the identified needs and preferences of your target audience.
• Content and campaign planning: Mapping out how the chosen concept will be executed across various types of content and marketing campaigns, ensuring a cohesive and integrated approach.

Content Drafting

Quality content production is essential for building brand authority, engaging with potential customers, driving lead generation, and improving conversion rates. Skilled content drafting ensures content that is relevant, timely, and optimized for search engines and user experience.

Why it’s popular: Most marketing teams have no shortage of content ideas. What they struggle to maintain is the bandwidth to execute them well, consistently, without sacrificing quality or brand voice.

What AI can and can’t do here: Good content writing is a craft. Whether that means producing original work or elevating AI-assisted drafts, the ability to shape language that’s clear, credible, and genuinely useful to a B2B audience isn’t something you can automate. It’s a skill that takes years to develop and plays out in how that content performs.

A B2B marketing agency’s content production offerings may include:

• Content creation: Crafting well-researched and well-written content that addresses the specific interests and pain points of the target audience, while also aligning with the brand’s voice and objectives.
• SEO optimization: Integrating relevant keywords and meta tags to enhance content visibility in search engine results and drive organic traffic.
• Content formatting and styling: Ensuring that content is not only informative but also easy to read and visually appealing.
• Quality assurance: Conducting thorough editing and proofreading to ensure content is free from errors, factually accurate, and consistent with the brand’s messaging and standards.

Thought Leadership and Influencer Content

This type of content allows for individual voices to inspire, educate, and challenge existing perspectives within your industry. Influencers and thought leaders can be from within your organization, or be that outside expertise that lends credibility to your brand.

Why it’s popular: Thought leaders and influencers lend their unique voices and perspectives to your brand.

What AI can and can’t do here: AI can produce a polished-sounding point of view. It can’t produce an earned one. The executive with twenty years of hard-won experience, or the analyst with a genuinely contrarian take, brings credibility that no language model can manufacture. That credibility gap widens as AI-generated content becomes easier to recognize.

A B2B marketing agency’s thought leadership and influencer content programs may include:

• Influencer partnerships: Identifying and partnering with influencers who have a strong following and credibility within your target market to co-create content, share content, or endorse your brand.
• Content creation and curation: Not every thought leader or influencer is an author, so partnering with a marketing service that has expertise in this arena can help your brand elevate the voice of the individual.

Design Services

Good design can significantly increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by making your content more attractive, easier to understand, and more memorable. Design services help in establishing a brand’s visual identity, ensuring that all marketing materials are coherent, appealing, and aligned with the brand’s objectives.

Why it’s popular: A lack of resources is the number one challenge facing marketing teams today. Outsourcing design can ensure your content visually reflects the value of your brand.

What AI can and can’t do here: AI tools can generate assets quickly, and for early-stage concepting they have real utility. Where they fall short is brand coherence. Building a visual system that scales consistently, communicates brand values at a glance, and holds up across every format and channel requires a designer who understands the business goals behind the aesthetics.

A B2B marketing service’s design offerings may include:

• Brand identity design: Creating or refining the visual elements that make up a brand’s identity.
• Web and digital design: Developing the layout, visual appearance and usability of websites and digital platforms.
• Interactive and multimedia design: Creating interactive elements such as infographics, animations, and videos that can enhance storytelling and engage users more deeply with content.
• Content visualization: Transforming data and information into visual formats, such as charts, graphs, and diagrams.

Video Content Creation

Video content is highly engaging and can significantly increase the time visitors spend on your website, which can lead to higher conversion rates. Videos are also more likely to be shared across social media platforms, increasing brand visibility and reach.

Why it’s popular: Video is the number one place marketers would increase their investment. Outsourcing video production to a qualified service can greatly increase your ROI.

What AI can and can’t do here: AI-generated video is improving fast, and for high-volume or short-form content it’s increasingly viable. But B2B video that builds real trust still depends on something AI can’t replicate: actual people with actual expertise saying things they actually believe. That credibility signal becomes more valuable, not less, as synthetic video grows more common.

A B2B marketing agency’s video content creation offerings may include:

• Concept development and scripting: Crafting creative concepts and writing scripts that convey the brand’s message.
• Filming and production: Capturing high-quality video footage using industry best practices.
• Editing and post-production: Combining the footage with supporting audio and graphics to ensure it’s polished and aligns with the brand’s identity.
• SEO optimization: Incorporating relevant keywords, titles, descriptions, and tags to ensure the video is discoverable on search engines and video platforms.
• Distribution strategy: Planning how and where to distribute the video content to reach the target audience.

Content Performance Analytics

Content performance analytics helps marketers understand how well their content is resonating with their target audience and contributing to business objectives. This is also how B2B marketers gather the data that proves the ROI of their marketing efforts.

Why it’s popular: Just under half of marketers report that they’re confident in their ability to measure content performance. This leaves a lot of room for improvement – and expert help!

Analytics What AI can and can’t do here: AI can process data and generate reports. What it can’t do is advise you on what to do about what the data shows. Human analysts bring in the context of your brand, your team’s capacity, and your specific business goals.

A B2B marketing agency’s content performance analytics offerings may include:

• Metric tracking and reporting: Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the business’s goals and regularly tracking these metrics to monitor content performance over time.
• Audience analysis: Analyzing the behavior and preferences of the target audience, including how they interact with content, which topics are most appealing, and which formats generate the most engagement.
• Content optimization: Using data insights to recommend changes to existing content, such as updating or repurposing underperforming content, as well as guiding the development of new content that aligns with audience interests and business goals.
• Competitive benchmarking: Comparing content performance against industry benchmarks or competitors to identify areas for improvement and opportunities to differentiate in the market.
• ROI analysis: Measuring the return on investment of content marketing activities by linking content performance to business outcomes, such as lead generation, sales, and customer acquisition and retention.

Choosing the right content marketing service partner

Did reading through that list of services have you daydreaming about how much time and energy your marketing team could free up with a little outsourcing?

Here are some best practices to follow when choosing a content marketing service provider.

Define your goals and needs: Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve with your content marketing. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or establish thought leadership? Understanding your objectives will help you identify the services that are most aligned with your goals.

Evaluate their content quality: Request samples of the agency’s work to evaluate the quality of their content. High-quality, engaging, and informative content is essential for a successful content marketing campaign.

Understand their analytics approach: A good content marketing service should have robust methods for measuring and reporting on the performance of your content. Ask about their metrics and reporting tools to ensure they can provide the insights you need.

Discuss communication and collaboration: Effective communication and collaboration are essential for a successful partnership. Discuss how they plan to communicate and collaborate with your team throughout the content marketing process.

Consider scalability: Choose a service that can scale with your business as it grows. They should be able to adapt to your changing needs and continue to deliver high-quality content as your business evolves.

Ask about SEO integration: Since SEO is a crucial element of successful content marketing, ensure that the service has a strong understanding of SEO best practices and can integrate these into your content strategy.

What will your choice of B2B content marketing agencies be?

We’ve all heard the warnings about AI-generated content and shrinking buyer attention. The best B2B content marketing agencies do more than produce assets at scale. They help B2B brands become the most trusted, discoverable, and credible source of answers for their customers. AKA “Best Answer Brands”.

From strategy and SEO / AEO to thought leadership, influencer collaboration, video, and analytics, the right content marketing agency goes beyond AI powered efficiency and optimization to bring together creativity, data, and industry expertise to build meaningful customer engagement and measurable business impact. Whether your goal is stronger visibility in search and AI discovery, deeper buyer trust, or full-funnel demand generation, partnering with an experienced B2B content marketing agency can help your brand stand out where it matters most.

The post 8 Content Marketing Agency Services In Demand for B2B Brands appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

At the same time, nearly half of marketers (49%) identify integrating influencer content across channels as the top trend, which is a sign that social networks are not a silo but a connective layer across campaigns, content, and customer experiences . This aligns with broader shifts in discovery: 32% of buyers now use generative AI tools to find thought leadership, and platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and peer networks continue to inform how expertise is surfaced, validated, and shared .

Without question, in 2026 social media is where influence is earned, where thought leadership is tested in real time, and where signals that impact SEO, AEO, and AI visibility are created. Best Answer Marketing reflects these changes well, emphasizing multi-channel discovery and the role of credible voices, including influencers and practitioners, in making brands visible and trusted wherever buyers are looking . As AI systems increasingly act as first choice channels of discovery they rely on patterns of authority, engagement, and consistency that are often built and validated on social platforms before being cited elsewhere.

That is why following the right leaders in B2B social media is especially useful. These B2B marketing leaders are not only sharing ideas about social media marketing, they are actively shaping how influence works in modern B2B marketing. The 32 B2B marketers featured here offer a window into what is working now and what is coming next, making them essential voices for anyone looking to stay relevant, credible, findable and trusted.

The Best Answer Marketing Leaders List: B2B Brand Social Media Marketing

Renee D. Edwards
Director, Global Social Media and Digital Communications at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
She builds global brands by turning strategy and creativity into multi-platform stories that drive affinity and measurable growth. With 15+ years across B2B and B2C, she leads teams that connect content, community, and performance into unified digital impact. Known for developing high-performing teams, she brings a forward-looking approach to scaling engagement and loyalty.
/in/reneededwards/

Rob Wolf
Senior Director of Social Media and Influence Marketing at Salesforce
He uses technology to tell stories that actually move buyers and businesses. When he’s not scaling global social programs, he’s riding the emotional rollercoaster of being a loyal Cleveland sports fan.
/in/robhwolf/

Elida Solis
Social Media Director at Vizient
The kind of optimist who sets big goals and hits them. Elida has grown audience reach by over 280% in the B2B healthcare space and isn’t slowing down. A self-described Enneagram 7, she’s always chasing the next tool or tactic that gives brands an edge.
/in/elidasolis/

Marc Meyer
Head of Social Media at Revvity
Marc has spent over 15 years figuring out how to make health science feel human on social. These days that means leaning into AI to build thought leadership that actually resonates.
/in/marctmeyer/

Jackie Ortiz
Social Media Strategist at GeneDx
Jackie turns complex ideas into clear, human stories that people actually connect with across tech, SaaS, biotech, and beyond. As a strategist and creative producer, she builds content engines, brand voices, and campaigns that bring clarity and intention to how organizations show up. Grounded in collaboration and inclusion, she focuses on creating work and teams that are both impactful and sustainable.
/in/otherjackieo/

Debbie Curtis-Magley
Director, Social Media Strategy & Planning at SAP
Debbie is less interested in vanity metrics and more interested in what actually changes how enterprise buyers think about a brand. Debbie runs a global social team at SAP that lives and breathes audience data.
/in/debbiecurtismagley/

Lisa Marcyes
Head of Social Media at Cohesity
Making complicated things compelling is kind of her thing, whether that’s cybersecurity, AI, or building a B2B advocacy program from scratch. Lisa has grown one to over 3,000 users and a LinkedIn newsletter to 132K subscribers.
/in/lisamarcyes/

Shaily Pasi
Social Media Director at Intel
Shaily leads global social strategy at Intel, driving 35% YoY growth through AI-powered analytics and data-driven storytelling across major platforms. Blending experience from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Intel, she turns complex technology into human, scalable narratives that drive revenue. At the intersection of entertainment, tech, and AI, she builds high-performing teams and brands designed for what’s next.
/in/disney-shailyp/

