April of this year will mark the seventh consecutive year I’ve provided steady summaries stemming from the world of PR software makers. When I started, I was providing updates on a dizzying array of announcements.

Many of them were around mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Too many in my book for any one company to effectively integrate them. I know that because over my career I’ve been involved, from a communications standpoint, in more than a dozen transactions.

Sometimes I was part of the acquiring company. Other times, I was part of a company being acquired. I even had a chance to do a divestiture while in-house, and then pick that divested company up as a customer years later on the consulting side. It’s given me a vantage point of what happens before, during and after these transactions.

I’ve concluded that M&A is easy to plan for and hard to execute. Executives put too much credence into their assumptions and not enough in the variables. Many fall in love with a deal, which blinds them to the risks that require mitigation, and sends a personalized invitation to join the sunk cost fallacy.

The variables are many. Employees want a purpose. Customers are fickle. Markets are unforgiving. When you start to add a second or third M&A on top of one that’s barely been swallowed, it quickly becomes a project that’s unwieldy to manage.

The pace of M&A has certainly slowed, even as I’ve pared back these missives from monthly to quarterly. The playing field I started covering in 2019 looks very different today – yet there’s still room left for one more deal, albeit one that makes sense – even as some of the old ones are still getting straightened out.

1. Signal AI acquires Memo for readership data

Media monitoring provider Signal AI announced it acquired Memo. Memo is a communications measurement platform that centers on providing readership data for placements. Instead of guessing how many people may have read an article, Memo provides data.

“Memo’s data is sourced directly from publishers via a network of data partners with direct integrations,” said Signal AI CEO David Benigson in an email exchange. “It’s not modelled or inferred, it’s based on actual readership data from the publisher side.”

Planned product integration

“This acquisition will integrate real readership metrics into Signal AI’s reputation and risk intelligence platform and services, giving Chief Communications Officers (CCOs) and reputation management teams a clearer, more holistic view of how their stories actually perform, what’s shaping their reputation, and which narratives pose a genuine threat to their brand,” the company said in a press release.

Benigson’ s email said the two companies have had “a long friendship” and initiated a formal partnership in 2025. That partnership achieved “tons of commercial traction” that eventually led to the decision to acquire the company.

“The strength of the commercial partnership, combined with clear customer demand for Memo’s dataset, led us to begin more strategic discussions towards the end of last year,” Benigson added.

Background on both companies

Memo was founded in New York in 2018. It has raised $19 million in Series A funding and has 46 employees, according to PitchBook.  Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, although PitchBook has classified the transaction as a leveraged buyout, which basically means someone borrowed money to buy the company.

Signal AI provides sophisticated media monitoring to help manage risk and reputation. It monitors “traditional media, social, podcasts, and regulatory filings to protect their brand value.” Memo has landed around 65 customers, Benigson said, which adds to the 750 customers Signal AI serves.

Singal AI was founded in 2013, employs roughly 240 people and last raised $165 million in a Series E round, bringing its total funding to $268 million, according to PitchBook.

In October of 2025, Signal AI partnered with Propel, an all-in-one PR software provider started by a former PR agency owner. The partnership provides Propel customers with more in-depth media monitoring options.

Signal AI takes a unique approach to monitoring – it aims to identify and track emerging issues early before they can snowball into business disruption. Signal AI and Memo are arguably joined at the hip in serving enterprise customers who operate “in high-reputation or high-scrutiny environments,” Benigson added.

2. Muck Rack rolls out new AI features for media relations

Muck Rack announced two new AI-powered features for identifying reporters and influencers the technology thinks you should be pitching.

First up is the Media List Agent. It will recommend “journalists based on your goals and analyzes your pitch content to improve targeting.” The agent will also work in the background to “discover relevant journalists” and also suggest “who to add or remove with clear rationale,” a company representative said in an email.

Next is AI Visibility Badges. This feature highlights “the journalists and outlets most frequently cited by generative AI models, giving you a new way to prioritize outreach.”  The badges appear for users sorting through possible contacts under “people, outlets and articles,” and users will soon be able to filter results based on their track record of AI citation.

The company also said it’s used AI to simplify Boolean searches. Its “AI Search Agent” will “translate your plain-language prompts into structured Boolean searches.” Boolean search is a logical query method that uses operators like AND, OR, and NOT to precisely combine or exclude terms for more accurate results. Some users find it tricky to employ.

(click image for higher resolution)

3. Onclusive finally sews its acquisitions together

About four years after buying Critical Mention, Kantar Reputation Intelligence and PRgloo, Onclusive has rolled out a unified platform. The unified platform combines the final product into four modules:

• Mention: Tracks where your brand is mentioned across news, broadcast and social media;
• Review: Create or manage press reviews or daily content;
• Contact: A database of journalists and influencers; and
• Measure: Analyze the impact of your coverage.

In 2019, prior to any M&A, I took a close look at its monitoring capabilities, which looked both thorough and expensive. Since then, Onclusive has gone through a lot of changes. It’s seen leadership turnover and hasn’t made much noise in the way of new product announcements or innovations.

The company is casting this announcement as a better user experience – rather than using separate tools, as in a best-of-breed approach. In reality, it’s joining a crowded and mature field of all-in-one PR software products. I also suspect the company’s brand recognition in the U.S. pales in comparison to the major incumbents in the PR software space.

4. PR tech briefs

• Meltwater makes it official with Reddit. Meltwater was granted Reddit partner status, which allows the company to continue accessing “Reddit’s enterprise data APIs” for media monitoring.

• Notified press release optimizer. Notified presents an AI Press Release Optimizer to “strengthen release drafts before distribution by improving structure, clarity, authority and quotability.” Notified owns GlobeNewswire.

• TV eyes a new media player. TVEyes announced an easier-to-use premium media player. The tool lets customers search, watch, clip, and analyze video and audio content with helpful features like thumbnail previews and transcripts.

• Semrush rebrands Prowly. SEO toolmaker Semrush rebranded Prowly, a PR software provider it acquired in 2020. Prowly is now the “Semrush AI PR Toolkit.” Rebranding an entire software company as a mere toolkit is quite possibly the most anti-climactic ending to an acquisition I’ve seen in the 7 years I’ve been writing about PR software.

• PRToolFinder filters for freebies. Tech directory PRToolFinder announced filters for users to find free PR software and free trials of PR software.

• Service providers turning software providers. Omnicom announced OMNI, an AI-powered system that pulls together data, technology, and expertise from across Omnicom (including after its merger with Interpublic) to help brands plan, create, buy, and measure their marketing more effectively.

