The way people discover information has forever changed.

Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek and Claude have gone from what was initially considered a novelty experience to a core part of the internet. According to a new study by Similarweb, Generative AI (GenAI) systems have progressed beyond just influencing how users start their journeys; they are now a core destination.

As we wrap up 2025, we’re seeing that it’s no longer a niche group of users leveraging AI; it’s a substantial share of netizens.

_{Image source: Similarweb}

AI adoption is increasing at a significant pace

So, how much has it grown? The 2025 Generative AI Landscape study shows growth across major engagement channels. Some key highlights include:

• A 76% increase in monthly visits to GenAI platforms year over year
• A 319% increase in LLM app downloads across the category
• Older audiences (45+) are the biggest drivers of this growth, growing 14% when other age groups have remained stable

_{Image source: Similarweb}

Another key insight: Traffic going to LLMs is rivaling social media numbers, with ChatGPT becoming the fifth most popular destination on the internet in the United States.

_{Image source: Similarweb}

B2B marketers see the benefits of AI

And those adoption numbers reinforce the need for brands to ensure they are represented in Gen AI.

Norwest recently partnered with Marketbridge to conduct their 3rd annual 2025 B2B Sales & Marketing Benchmark Report. Findings confirmed that marketers investing in AI Optimization say it is having a huge influence on performance. When we asked which AI-enabled use case had the most impact on their efforts, AI Search Optimization ranked second, with content and copy generation topping the list.

_{Image source: Norwest}

And this makes sense, you go to where your audience is.

The emerging risks

While the benefits are promising, there are also practical considerations to consider:

• Uncertain ROI: AI referral traffic is growing, but performance varies. Not every content type benefits equally.
• Operational overhead: Creating structured, machine-friendly content requires development time, quality assurance and continued monitoring.
• Crawl volatility: AI tools are aggressive crawlers. This can increase server load and create unpredictable logs if not monitored.
• Evolving standards: The AI ecosystem is still shifting. What works today may need adjustment within months.

These risks do not outweigh the opportunity, but they should be factored into infrastructure planning.

What does this mean for B2B brands and their content?

For B2B organizations looking to maintain visibility in this evolving landscape, understanding current LLM performance provides the best foundation for strategic action. When trying to improve performance in an LLM environment, auditing how and where your content currently appears in AI-generated responses gives brands actionable insights. Here are some key considerations:

For content owners

GenAI’s ability to discover new content hasn’t grown as quickly as its adoption. In fact, when LLMs search for sources, they use relatively simple technology and can miss significant parts of a brand’s message.

AI platforms prefer content that is well-structured and backed by clean code, so elements like schema markup, semantic HTML, and consistent authorship information matter when trying to gain GenAI visibility.

For social media

LLMs often have preferred social media sources, so you may see an over-index on Reddit, YouTube or LinkedIn when analyzing their citations. If your brand maintains a social presence, leverage all available optimization options on each respective platform to improve visibility, including strategic use of hashtags, descriptive titles and detailed descriptions.

The more structured and contextually rich your social content, the more likely it is to be surfaced by GenAI.

For PR

Authoritative spaces like news sites and well-known publications are often included as referenced sources for many LLMs, though the weight can vary by industry and platform. Having content published about your brand in these prioritized sources not only creates credible touchpoints for users but can also influence LLM responses.

Strategic media placement is now serving a dual purpose: reaching human audiences and training AI systems on your brand narrative.

Taking action

GenAI has become a structural part of how users access information. Organizations that take steps now to make themselves more AI-friendly will be better positioned as buyers continue to adopt usage.

While the exact impact is still evolving, the opportunity is significant and justifies investment. Brands that treat AI optimization as a strategic priority will maintain visibility in a landscape where Search and Social are no longer the only gateways to information.

The post Generative AI is becoming a core part of the internet appeared first on Marketbridge.

“Influ2 is so unique—it lets Marketing meet Sales where they need to be, with the right message, to the right buyer, at the right time.”

—Amy Grucela, SVP, Demand Strategy

Smaller teams. Tighter budgets. Higher stakes. Today’s GTM leaders are being asked to do more with less—and Marketbridge proves you don’t have to choose between precision and scale—or between data-driven results and meaningful human connection.

With Influ2, we built a smarter contact-level advertising framework—one that delivers real buyer signals, relevant ad journeys, and meaningful marketing moments that actually move pipeline for our clients.