Kirt Zimmer
Senior Manager of Social Media Marketing at Marvell Technology
Kirt likes building things. He’s done it repeatedly across AI, fintech, and semiconductor companies, taking social programs from zero and turning them into something that actually performs for complex B2B brands.
/in/kirtzimmer/

Katelyn Brower
Director, Social Media, Public Relations, and Events at First Advantage
Professional women’s lacrosse didn’t work out, so she brought that same competitive energy to B2B. Katelyn has been proving ever since that business brands don’t have to be boring.
/in/katelyn-brower/

Virginette Acacio
Social Media Manager at Anthropic
She helps B2B tech brands turn storytelling and social engagement into real business impact. With experience at Snowflake, New Relic, BlueJeans, and now Anthropic, Virginette builds creative campaigns that expand reach and deepen connection. Her focus is simple: make enterprise brands show up in ways people actually care about.
/in/virginetteacacio/

Mageida Sopon
Social Media Manager at Insperity
Client success is the focus as she builds programs, manages complexity, and earns trust by consistently delivering when it matters most. With experience across agency and brand roles, she brings both strategic and operational strength to help B2B organizations move forward with confidence. Grounded in empathy and purpose, she’s especially focused on work where business impact and human outcomes intersect.
/in/mageida-sopon/

Michael Pranikoff
Director of Global Social Media at Equinix
He looks at social data and sees a story most people would miss. Michael uses those insights to shape B2B strategy and also runs the editorial vision for a global blog.
/in/michaelpranikoff/

Terra Walker
Executive Director, Social Media & Marketing Operations at Comcast Advertising
Fifteen social channels across four brands, and somehow she makes it look manageable. Terra’s real focus is getting employees to show up authentically online in ways that drive real B2B brand equity.
/in/terralynnewalker/

Kirsten Hamstra
Executive Director of Global Social Media COE at Lenovo
Running a team of 27 across global markets means a lot of the job is building systems that let good social work happen at scale. Kirsten has turned that into an art form at one of the world’s largest B2B technology companies.
/in/kirstenhamstra/

Emanuele Breccia
Director, Social Media at Adobe
He builds social-first brands that connect culture to measurable business results, leading integrated campaigns across creators, content, and commerce. With 15+ years of experience, Emanuele delivered standout impact for global brands like Samsung, Nissan, and Novo Nordisk through creator-led strategies that outperform. His edge is blending bold creative with operational precision to turn cultural signals into growth.
/in/emanuelebreccia/

Mike Delgado
Director of Social Media (Global & North America) at Experian
Mike hosts a recognized leadership podcast, runs multilingual campaigns, and still makes data feel like something worth caring about. His north star is making complex information accessible to everyone.
/in/mikedelgado/

Paul Harrer
Director, Social Media at AMD
Paul thinks like a storyteller, operates like a strategist. He has built international B2B programs that move audiences from awareness to action, and credits a healthy obsession with culture for keeping the work fresh.
/in/paulharrer/

Suzanne Doughty
Senior Social Media Strategist at Broadcom
A computer science degree, an MBA, and 15 years in B2B tech. Suzanne is equally comfortable talking governance and creative, and she’s the person who makes sure the strategy actually holds together across a sprawling global brand.
/in/suzannedoughty/

Karla Turntine
Global Social Media Manager at Oracle
Karla leads social across multiple Oracle industry verticals, turning complex enterprise narratives into measurable ROI. With a decade across B2B and B2C, she builds strategies that balance performance with authenticity at scale. Her focus is simple: make social matter to the business.
/in/karlamjackson/

Katie Yun
Social Media Director at Nationwide
A 30,000-person ambassador program, influencer marketing, sports partnerships, and a Fortune 100 brand to manage. Katie is one of those rare people who can connect social data directly to business outcomes across both B2B and B2C.
/in/katieyun/

Meghan Meeker
Director of Social Media at Cision
Meghan leads a global team and has a background in storytelling and photography, which shows in how she thinks about content. She cares about organic growth that actually means something, not just numbers going up.
/in/meghanmeeker/

Sabrina Barekzai
Director, Social Media Strategy at Slack
Sabrina has spent over 12 years figuring out what makes social actually work for a brand. She bridges the creative and analytical sides in a way that not everyone can pull off.
/in/sabrinabarekzai/

Toni Bird
Director, Social Media and Influencers at MongoDB
Toni spent years at Amazon and Stanford before turning her attention to B2B social. She’s the kind of operator who builds the infrastructure that lets good storytelling scale, quietly making everything run better.
/in/tonibird/

Mark Bilotta
Director of Social Media at AlphaSense
He’s been doing this long enough to know what actually works. Mark has built B2B programs for major tech brands and still believes the best content earns attention rather than just buying it.
/in/markbilotta/

Desirée Porcaro
Senior Director of Social Media at UKG
Desirée manages social, influencer marketing, and review sites, and she also chairs the board at SocialMedia.org, where senior social leaders from major brands come to think through the hard stuff together.
/in/dporcaro/

Jared Carneson
Head of Global Social. Senior Director at Adobe
Jared is obsessed with how culture, content, and community intersect online. He spends a lot of time thinking about what AI means for brand relationships and helping his team stay ahead of it.
/in/jaredcarneson/

Leslie Douglas
Director of Paid, Creative and Social at Intel
Leslie is an award-winning leader who runs global B2B campaigns and influencer partnerships while keeping the brand’s integrity intact. Leslie is equally at home in paid strategy and creative storytelling.
/in/lesliewadouglas/

Benjamin French Cobb
Director/Head of Social Media at Dropbox
He brings a wealth of experience from powerhouse brands like LinkedIn, Fidelity, and Reebok to his current role at Dropbox. By prioritizing influencer partnerships and intentional storytelling, he ensures the brand remains a distinctive and trusted voice within the digital workspace.
/in/benjamin-french-cobb

Nicole-Michele Traycoff
Social Media Marketing Manager at Comcast Business
She built the social-selling program from the ground up and has been weaving in AI tools ever since. Nicole sits at the intersection of PR, sales enablement, and cybersecurity, an unusual mix that turns out to be pretty powerful for driving B2B growth.
/in/nicolemicheletraycoff/

Amanda Gebhard
Associate Director, Enterprise Social Media at Boston Scientific
Amanda has spent fourteen years navigating some of the most regulated industries out there: healthcare, insurance, MedTech. She knows how to tell B2B stories that are both compliant and actually compelling
/in/amandagebhard/

Emily Vonakis
Social Media Manager at RTX
Emily builds culture-first social strategies that turn brands into communities and conversations into measurable growth. With 12+ years of experience, she’s led high-impact campaigns, grown audiences at scale, and elevated voices across enterprise, healthcare, and nonprofit organizations. She also invests deeply in mentoring the next generation of marketers, developing confident leaders alongside strong brands.
/in/emilyvonakis/

B2B Social Media Marketing Inspiration, Influence and Impact

The B2B marketing leaders on this list are the reason our industry keeps evolving. While many are still trying to conduct that “symphony in a hurricane,” these individuals have gone further than expected to implement strategies and playbooks that actually feel different to today’s audiences. They’re both surviving the turbulence and redefining how we fly through it.

In an era where visibility is no longer enough, brands need leaders who can create fresh ideas and build on a proven way of thinking. Right now, that means navigating the Complexity Crisis head-on. The marketers who rise above it will be those who stop chasing tactics in isolation and, instead, start building something more enduring. This shift requires a connected approach that earns trust, drives discovery, and delivers results that compound over time.

Are you ready to move beyond visibility and start being believed?

Check out the excellent post by Nick Nelson, The 8 Step B2B Social Media Marketing Plan You Need to Succeed in 2026.

If you’re ready to learn how your B2B brand can go beyond visibility to build trust and belief in the age of infinite content, explore the Best Answer Marketing Playbook.

And of course be sure to follow TopRank Marketing on our own social media accounts including LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

The post 32 Top B2B Social Media Marketers from B2B Brands appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

Past LinkedIn Global Head of Content Steve Kearns describes taste as a force that builds memorability and brand fame in a world of commoditized content, and the data backs him up. A Semrush analysis of 42,000 blog posts found human-written content is eight times more likely to rank first on Google than purely AI-generated pages. In sales, the same dynamic holds. In sales, the same dynamic holds. As marketer Osman Lee wrote, the constraint is no longer output: it’s knowing which of those outputs are actually good.

This is exactly why becoming a Best Answer brand requires more than volume. It requires creativity, credibility, and relevance that buyers can feel. With that in mind, here are five B2B brands showing what content looks like when genuine taste drives the work.

1. Capgemini — Realities Remixed

What if I told you there’s a B2B podcast out there with both niche and mass appeal?

After award-winning acclaim in 2025, the team behind Cloud Realities launched a new offshoot, one that focuses on topics designed to catch the attention of both B2B insiders and people who simply enjoy entertaining conversations. It asks a bigger question than most B2B shows: what happens when people, culture, industry, and technology collide?

So, what makes it innovative? At first glance, you wouldn’t know this is a Capgemini-led podcast. It feels exciting, there’s real value, and it avoids generic platitudes or product-led conversations. It’s not over-scripted or overly polished. It feels conversational and fun, with pop culture references and comedic moments.

With episode titles like Leading in the Never Normal and Value Metrics vs. Vanity Metrics, there really is something for everyone. This podcast was made for the B2B marketer who wants an easy listen and who probably was never going to Google “Capgemini services” anyway. Which is critical because buyers are discovering content across podcasts, communities, and multiple touchpoints long before they ever speak to sales.

If B2B brands want to break the stigma of “business to boring” marketing, they’ll have to take a similar approach. Lead with value and entertainment, and let the listener decide whether they want to explore the brand further. That balance between usefulness and subtle brand presence is what makes the format work.

Another good listen is the Beyond B2B Marketing Podcast, if you want another example of B2B content that prioritizes insight over pitch. You’ll get timely B2B insights from leaders at companies like Forrester, The B2B Institute, Cisco, Bain & Company, and more.

2. KPMG — It’s Time For AI-X

And now for something completely different.

Can AI be used for good? Of course it can. But can it be used for groundbreaking marketing? You’ve probably come across your fair share of AI slop that makes up a significant amount of content, including long-form social posts, blogs, branded images, and even videos, but I can assure you, you’ve never seen anything like this.

AI has changed a lot, but it hasn’t changed our desire for hyper-personalized messaging. This next example shows what happens when AI is used to personalize rather than mass-produce. Last year, KPMG launched its It’s Time For AI-X campaign around the release of its annual Customer Experience Excellence report.

Instead of just distributing the report, they personalized it. Fifty high-value clients each received an AI-generated video addressed to them by name, surfacing their own CEE data and growth opportunities. Each video led to a branded microsite, then to The AI-X Hour, an exclusive sixty-minute strategy session with senior KPMG experts.

Every one of the fifty clients engaged, and 750+ more downloaded the full report. The result was a 3,200% ROI and multiple industry awards for Best Use of AI in Corporate Communications. What makes this fresh isn’t just the technology itself, but the thinking behind it. They didn’t use AI to cut corners or flood the market with more noise. Rather, they used it to create fifty one-on-one conversations that felt personal and relevant.

3. Sprinklr Socialverse

Product launches should be exciting, they should take on new forms, and they should hold people’s interest for longer than a fleeting moment. TopRank Marketing’s Sprinklr Socialverse absolutely nailed that (no bias).