5. New vendor survey data and reports

• PR inspiration. “86% of journalists say PR pitches inspire at least some stories, yet 88% delete pitches that miss their beat,” according to a survey of 900 reporters by Muck Rack.

• Change as an obstacle. 60% of PR teams surveyed “cite the rapidly shifting media landscape as their biggest challenge,” according to a Cision survey.

• AI use in PR needs no prompting. More than “90% of PR teams have already integrated generative AI into their workflows,” according to a survey by Meltwater.

PR software coverage for 2026

Here’s how to get on my radar if you are a vendor. At some point this year, I plan to write a separate and updated “comprehensive” list of PR software providers. I’ll likely place a query in Peter Shankman’s Source of Sources when I get ready to compile it.

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5 takes on Gartner’s new optimism for PR and earned media in the age of AI

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When generative AI was still fairly new, an entrepreneurial friend of mine saw an opportunity. He would create a new site, in a niche space, and use generative AI to generate a steady stream of new content for it.

The planned business model? Advertising, of course.

It didn’t last long. The site was unable to produce meaningful traffic or engagement.

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An experiment across 20 sites

Bogdan Babiak, and the team at the SEO firm SE Ranking, performed a similar experiment, as published in Search Engine Land, on a greater scale. They started by purchasing 20 new domains across 20 different industries, including business, technology and industry.

Importantly, none of these new sites had “backlinks, domain authority, brand recognition, or search history.”

Next, they identified 100 long-tail keywords for the popular “how-to” and used generative AI to generate 100 articles for each site. That’s 2,000 articles in total.

Finally, they added these sites to Google Search Console, submitted site maps and “we left the sites untouched to observe performance over time.”

Short-lived results

In the first month, about 71% of the articles had been indexed by Google Search, which Babiak calls “notable” for domains with “zero-authority.” It generated ~120,000 impressions and 244 clicks – which my math works out to ~.12 clicks per article.

The results are much, but aside from setting up the experiment, the effort wasn’t much either. A well-researched blog post easily requires 4-6 hours of time or more. Generative AI requires a prompt.

That’s a promising start for a brand-new site – especially with no other promotion other than organic search. But it didn’t last. By the six-month mark, the sites had collectively earned 706,328 impressions and 1,062 clicks.

Divided by six months, that works out to about the same level of impressions and clicks each month over that time frame. Overall, it works out to about one click for every two articles.

A year later, and full 16 months after starting the experiment, those sites earned another 300,000 impressions and another ~381 clicks. In total, the sites gained 1,092,079 impressions and 1,381 clicks.

It just goes to show what many of us in marketing, who have been paying close attention to generative AI, have been saying for a while: “good content” may be subjective, but generative AI doesn’t come close to meeting the standard.

Why content generated by AI doesn’t perform

Babiak provides some sound analysis for why the content didn’t perform, including the following:

• “No backlinks or external validation.”
• “No authors, credentials, or real-world expertise.”
• “Much of the content resembled what already exists.”
• “No internal linking, topical organization, or clear hierarchy.”

Datelines and bylines have been important trust signals for branded content for a long time.  Yet the biggest factor in my assessment is the third bullet.

Generative AI works on probability, so the content it produces is statistically driven. It is not the best content, nor the worst content, but average content.

No one is going to bookmark, share, subscribe or revisit a site with average content. Especially since they can prompt AI for themselves and get a more personalized answer, and drill down on areas that are of their interest.

Accelerating the sea of sameness

Marketing and PR professionals working in B2B technology circles know that the “sea of sameness” has been a problem long before generative AI became commonly available. Too many companies look to see how their competitors describe things and rush to match the language.

The result has been a “sea” of content that all sounds the same. No flavor. No distinction. No informed viewpoint. All repetition. The results are telling – prospects and customers can’t understand what distinguishes one company from another.

So, what do they do? They ask trusted colleagues. They look at analyst reports. They stick to brands that are familiar – because familiarity is safer. No one is going to take a chance buying an unproven product from an unfamiliar company that sounds like they do the same thing as everyone else.

A math analogy for marketing communications

I was always capable of performing well in school as a kid growing up. I never had to work too hard to make decent grades.

That changed when I got to high school. Algebra, in particular, was challenging for me to wrap my head around. The teacher was a bit aloof, and I, as a teenager, had a lot of competing interests.

I didn’t fail the class, but I was required to take a similar class again the next year. The teacher was qualified to teach math, but his primary job was teaching music. That meant he had a completely different way of explaining Algebra – and perhaps a better way to connect.

When he explained it, I understood. Suddenly, these math problems that seemed abstract became real and logical. Math wasn’t a mystery; it was a puzzle and a solvable one at that.

That’s what I think humans bring to the table when it comes to developing marketing and communications content. Humans don’t set out to just explain the thing the way AI does; they strive to connect to readers, or content consumers, and bring context that brings ideas to the real world.

An average of the internet

If you ask 10 people the same survey question, you might get 10 different answers. However, if you ask 100 people, you’ll start to see a solid average.

If you ask 1,000 people, the average becomes clear. This is how confidence intervals in surveys work – it’s the confidence that if you ran the same survey, you’d get the same results.

These LLMs have sucked up an internet’s worth of content already. The average is set. It won’t get worse, but it also won’t get better.

There are a lot of credible SMEs that have come to a similar conclusion. Nikita Bier, who is focused on eliminating AI-generated spam on X, recently noted that he thinks the platform will be successful.

Why? “We are very close to approaching the limit of the content being indistinguishable,” he said recently. And you can see from the results of the experiment above that Google is figuring it out, too.

There are no “hacks” or shortcuts to marketing and PR. It takes time, effort, data, consistency, and perseverance. Generative AI is a useful tool for augmenting your marketing and communications team, but it’s not a replacement.

It’s definitely not a replacement for good writing. That’s not my opinion, but a conclusion we can draw on a mounting pile of data.

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The Meaning of Staying “On Message”

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Media relations, what many think of as “PR” isn’t a magic button. PR people don’t have mythical powers that can suddenly produce coverage.

While journalist relationships can help, too many in PR feign familiarity with a reporter and pretend it’s a relationship. A reporter will take a story idea from a PR if it’s solid, timely and newsworthy, no matter the relationship.

From a B2B perspective, PR is about matching a client’s ideas to news trends and helping them articulate those ideas in a newsworthy fashion to the right person. Relevance matters. So does intrigue, novelty, and timing.