The Challenge

We work across industries, verticals, and complex buying groups—but the challenge is always the same: smarter targeting in a world full of noise. Our goal is to help clients connect with the right people, show real impact, and make Sales’ job easier.

Traditional ABM tools were falling short. We needed something more precise to:

• Target specific stakeholders across client accounts
• Deliver contact-level engagement signals that sellers could act on
• Launch campaigns built to engage complex buying groups
• Seamlessly integrate with each client’s existing tech stack

“We needed to solve one of our clients’ biggest challenges—how to surgically target the right people,” says Amy Grucela, SVP, Demand Strategy at Marketbridge. “With Influ2, we know exactly who we’re reaching and who’s engaging.”

The Solution

A scalable framework that flexes and scales, we used Influ2 to build a repeatable, multi-layered approach to precision targeting—one that enabled us to meet each client’s needs without sacrificing efficiency or control.

Step 1: Strategy on Autopilot—(Almost)

With Influ2, we transform strategy into action—from persona mapping to real-time sales signals—enabling us to move fast without losing focus.

With Influ2 we can:

• Map buying committees and intent signals
• Sync dynamic contact lists into Influ2
• Launch persona and stage-based ad journeys
• Send real-time engagement data to Sales

Step 2: Content that Actually Feels Relevant

Forget the one-size-fits-none approach. We use Influ2 to deliver content that feels relevant—tailored to the buyer’s role, their stage in the journey, and how they engage over time.

We follow a clear structure to meet each persona with the right message at the right moment:

• Awareness: Problem-led messaging to drive familiarity
• Consideration: Role-specific product and solution content
• Decision: ROI-focused assets, case studies, and customer proof

“We design campaigns around specific personas and adapt the ad journey based on how each person engages over time,” says Bailey Creeden, Director, Media at Marketbridge. “It’s just like a nurture stream—but with ads.”

Step 3: Real-Time Sales Signals

When a CMO clicks three times in a week, Sales isn’t left guessing—they’re already reaching out. They get the full story in Salesforce, Slack, or HubSpot, so sellers always know who is active, what they clicked, and how to follow up.

“Sales gets notified instantly and knows exactly who to reach out to, what resonated, and how to steer the conversation,” says Maggie Forbush, Senior Specialist, Media at Marketbridge. “No other platform has given us that level of clarity.”

Step 4: Insights That Sharpen Your Strategy

With every campaign we run, Influ2 provides clear insights that clients actually want (yes, really). With the Influ2 Dashboard, we can analyze performance by account, campaign, and creative—and turn those insights into immediate strategy upgrades.

“The Influ2 dashboard is incredibly intuitive,” says Maggie Forbush, Senior Specialist, Media at Marketbridge. “It gives us clear contact, account, and campaign data our clients actually want—making it easy to show what’s working and where to go next.”

Key Takeaways

Today’s GTM teams don’t have time (or budget) to play the “maybe” game. You need to know who to talk to, when they’re ready, and what actually matters.

We cracked the code—turning strategy into action and giving Marketing and Sales the green light to move faster, work smarter, and stay perfectly in sync.

Here’s how we do it:

• Start with strategy → Define your ICP and target buyers
• Contact-level ad targeting → Reach real people, not just accounts
• Lead with relevance → Match content to persona and stage
• Enable Sales in real time → Deliver signals they can act on instantly
• Optimize continuously → Use insights to scale what works

“Influ2 acts as the bridge between our campaigns and our clients’ revenue teams,” says Amy Grucela, SVP, Demand Strategy at Marketbridge. “It connects marketing efforts directly to what Sales needs to move deals forward.”

The Results

For one standout client campaign, we set out to prove that contact-level advertising could do more than just reach the right people—it could drive real momentum through the funnel.

With Influ2, we achieved powerful results:

• 100% of late-stage deals had at least one engaged contact
• 41% faster deal velocity when contacts engaged with Influ2
• 6x more accounts entered active pipeline
• 19 engaged contacts per deal on average
• 85% more accounts moved into active engagement
• 10% of all target accounts converted to pipeline

For us, this campaign validated our approach: when you know exactly who you’re reaching and how they’re engaging, Sales can follow up with confidence and timing that actually drives results.