It turned what would normally be a typical product launch into a MasterClass-style experience, one that was educational, inspiring, cinematic, and led by recognizable, heavyweight marketing players like Ann Handley and Jay Baer. What made it innovative was the fact that it didn’t feel like a typical webinar. You know the ones: floating heads, low-resolution video, choppy audio, sitting around 250 views with no comments on YouTube?

The goal was to use these influencers as teachers, not promoters, people who can really take control of a room while building both trust and authority. By leveraging these recognized experts as teachers, Sprinklr earned both views and engagements to build the credible expertise necessary to become a trusted, go-to answer in their category.

It achieved the goal of humanizing a complex product with strong storytelling, high production value, top B2B influencers, and an entertaining, educational experience that led to another season, as well as an accolade for Best Use of Influencer Marketing. The campaign drove more than 5,000 event registrations, reached 23.4 million people, and generated nearly 100,000 engagements, showing that education-led, influencer-driven content can build trust while driving both attention and real demand.

4. SCIEX — SCIEX ZenoTOF 8600 Launch

Are you skeptical by nature? From fad diets to supernatural phenomena to the moon landing, we’re all wired to question big promises (FYI – I do not think the moon landing was faked). Today’s B2B buyers are no different. That’s exactly why the SCIEX team took a bold approach to getting their technical and skeptical audience to buy in on the launch of their highly innovative product (ZenoTOF 8600).

They couldn’t just pass out brochures and make sweeping claims and hope buyers would reach out on curiosity alone. Instead, they decided to lead with proof, launching the campaign under the title “Skeptics Welcome,” essentially embracing doubt many buyers have up front. They used multiple channels to drive awareness and engage their audience, primarily email and social.

What came next was the real differentiator: an immersive, in-person, multi-sensory, gamified experience designed to turn skeptics into supporters.

These skeptics were put in an environment that can only be described as IMAX-level theatricality. We’re talking 15-meter LED screens, 5.1 surround sound, and narrated presentations that framed each claim as a provable hypothesis. Additionally, each conference attendee was given a “Prove It” button, which allowed them to interrupt the presentation and ask for fact-based evidence in real time. When enough buttons were pressed, the presentation paused to reveal supporting data on the spot. Cool, right?

SCIEX understood that to be chosen, they first had to be believed. By inviting skepticism and providing immediate fact-based answers, they moved from a company with a bold claim to one buyers could trust, evaluate, and believe.

And it worked. In just three months, SCIEX drove 277 data downloads and 195 sales opportunities, easily passing its annual target and building a pipeline worth over $165M. Beyond that, it shifted how the brand was perceived. A brand that had previously been easy to overlook became one people were willing to talk about. It just goes to show, when you stop marketing to a skeptical audience and instead invite them to challenge you, you can earn both attention and belief.

5. LinkedIn – Don’t Let Good Ads Go To Waste

How often are you served an ad that’s clearly not for you? Surfing lessons (I live in landlocked Philadelphia where the only waterway is the Schuylkill River, yikes). Hearing aids (my ears work fine, thanks). Luxury baby strollers (no kids in sight). Businesses are wasting ad dollars targeting the wrong people. I think we can all agree these mistargeted ads are both annoying and a huge waste of money, right?

Traditionally, marketing usually focuses on what it wants you to start doing. What made this campaign different is the focus on what they want you to stop doing: wasting ad dollars. That idea came to life through the “Don’t Let Good Ads Go to Waste” platform, supported by a full-funnel strategy that combined high-impact video, digital placements, and contextual storytelling. The creative execution leaned into absurdity to make ad waste impossible to ignore, like a forklift being served to a boardroom of financiers or a server appearing in the middle of an archaeological dig. Each ad dramatized the core problem while reinforcing LinkedIn’s precision targeting as the solution.

The campaign delivered measurable impact across key brand and perception metrics. Unaided brand awareness increased by +8 points year over year, while perceptions of delivering higher quality leads rose by +6 points. Perceptions of providing the right audience increased by +4 points among exposed B2B marketers, and usage of LinkedIn also grew among advertisers on competing platforms, including +8% among Facebook users and +9% among Google users.

Taken together, these examples show that the strongest B2B marketing does more than capture attention. It creates relevance, builds confidence, and gives buyers a clearer reason to act. Innovation shouldn’t be a hollow line item on a slide deck. It keeps a brand relevant when buyers have more options, more information, and less patience than ever. Best Answer Marketing is about showing up with relevance, earning trust, and giving buyers a reason to choose you.

Explore the Best Answer Marketing playbook to see how visibility, trust, and choice come together in practice.

The post Dare to Be Different: 5 Fresh Examples of Innovative B2B Content Marketing appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

The room at Forrester B2B Summit North America had all attention to the front for a reason. A panel featuring analysts from Forrester alongside marketing leaders from LinkedIn and SAP Concur who took on one of the most pressing questions facing B2B marketers right now: in a world flooded with AI-generated content, what does authentic content actually mean and what role does it play in modern information discovery, engagement and building decision confidence?

The answer, drawn from Forrester research, practitioner experience, and platform-level data, was both clarifying and actionable. The decision to emphasize authenticity in content is the foundation of building trust. With 94% of B2B marketers agreeing that trust is the most important factor for achieving B2B brand success, that foundation is more important than ever.

The visibility shift: AI has changed the starting line

The session opened with Forrester’s Karen Tran sharing a data point that is an important clarification about modern content discovery. According to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2025, generative AI conversational search tools now rank as the single most meaningful interaction in the B2B buying process, ahead of social media, industry publications, product experts, and vendor websites.

Buyers go to AI first. Then they seek human validation.

That sequence has direct implications for content strategy according to data shared by Karen from Forrester: 85% of brand mentions come from third-party sources, and 49% of executives report actively questioning how their brand and content appear in AI-powered search. Yet only 50% of B2B marketing decision-makers say they currently optimize content for AI-powered search, and just 47% create content specifically designed to directly answer the questions buyers are asking.

The gap between where buyers are looking and where most brands are present is the both a challenge and an opportunity. B2B brands across the board are seeing a decline in visibility and the sense of urgency to reclaim that lost attention is higher than ever. Of course being more visible is just the start. Being the chosen solution recommended by the trusted sources that influence buyers from AI search to Google to industry media to creators is where attention becomes intent and is at the heart of being the best answer.

Three audiences every B2B content program must serve

Davang Shah, VP of Marketing at LinkedIn, shared some clarity around the role of content in B2B marketing: today’s content programs must influence three distinct entities simultaneously.

“Content is grounded in trust that helps buyers make a decision that answers a question in a way that is useful. There are three entities to influence: end customers, LLMs, and agents. All of them are grounded in building trust.” – Davang Shah, VP Marketing, LinkedIn

For B2B marketers navigating their visibility gap, that framing of customers, language models, and AI agents is a useful one. What earns trust with humans (credibility, consistency, third-party validation) largely also earns inclusion in AI-generated answers. In some ways, those principles of being chosen as the answer converge. If you are treating AI optimization as separate from audience-first content, you are probably working harder than you need to.

Davang also added a demographic signal worth considering when you are making content decisions: 71% of B2B buyers today are Gen Z and millennials, and they are looking for content they can trust to help them solve problems, not content engineered to sell. The buying cycle, according to data from Dreamdata that Davang referenced, now averages 272 days. And buyer groups are larger, involving an average of 22 people (Forrester). In today’s customer journey, trust must be built across a long arc, with multiple voices, across multiple channels.

What authentic B2B content actually requires

Karen Tran, Principal Analyst at Forrester, pressed the panel throughout on one of the harder questions B2B content leaders face: how do you maintain authenticity while capturing the efficiency and scale that AI makes possible?

The concern she shared, that AI can make content vanilla, is real. But the panelists’ responses clarified that AI is a production accelerator, not a substitute for the source material that earns trust. And that means the authentic inputs have to come first.

Phyllis Davidson, VP Principal Analyst at Forrester, explained this as a primary and derivative model.

“Once you have high-value content – thought leadership, data from a third-party study – you can use that authentic content and use AI to create derivatives. Think of modules of content that drive trust, that are authentic and tell your brand story.” – Phyllis Davidson, VP Principal Analyst, Forrester

This insight shared by Phyllis maps directly to the content atomization approach at the center of Best Answer Marketing. Original research, proprietary data, and genuine expert perspective serve as primary assets. AI then helps scale those assets into derivative formats including social posts, video scripts, email sequences, summaries, etc that reach buyers across channels throughout that long 272-day journey. To maximize value and impact, the sequence matters: authentic inputs first, then scaled distribution.

Phyllis also shared a risk that doesn’t get enough attention: 60% or more of marketers recognize they are personalizing content based on the messages they want to deliver, not the messages buyers want to hear. AI risks scaling that misalignment. The fix is to train your AI systems to advocate for buyer needs, not brand preferences.

The case for third-party validation and its evolution

Rob Gubas, Senior Director of Global Integrated Campaigns and Content Strategy at SAP Concur, brought the practitioner perspective on third-party validation.

“Analyst content and third-party validation used to be table stakes. The real benefit now comes from marrying an analyst perspective with proprietary information from the brand. A five-stage maturity model built on 30 years of data, validated by an industry analyst – that combination creates something genuinely defensible.” – Rob Gubas, Senior Director Global Marketing, SAP Concur

Rob talked about three forms of third-party validation that matter most right now: analyst-validated proprietary research, customer reviews (which he described as a primary input for LLMs), and influencer programs. He said that his own skepticism about B2B influencer marketing had shifted considerably and that he is now a believer, based on measurable program performance.

The data from TopRank Marketing’s own research reinforces that shift. The State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026 report found that 72% of B2B marketers who frequently collaborate with influencers report their research-based content is very effective, compared to just 29% of those who do not. That performance gap is a strong argument for ongoing influencer and creator investment as part of a trust-building content creation and distribution strategy.

Consistency and longevity over one-and-done

A theme running through the entire session was the importance of consistency over volume. Rob talked about how a unique perspective on a topic of persistent audience interest, built and sustained over time, compounds in value in ways that campaign-by-campaign content never can.

“No one-and-done. Something you build up over time, program over program, year after year. Having that patience is key.” – Rob Gubas, Senior Director Global Marketing, SAP Concur

Davang expanded on this into the question of how brands use the voices available to them internally and through influencer and creator partnerships. People buy from people, not from brands. His data point: 77% of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase when they see people from the brand active on social media. What matters is less how much your brand says and more who says it – and whether those voices show up consistently with genuine perspective over time.

This connects directly to a finding in TopRank’s thought leadership research: 97% of B2B marketers say thought leadership is critical to full-funnel success, yet only 43% extend it beyond acquisition to engage and retain customers post-sale. The long-term value of consistent, trust-building content is broadly understood – but infrequently acted on.

Integration across owned, earned, and paid

I asked the panel about the role AI could play in integrating content across owned channels, earned media, and influencer and community partnerships. specifically given the need for consistency and longevity across that 272-day buying cycle.

Davang’s response was that brand voice and unique selling proposition are the foundation. They are the lens through which consistency is enforced across every touchpoint. Without that foundation, AI-enabled integration risks scaling incoherence rather than coherence.