There’s no doubt that media relations is more challenging today than when I started out years ago. I’ve come to believe that’s why a lot of PR people don’t like media relations work: it’s hard work, and like salespeople, you face a lot of rejections.

You’ve got to find a way to push through it.  That’s why I enjoy it. I tend to see it as an intellectually stimulating problem that’s (mostly) fun to solve.

Good PR people learn how to snoop useful information out of clients that aids in developing good pitches. It’s about eliciting ideas, kicking them around, and figuring out where and how they apply to current news trends. Below are a few things that PR savvy clients do to get more out of their PR teams.

1. Access to information

A good PR person is a consummate consumer of information. They should be continuously developing good pitch ideas. But they can’t work in a vacuum; PR needs regular updates about what’s happening inside a company.

I say this all the time: thought leadership requires actual thought and actual leadership. Clients are the SMEs on their business and technology; PR’s expertise rests in communicating that expertise. It’s the delta of those two things that makes all the difference.

A few good ways to facilitate information flow include:

• Dedicate a portion of a monthly call to what’s new in a client’s business;
• Schedule dedicated 30-minute brainstorming calls with a different executive every month; and
• Send clients ‘viewpoint’ questions by email about emerging trends.

For its part, PR should never be afraid to ask basic questions, even if you already know the answer. Letting a client articulate their answers and listening carefully often leads to new ideas for pitching and old topics.

2. Responsiveness, especially to reporters

PR spends a lot of time and effort trying to persuade reporters that a certain view merits inclusion in a story. When they get a bite and ask a client for an answer, the client has to answer responsively.

Whether it’s scheduling a call or sending a written answer, you absolutely have to be responsive, or you miss your chance. If you drag your feet, you may get written off in that moment for the next opportunity, too.

3. Impeccable timing

When a client asks me how we landed certain coverage, my first answer is usually timing. Some people call that luck, but I think luck is the intersection of good preparation and timing.

In media relations, good timing means having a view that nests well with current news. Maybe that timing is around a holiday, maybe it’s around a long-standing trend, or maybe it’s about an emerging issue. Few things matter more in media relations than timing.

4. Let PR lead new announcements

Generally, every new announcement, if it has news merit, should be led by PR. Not with email marketing. Not through a product page. Not with an advertisement.

Why? Reporters avoid covering something that’s already been “covered.”

There are some nuances and exceptions to this idea. A study, for example, should be hung on a company page just before pitching. Why? Reporters want a source to cite.

5. An appetite for risk

News is something that defies expectations. Ideas that defy expectations are scary, and they’re often lonely. You’ve got to have an appetite for risk. This means having a willingness to say things that other people are thinking but are too afraid to say aloud.

An appetite for risk does not mean callous, although the sensationalized headlines that are so common today are tempting. It doesn’t mean saying wild things for the sake of attention.

It means having a willingness to speak to aspects that make you uncomfortable. It’s not the successes that make a good business story – it’s the setbacks. I’ve always found that if a pitch makes me a little nervous to send, it’s probably a good one. That’s true for blog posts, articles and press releases as well.

6. A bias for action

Too many good PR ideas get kicked down the road because they require effort, and clients are busy. We’ll write that report one day. We’ll do that survey another time. We can look for a customer case study on that point after the quarter ends. Often, those good ideas get put on a shelf and collect dust for infinity.

Putting some effort into deep thinking and thoughtful long-form analysis is crucial for thought leadership. When clients oblige and dig into the details, they wind up with a successful initiative that leaves them with one thought: I wish we had started doing this sooner.

7. Be open to feedback

I’ve worked with marketing executives who perform extensive PPC and social ad testing. They often have a strong view, based on data, on which ad performs the best. That view informs how they frame announcements, and sometimes that comes into conflict with PR.

News works differently from ads. One is trying to sell a product, while PR is selling a story. Testing ads on buyers may not necessarily produce results on how best to frame pitches or press releases. That’s what PR brings to the table – the context and angles that are being reported or are likely to be reported.

What businesses want from PR and what the media wants from PR have small sections of overlap. Clients have to be receptive to such feedback if they want coverage.

8. Avoid second-guessing pitches

PR will draft a press release and send it to a client for review. The client typically has several people review the release and it comes out very different at the end of that process.

I never let a client review and approve my pitches (although I’ll share them after the fact, completely transparent). I’m an agent. I’m acting in their best interest. When the press release machinations happen, I’ll do the client a favor and use my original draft as the pitch, which leads me to this next point: avoid second-guessing PR pitches.

I say avoid because you don’t want willful ignorance to reflect poorly, but if you’ve got an experienced professional working for you – get the heck out of their way and let them work. Your role here is to feed them information as you get it and be responsive to media inquiries.

If they make a small mistake, consider that an investment. Ask them this question: What did we learn from this mistake?

9. Consistency and patience

Think about this question from a B2B perspective: How often have you purchased a B2B software product based on a single email the first time you received it? For most people, the answer is probably “never.”

Something similar is at play when you are pitching reporters. You can’t expect magic the first time you show up, because you haven’t earned a reputation yet. Reporters worry about credibility, hype and misinformation. Reliability and trust are earned over time. You’ve got to show up consistently, with good ideas over time, to earn your way in.

10. Honesty

Your lawyer can’t help you if you aren’t completely honest. Your accountant can’t help you if you hide numbers. Doctors can’t make an accurate diagnosis if you withhold that embarrassing symptom. The same is true for PR.

You’ve got to be completely honest about the good and the ugly for PR to work effectively. If you lie to a PR person and they, in turn, unknowingly lie to a reporter, you’re going to get caught, and you are going to be blacklisted.

As one beltway pundit once said about crisis communications: tell it early, tell it all, and tell it often.

It’s about collaboration

One of the things good PR professionals at outside agencies and consultancies strive to do is be an extension of your team. But that only works when it’s a two-way street. A lot of this comes down to learning good client management skills; however, even the best PR professional in the world is only going to be as good as the client’s collaboration.

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Media pitching: Adding perspective to Michael Smart’s FAQs for Muck Rack

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LLMs are poised to replace search and more and more businesses will turn to PR and communications functions to help them through this change.

That’s according to a list of predictions the organization recently published on its website titled, “Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies.” The top takeaway for comms professionals is Gartner’s prediction for budgets:

“By 2027, mass adoption of public LLMs as a replacement for traditional search will drive a 2x increase in PR and earned media budgets.”