See Influ2’s full Marketbridge campaign spotlight here

“With Influ2, we’re not just running ads—we’re tracking impact and connecting the dots from click to close,” says Amy Grucela, SVP, Demand Strategy at Marketbridge. “It’s a complete view of how marketing drives revenue.”

The Conclusion

We elevated our go-to-market strategy with Influ2, replacing generic ABM tactics with a contact-level framework that delivered precision targeting, real-time buyer signals, and relevant ad journeys. By bridging the gap between marketing and sales, we scaled campaign impact without sacrificing personalization—leading to 6x more accounts in pipeline, a 41% increase in deal velocity, and a 94% boost in site engagement. With Influ2 powering our ad strategy, we turned insight into action and made contact-level advertising a growth engine for our clients.

The post Scaling contact-level ads with Influ2—Without losing the human touch appeared first on Marketbridge.

One of the (many) dimensions to consider is the allocation of dollars towards brand building vs. demand marketing investments. On the one hand, brand investment focuses on building awareness and reputation, while demand investments generate leads and drive sales. 

In our work with B2B enterprises, we typically see marketing budgets heavily weighted to demand. This is not surprising given the omnipresent pressure from the C-suite and sales for qualified leads and pipeline generation. Couple this expectation with the reality that it can be difficult to measure the effect and ROI of brand-focused investments, and demand marketing will win the budget bounty every time.

Despite these realities, what our marketing clients keenly understand—and a concept other organizational stakeholders need to grasp—is the unassailable continuum of brand TO demand. It is not brand OR demand, nor brand AND demand: It is that brand-focused investments and activities lead directly to the returns of demand-focused efforts.

How can marketers help convince the powers that be of the value of brand investments? By helping B2B leadership and sales better understand how their buyers buy. Consider this…

6sense recently surveyed 2,509 B2B buyers to analyze how and when purchase decisions are made and found:

• Buyers enter their purchase journey with a ‘day 1 shortlist.’ It turns out that this shortlist contains four out of the five vendors that will ultimately be evaluated.
• 95% of the time, buyers have prior experience with at least one of the vendors they’ll evaluate.
• Being on the day 1 shortlist matters with buyers ultimately choosing one of the first four vendors from the day 1 shortlist 85% of the time. (Or as Kerry Cunningham from 6sense puts it, “The truth is, all is not lost if you’re not on the day one short list… but 85% of all is lost!”)
• Buyers reach out late in their journeys. B2B buyers are nearly 70% through their purchasing process before connecting with sales.
• Buyers choose a winner early. In 81% of cases, buyers have chosen a preferred vendor before talking to sellers.

In addition, LinkedIn B2B Institute’s highly referenced statistic—that only 5% of your target market will be in an active purchase stage (or ‘in-market’) at any one point in time—all builds the case for marketing and, in particular, brand-building to ensure you’re on buyers’ ‘day 1 shortlists.’

Each of these stats underscores the critical importance of establishing your brand with buyers BEFORE targeting them with any demand marketing. Further, this data supports the fact that brand marketing is the direct on-ramp to successful demand generation.

What’s the ideal brand-to-demand budget balance?

While what constitutes ‘ideal’ does vary based on your organization’s unique situation, new ANA research previewed at a recent B2B event in NYC revealed most B2B leaders (75%) feel the ‘ideal’ Brand:Demand spend is an equal split, 50:50. Despite that, only 1 in 4 (23%) of marketers balance their budget in that way, with most (45%) running budgets that skew mostly towards demand.

While B2B marketers may still be challenged to put 50% of their budgets towards brand activities, how can they ensure their brand budgets work as hard as possible for them? Here are a few tips:

• Brand doesn’t have to equal broad: Think ICP, not TAM, and employ targeted media to minimize waste.
• Focus on creating brand affinity, not just awareness: This means your brand must connect with the buyers’ hearts and minds, a connection that starts with meaningful buyer insight.
• A head-snapping creative concept with a smaller media budget will deliver more brand ROI than a wah-wah concept with a larger media budget. (For tips on how to elevate your B2B creative, read this post by Executive Creative Director Michael Palmer.)
• Establish and nurture relationships with industry influencers to amplify your reach to relevant audiences. (For more on why influencing the influencers is particularly important for Millennial & Gen Z B2B buyers, read this post by SVP, Brand Strategy, Frances Ranger.)
• Punch above your weight by pursuing and promoting industry award wins and earned media coverage.