Rob stressed the importance of a collaborative process: maintaining a consistent narrative thread requires intentional cross-functional alignment. The message needs to travel through every channel, not just originate in one.

The  conclusion of the session by Karen Tran from Forrester reinforced these points: build authenticity into all content and messaging across activation channels, prioritize co-creation with credible third parties to enhance brand visibility, and establish strong governance to ensure brand alignment and brand safety.

GEO: optimizing content for the AI answers buyers actually see

AI as a discovery channel is front an center in every B2B marketing conversation and this session provided multiple insights. Davang was unambiguous about the importance: “94% of buyers are using LLMs on their journeys. If you’re not present at that initial stage, you’re not on the day one list. If you’re not on that list, your chances of being chosen go down significantly.”

This is the domain of AI search optimization (AEO/GEO) and structuring content so that it is surfaced, cited, and recommended by AI systems, not just ranked in traditional search results.  Forrester frames it as a zero-click visibility problem: when an AI tool synthesizes an answer directly, content that isn’t structured to provide upfront value gets bypassed entirely. It simply doesn’t get chosen as an answer that buyers will ever see.

What earns inclusion in AI-generated answers follows the same logic the panel applied to buyer trust. Specificity matters more than volume. Original data and proprietary insights are more citable than generic commentary. Third-party validation signals credibility to AI systems the same way it signals credibility to human buyers. And content organized around what buyers are actually asking vs. what your brand wants to say is more likely to be retrieved and surfaced as an answer.

Rob made a great point about customer reviews that applies directly here: he described them as a primary input for how LLMs characterize brands and products. Organic, third-party language in reviews and analyst reports carries weight with AI systems because it is independent. That’s one more reason the shift Rob described of actively combining third-party validation with proprietary research, represents an AI search optimization advantage as well as a trust-building one.

The good news: AI search-aware content is not an entirely separate discipline. It shares many of the same characteristics that the panel described throughout the session: structured around buyer questions, grounded in original data, validated by credible voices, consistent in perspective and terminology across channels. If you are applying those principles, you are already doing the right things. The question is whether your distribution architecture ensures that content is findable wherever buyers are looking. Or as we like to say it, are you the best answer where and when buyers are looking?

What AI and authenticity means for your content strategy in 2026

As you can probably tell, the panel’s central argument aligns well with our Best Answer Marketing framework: the brands that will earn visibility in AI-generated answers, in search, and in the minds of B2B buying groups are the ones building a genuine trust infrastructure, not a content production machine.

That infrastructure has specific parts: original research or proprietary data that gives buyers insight they cannot find elsewhere, third-party voices that validate your claims, consistent presence across the channels where buyers are looking for answers, and an AI strategy that accelerates distribution of authentic inputs.

Our research found that 93% of B2B marketers using research-based content say it is effective at driving engagement and leads, with nearly half calling it very effective. The session at Forrester B2B Summit confirmed why: research-backed content, amplified by trusted voices and optimized for the channels buyers actually use – including generative AI – is what it means to be the best answer when it matters most.

For more insights on putting Best Answer Marketing into action, check out the BAM Playbook.

The post AI Leads B2B Buyer Discovery, But Authentic Content Earns Their Trust – Forrester B2B Summit appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

And that performance is attracting investment. 81% of B2B marketers now have a dedicated influencer marketing budget and 53% are increasing that budget. Research from Forrester predicts 75% of B2B brands will increase their investments in influencer relations in 2026.

As more B2B brands move beyond experimentation to implementing pilots, sequential campaigns, and always-on programs, there has been a significant increase in interest about how to expand and best engage with business influencers (and creators) in ways that drive measurable business impact.

As a B2B marketing agency providing enterprise B2B brands with influencer marketing solutions for well over 10 years, we’re uniquely qualified to help B2B marketers solve that problem. Here is an updated collection of  B2B influencer campaigns and activation opportunities for 2026. Implementing just a few of these could help a company generate substantial influencer program activity, blending the tried-and-true with innovative tactics like AI-driven matching, performance-based commissions, and dark social community embedding.

Of course, just because you can, does not mean you should. As with all effective B2B marketing, it is important to match the campaign approach with the criteria for your customers and how they want to engage with influencer and brand content. Check out the list below, organized by strategic clusters, and hopefully, some good ideas will spark and ignite your go forward plans for working with B2B influencers and creators in 2026.

AI Search Visibility, GEO & LLM Citations for B2B Brands

1. Publish proprietary data drops and mini-reports – LLMs actively seek out and cite original data to answer user prompts. By publishing proprietary industry data, you create a “referenceable asset” that AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity can easily ingest and cite.

2. Embed executives in Reddit and industry forums – Research from Tinuiti found that Reddit accounted for 44% of all social media citations in Google AI Overviews. Having subject matter experts actively participate and answer questions in these communities ensures your brand’s perspective is scraped into LLM training data.

3. Sponsor independent industry newsletters and Substacks – Publications that are openly crawlable by LLMs heavily influence the narratives that AI models learn. Sponsoring or co-authoring content with independent analysts ensures your brand is mentioned in high-trust environments that LLMs index.

4. Create highly scannable “canonical definition” pages with influencers – When a brand becomes the primary source for defining a new industry concept, it is cited disproportionately by AI tools. Collaborate with experts to create clear, structured explainer pages that LLMs can easily extract and reference.

5. Publish full transcripts of influencer podcast interviews – A 40-minute podcast conversation contains thousands of indexable words. Publishing the full transcript turns audio insights into text that can be scraped, boosting long-tail search visibility and the likelihood of AI citations.

6. Develop an “AI Mention” outreach strategy for PR – Move beyond traditional link building by pitching journalists and creators with specific data comparisons or ready-made hooks that naturally include your brand. According to research from MuckRack staggering 95% of AI citations come from public relations and earned media content.

7. Launch an influencer-led “Troubleshooting” or FAQ series – Identify the exact questions your customers are asking ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews. Then, partner with influencers to create targeted website content answering those specific questions, establishing your brand as the authoritative answer source.

B2B Influencer Content Co-Creation & Thought Leadership

8. Conduct a series of video interviews with influencers – Pick a theme and topics you want your brand to be influential about, then interview the top experts. The great thing about video is that you can repurpose it as a podcast or even as text for social shares and quotes for related blog posts, presentations, reports, and newsletters. This is exactly what we do with the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast.

9. Add influencer reactions and expertise to a research report – When IT Service Management leader Cherwell Software released their research report, they engaged relevant influencers to share their expertise. More recently, Adobe’s “Analytics Champions” campaign partnered with prominent data experts to co-create an in-depth guide, which resulted in 150% more lead captures compared to their previous traditional marketing efforts.

10. Invite influencers to provide content for an interactive content experience – Interactive content formats are engaging for your audience and also for contributing influencers because it elevates their status and visibility. Typeform’s “Get Real” campaign replaced the traditional gated PDF report with an interactive landing page featuring 146 video responses from influencers and marketers, turning survey respondents into brand advocates.

11. Invite influencers to write a series of articles published on the brand site – Brands that answer buyer questions provide a valuable service. Inviting third-party experts to answer those questions through useful content is even more valuable. Keep in mind, in most cases, a commitment to writing on a regular basis is a paid engagement with the contributing influencers.

12. Create an ebook featuring brand thought leadership accentuated by relevant industry influencer insights – Oracle Dyn created the Cybersecurity Intelligence Report featuring a combination of respected influencers and practitioners as well as an Oracle executive, building credibility by association.

13. Engage influencers to contribute expertise to content that advances a key brand theme – It sounds pretty basic, but many B2B brands produce content without any third-party credibility. Adobe engaged multiple influencers to provide insights around customer experience management in an interactive infographic in support of the Adobe Summit conference.

14. Feature quotes from a group of influencers for a roundup blog post or landing page – Dell Outlet Small Business added commentary from multiple small business influencers about the value of refurbished computers on a dedicated landing page to drive awareness and engagement.

15. Curate quotes from influencer contributions and repurpose them as social shares throughout the year – Modular content means planning repurposing by using templates with influencer interviews and content capture. This makes it easier to create a library of influencer quotes organized by topic for social shares, use in contributed articles, newsletters, blog posts, and presentations.

B2B Creator Social-First & Digital Video Activations

16. Leverage LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads – Promote individual posts from experts to bypass the “brand logo” trust barrier. Nextiva achieved a significant 5600% growth in influenced sales pipeline by sponsoring video content from internal subject matter experts on LinkedIn, clearly showing the power of humanizing enterprise brands.

17. Launch a short-form video series on TikTok or YouTube Shorts – For the launch of Copilot, Microsoft partnered with lifestyle creators like Alix Earle, whose content reached over 15 million views, effectively making AI tools a trending topic among younger professional audiences. IBM also executed a multi-platform blitz for its Granite AI platform, generating 43 million impressions.

18. Co-create LinkedIn newsletters with established creators – Partner with niche creators who already have a highly engaged subscriber base to tap into pre-built, high-intent communities rather than starting from scratch.

19. Create a “street-style” expert interview video series – Pinpoint created a viral LinkedIn video series called “Red Flag, Green Flag” at RecFest UK. Featuring talent leaders, the series used a “street interview” format to get instant expert reactions to hiring scenarios, humanizing the brand through unscripted insights.

20. Partner influencers with your customers to interview each other for a web video series – Customer trust in brands is not high, but trust in peers and experts is. Creating conversation opportunities between credible industry experts and your clients can inspire truly meaningful dialog that resonates with potential customers.

21. Engage an influencer to be an emcee or digital correspondent during a brand conference – A digital correspondent can cover a conference with interviews and commentary to really level up the brand. These emcee activations can go beyond a conference to a VIP dinner during a conference, a roadshow of roundtable discussions, or even a virtual event.

22. Have a tech influencer do an “unboxing video” or software walkthrough – Many B2C influencer tactics can be cleverly applied to B2B products. Go ahead and search for “server unboxing” on YouTube, or invite influencers to do software walkthroughs and post them to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

B2B Influencer Podcasts & Episodic Formats

23. Engage an influencer host on a brand podcast – Tamara McCleary did an amazing job for the SAP Tech Unknown podcast, interviewing other influencers and executives from SAP. This strategy achieved a 66% increase in downloads and generated over 52 million social media impressions.

24. Produce an episodic talk show format – Lenovo’s “Late Night I.T.” campaign serves as a benchmark, utilizing a tech talk show format that generated over 300 million impressions and 72 million video views, resulting in a 7-point lift in brand consideration among large enterprises.

25. Run a webinar or series of webinars featuring an influencer as host or guest – Featuring an industry expert in a webinar is a fairly common influencer activation because it works. Sprinklr’s “Across the Socialverse” masterclass series leveraged influencer expertise to drive over 5,000 registrations.

26. Co-create a series of organic or paid podcast episodes on the influencers’ channels -Emphasize content that is genuinely useful to the audience and include supporting content like original research, deep dive content or polls, and cross-channel amplification to maximize reach.

27. Create an ask-the-expert video series – Host this on your brand YouTube channel where influencers join a brand co-host to answer top questions from your community. There are few industries that wouldn’t benefit from an ongoing series of this type.

B2B Events, Experiences & Community

28. Host creator-led retreats and outposts – Zapier reimagined a B2B event by hosting a glamping retreat in Zion National Park for 20 creators, focusing on co-creation and authentic relationship building rather than traditional corporate presentations. This generated $136,000 in earned media value.