At the time of this writing, 2027 is just a little more than eight months away. I’m not surprised by this idea. Most of the contributors to my annual predictions roundup, at the end of 2025, said just that: Generative AI makes PR and business priority.

I am a little surprised at the speed at which Gartner says this will take place – and by the firm’s rather sudden interest in the space. So, this past weekend, I read through Gartner’s predictions. Below, I’ve highlighted a few of the findings that stood out to me and along with my commentary for consideration.

1. What’s in it for Gartner?

Gartner has only recently started paying attention to PR software and comms tech. They published a “market guide” report in 2025. A market guide is a step below a “magic quadrant” report. It contains the same basic information, but the analyst firm doesn’t rank vendors in a quadrant.  The firm uses a guide when they have assessed that a market is nascent.

PR software has been around for more than 25 years, but it’s a low-growth market. It’s been a while since I’ve dug into market sizing, but I’d venture it’s a roughly $15-$20 billion market. That’s all in – services and software – although one PR firm puts the value of “reputation” market at $7 trillion. There are a lot of areas for overlap outside of PR.

The biggest buyers of PR software are those that do media relations – which is only 26% of the market – according to recent surveys. While there are buyers outside of media relations, I just don’t think it’s a big enough focus area for this to be profitable for an analyst firm.

I’ve never seen a PR software vendor buy an analyst report reprint and promote it. I doubt most PR people, outside of the tech world, would even be familiar with the likes of Gartner or Forrester. So, the question remains, what’s in it for Gartner?

Generative AI is raising the ante for sound communications. It’s given us tools for analysis and understanding, but also dramatically increased the capacity for output. Most social platforms have embedded generative AI natively. We’re already drowning in content; the pile is only going to grow.

That’s elevating PR and communications among business priorities. Gartner was clear that it sees comms budgets and influence growing, and I think the firm is trying to figure out how to play in this space. They are probably right about choosing a market guide. And if you are a business leader wondering about PR, then here’s your sign.

2. Gartner says PR is key because generative AI will replace search

Gartner’s views on generative AI may bend some SEOs out of shape. Gartner thinks generative AI will replace traditional search as the primary way people access information. There have been several reports of conflicting data, but it does seem like generative AI is beginning to edge out search. Currently, generative AI relies heavily on news to retrieve answers, and PR is the best function in corporate America to influence news.

Here are a few quotes from the Gartner post:

• LLMs rely on news. “…more than 95% of links cited are nonpaid mentions and coverage, with 27% originating directly from earned media.”

• PR is better positioned than SEO to influence generative AI. “While traditional SEO efforts are best served by marketing, the growing demand for answer engine optimization (AEO) to build visibility and reputation requires Communications-specific skills to balance stakeholder trust and platform requirements.”

• Earned media budgets will adjust accordingly. “PR and earned media budgets must increase to ensure optimal AI search visibility. Reallocating paid budgets to PR and earned media is likely a logical option for most organizations, but it will require investment trade-offs, as well as a clear perspective on measurement and the intended impact on audience behaviors.”

Comment: I think there’s merit to the notion that generative AI may replace much of traditional search. It’s just a whole lot easier, accuracy aside, to rely on AI for an answer than to pick through a bunch of links yourself.

However, I don’t think this will unfold as cleanly as Gartner’s prediction suggests. First, some LLMs, like ChatGPT, seem to rely on Google’s search results as a trust signal. Second, I think this will evolve into a hybrid format, combining search and LLM results in a single screen, like Google’s AI Overviews. So, don’t throw out traditional SEO just yet.

Media relations is a path to earn your way into LLM results, but it’s going to come from pitching good stories. Gartner notes that “Press releases tend to get the fewest number of citations.” To be sure, I don’t believe this rules out “press releases” per se, it’s not the format, but the distribution: wire service distribution of those releases does not seem to have an impact.

Solid pitching has never been harder. The focus on clicks has made news broadly sensationalized. Headlines are optimized to evoke emotions rather than inform. Reporters are required to produce more stories in less time. Their inboxes are brimming with pitches they don’t find helpful.

To be successful, it’s going to take sustained observation, research, and effort, along with impeccable timing.

3. Internal comms must get comfortable with chatbots

The analyst firm is predicting chatbots will take center stage as the primary channel for internal comms. Here are a few points they say that stood out to me on this point:

• Chatbots replace other internal comms channels. “By 2028, 75% of employees will rely on chatbots to obtain relevant internal communications, replacing traditional communications channels.”

• Chatbots are the answer to information overload. “The increasing volume of traditional communication channels exacerbates information overload… Employee chatbots offer an effective solution to the information overload and information burden challenge.”

• Chatbots are a personalized medium. “Chatbots will improve information accessibility and provide personalized, relevant communications. For pull communications, employees will ask questions and get personalized, curated answers. For push communications, chatbots will send customized push alerts to specific employee segments.”

Comment: Gartner’s advice to comms leaders is to scale “down less-engaged channels” and use that time and budget to invest in chatbots. This makes sense, but you are still going to need some. Generative AI is reliant on content to produce answers, so you still need to be producing internal information. It’s channel replacement, not content replacement.

4. The rise of “narrative intelligence”

As the old adage goes, facts tell, but stories sell. It defies logic, but to the human mind, stories are a thousand times more compelling than statistics. It’s just how our brains work.

As such, Gartner thinks there’s an opportunity for media monitoring tools to embark on “narrative intelligence.” Instead of you looking at tone and sentiment in clips and trying to extract an emerging narrative, monitoring tools will simply provide it.

Some of the quotable lines from the piece include the following:

• Narrative intel augments reputation. “By 2029, 45% of CCOs will adopt narrative intelligence technologies to support reputation monitoring amid an intensifying disinformation landscape.”

• Early warning signs of emerging narratives. “The legacy listening and monitoring tools that CCOs rely on to monitor mentions, keywords, coverage, and conversations miss the early warning signs of damaging narratives. These narratives can emerge from both mainstream social media platforms and fringe areas of the internet.”

• Media monitoring tech investments poised to grow. “CCOs forecast that their investments in technology will increase more than any other spend category in 2025. Some of this investment is expected to go toward narrative intelligence platforms in the next three years.”

Comment: Once a narrative takes root in the public consciousness, whether it’s true or not, it’s really hard to change later. Identifying those narratives, and knowing how to feed or combat them, has always been a secret superpower of effective communicators.