Bottom line: Brand investments really are demand investments. Don’t limit marketing’s success by underinvesting in the all-important front end of the brand-to-demand continuum.

Looking for more on this topic? From storytelling to ROI: Bring brand full circle

Crafting a brand that resonates is only half the equation—proving its impact is the other. The most effective marketers are getting both right: defining a clear, differentiated brand and measuring how that brand drives real business results. Explore how our creative and analytics teams have helped teams on both sides—from sharpening their positioning to quantifying brand impact.

The post Invest in your brand to drive demand appeared first on Marketbridge.

Since then, we’ve witnessed a B2B creative awakening of sorts (or so it feels). Even the Cannes Lions Awards recently launched a new B2B Creative category. But how far have we really come? Are most B2B ads pushing the creative limits further? Or are the widely celebrated recent spots from the likes of Workday, Amazon and Salesforce just isolated examples of highly creative (and big budget) advertising in B2B?

Unfortunately, follow-up new research from LinkedIn suggests we might not be as far along as we’d hoped.

In their latest 2024 study, “The B2B Renaissance,” LinkedIn reported that the majority of business decision makers remain underwhelmed by the B2B ads they encounter.

Despite stating that more creative ads would drive their interest and action, 64% of respondents said they rarely saw B2B ads with emotional appeal or humor. Similarly, 60% said ads lacked characters they could connect with, and 59% said ads failed to offer a unique perspective. Yikes!

So, B2B buyers are unimpressed by your ads. The cure? Be less boring. Be more memorable.

Easier said than done, I know. In an effort to lift the burden, here’s how you might raise the bar in your B2B ads (without necessarily breaking the budget):

Humor is surprisingly powerful in B2B advertising—even though B2B is often seen as all serious suits and spreadsheets. Here’s why humor works so well in that space:

• Cuts Through the Noise
  B2B audiences are bombarded with dry, technical, jargon-filled content. A well-placed joke or clever twist stands out and grabs attention.
  
• Humanizes the Brand
  Businesses don’t buy things—people do. Humor shows there’s a real, relatable human behind the brand, which builds trust and emotional connection.
  
• Boosts Memorability
  Funny ads are easier to remember. If you make someone laugh, they’re more likely to recall your brand later when they actually need your product or service.
  
• Encourages Sharing
  Humorous content gets shared more—even in professional circles. This can amplify reach without extra budget.
  
• Makes Complex Ideas Digestible
  B2B products can be complex or dry. Humor can simplify and make boring stuff fun, helping audiences understand your value proposition more easily.
  
• Differentiates in a Serious Market
  When competitors are all saying the same things in the same tone, humor makes your brand distinct and more likable.

So, how might you add a touch of funny to your ads? Great question—here’s how you might pull it off:

1. Start With Empathy
   Know your audience’s day-to-day struggles. Humor that taps into real pain points (“Ugh, another 43-tab spreadsheet.”) is gold. Think: “We know your procurement software feels like it was coded in 1996… because it was.” 

2. Use Smart, Situational Humor 
   Avoid slapstick or over-the-top silliness. Instead, go for wit, irony or exaggeration based on real business life. Examples: 
   • The endless Zoom meetings 
   • Office buzzwords (“Let’s circle back.”) 
   • “Mission-critical” tasks that are actually just moving files 

3. Play With Format 
   You don’t have to write just funny copy. Try: 
   • Funny charts with absurdly obvious insights 
   • Mock testimonials (“This changed my life—my inbox now has only 912 unread emails.”) 
   • Parody ads styled like something your audience already knows 
   • Video! Stats show video content helps drive better brand engagement.  

4. Personify the Problem (or the Product) 
   Give your tech or service a voice. Or make a dramatic villain out of the problem you solve. 
   • “Meet Tom. Tom is the spreadsheet that’s been running your operations since 2010. Tom has feelings. Unfortunately, ‘efficiency’ isn’t one of them.” 

5. Tone It Right 
   Balance is key. You can be playful without being unprofessional. Think of your brand voice like a smart, funny coworker—the one who makes meetings bearable but also knows their stuff. 

6. Avoid 
   • Inside jokes that are too niche (unless you’re 100% sure your audience gets it) 
   • Humor that could offend or feel like a punch-down 
   • Overuse—it should support your message, not overshadow it 

OK, you’ve got the big idea—but how do you pull it off in a time when budgets (and timelines) are shrinking? Well, we’ve leveraged AI in a few key ways to be our secret weapon for scaling big ideas without “Mad Men” budgets.