29. Invite influencers to an event at brand HQ – Provide tours, executive meet-and-greets, education, and social content creation opportunities. Adobe hosted 18 industry influencers in San Jose for a deep dive into topics like CDP and CXM, resulting in great documented experiences.

30. Enlist influencers as judges in a contest – Alcatel Lucent Enterprise did this with their IT Vanguard Awards. The program created great exposure for the winners, the judges, and for ALE, resulting in multiple six-figure leads.

31. Engage influencers to keynote or workshop at your brand’s user conference – These engagements can elevate the performance of an event when a talented performer with deep industry expertise inspires the audience. Influencers are often associated with discovery, engagement and decision, but retention is another powerful opportunity to bring trusted industry voices to further client relationships.

32. Invite influencers to an event to livestream and document their experience – A small number of influencers experiencing a brand event can have a big impact. At SAP’s annual conference, 15 influencers drove 25% of all social media impressions.

33. Invite influencers along with clients and prospects to VIP dinners – Connecting clients with top industry influencers creates an experience everyone remembers, and that top-of-mind effect is priceless.

34. Invite influencers to an executive meeting or retreat to discuss topics of mutual interest – The Digital Marketing Institute formed the Global Industry Advisory Council to share insights around the state of digital marketing, publishing summaries of the conversations along with industry research for the benefit of customers and prospective customers alike.

Performance, Data & Innovative Campaigns

35. Implement performance-based commission programs – Submagic generated over $1 million in revenue within 90 days by implementing a performance-based payout structure, where influencers earned a 30% commission on conversions rather than flat fees.

36. Utilize interactive funnel triggers – Kittl used interactive Instagram Reels to position itself as a credible alternative to established tools, using automated keyword triggers in comments to drive high-intent trial sign-ups.

37. Execute world record and stunt campaigns – Travelport launched the “7 Wonders Challenge,” where influencer Adventureman visited all seven world wonders in seven days using the Travelport+ platform. This generated 2.76 billion impressions and positioned the complex B2B booking tool as a seamless solution.

38. Create pop culture and nostalgia-based campaigns – AT&T Business’s “Sleep With Rain” campaign reunited the cast of The Office to address the sleep deprivation of small business owners. By leveraging nostalgia, AT&T achieved over 2.5 billion impressions.

39. Leverage AI-powered influencer matching and selection – IBM utilized the IBM Watson-powered Influential platform to analyze influencer personality traits, resulting in a 30% increase in engagement compared to non-sponsored posts.

40. Build influencer insight networks and advisory panels – Move from sponsored posts to long-term advisory panels that inform R&D and product strategy. Rubix Foods established the “NEXT Flavor Network,” a group of Gen Z foodie influencers who act as an insight generator for restaurant brands.

41. Embed in dark social and private communities – Slack’s social team actively participated in LinkedIn and private threads to build relationships rather than just likes. Their “Hype Machine” initiative surprised loyal users with high-value, personalized gifts, triggering significant organic viral engagement.

42. Formalize employee advocacy alongside external influencers – LinkedIn data found that employee networks are typically 12 times larger than the company’s own following. Campaigns like LinkedIn’s own #MyMarketingStory saw a 239% increase in reactions by encouraging employees and influencers to share authentic, lived experiences.

43. Publish a list of top influencers in each industry vertical – One of many ways to get on influencers’ radar is to publish a qualitative list of who is leading the field. Go beyond one-off lists and make it an annual event. Then follow up with the honorees and invite them to collaborate.

44. Create a series of blog posts featuring author influencers and their books – The team at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions has published a series of posts honoring top marketing authors that have been well received by their readers and inspiring for authors to share.

While there are a variety of solid and actionable ideas in this list, it is really important to lay the groundwork and strategy for an influencer marketing program in terms of understanding what kind of influencers and topics make the most sense for your brand and customers. F

Finding the right influencers has consistently been cited by B2B survey respondents as their top challenge and for good reason. Making sure influencers represent reach, relevance and resonance objectives is just the start. There’s also ensuring brand values alignment and performance. Negotiating with influencers, content licensing, creating briefs, managing deliverables and measurement are all specialty areas.

Influencers are not magic, but when you develop strong relationships with a relevant group of influencers, the impact on your marketing across the customer lifecycle can seem magical.

The post 44 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Activation Ideas for 2026 appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

This experience is like attending big marketing conferences with huge numbers of people and the chaos of simple things like trying to find out where Room 6 is or how to get to Grand Ballroom B on time. It’s a huge relief to get that VIP dinner invitation (or host one yourself) to spend time with a curated group of professionals you can actually connect with.

I think the desire for that kind of connection in a more exclusive space is why private communities are so popular for B2B marketers right now. Exit Five is a good example; they went from 3,500 paying members in April 2022 to over 5,700 members in April 2026.

In an episode about community on our Beyond B2B Marketing podcast, guest Kathleen Booth summed up the value of communities well:

“You need a network of people who are in the trenches at the same time as you are… and together, like it’s a one plus one is three situation, where as a community you can rise and really be successful.” Kathleen Booth VP Marketing, Sequel.io (formerly with Pavilion)

Connecting with other professionals who are trying, just like you, to figure things out from all things AI to increased complexity and performance expectations is more important than ever.

Part of our mission here at TopRank Marketing is to elevate the B2B Marketing industry by curating useful resources. To do that, we reviewed everything we could find serving B2B marketing professionals in the private and public community space.

So what’s the difference between one community and another, the best from good enough? Here are a few differences we found:

Exclusivity vs. scale: Communities like RevGenius and MarketingProfs offer huge scale and pretty broad networking opportunities, which is great for practitioners and wider visibility. In contrast, InspireCMO and GTM Leader Society prioritize intimacy and high-level strategic discussions, restricting access to VP/C-suite leaders. Some of the large communities offer exclusivity within their membership like ExitFive’s Marketing Leaders Club.

Discipline-specific deep dives: For marketing leaders focused on specific functions, communities like Demand Collective (strictly for in-house demand gen managing $30k+ spend) or Marketing Operations Pros provide great technical depth that generalist CMO groups don’t always match.

“Marketers need a way to understand what good looks like – and that often comes from being around other marketers doing the same job.” Dave Frankland, VP & Research Director, Forrester

Mentorship vs. peer groups: While most communities focus on peer-to-peer interaction, platforms like GrowthMentor are different because they offer direct 1:1 access to vetted experts for specific, tactical problem-solving.

Influential leaders: Many marketing communities are led by companies or committees. There are also several stand-out communities led by visionary and charismatic personalities. From Dave Gerhardt at Exit Five to Nadine Dietz at Virtuosi League to Ann Handley at MarketingProfs to Drew Neisser at CMO Huddles, these leaders play an important role in setting the tone and culture of each community.

If you’re a B2B marketer reading this blog (thank you BTW) you may already be a member of a marketing community. Or maybe you’re not, or you’re looking for something different. In either case, we hope this is a useful resource for you to connect with peers and leaders to engage, advance your skills and career.

CMO & Senior Marketing Leadership Communities

ANA

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) includes CMO level communities like the CMO Global Growth Council as well as the B2B Practice, which is the dedicated business marketing unit. Overall, the ANA includes over 1,000 client-side marketers representing an estimated 20,000 brands that collectively spend $400 billion in marketing and advertising each year  as well 500+ marketing solution providers.

The B2B Practice within the ANA serves as a peer community and professional development platform for marketers across industries, with a mission to provide unbiased insights and resources that drive growth and member success. The CMO Global Growth Council is a platform for the global community of chief marketers to come together in unified leadership to drive change and bring forward industry solutions to help advance the industry in the areas of Brand Marketing, B2B, Data, Technology, Media, Inclusive Marketing, Talent, and Small/Medium Business.

ANA member benefits include access to five dedicated B2B peer committees covering: ABM, channel marketing, customer experience, data excellence, and broader B2B strategy. Additional benefits include a library of thousands of case studies, research reports, tools, and templates; a B2B Webinar Series featuring thought leaders and industry practitioners; on-demand training courses and professional certification through the Certified ANA Marketing Professional (CAMP) program; and the annual ANA Masters of B2B Marketing Conference. The ANA also hosts the ANA B2 Awards, recognizing excellence in B2B marketing creativity and business results, and original research including studies such as The Confident B2B Marketer and the B2B Brand-to-Demand Maturity Study.

Membership Model: Paid – corporate membership (pricing based on company size and tier; contact ANA directly); individual membership may be available through local ANA Business Marketing chapters.

Chief

Chief is a membership network and community platform built exclusively for senior women leaders, with a stated mission to create more possibilities for women’s power. The community reports that 44% of its members are in the C-suite, with members representing more than 10,000 companies, including 67% of the Fortune 100.

Membership combines access to private Clubhouses, Core Groups and Executive Coaching, top-level training from the Wharton School of Business, annual summits, and events at major industry conferences. Chief also offers an enterprise offering for companies and brand partnership programs, and publishes original thought leadership covering topics such as AI strategy, leadership, and the evolving career paths of senior women executives.

Membership Model: Paid – $5,900 to $7,900+ per year; application-only

CMO Council

The CMO Council is a peer-powered global network for senior marketing decision-makers, founded in 2001 and celebrating its 25th anniversary this year in 2026. As a global network of executives specifically dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, it provides thought leadership, and peer relationship-building among senior corporate marketing leaders across a wide range of industries, with a strong emphasis on B2B and enterprise marketing challenges.

The network says it connects 16,000+ members at 10,000 companies across 110 countries, collectively controlling about $1 trillion in annual marketing spend. Member benefits include access to a library of 300+ original research reports, webinars, CMO interviews, a private LinkedIn community, seven regional advisory boards with 350 senior practitioners, academic linkages to 100+ top business schools, and the Marketing Magnified newsletter.

Membership Model: Free (Basic, approval required); $149/year (Premium); $3,500+/year (Corporate, teams of 4-30+); $295/year (Library subscription); $1,500/year (Academic & Affiliate).

CMO Huddles

CMO Huddles is a B2B community built exclusively for chief marketing officers, offering a free Starter tier and a white-glove Leader membership at $395 per month. Core benefits include monthly peer huddles with groups of 7-12 CMO peers, expert huddles with B2B marketing specialists, career huddles featuring bestselling authors, arranged 1:1 peer matching, a Slack channel, a resource library, and 1:1 coaching sessions with founder Drew Neisser.

In-person events include the annual CMO Super Huddle conference as well as lunch and dinner huddles available in Silicon Valley, New York City, Boston, Washington DC, and London. The community also offers PR and brand-building opportunities for members, including podcast and video appearances through CMO Huddles Studio, recognition in Ad Age, and a LinkedIn Amplifier to boost the visibility of members’ posts.

Membership Model: Paid – $395/month or $3,950/year; free ‘Starter’ tier available

Virtuosi LEAGUE

Virtuosi League is a leadership development community and experience platform exclusively for B2B and B2C CMOs and senior marketing executives, with a mission to develop the next generation of marketing leaders and drive industry transformation. Led by Nadine Dietz, the community is built around two pillars: peer engagement for sitting CMOs and structured leadership development for their senior teams. CMO-facing programs include The Forum – an inaugural closed-door gathering of 100+ CMOs, futurists, and senior executives held at Carmel Valley Ranch – Regional Roundtables in cities throughout the year, a global Dinner with Friends series, and periodic virtual community events.