While I agree with Gartner that the need exists, it’s going to be interesting to see if the solution providers latch on to this notion. Of all the vendors I’ve been watching for the last ten years or so, Singal AI is one vendor that I think is probably best positioned to capitalize here.

5. All this puts a greater emphasis on PR measurement

If PR’s budget does grow, Gartner is right that measurement needs to be dialed in. Here are a few of Gartner’s ideas on this point:

• Comms underinvests in measurement. “CCOs underinvest in measurement and monitoring capabilities, allocating just 2.9% of their budgets, well behind marketing, which commits 8%.”

• PR has long struggled with measurement. “Nearly half (47%) of CCOs report difficulty in demonstrating the impact of their function, while 34% say their teams are still viewed as cost centers rather than value drivers.”

• Outcomes versus outputs. “CCOs must develop outcomes-focused measurement frameworks that go beyond tracking outputs to assess how Communications initiatives influence audience behaviors and business outcomes.”

Comment: Measurement has always been a weak spot for PR, but in this case, you need to be prepared to tie citations in LLMs to either behavior change or business results. It’s hard to tie any one activity to an outcome, because it’s hard to attribute a given news mention to sales results, for example.

I also don’t think PR can “win” on news coverage alone. The media landscape is fractured. It doesn’t have the reach or influence it did when many of us were coming up. Anyone who reads me knows I sound like a broken record: what you do with a media mention after earning it is just as important as earning it in the first place.

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PR software vendors race to add AI features to comms tools [PR Tech Sum No. 63]

Image credit: Google Gemini

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There’s little tolerance for mistakes in corporate culture, and that too is a mistake.

It’s obvious whenever two business functions have a clash of ideas. Sales and marketing clash over GTM and lead routing. Corporate communications clashes with marketing over positioning and messaging. There are plenty of other examples across business.

When I say “mistake,” I’m referring to conscious decisions to execute on a program that falls short of the objective. The conflict over outcomes that follows deters future experiments. It creates a culture where no one is willing to take calculated risks.

Mistakes are better viewed as opportunities. Even a failed experiment leads to knowledge and experience, which may provide long-term benefits.

Science provides a good illustration. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, which was subsequently generalized, is one such example.

Einstein was a theoretical physicist. He didn’t conduct experiments himself; he figured out those theories by writing out math equations (which blows my mind). An incredible number of the predictions derived from his equations have been observed in experiments over the course of decades (such as that mass and energy are interchangeable, time dilation, gravitational lensing, and more).

While he didn’t conduct experiments himself, he did use the results of experiments to tinker with assumptions and variables. One assumption he made, which was counterintuitive at the time, was to assume the speed of light was constant. No one had thought to try that before his time.

One such experiment was the Michelson-Morley experiment, by scientists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in the 1880s. They set up an elaborate global experiment to measure the speed of light, from the Sun, as the Earth revolved around the Sun over the course of an entire year.

The hypothesis was that light from the sun from one vantage point would be slower and light from the other direction would be faster. Their hypothesis was wrong.

While they were mistaken, they learned something that would lead to a breakthrough in science with relativity: the speed of light was constant. It was counterintuitive at the time, but Einstein plugged that constant into his equations and the math worked.

Science celebrates mistakes and relishes being wrong because being wrong narrows the pathway to eventually being right. Marketing and communications should also celebrate mistakes. As PR people ought to know, it’s not the success that makes for a good business story, it’s the setbacks.

The technology world has adopted this idea too, with the mantra “move fast and break things.” Breaking things leads to new insights. Marketing, PR and communications should strive for the same thing.

The next time a team or individual contributor fails spectacularly, put your criticism aside and instead ask them this question: What did we learn from this mistake?

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Art or Science: The difference between a puzzle and a mystery for creative marketing and PR 

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It’s safe to say the state of PR in 2026 is pretty good.

As with the advent of social media more than a decade ago, PR is having a moment with generative AI. Indeed, generative AI made PR a key business priority in 2026.

Of course, PR is not without challenges. One of the findings from a survey summarized below is that 75% said PR is more challenging today than a year ago.

That reflects findings from a survey that a team of collaborators and I conducted in 2020. At that time, 75% of PR and comms pros say media relations is getting harder – up 25% over the previous three years in the same survey.

Chances are, it’s going to be harder next year, too. That’s just the way of the world, so the best approach is to accept it as fact, develop yourself professionally, and iterate and improve.

1. State of PR Report by Meltwater

Meltwater says it surveyed 1,100 PR professionals around the world for its “State of PR Report.” About 500 respondents, nearly half, are based in the U.S., and another 100 are from Canada. The remainder are from various countries, “with Europe being particularly well represented.”

Below are some of the findings that stood out to me. Except where it’s obvious, these are all pluralities, that is, the most responses for each answer, but not a majority of respondents:

• 26% said media relations is their main task;
• 46% said 1:1 email is the most effective way to pitch media;
• 47% said PR manages social media for their brand;
• 62% said LinkedIn is the most valuable social media site;
• 37% said PR manages influencer marketing;
• 28% said reactive work, like crisis, is their biggest time suck; and
• 35% said they provide progress reports monthly.

The section I found most interesting of all was on the actions PR thinks leaders could take to improve the effectiveness of communications:

• 19% said prioritize PR in the overall company strategy;
• 19% said allocate more budget to PR;
• 18% said provide clearer goals and direction;
• 17% said improving cross-functional collaboration;
• 14% said investing in tools and training; and
• 10% said increase engagement with PR metrics and outcomes.

Comment: The biggest answer missing from this list is time. Time is what leaders can provide to improve PR results. PR thrives on ideas and we can only get those ideas through communication.

One way to nudge this is to set up time, at least once a quarter, to have a conversation with leaders around the business. Come with a list of questions, including asking for their views on issues and trends. Those conversations will not only provide genuine fuel for PR, but they’ll also check the box on many of the other answers provided to this question.

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Read the full report by Meltwater here – registration required. 

2. State of AI in PR by Muck Rack

Muck Rack says it polled 564 PR professionals in December 2025 for its “2026 State of AI in PR” report. The report didn’t say where the respondents were based, but I’d wager most of them, if not all, are based in the U.S.

As the title suggests, all of the questions are centered on AI. Here are a few of the findings that stood out to me:

• 93% said AI accelerates their ability to complete work;
• 82% said AI improves the quality of their work;
• 98% said they edit text generated by AI;
• 59% said they are not comfortable with AI agents acting on their behalf;
• 57% said they use at least one premium AI tool; and
• 77% said entry level PR are overly reliant on AI and that’s causing them to miss learning the basics they’ll need to be successful.