Everything from brainstorming and concept development to visual and video production and testing and optimization, AI has helped us scale effectively and efficiently.

But is that actually doable? Hell yeah! Check out our recent award-winning campaign for Chevron, where we brought humor and AI together and achieved some pretty amazing results.

Or there’s this campaign we created for BioCatch, which recently won a 2025 Communicator Award for AI Creative Integration—where we leveraged generative AI imagery and video to deliver outsized creative impact while keeping production nimble.

The line between B2B and B2C hasn’t just been blurred; it’s disappearing. By leveraging some of the tips above, you might just find your ads stand out from the crowd, help move the needle for your business and get some laughs along the way.

The post B2Be less boring. How to bring the funny to B2B creative. appeared first on Marketbridge.

BioCatch is a world-renowned leader in financial crime prevention powered by behavior biometric intelligence, which uses advanced analysis of a user’s physical and cognitive behavior to help banks protect consumers and their assets from fraud and cyberattacks. 

BioCatch’s marketing team faced a familiar challenge: a lack of actionable data. This made it difficult to effectively connect with their ideal audience using personalized, relevant messaging.

“We didn’t want to be on an ad platform where we were wasting even a penny showing ads to people who didn’t care or were not within our ICP,” said Jonathan Daly, CMO of BioCatch.

Past campaigns leaned on more traditional marketing tactics, often generating leads that didn’t align with their ideal customer profile (ICP). Without a way to clearly understand buying signals and real-time intent, resources were being drained without measurable ROI.

Solution: implementing 6sense

To address this, we helped BioCatch implement 6sense and build out an ABX strategy to use this data.

Our team designed a series of one-to-few and one-to-many campaigns, integrated a multi-touch framework, and established a robust reporting framework for tracking full-funnel performance.

We began by refining their ICPs and deploying 6sense’s Predictive Analytics to continuously optimize messaging based on customer behaviors and buying signals. This AI-driven capability provided visibility into where accounts were in their journey, enabling BioCatch to prioritize high-potential prospects.

6sense’s Intent Scoring added another layer of precision, giving the team the data they needed to focus efforts on the accounts most likely to convert based on prior engagement trends.

Outcome: a wildly successful pilot campaign

We rolled out a pilot initiative with a bold target: engage 553 global banks that had shown little to no previous interest, and move at least 60 into the active sales pipeline—all through an Account-Based Experience (ABX) strategy.

Using 6sense, we developed over 200 unique audience segments and ran personalized one-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many campaigns.

Over the course of six months, we launched highly tailored landing pages, ran full-funnel, multi-channel campaigns across 6sense Display Ads, LinkedIn, and Google, and synced our messaging to match where each account was in the buying cycle.

In total, we created over 450 creative assets and built over 10 landing pages. And after six months, the results were:  

• 5x increase in accounts in active pipeline stage  
• 6% of the full target account list moved into the pipeline stage since March  
• 63% increase in accounts in active engagement stage  

This initiative marked a turning point for BioCatch’s marketing strategy—transforming their approach from broad and traditional to data-driven and precision-targeted. By leveraging the power of 6sense and a deeply segmented ABX framework, BioCatch was able to focus its efforts where it mattered most, align closely with buyer intent, and drive measurable pipeline impact at scale. The success of this pilot not only proved the value of intent data and predictive insights but also laid a strong foundation for future growth.

The post Inside BioCatch’s ABX strategy that targets the world’s largest banks appeared first on Marketbridge.

Seems like only yesterday that pundits were yakking about the rise of millennials and how it would affect business culture. Those Millennials are now well into their careers and rapidly entering middle age. (I’m sorry, Millennials, but it’s true. You can switch to wearing taller socks but time marches on regardless.)

People born in or near the 2000s are the new kids in town, and this Gen Z wave is changing the game for B2B marketers once again.

The buying group is even bigger than you think.

Forrester predicts, “As the Millennial and Generation Z buyer cohorts increasingly drive purchases, they will rely on external sources — including their value network — to help make their decisions.”