Leadership development is delivered through the LEAP suite of programs: LEAP Flagship (an immersive multi-week program developed in partnership with the Aspen Institute), LEAP Essentials (a six-week course for VPs and SVPs), and LEAP Bespoke Workshops for individual marketing teams. B2B member companies include Google, Adobe, IBM, HP, AT&T Business, McKinsey & Company.

Membership Model: Paid – pricing available on request; programs are application- or invitation-based for CMOs and senior marketing leaders.

B2B CMO Club

B2B CMO Club is a private, application-based community exclusively for B2B chief marketing officers, positioned as a peer network for collaboration, growth, and innovation. Core membership benefits include a 24/7 online community for peer problem-solving, monthly mastermind calls, small accountability pods for staying focused on business goals, and access to vetted vendors, agencies, and growth partners.

The community also provides exclusive discounts on SaaS tools, marketing platforms, and agencies, and operates as a no-sell zone designed to foster authentic conversations free from sales pitches. Members gain access to expert advice through member-led sessions and a curated resource library, with the application and review process completed within three business days of an introductory call.

Membership Model: Application-only; cost not publicly disclosed

6sense CMO Coffee Talk

CMO Coffee Talk is a free, vendor-hosted community of 4,000+ CMOs and ultimate heads of marketing, operated by 6sense and co-hosted by Matt Heinz, President and Founder of Heinz Marketing, and Kelly Hopping, CMO of 6sense.  The community meets weekly every Friday at 8AM ET and 8AM PT via live sessions on crowd-sourced topics, with topic experts joining to share expertise and an open format encouraging questions, examples, and peer-to-peer conversation.

Members also have access to a Slack workspace for ongoing discussion, and all registrants undergo an approval process to maintain the quality of the community.  Recording is prohibited at all sessions to allow for open and honest communication, and the community sits alongside other 6sense community offerings including BDR Leader Coffee Talk and RevCity.

Membership Model: Free – Application-only (requires approval)

Marketers That Matter

Marketers That Matter is a community of top marketing executives and their teams, operating in partnership with The Wall Street Journal and run under the 24 Seven talent company umbrella. The community brings together CMOs and senior marketing leaders from organizations including Delta Air Lines, Equinix, Hilton, Instacart, Intuit, Samsung Electronics America, Sephora, and Twilio, among others.

Member benefits include access to exclusive events, a monthly live Visionaries program featuring chief marketing executives on Zoom, a companion podcast, a newsletter, and an insights library covering the latest marketing trends and strategies. The community also features an MTM Innovators program – described as a powerhouse group of top CMOs dedicated to reshaping the marketing landscape, mentoring emerging talent, and driving innovation – as well as The Marketing Boards as a distinct offering for members and their teams.

Membership Model: Paid – Tiered corporate membership model based on the number of participating marketers; application-only.

HotTopics Global CMO Community

HotTopics is a global C-suite community platform founded by Philip Randerson, with the CMO Community serving as its hub for Chief Marketing Officers and senior marketing leaders. The broader HotTopics network has grown to 20,000+ C-suite leaders, with 75% of the Fortune 500 represented among its members.

The CMO Community has a strong B2B orientation, with content and events covering topics such as ABM, B2B marketing metrics, trust in B2B marketing, AI-native marketing organizations, and partner marketing. Member benefits include access to curated events at iconic venues – including HotTopics Studio at Abbey Road Studios in London – virtual roundtables, a B2B Marketing Leaders Benchmark Report, the Global B2B CMO 100 Awards, a CMO 2.0 initiative for navigating modern marketing leadership, exclusive CMO interviews, and a Marketing Advisory Board including senior leaders from Microsoft, ServiceNow, Tata Communications, and Verizon.

Membership Model: Free – open application via the HotTopics website; membership is subject to approval based on seniority and role.

B2B Marketing Communities for All Levels

Exit Five

Exit Five is a private online community for B2B marketers, founded by Dave Gerhardt, with a goal to help members grow their careers through education, peer connections, and high-signal discussion. No one went to school for B2B marketing, right?

The community currently has more than 5,700 members and over 8,000 posts. There is also a CMO Council within offering an exclusive peer network for the top CMOs and VPs in B2B companies. Overall member benefits include monthly peer matchmaking, industry-specific subgroups, access to a swipe file and templates, member-led training sessions, a job board, and 30+ local chapters in cities including New York, San Francisco, London, and Toronto. Circle has recognized Exit Five as a Platinum Community ranked in the top 1% of all communities on the platform, with 2.5x the average engagement.

Membership Model: Paid – $49/month (Pro); $99/month (Leaders Club, application-only); CMO Council (Invite-only).

MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs is a B2B-focused marketing training and community platform that over 600,000 marketers rely on for know-how every day.  The platform offers a broad mix of free and paid resources including articles, webinars, video tutorials, guides, reports, infographics, and a discussion forum, with new content added every week.

PRO membership unlocks additional training programs such as master classes, how-to series, AI training, and an Ask an Expert feature, while enterprise training options are also available for larger teams. MarketingProfs also hosts their famous annual in-person B2B Forum conference programmed by the famous Ann Handley with the next edition scheduled for November 2-4, 2026 in Boston.

Membership Model: Paid – $279/year for individual PRO; $179/year per person for teams of 3+; free basic tier available.

RevGenius

RevGenius is a free community of 50,000 revenue creators spanning sales, marketing, and RevOps professionals from fast-growing tech companies including Salesforce, HubSpot, OpenAI, Clay, Zapier, and Copy.ai. Core community touchpoints include a Slack community for real-time collaboration, a weekly Revenue Creator newsletter, a monthly Demo Day where members showcase breakthroughs, and virtual roundtable events covering topics such as AI in revenue strategy, RevOps, and GTM execution.

The platform also offers an exclusive Executive Community for senior revenue leaders, a jobs board via RevOps Pipeline, and partnership programs designed to help companies reach their ICP through what RevGenius calls “Lightning Strikes” and “Drum Beats.”  Additional resources include RevGenius Magazine with articles covering sales, marketing, and RevOps, a podcast, a Next 50 Creators list, and a Next 50 GTM Startups list.

Membership Model: Free; paid executive tier (RevRoom) available via application

Propolis

Propolis is a membership-based community intelligence platform for B2B marketing leaders, launched in 2021 by B2B Marketing, the organization behind the Global ABM Conference, B2B Ignite London, and the B2B Marketing Awards, with a global membership. The platform gives marketing leaders and their teams access to actionable frameworks and playbooks, performance benchmarks, on-demand training courses, expert mentoring and coaching, award-winning B2B case studies, and peer roundtables exclusively for senior-level members.

Propolis also provides the Community Index, which is a real-time B2B marketing metrics dashboard continuously populated by data from 1,000+ CMOs and marketing leaders at businesses with $20M+ in revenue across the UK and US, covering budgets, ROI, customer attrition, and team structure across five major B2B sectors. B2B Marketing In-person programming includes the annual Propolis Leaders Forum, an exclusive day of thought leadership for CMO and senior-level members focused on positioning marketing as a growth driver and building C-suite influence.

Membership Model: Paid – Tiers range from £27,500 to £73,500 per year for team-based access

FINITE

FINITE is a free, application-only global community for B2B marketers working within technology, software, and SaaS companies, with over 2,100 members worldwide and membership restricted to client-side marketers only, excluding agencies, martech vendors, and other suppliers. The community brings members together through a private Slack workspace with channels covering topics including ABM, demand generation, content marketing, marketing operations, data and analytics, and brand versus performance marketing, as well as online webinars, private roundtables, and a fortnightly newsletter called FINITE Times.

FINITE also produces a podcast exploring the latest trends and challenges in B2B tech marketing, and publishes the FINITE Influential 30, a recognition program highlighting top marketers across SaaS, FinTech, enterprise tech, and sustainability.

Membership Model: Free – Application-only (restricted to in-house/client-side B2B tech marketers)

B2B Marketing Society

The B2B Marketing Society is a community run by The Ingenuity Group, designed for B2B professionals at all career stages who are looking to expand their marketing expertise, connect with peers, and develop their careers in the B2B space. Core benefits include quarterly themed panel events, access to MAD//Fest (described as the UK’s largest marketing show), and monthly content including thought leadership, interviews, and industry insights.

The community is positioned as a space for networking that can lead to mentorship and collaborations, discovering new agency partners, and learning from experienced B2B marketing professionals. It sits within The Ingenuity Group’s broader portfolio of communities, which also includes CMO of the Future, Marketing Procurement Club, Future Marketer North, and two agency-focused communities called The Agency Curve and The Agency Curve North.

Membership Model: Free registration; invite-only for premium events

GrowthMentor

GrowthMentor is a paid mentorship platform connecting founders, marketers, and product managers with a network of 750+ vetted mentors, rejecting 95% of mentor applicants to maintain quality, with over 60,000 sessions booked and an average session rating of 4.8 out of 5. The platform’s core offering is unlimited 1:1 calls with mentors under a flat membership fee, supported by AI-powered matching, a Slack community of 3,000+ members, help requests, and a video room, with mentor expertise spanning growth strategy, GTM, demand generation, content marketing, product marketing, sales, fundraising, and more.

Mentors come from companies including Canva, PayPal, Klarna, Airbnb, Miro, Atlassian, Shopify, Netflix, Spotify, and Uber, and membership is available for individuals, teams, and venture capital firms looking to support their portfolio companies.The platform also hosts local in-person events in cities including London and Lisbon, publishes a blog, video library, and glossary, and offers a weekly newsletter covering growth resources and upcoming events.

Membership Model: Paid – $150/month (monthly), $75/month (quarterly), or $50/month (annual); team plans available

GTM, Revenue & Growth Communities

Pavilion

Pavilion is a private community for go-to-market (GTM) leaders, serving over 5,000 executives across SaaS, AI, fintech, and services, including CROs, CMOs, CCOs, RevOps leaders, and VPs who are actively running teams. Membership tiers include Associate (for managers and directors), Executive (for VPs and C-suite leaders), and Gold (for CXOs at companies with 100M+ ARR), with a team membership option also available.

Member benefits include access to Pavilion University, an AI in GTM School offering an 8-week certified program, over 700 in-person events ranging from private dinners to global summits, and a peer network where questions receive responses often in under 10 minutes. More than 10,000 operators have taken a Pavilion program, and the community is trusted by leaders from companies including Shopify, Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM, Stripe, LinkedIn, Oracle, SAP, Google, and Adobe.

Membership Model: Paid – Executive membership is approximately $2,700/year (billed annually); application-only.

GTMnow

GTMnow (formerly Sales Hacker) is the media brand of GTMfund, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on B2B SaaS companies, sharing go-to-market insight drawn from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350 executive operators from the world’s fastest-growing SaaS companies. The platform serves over 50,000 revenue professionals across all 50 U.S. states and amongst 136 countries.

Members have access to a weekly newsletter, podcast, articles, and live events covering topics including sales, marketing, customer success, AI, venture capital, and growth and operations. Content features insights from executive operators at high-profile companies, with podcast guests and contributors drawn from organizations such as Stripe, Snowflake, Figma, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and LinkedIn. GTMfund’s LP network consists of VP and C-level leaders in sales, marketing, and customer success from companies including DocuSign, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Okta, and Zoom.