The section on use cases – how PR is using AI was the most interesting. Below are the top AI use cases in PR:

• 86% use AI for editing and refinement;
• 76% use AI for research and insights;
• 74% use AI for writing and content creation;
• 68% use AI for strategy and planning;
• 51% use AI for administrative or operational tasks;
• 30% use AI for media list building and outreach;
• 19% use AI for measurement and reporting; and
• 19% use AI for creative asset production.

Comment: The quip that “You won’t be replaced by AI, but you might be replaced by someone using AI” has aged well. I believe a productive subject matter expert (SME) who uses AI effectively will improve their output by 1.25-1.5 times.

Why an SME? Because I think you have to have some knowledge and experience to know when AI is wrong. While it’s useful for brainstorming and summaries and the like, it does make a lot of mistakes. Inexperienced staff don’t have the wisdom yet to tell the difference.

While I believe most of the talk of replacing white-collar jobs is hyperbole, it is having an impact on entry-level jobs. And if those new to PR are relying on AI without going through the mental struggle of foundational learning, succession planning and promotions is going to get messy.

One last thought on AI: I never let AI write my first draft. I’ll use it to brainstorm beforehand – and suggest improvements after – but I want to maintain my core skills and persevere what makes my work unique.

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Read the full report from Muck Rack here – registration required. Or get some different takes on the findings here – no registration required.

3. State of Digital PR by BuzzStream

Buzzstream says it “interviewed 150+ digital PR professionals” for its 2026 “State of Digital PR Report.” Most respondents were based in the UK (57%), followed by the U.S. (29%).

The survey asked a broad range of electric questions. Below are a few of the findings that stood out to me:

• 75% said PR is more challenging today than a year ago;
• 65% said they do not use a press release distribution service;
• 64% said the biggest challenge with PR vendors is outdated media contacts;
• 55% follow up with a journalist once; another 33% do it twice;
• 51% said it takes 3-6 months for PR to produce results; and
• 26%, a plurality, said their top challenge was getting coverage.

It was the section on SEO that stood out to me the most. The majority, 86% of respondents, said PR builds backlinks. More than half (53%) said PR collaborates more closely with SEOs than any other function.

• The real kicker was the fact that 16% of PR respondents said they pay for backlinks!

Comment: Everyone in PR knows, or ought to know, that buying backlinks is like playing with fire. This 2007 era post from Google calls it “manipulating search engine rankings.”  If you get caught, and you will sooner or later, you risk being penalized and your online visibility will drop to zero. It’s very difficult to recover from such a penalty.

A better reason to avoid such scams is trust. Trust is hard to build, easy to lose, and we’re all starting from a deficit. At a fundamental level, businesses need people to believe what they say in order to be successful. Trust is disproportionately more valuable than a backlink.

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Read the full report from Buzzstream here – no registration required.

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The claims PR pros sometimes make of relationships with journalists are mostly BS; here’s what actually matters

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You’ve seen those listicles. The ones where a technology company lists “the top” or “the best” tools in any given industry.  The catch is they list their own tool – and usually at the top.

It’s self-aggrandizing and off-putting. Most people avoid talking to people who are full of themselves. That extends to businesses, too, and to the best of my knowledge, it’s still people who buy software.

Undoubtedly, this perception comes from my roots in PR.  Who would you trust more: the software company that says they are the best – or a customer review, analyst report or independent article that does? That’s the same classical distinction in approaches between PR and advertising.

Even so, we can understand why a company succumbs to the temptation to compile a listicle and slap its name at the top. Up until now, they’ve ranked in search, and more importantly to marketers, they get regurgitated by AI. In other words, when a user prompts AI for the best tools in a given category, such listicles are likely to rank.

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But that may well be changing, according to Search Engine Land, based on some quick evaluations by Amsive VP of SEO Strategy and Research Lily Ray. She analyzed websites that had dozens, or even hundreds in some cases, of these self-aggrandizing listicles and found that search traffic has dropped noticeably:

“In multiple cases, organic visibility dropped 30% to 50% within weeks. The losses were not domain-wide. They were concentrated in blog, guide, and tutorial subfolders.”

This will likely have an impact on AI search tools. For example, ChatGPT is reportedly reliant on Google search results to provide its own answers:

“Presumably, these drops in Google organic results will also impact visibility across other LLMs that leverage Google’s search results, which extends beyond Google’s ecosystem of AI search products like Gemini and AI Mode [and AI Overviews], but is also likely to include ChatGPT,” Ray wrote.

It wasn’t just the listicles that were getting hit, but other shady SEO practices intended to game search rankings:

“Self-promotional listicles likely weren’t the only factor impacting organic visibility. Many affected sites also showed signs of rapid content scaling, automation, aggressive year-based refreshes, and other tactics tied to algorithmic risk.”

In other words, what’s getting crushed is synthetic attempts to trick search engines, AI tools, and ultimately people. And that’s the way it ought to be. This was entirely predictable.

The secret to good marketing is that there are no shortcuts. Marketing is hard because distrust is the default mode of your target audience – because of tactics like self-aggrandizing listicles. It takes knowledge to understand the market, focus, effort, and trial and error over time.

It’s a fool’s errand to pursue cheap and cheerful tactics. Unfortunately, if the SEO games of the last 20 years are any indication, AI visibility is just the start of a whole new game of whac-a-mole.

On the other hand, the technology is advancing rapidly, so your chances of getting caught, penalized and being set back many months, is a real risk.

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B2B tech vendors that hide pricing may never make a prospect’s short list 

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B2B marketers are often tasked with creating content that the sales team can use to facilitate customer conversations.

This is often referred to as “sales enablement.” The idea is to pull together pieces that will help sales differentiate a product from competitors, hit uniform key messages and handle objections.

Ideally, it’s based on research, sales input and observation. It seems simple enough on the surface, but any seasoned B2B marketer who listens to sales calls knows it often goes awry in implementation.

Sales teams will hack out their own content and the messaging and quality can vary widely. This self-made content is sometimes called “shadow” sales or marketing collateral.

It slows down the buying cycle, as Shawn Casemore recently wrote for Sales & Marketing Management: Reduce sales closing times with better sales messaging.

He sets it up this way:

“A client who asked me to speak at their recent sales kickoff requested that I share insights into how to shorten their time to close. The client shared that the average time to close an opportunity was 30 to 90 days.”