A few related stats to mull:

• 6sense reports that nearly three-quarters (72%) of buying teams now hire consultants or analysts to help with purchasing decisions.
• Among younger buyers who responded to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2024, 30% indicated that 10 or more people outside their organization are involved in purchase decisions.
• Not surprisingly, word-of-mouth recommendations still carry the highest weight, with 73% of buyers ranking it as their most trusted source (Wynter).

So, what does that mean for B2B marketers?

Just as we’ve gotten our heads around using account-targeted campaign and media strategy to reach multiple members of the buying group, we must expand our understanding of the audience. We need to reach more broadly to influencers outside of the target organization –– without becoming scattershot.

And where do you start?

1. Continue to invest in your social presence

Social media has become a top source of information across B2B buyers regardless of age (PR News). As more and more “social media natives” get into decision-making roles, its influence will only grow. My LinkedIn scroll is already replete with memes and personal stories, and yours probably is too. The divide between personal and professional social media is getting thin (LinkedIn). You may want to consider expanding your brand’s presence on social channels that have traditionally been thought of as more personal if you have the resources, savvy and determination to support them.

Even if you’re not actively publishing widely, you should be listening widely. Keep digital ears open across social platforms, online communities and industry forums. Conversations are happening in these channels and consideration sets are being formed –– whether you’re part of them or not.

2. Influence the influencers

“Influencers” are not just for aspirational lifestyle brands. They’re part of the value network for B2B buyers too. Identify who has credibility and clout, engage them, and look for opportunities to partner with them.

More and more of our clients are getting serious about their influencer strategy, and it’s about time. Chevron Lubricants has been effectively working with influencers for years, most recently with Bryan Furnace, a heavy equipment operator, content creator and the host of Equipment World’s weekly video show, The Dirt. He’s got the expertise, experience and street cred (worksite cred?) to discuss oil technology claims and benefits with authority. (Chevron’s work in this area recently won them a 2025 B2BMX Killer Content Award for “Best Influencer Marketing”. You can see their award-winning video series with Bryan here.)

3. Authenticity still matters

Consider how you might enable and encourage customers to share honest reviews about your services or solutions. It may feel risky, but it’s a strategy that pays off in increased visibility and credibility.

Reviews help you get found. Great reviews are social proof that speaks for itself. Not-so-great reviews give you the opportunity to authentically engage and repair. How you show up in moments of challenge has enormous influence on the perception of your brand. The “Service Recovery Paradox” has been observed for decades – that is, brands that respond to challenges transparently, quickly and with meaningful action may be perceived more favorably than if no problem had occurred in the first place (Wikipedia).

4. Be sharable

While the idea of a B2B campaign going viral may sound unlikely – at least before Workday’s delightful “Rock Star” spots – it’s a worthwhile ambition. Especially when you use “viral” to mean “gets shared among target audiences.” Sure, you could take a cheeky, entertaining (and costly!) approach like Workday did, but there are other ways to create experiences that are worthy of being shared amongst value networks and by influencers.

What is your brand expert on? What do you care deeply about? What causes or ideas do you want to be associated with? Answer the same questions about your target audiences. Draw your Venn diagram and start in the areas of overlap as a jumping off point for ideation. Maybe there’s content you can create, a learning opportunity you could sponsor, or a contest or event or handy-dandy calculator or tool.

5. Learn about – and from – your audience

Look around your organization. I bet there are at least a few Gen Zs, and I know it’s bursting with Millennials. Tap into your own team for insight. How they make significant purchase decisions in their personal lives may reflect how they’d want to approach business buying. Extensive online research, reaching out to friend and family networks for opinions – almost certainly ducking the salesperson until they have already decided to buy. Ask: how can you reduce friction from your processes and get ahead of theirs?

In B2B marketing, strengthening your brand and accelerating demand go hand-in-hand. (Yikes. Do I leave the corny rhyme? Yes, I do.) They should be thought of as deeply interconnected marketing motions serving the same ultimate goals – build interest, build trust, build results.

There you go. One new generation, three major shifts in the landscape, and five things B2B marketers should be thinking about now.

The post 5 ways to adapt your strategy for Millennial & Gen Z B2B buyers appeared first on Marketbridge.

But while its impact is undeniable, adoption is still in its early stages. The question is: will you take the lead or risk falling behind? In 2025, leaders must move beyond exploration and take decisive action.

What to do in 2025? Take action to explore and embrace AI’s potential to help Sales & Marketing be more efficient and effective.