Membership Model: Free (media platform); Application-only (private GTM Leaders network).

GTM Alliance

GTM Alliance is a go-to-market learning platform for individuals, teams, and organizations, with a stated mission to help drive company-wide alignment and unity around go-to-market strategy. The platform combines a paid membership with access to certified courses built alongside industry experts, covering topics including product marketing, competitive intelligence, pricing strategy, sales enablement, product launches, and product-market fit.

Members also gain access to real-world case studies, proven frameworks, interactive workshops, exclusive content, and events ranging from webinars and leadership dinners to in-person summits and members-only meetups. GTM Alliance is part of a broader network of communities under The Alliance umbrella with members from organizations such as TikTok, PayPal, Microsoft, Adobe, LinkedIn, and Zendesk.

Membership Model: Paid – $167/month (billed annually); free ‘Insider’ tier available

GTM Leader Society

GTM Leader Society is an invitation-only community and events organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area, designed specifically for GTM executives in technology at companies with more than 100 employees, including senior leaders at the VP level and above in marketing, sales, post-sales, RevOps, and product.

The community focuses on in-person events described as intimate and thoughtfully curated, ranging from small executive breakfasts and seated discussions with featured guests to larger social gatherings, with a deliberate emphasis on peer learning and experience sharing rather than sales pitches. Members represent companies including Amazon, IBM, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Atlassian, Snowflake, Adobe, LinkedIn, Stripe, and Cloudflare, among others.  Community partners include Pavilion, Winning by Design, GTM Partners, and Safe to Capital.

Membership Model: Invite-only / Application-only

The GTM Circle

The GTM Circle is an invite-only peer community for go-to-market leaders at venture-backed B2B startups, founded and facilitated by Focal, a pre-seed VC firm focused on early-stage software companies in the US and Canada. Membership is open to CMOs, CROs, Heads of Sales, RevOps, and Customer Success leaders at Seed through Series D B2B companies. The community currently has 200+ members representing GTM leaders at startups backed by firms including Lightspeed, Bessemer, Accel, and General Catalyst.

Member benefits include an engaged Slack community for tactical peer feedback, member-initiated virtual roundtables held 2-4 times per month on topics such as marketing analytics, developer ICP strategy, SEO and AI, community-led growth, and sales automation, plus a GTM Insights publication featuring member-contributed perspectives. A strict no-selling, no-self-promotion policy and full confidentiality requirement foster high-trust discussion.

Membership Model: Free (invite-only; application required) – restricted to GTM leaders at venture-backed Seed through Series D B2B startups in the US or Canada.

Efficient Growth

Efficient Growth is a community and advisory platform for senior growth marketing leaders, with a particular focus on B2B SaaS, consumer subscription, AI, and e-commerce. Founded and operated by Daniel Pearson, whose agency deployed over $1B in paid media for companies including Uber, DoorDash, and Dropbox, the platform pairs a free Slack community with an optional paid advisory service.

The Slack community has 4,500+ members and is designed for growth marketers to share insights, ask tactical questions, and access peer support from practitioners who have led growth at companies including Stripe, Notion, Slack, Lyft, and Webflow. The advisory service connects clients 1:1 with senior growth leaders for strategic guidance on topics including B2B SaaS scaling, marketing attribution, team leadership, and performance marketing.

Membership Model: Free (Slack community, open to all growth marketers); Paid – $6,000/month (1:1 advisory board service, application-based).

Demand Generation Communities

Demand Collective

Demand Collective is a paid, application-only community built exclusively for in-house demand generation practitioners, requiring all members to have at least three years of direct demand experience and be actively managing $30k or more per month in spend.

The community is deliberately narrow in focus, admitting only demand gen practitioners and explicitly excluding broader GTM roles, vendors, and pitching, with the goal of creating a peer group of operators who are doing the actual work. Member benefits include a private digital forum for peer Q&A, bi-monthly group workshops where members and experts share current playbooks and strategies, group strategy calls for direct feedback on live challenges, and curated 1:1 introductions to grow members’ networks. The community also publishes a newsletter, hosts the Demand Day Summit and other in-person events, and offers a salary benchmarks resource for demand marketers.

Membership Model: Free (Application-only / Vetted)

DEMAND Community

DEMAND Community is a free Slack-based community for demand gen marketers of all levels, operated by Metadata.io, with a stated goal of creating a learning and support space with no fluff, self-promotion, or barriers to entry. The community has grown to more than 3,000 members from organizations including Zoom, Fivetran, ThoughtSpot, Pendo, Tenable, and Refine Labs, spanning practitioners from early-career demand gen marketers to senior marketing leaders.

Members gain access to specialized channels for Q&A, discussions, and advice across all areas of B2B marketing, as well as exclusive community events, AMAs, sessions, and networking meetups. Content covers topics including paid media, SEO, pipeline measurement, brand building on LinkedIn, and AI-assisted marketing tactics, with blog posts and member-led sessions published alongside community discussions.

Membership Model: Free

Demand Generation Club

Demand Generation Club is a B2B demand generation community that originated in 2015 as a local meetup in San Francisco focused on demand generation and account-based marketing, and has since grown to more than 4,000 members.  The community has hosted dozens of events covering topics including marketing automation, paid ads, webinar strategy, content marketing, and ABM, drawing primarily on learnings from practitioners at high-growth SaaS companies.

Member touchpoints include webinars, a podcast, live meetups in San Francisco, and a blog, with all recordings and materials shared with the broader membership. The community welcomes guest speakers from within its membership, inviting practitioners to share knowledge and insights across its webinar, podcast, and in-person event formats.

Membership Model: Free – Application-only

Specialist Function Marketing Communities

Product Marketing Alliance

Product Marketing Alliance is a global professional network and learning platform for product marketers, with over 300,000 community members worldwide and a stated mission to elevate the role of product marketing. The platform offers more than 40 certifications, tiered membership plans ranging from a free Insider level to Pro, Pro+, and Exec+ tiers, a Slack community, local meetups, and an annual Product Marketing Summit that draws more than 5,000 event attendees.

Resources include industry reports, articles, guides, eBooks, templates and frameworks, podcasts, webinars, a jobs board, a salary calculator, and a Product Marketing Core Framework covering discovery, strategy, positioning, sales enablement, and growth. Product Marketing Alliance is part of The Alliance network, which also includes Marketing Alliance, Revenue Alliance, Customer Alliance, Finance Alliance, and Technology Alliance, and has received recognition from the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, and G2.

Membership Model: Paid – $42/month (Pro), $167/month (Pro+), $250/month (Exec+); free ‘Insider’ tier available

Marketing Ops Pros

As the name implies, Marketing Ops Pros is a community-led platform for Marketing Operations professionals, founded by Mike Rizzo, with an invite-only Slack community of 3,500+ active members, a verified database of 14,000+ professionals, and the Ops Cast podcast reaching 2,600+ monthly subscribers. Membership tiers include free access and paid Pro and Pro+ plans, with Pro and Pro+ members gaining access to the Slack community, a MatchUp peer networking feature, strategist consultations, local chapter events, a jobs board, and benchmark research reports including an annual State of the MO Pro salary report.

The community operates local chapters across North America, the UK, EMEA, and APAC, with members meeting face-to-face through weekly dinners, quarterly in-person events, and annual Functional Summits led by trained chapter heads. Flagship events include the annual MOps-Apalooza conference covering topics spanning AI, attribution, RevOps, PLG, and career growth, as well as regional Spring Fling meetups held throughout the year.

Membership Model: Paid – $349/year (Pro) or $1,200/year (Pro+); free tier available with participation requirements

Superpath

Superpath is a content marketing community serving over 18,000 newsletter and podcast subscribers, with a paid Superpath Pro tier gives access to a private Slack community of 300+ in-house, freelance, and agency content marketers. Superpath Pro members receive access to 15+ Slack channels, monthly curated 1:1 peer networking calls, monthly group video calls with breakout sessions, a library of 40+ graduate-level content marketing courses, and monthly AI Show & Tell sessions where members share real AI-enabled content workflows.

Additional member programs include monthly accountability challenges, member-led interest groups called Spaces covering areas such as freelancing, content operations, and content strategy, and a 2026 in-person IRL tour with planned meetups in Salt Lake City, Denver, New York, London, and Lisbon. Free access is also available via the weekly newsletter, podcast, a content strategy template, a job board, and free webinars and workshops, with the broader Superpath network including members from companies such as Shopify, HubSpot, Intercom, Sprout Social, Airtable, and Buffer.

Membership Model: Paid – $50/month or $500/year; 30-day free trial available

RevOps Co-op

RevOps Co-op is a community for Revenue Operations professionals with 19,000 members, offering three membership tiers: a free forever tier, a Starter tier with access to the Slack community of 15,000+ RevOps professionals and peer-to-peer mentor matching, and a Rise tier that adds a $300 course credit, a premium knowledge hub with how-tos and templates, and career coaching.

The community’s average member has more than five years of RevOps experience, with members from organizations including Slack, Lyft, OpenAI, Stripe, and Amazon. Resources include the RevOpsAF podcast, RevOps reports, a B2B acronym glossary, on-demand video series, courses, a salary repository, and a Consultant Corner for connecting with vetted RevOps consultants. The community also hosts local geographic chapters, an annual RevOpsAF conference with both US and European editions planned for 2026, and regular networking events designed to keep members current on market trends.

Membership Model: Paid – $15/mo (Starter) or $63/mo (Rise) with annual commitment; free tier available

Sharebird

Sharebird is a free knowledge-sharing community for B2B marketing and revenue professionals, built around dedicated hubs for Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Revenue Operations, Product Management, Customer Success, and Sales. Born from a San Francisco meetup group, the platform has grown to serve hundreds of thousands of professionals in tech, with an aspiration to reach 100 million members. The community is structured around expert-led Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions featuring practitioners – not consultants – from companies including Google, Salesforce, HubSpot, Atlassian, Datadog, and Anthropic.

Member benefits include access to a searchable library of tens of thousands of expert answers, weekly curated digests, anonymous question submission, deep-dive reports on topics such as product launches and GTM strategy, a job board, and executive search services. All community content is freely accessible. Revenue is generated through executive search placements rather than membership fees.

Membership Model: Free – open to all professionals in tech and tech-adjacent roles.

Find your B2B marketing community, connect with peers, be inspired, become a leader

There are a lot of options here and I hope this list has been useful. We learned a lot putting it together and hopefully you’ve learned about some new resources that will be helpful in your B2B marketing career. There are a lot of formal education opportunities available online today and of course there’s also AI, but communities can often provide the kind of space that leads to insight and resonance that’s hard to find in a virtual classroom or from a ChatBot.

As Michael Brenner, VP of Thought Leadership and Customer Advocacy at Workday has put it,

“The best marketers I know aren’t learning from courses as much as they’re learning from each other.”

At TopRank Marketing our community is informal and exists amongst the readers or our blog which has been publishing for 23 years as well as listeners of our podcast about B2B marketing featuring some of the most interesting and talented B2B marketers in the industry – a great resource to learn from and get inspiration. Check it out on video, audio or text.

The post 30 Best Communities for B2B Marketers to Learn, Connect and Advance appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.