The sales leadership attributed the problem to tactical sales actions such as these:

• “Not creating a sense of urgency in prospect calls”;
• “Delays in following up with prospects”;
• “Time wasted in attempting to craft a perfect response or presentation.”

The company commissioned Shawn to research the issue, since solving it could accelerate sales. He found the problem was quite different:

“For the most part, clients wanted to move forward much faster. However, they repeatedly found that the information they had researched in advance of speaking with sales did not align with the information shared by sales.”

We know B2B prospects research products well in advance of speaking with sales. The stuff a prospect will find in the research phase is created by marketing. It sets expectations.

Later, when prospects do speak with a member of the sales team and hear something completely different, they pump the brakes. It’s a natural reaction.

If sales is saying different things than the understanding a prospect gleaned in research, perhaps they didn’t understand the value like they thought they did. Or worse, the vendor is pulling a fast one on them.

Why sales ‘ignores’ marketing content

Forrester research analyst Peter Ostrow recently addressed this issue as well: “Why won’t sales pay attention to me?” – Four hacks to reduce enablement anxiety.

He calls it the “ignoring us” issue. It takes root at the very beginning because marketing is focused on getting it done, rather than solving the problem the sales team has:

“This ‘ignoring us’ issue arises when enablement efforts are not explicitly created and executed to serve sellers’ best interests but to satisfy production or activity goals from other functions.”

The way to fix this, according to Ostro is to focus on one key question:

“Are you creating something truly helpful?”

In other words, B2B marketing will have more success with sales enablement content if they: “view sales as an internal customer and follow the same rigor with which your external campaigns are delivered.”

High-performing salespeople can sell sales enablement

Nailing the “truly helpful” part is imperative, but there’s still a credibility gap. To put it bluntly, sales quota-carrying salespeople inherently discount recommendations from marketers that do not.

A fantastic study of B2B sales and marketing, that I covered a few years ago, provided keen insights. Importantly, this wasn’t a survey, but a study based on behavior.

The key finding was to have a high-performing salesperson present the materials rather than marketing. If a president’s club awardee is using sales enablement content with success, then the rest of the sales team will follow.

Among the key findings in that study were the following:

• “Using a high-performing seller to present new collateral increased the likelihood of use by 61% over a similar presentation made by the product specialist.”

• “Presenting new content with a case study or a demonstration increased likelihood of use by roughly 30% over basic information alone.”

• “When a high-performing seller presented new collateral with a demonstration, the likelihood of use increased by 111% over the least effective combination, which was a product specialist presenting only basic information.”

A high-performing salesperson will only present content they know works. So, this approach is also a good way to ensure the “truly helpful” is baked into sales enablement.

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How many touches or interactions does it take to attract and close B2B prospects?

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Cision, a public relations (PR) software vendor, polled 561 communications professionals from the U.S. and UK late last year. I’m not a fan of Cision’s software, or their business practices, however, I do think the survey provides a sound look at the challenges and opportunities facing PR in 2026.

This post provides a look at some of the highlights of the survey, along with my perspective of the findings.

1. Top priorities for PR in 2026

PR professionals who took the survey identified their top priorities as follows:

• 73% said brand awareness;
• 55% said driving sales/revenue; and
• 49% said PR Measurement and ROI.

Perspective: These findings jive with another survey I covered recently about B2B events and PR objectives. Indeed, building brand awareness is a natural objective for PR.

While a strong brand can facilitate sales, I’d caution communicators who work in B2B environments away from pinning hopes that PR will drive sales. It’s just not realistic.

Why? First, if it’s media relations, editors and reporters don’t want sales pitches; they want stories. If closing deals is your priority, then the copy you write is going to get salesy too. That’s unlikely to land a placement. If you can’t land placements, then you aren’t building a brand and you’ve got nothing to measure.

Second, I’ve written about a gazillion studies on these pages that show sales in B2B require convincing teams of buyers, not just one person. Here’s a summary of five of them.

That process takes several months, depending on the complexity of the technology and dozens of touches in an omnichannel environment. It’s a team effort and seeking a direct cause-and-effect of any single tactic is fruitless.

These studies mentioned all mirror my own observations over the course of 25 years working in B2B. PR can and should be aligned with sales. Brand awareness brings familiarity, which supports sales outreach and cold calls. Marketing and businesses should make meaningful use of the coverage that PR earns.

Those are important functions, but they are also supportive. Yes, every now and again, a deal closes and a new customer will credit a story – but those are few and far between. You should strive to collect those anecdotes but drop the bravado over driving sales.

Third, the media is highly fractured. Few news organizations today command the same size audience they did when I started out. Those days are gone. It takes a far greater effort to earn media today than it once did and the impact of any given placement isn’t what it once was.

2. The top challenges facing PR in 2026

Respondents to this survey identified the following as the top challenges communications professionals are facing:

• 60% said the changing media landscape;
• 58% said resource pressure;
• 50% said AI and automation;
• 38% said data-driven strategies;
• 25% said misinformation and disinformation risks; and
• 18% said influencer evolution.

Perspective: Many of these challenges are solvable. You can experiment with AI. You can gather data. Developing crisis plans to correct misinformation is just problem-solving. Budget constraints breed creativity. These challenges are never going to be resolved. The path to addressing them is professional development.

With respect to the media landscape, that’s the one factor that’s completely outside of PR’s control. The best way to address it is to create a site, blog, or newsletter that looks, feels and acts like the media. Report on your industry through your own unique lenses.

Some people call this brand journalism, others call it content marketing, I call essential. Running a blog like a site enables you to repurpose earned media, build relationships through content, attract backlinks and most importantly of all, to build a subscribed audience.

One of the biggest challenges in effective media relations is proving to a reporter that a story idea will be of interest to their audience. A subscribed audience is social proof.

There have been countless times in my career where a reporter declined a pitch, and I then turned it into a blog post that got traction – and led to coverage. In a couple of cases, it’s led to coverage in the same publication where the reporter had rejected my pitch.

None of this replaces foundational media relations work – it augments it. Yes, it’s a ton of extra work. It’s one more task on a to-do list that’s already very long, but it’s completely worth it. Content marketing, brand journalism, whatever euphemism you prefer, it makes your PR efforts more efficient and productive.