Our new research and recently released whitepaper “The impact of AI on Go-to-Market strategies, programs, and investments”, outlines several key action items for Sales & Marketing leaders to embrace, as summarized by Forbes:

1. Identify Areas of Emerging Growth. The increased demand for AI-enabled solutions creates opportunities for new revenue streams. It’s critical for GTM leaders to identify areas with the most potential for growth and invest accordingly.
2. Recognize Changing Buyer Needs. As buyer behavior shifts, closely track changes in that behavior to guide strategies around customer targeting, promotion timing, support tactics and more.
3. Reinvent New Routes to Market. Disruptive technology like AI will create new expectations from customers about how they want to engage with vendors. Organizations will need to rethink their strategies to meet those expectations and optimize their distribution channels.
4. Reimagine the Jobs AI Won’t Do. With AI handling routine tasks, teams can refocus on higher-value activities that drive growth, encouraging a more strategic use of human resources. Successful companies will identify jobs with the highest potential and redesign AI-enabled workflows to support them.
5. Take a Unique Approach to AI Solutions. It’s not enough to offer innovative AI solutions. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, companies must match their unique value propositions with AI, making it clear how they differ from competitors. That enables crisp positioning that makes the value clear to your audiences.
6. Activate New High-Performing Sales Motions. Effective activation is the key to driving value from new AI strategies. Marketing and sales leaders will need to work together on creating demand generation campaigns, account-based marketing (ABM) programs and sales motions to build the pipeline.

As AI continues to reshape sales and marketing, now is the time for leaders to take proactive steps toward adoption. The opportunity to drive efficiency, enhance personalization, and unlock new revenue streams is too significant to ignore. Organizations that embrace AI’s potential will gain a competitive edge by identifying growth areas, adapting to evolving buyer behaviors, and reimagining go-to-market strategies.

As highlighted in our latest research, success will depend on integrating AI in ways that enhance—not replace—human expertise. The future of Sales and Marketing is AI-powered, and those who act now will be best positioned to lead the way.

Download our report, “The impact of AI on Go-to-Market strategies, programs, and investments”​

Download

The post The rise of AI for marketing & sales appeared first on Marketbridge.

But AI isn’t just driving a seismic shift in how marketers and sellers get things done. It’s also fundamentally shifting how B2B buyers get answers to key buying questions, find and consider potential providers and conduct research on them faster.

Now, you might be thinking this adoption trend might just be for younger B2B decision makers (see trend #4). But you’d be wrong. Buyers’ shift to generative AI (GenAI) over standard web search engines is fast becoming universal across all B2B buyers. Get this: Since ChatGPT was first introduced just a few years ago, 89% of B2B buyers now use GenAI as one of the top sources of self-guided information in every phase of their buying process (source: Forrester, 2024 B2B Buyers Journey Survey).

The question is, do your marketing efforts reflect this shift? Do you know how tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini represent your brand in relevant results generated? Are you taking steps to ensure your brand is being found and is showing up in the right way?

What to do in 2025? Don’t get caught off guard—time to integrate Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) into your SEO strategy.

This change in buyer behavior is moving fast, so put simply, it’s (past) time to start getting more proactive when it comes to managing your brand for AI-generated search results. To do so, consider these five tips:

1. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) focuses on clear, direct answers within comprehensive and context-rich content to address user queries. Format your on-page content accordingly.
2. When stuck, just ask AI. Utilize LLMs to review and critique your on-page optimizations as well as test or simulate user query response.
3. While Search AI results can be tough to track, Google AI Overviews (via tools like SEMRush) can provide insight into how well other LLMs are indexing your work.
4. Ensure GEO and AI search strategies work in tandem with brand building campaigns, as GEO relies on strong, authoritative brands, backlinks, and user engagement, just as much as traditional SEO.
5. Review your existing organic strategy. Ask your agency, is GEO part of it and how are you optimizing towards it?

The rise of generative AI is transforming how businesses connect with and influence their audiences. As buyer behavior evolves, so must our strategies, ensuring we adapt to new technologies and meet buyers where they are. Success in this new landscape requires proactive engagement, thoughtful innovation, and a commitment to staying ahead of the curve.

Want to learn more from William Crane? Follow him on LinkedIn!