Best Answer Marketing is a B2B marketing framework for creating content that stands out, builds trust and creates confidence across the entire customer journey. As B2B marketing becomes more complex, the customer-centricity of being the best answer wherever customers are looking boils down to three things: being visible, being believed and being chosen. This post drills down into each to help B2B marketers undertsand how to become Best Answer Brands.

With 94% of B2B buyers using AI during the buying process (6Sense) and the fragmentation of information sources averaging 10+ distinct channels (McKinsey) and buying committees averaging 13 people inside and 9 from outside the buyer’s organization in making a purchase decision (Forrester), B2B marketing is facing a substantial shift in complexity.

Some B2B brands are approaching this challenge with a strategy of “more content” with much of that content created or largely informed by AI.

So how are successful B2B brands standing out amongst the sea of AI generated sameness? According to research from Adobe, 82% are focused on content that answers questions. But simply answering questions isn’t enough, is it? What questions you’re answering, how you answer them, where you answer them, who is answering them and of course why, are all important. The means to optimize content for AI discovery and following Google’s EEAT guidelines to demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are available to everyone.

When everyone has access to the same strategies and resources via AI, how does anyone truly stand out, build trust and inspire the kind of confidence that drives decision?

One approach is a through a thought leadership focus informed by original research, co-created and amplified by influencers and published in content formats designed to create experiences that meet the omnichannel expectations of today’s buying groups. We’ve published our own original research with Ascend2 on this, The State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026 to understand the intersection of original research, influence and content plus a Best Answer Marketing Playbook series that provides a model for implementation.

These have been the most popular pieces of content we’ve published in the last 6 months. But research and playbooks are just one way to explain the idea of being the best answer and what that means for an integrated B2B marketing strategy.

To navigate the growing complexity of B2B marketing in 2026 and in the future, it’s important to pause thinly spread efforts focused on optimizing for efficiency and to focus on what’s really important – delivering answers that buyers need. As the pendulum of promise for AI and content creation swings back from mechanical to meaningfully human, B2B brands have an opportunity to stop blending in and start becoming best answer brands. Here’s how:

Be Visible

You can’t win the game if you don’t show up. But simply publishing more content isn’t the solution – that’s what everyone else is doing and it’s all just blending in as buyers swipe and scroll for something that stands out. And if your content does stop your audience from scrolling, you have mere seconds to meaningfully capture their attention. To optimize for visibility in LLMs and search, LinkedIn and other influential sources, there are 4 considerations within a Best Answer Marketing strategy for capturing buyer attention: relevance, reach, creativity and integration.

Relevance – To be the best answer for your customers you must first understand the questions they’re asking. That means question research and there are multiple sources for that including

• CRM data – what questions buyers are asking when they make inquiries.
• Sales and Customer support – what questions frontline teams are being asked by prospects and customers.
• SEO and AEO tools – what questions people are asking when they search or prompt for things your brand should be the best answer for? PAA and Query Fan Out simulators can be useful as well as SEO topic research tools from Semrush and Ahrefs.
• Customer interviews and surveys – talk to real customers about what’s important to them now provides insights of substance as well as style and nuance.
• Original research – insights from a significant and relevant sample of your market can reveal the topics and associated questions most in demand.

Reach – Central to visibility is the notion of “where” and with expectations of “everywhere” it’s important to prioritize. Audience intelligence tools like SparkToro can he instrumental in providing the information about where your buyers are discovering and validating information. This is especially important with providing today’s buyers all of the information they need, given that 61% prefer a self serve sales approach and don’t ever want to talk to a sales rep (Gartner).

Google is still the big player in B2B discovery, but the rate of accelerated use of AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity is where most of the attention for B2B marketers is focused. Our survey with Ascend2 of 797 senior B2B marketers found the top channels for distributing B2B thought leadership are:

• LinkedIn (54%)
• In-person events (54%)
• YouTube/video (51%)
• GenAI tools (32%)

Of course there are many more channels including email, word of mouth and influencers, earned media, paid media, social media at large, vendor websites, events (virtual like webinars and IRL like conferences). To prioritize, it’s important to understand where your audience is discovering content and distinguishing when possible, which channels for which stage of the buyer journey are most relevant.

Creativity – With that sea of sameness I mentioned earlier, one of the most effective ways to be seen and not skipped is through creative. Visual creativity, great copywriting, originality, authentic human narratives and storytelling that connect emotionally are all often lost on B2B brands. And that represents a tremendous opportunity to be visible. The simplest expression to represent this is, facts tell but stories sell. People are hungry for more meaningful and nuanced messaging that authentically connects with how they think about a problem, that truly empathizes with their constraints and attempts to create the conditions for connection.

We’ve talked about the importance of breaking free of boring B2B for years and that means creativity. Anyone remember the Laser Bear? The good news is that more B2B brands are experimenting with more creative ways to express their stories in ways that get attention and connect with buyers.

Integration – But here’s the thing: it’s not enough simply to be creative in one channel. Also, creativity for creativity’s sake is ephemeral and a moment of entertainment is quickly forgotten. Creative expressions of relevance on the channels of reach most important to your customers are basically random unless coordinated and integrated. Remember, buying groups are larger and discovering content on many more channels. Integrating messaging and creative efforts across channels is a direct contributor to the mental availability needed to be considered.

Be Believed

What good is capturing a customer’s attention if they don’t trust what you’re saying? Research from LinkedIn has shown that 94% of marketers agree that trust is the key to B2B success. The challenge for B2B brands in a fragmented discovery environment goes beyond the need to build trust to the ability to inspire belief.  Of course the foundation of belief is trust and within the BAM framework, there is a component called the Trust System. That integrated approach to messaging and creative can be applied to this trust system in a few different ways;

• Original Research – When a B2B brand collects data from the very audience they are marketing to and creates original research and thought leadership, an important differentiation is accomplished. No one else has that data – it is unique to your brand along with the insights from the research. Original research can be invaluable for differentiated content and proof of ideas that can serve as an entire platform for brand, demand and lead generation.
• Industry Influencers – Beyond a brand advocating for itself, a more powerful way to build trust and belief is when the most trusted voices in your industry help drive the conversation. Done authentically, a coordinated influencer and creator effort to engage the audience you’re after can become a true force multiplier for credibility. Not only do industry experts add validation to a brand’s message, they add distribution as well when promoted to their audiences. Creators can add even more value by creative content formats that tap in to the nuance of content preferences both topically and in format.
• Internal Experts and Peers – People want to hear from other people they trust and expertise is a big driver towards building trust. Showcasing internal experts adds that expertise. When partnering internal executives and SMEs with external influencers, the impact can be even greater because of how the combination of influence and expertise drives believability.  Peer communities are a part of this trust building and belief effort too – authentic stories about challenges and solutions can go a long way towards building trust.
• Earned Media – Whether original research serves as the basis for media coverage or industry experts provide context for contributed articles to industry publications, the opportunity for brand and solution validation through industry media is significant. Mentions of a B2B brand in industry media along with influencers that publish also provide strong signals for AI search and LLMs when deciding which sources to present as answers.
• Customer Stories – Whether they take the form of case studies on the company website, or videos on LinkedIn or a co-presentation at an industry conference, hearing about the experience of having worked with your company and proof of outcomes is an effective way to extend trust to belief for a B2B brand. The key is authenticity – no one wants to read or watch hype.

Within B2B marketing, it is no longer enough to simply inform customers, we must make them feel something.

Informing vs. inspiring feeling something is the difference between trust and belief. Architecting trust is the foundation for building belief through consistency of message and consensus amongst sources of influence that your brand is the best answer or the most buyable for your solution. Integrating these tactics creates a more powerful foundation of trust upon which B2B brands can inspire belief that they are indeed, the best answer for what customers are looking for.

Be Chosen

You can probably tell these 3 elements of a Best Answer approach to B2B content marketing build on each other. To be chosen means to be visible and be trusted, consistently. But that’s not all. To be chosen requires more than all the right facts, a  great content experience and credibility. It also goes beyond whether your brand is truly the best solution in your category or industry. Being chosen requires decision confidence. How well can the buying group defend the decision to choose your solution, your company over all others?

Being the best answer means your brand is visible in the most relevant way, on the channels where buyers are looking, is validated through consensus amongst trusted sources and that delivers answers through content experiences that reach the entire buyer group. That combination of elements means being chosen by search engines, LLMs and AI search, as well as sources of trust for your audience whether it’s a respected industry publication, an industry thought leader and expert on LinkedIn, or a peer on platforms like Reddit making recommendations.

So how do you know when you’re chosen? With zero-click search and LLMs not always citing sources, the visibility into knowing a particular source played an attributable role in informing buyer confidence is more difficult than ever.  So the question is less about whether content drive a click and more about, “Did this content change what buyers know, trust, or do next?” Here are a few ways to tell:

Brand propagation: Your unique ideas, narratives or research are cited, summarized, or modeled by LLMs & search engines. If your content is being used to generate answers, it is being chosen at the highest level of discovery and you are influencing answers even when no click occurs. Things to watch for:

• Your ideas are included in AI Overviews, LLM responses, featured snippets
• Your frameworks, stats, or language show up in search and AI answers
• There’s semantic similarity between your content and AI outputs
• Buyers or influencers referencing your ideas in their own words
• Internal sales or customer conversations mirroring your content themes

Brand consistency: You earn disproportionate visibility across the channels that matter. This is about evidence that your answers are being discovered consistently across channels in ways that are relevant throughout the buyer journey. Note: if you’re publishing the same types of things as everyone else, you’re pretty much invisible. Things to track:

• High share of voice in organic search, social, earned media, amongst industry influencers and in AI search
• Presence across multiple formats (video, articles, podcasts, communities)
• Consistent discovery beyond your owned channels that you don’t publish t0 – a second and third layer effect of idea propagation

Brand persuasion: High-intent buyers arrive “pre-sold” or well informed about your solutions. Being chosen means your best answer content has reduced uncertainty and built decision confidence. You’ve effectively created mental availability for buyers that are part of the 95% that are not in-market and made the shortlist as they move into the 5% that are actively looking for solutions. Here are things to track:

• Prospects referencing your unique content or ideas early in conversations
• Shorter education cycles in sales
• More advanced questions vs. basic awareness questions

Brand driven pipeline: Your best answer content correlates with pipeline quality. Beyond influence on the discovery and engagement aspects of being chosen, best answer content builds confidence in decision making and the defense of those decisions. The impact of that confidence can be associated with pipeline metrics including:

• Higher close rates for opportunities that are influenced by best answer content
• Faster deal velocity when content touch points are visible and trackable
• Stronger engagement from your ICP accounts vs. general traffic

Being chosen isn’t just about one moment. Being chosen is a function of being present where and when buyers are looking along with the compounding value of familiarity, trust and belief.  Creating mental availability through consistency across channels and confidence through proof and building consensus that your brand is the best answer all add up to selection. To really get a handle on how to track these kinds of metrics, learn more about BAM Unified Analytics.

Is your brand the best answer for what your customers are looking for?

For an example of Best Answer Marketing content, check out this case study featuring Sprinklr and LinkedIn that delivered 4.6 million targeted impressions, 370% higher engagement rate and 1,100 qualified leads.

For examples of B2B Influencer Marketing in action, check out these TopRank Marketing case studies featuring work with Adobe, Smartsheet and Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, Dell, Demandbase and Monday.com.

To understand whether Best Answer Marketing is right for you, check out the BAM Action Plan or connect with us directly and we can answer any questions.

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