3. The top opportunities for PR in 2026

Communications professionals who answered this survey identified the following at the top opportunities this year:

• 48% said AI and automation to drive efficiency and insights;
• 39% said strengthening journalist and creator relationships;
• 32% said closer alignment with marketing and business strategy;
• 31% said data and analytics to demonstrate ROI and strategy;
• 29% said executive visibility and thought leadership; and
• 21% said partnering with influencers and advocates (including employees).

Perspective: These are all reasonable opportunities. There’s a lot of hyperbole around AI at the moment, but if we look past that, it is a useful tool in the hands of an experienced PR professional. In my observation, learning how to use AI and incorporating it into your daily work will turn 1 subject matter expert (SME) into 1.25 or 1.5 SMEs. That old notion that you won’t be replaced by AI, but you might be replaced by someone using it, I think, has aged very well.

The biggest catch in all this is for entry-level professionals. Companies are going to find they can get by with fewer junior employees. That’s going to have a substantial impact on the bench of talent and succession planning. It won’t be a problem until it’s a problem, so the entire industry needs to be thinking about how to manage this trend.

4. The top PR and comms use cases for AI

PR is using AI and respondents to this survey identified the following as the top use cases:

• 73% said brainstorming ideas, campaign concepts, or headlines;
• 68% said writing or refining press releases, pitches, or other content;
• 55% said researching topics, journalists, or trends;
• 36% said drafting or scheduling social media posts; and
• 30% said analyzing data or generating reports.

Perspective: The AI use cases I use most often are a) brainstorming, b) summarization of long-form content to see if it deserves a closer look, c) research. I’ve found AI is a good ‘sounding board,’ too. That’s incredibly valuable as a solo consultant. It’s rare that AI ever gives me an ‘answer,’ but the exchange often leads to new ideas to pursue.

Here are some of the prompts I’ll give to AI:

• What is John Doe’s email address?

• Identify reporters from XYZ publication who have covered ABC in the last six months.

• Has Jane Doe ever covered ABC topic?

• Summarize the key themes of John Doe’s coverage in the last year.

• Has Jane Doe ever spoken publicly about pitching preferences?

• Does XYZ publication report from a certain political perspective?

• For publications that publish OpEds, but do not have a dedicated opinion editor: who is the best contact to pitch an OpEd?

• What studies or surveys about XYZ trend have been published in the last year?

• Obviously, I also use generative AI to make custom images; it’s 1,000 times better than a stock image in my book.

That’s just a small sample I’ve pulled from my AI history in the last week. It’s just amazing to be able to ask AI for an answer, where previously, it would have taken 20 minutes of clicking around on a news site to find whatever it is I’m looking for.

A key consideration is that I always take AI answers as a suggestion that needs to be vetted. If it says a study was written, I ask for links and check out the identified study. If AI suggests a reporter to pitch, I review the masthead and reporting history to corroborate the suggestion.

Sometimes the suggestions are good, sometimes they are not, but in the long run, AI saves me a lot of time. The catch is you need to know the right questions to ask. That comes from work experience, which is why I find AI is an asset for SMEs, but it could be misleading for comms professionals without it.

The full report can be found here: Inside PR 2026 report.

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7 non-negotiable digital trust signals PR must use in this era of distrust

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“B2B buyers are changing how they search, shortlist, and select vendors.” That’s the high-level finding from a survey of 350 of them by Responsive.

A change in buying behavior is the key to watch.

The survey found:

“90% of buyers conduct research before first contact, and almost two-thirds are already using genAI [generative AI] tools as much as – or more than – traditional search.”

Among those buying software, the use of genAI is even more pronounced:

“In the technology and software industry, 80% of buyers now use genAI at least as much as traditional search, compared to 59% of buyers in other industries who say the same.”

Here’s how B2B buyer-respondents say, overall, they discover vendors who make products they are interested in procuring:

• 33% said web search;
• 33% said peer recommendations/word of mouth;
• 32% said generative AI chatbots;
• 24% said internal referrals;
• 22% said analyst reports;
• 21% said consultant/3rd-partyrecommendations;
• 20% said vendor outreach;
• 19% said online procurement platforms;
• 19% said directories or listings;
• 19% said industry events/trade shows;
• 19% said previous experience with vendor;
• 13% said 3rd-party resellers/marketplaces;
• 13% said social media/online communities; and
• 13% said business or trade media.

There are two important caveats to this list. First, business and trade media, which are at the bottom of this list, fuel web search, through links and mentions, word-of-mouth (‘hey, did you see this article?!” and studies show it’s a leading influence on generative AI.

How B2B buyers get to a short list

Buyers who use gen AI take their sweet time to research the vendors they find. Three-quarters (75%) of respondents said “discovery and market research” takes the longest.

Evaluation of those vendors trailed next, with 61%, as a time-intensive process. On average, the B2B buyers surveyed said they look at 7.6 vendors and whittle that down to 3.5 who make the short list.

Those 3.5 who make the short list are likely to receive an RFP. In this survey, “buyers say the RFP response is the most critical factor in their final decision.”

And RFP’s are a process that largely requires human intervention.

It takes a human touch to win an RFP

When prospects ask for an RFP, there’s usually a reason. Respondents in this survey said they issue an RFP when they are:

• Looking for better pricing (47%);
• Making a high-stakes decision (41%); or
• Demonstrating objectivity (39%).

Incumbents definitely have an advantage here: Six out of 10 (61%) of “buyers admit they start the process with a preferred vendor, but nearly half say they’re open to switching.”

However, the vast majority remain open to switching, even during the RFP process:

“…a strong performance can shift the outcome. 84% of buyers say the best vendor ultimately wins — even when one enters with an advantage.”

So, what actions can tip the balance during an RFP?

According to this survey:

• 81% said the RFP response;
• 78% said vendor presentations and demos;
• 77% said their own independent research;
• 75% said proof of concept;
• 57% said verbal/oral reviews or conversations; and
• 46% said informal responses from the sales team.

Of the six possible actions on that list, they all involve human engagement. Presentations, demonstrations, and conversations all require human involvement. As long as people are buying software, it’s going to also take people to sell it.

As the report on this survey puts it aptly:

“Even when a vendor enters with an edge, the door isn’t closed. Buyers still respond to what’s in front of them…”

Make sure that what you put in front of them is a human face.

I first learned of this survey in a piece from Digital Commerce 360: AI reshapes B2B buying, but RFPs still decide who wins. The full report can be downloaded here: Inside the buyer’s mind what shapes B2B decisions today.

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How many touches or interactions does it take to attract and close B2B prospects?

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