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A CMO’s to-do list continues to expand. Generate leads and sales, navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape, maximize share of voice, optimize media, and continue to innovate to beat the competition, all while delivering a great experience online and offline by leveraging the latest technology (while also ensuring it integrates with existing MarTech).

In addition to that ever-expanding purview is increased competition everywhere. So it’s no surprise to see that CMO tenure remains at its lowest level in more than a decade, according to the Wall Street Journal. Success isn’t a given and CMOs face an uphill battle to justify budget and prove results.

Where do many CMOs turn when they need to demonstrate marketing’s effectiveness? Lead generation campaigns. Due to an inherent focus on measurability and ROI, lead-gen is a natural fit. However, that hyper-focus can lead to short-term gains at the expense of long-term results.

We’ve identified four common mistakes busy CMOs and their teams make that hinder lead gen performance. Is your team suffering from these problems?

1. Can’t See the Forest for the Trees
2. Over Segmentation
3. Not Testing Enough
4. Forgetting to Review Lead Generation Campaigns Holistically

Mistake #1: Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

Marketing teams can get so focused on tactics (A/B testing and tactic-level optimizations especially) that cross-media performance becomes an afterthought. Often marketing develops expertise by media channel and those individuals focus on that media alone—but who is reviewing how the media are working together? Are those individuals talking to each other regularly to identify cross-media trends (such as messaging that resonates with a particular audience)?

In extremely competitive industries, creative and messaging often become similar across all competitors. Rather than breaking through the clutter, each new creative test brings more sameness: same CTA, same value proposition, same visuals. When did you last audit your creative and messaging and compare value propositions and CTAs to your competitors?

Or maybe your organization is one that has historically focused on marketing activity. The number of content pieces developed, social media followers gained, or emails sent is not important if you aren’t able to tie that to marketing and business outcomes. Helping team members shift their mindset to be more strategic and focused on business outcomes can be a full-time job.

Mistake #2: Over Segmentation

How many segments are you targeting today? Is it the same across all media? Often audience segments sub-divide for a specific marketing tactic or campaign, and then these new sub-segments become the norm. Or sometimes segments are developed for a specific use case. However running an ever-expanding list of segments across marketing is inefficient, when really, most segments are based on the same factors.

In lead generation campaigns, creating messages specific to increasingly niche audience segments adds complexity across the buyer journey and narrows the funnel. You’ll be missing potential leads who don’t respond to the niche messaging while also driving smaller audience sub-segments that may not convert at the same rate as the larger established segments. The consumer experience can be personalized and adapted without over-segmenting and sacrificing the strategy.

Mistake #3: Not Testing Enough

Marketing needs to take risks to stay ahead of the competition and continue to drive strong results. Is your organization following the 70/20/10 rule?

Seventy percent of the budget focused on proven results, 20% focused on new promising areas, and 10% on brand new ideas.

Unfortunately, many Marketing teams focus too much on tactical tests: A/B testing minute changes on messaging, media, or segment. These optimizations are lower risk and easier to measure, but without some larger risks, how will your organization find areas of growth? Top teams test new audiences, new media, and completely new innovations, all while partnering closely with analytics to ensure tests are measurable and reproducible. What big bets has your organization made recently?

Mistake #4: Forgetting to Review Lead Generation Campaigns Holistically

The team is conducting daily media optimizations and testing regularly, but ROI is getting worse. Even if performance is flat, nearly one-third of marketers say generating more leads is a top priority (Hubspot). With pressure to improve performance, short-term gains are prioritized, which can lead to worse long-term performance.

Even if you’re doing everything right, an organization’s maniacal focus on measurability and ROI can lead to a bias for lead generation investment and other lower-funnel activities.

Top Marketing teams conduct holistic campaign assessments every few years to understand overall performance trends, identify where strategy may have unintentionally drifted and diagnose issues driving performance decline.

How to Fix Common Lead Generation Mistakes

If your organization is struggling with declining ROI or worse lead generation performance, you’re not alone. Often campaigns reach a point where optimizations have little impact and returns continue to decline.

That’s why we’ve created a 4-step approach to help Marketing teams evaluate lead generation campaigns for long-term success.

Download our framework, “Evaluating Lead Generation Campaigns for Long-Term Success”​

Download the framework, where we share four core steps to help marketing teams combat the natural decline of lead generation campaigns over time and strategy shift.

Download

The post 4 lead generation mistakes CMOs (and their teams) make appeared first on Marketbridge.