Name: The messy middle: How B2B buyers actually discover and decide today
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T18:01:08.009Z
Duration: 46 min 4 s
Description: The messy middle: How B2B buyers actually discover and decide today

Transcript for "The messy middle: How B2B buyers actually discover and decide today": Hi, everyone. I'm Brooke Spath. I lead our customer marketing team here at SurveyMonkey, and I am so excited to host this session, the messy middle. This is really meant to be a discussion on how buyers are making buying decisions today. But before we dive in, of course, just a few housekeeping items. First, we're recording today's session, so we'll send you a link out to everyone afterwards. And we're also saving time at the end for your questions, so please drop them into the q and a panel as we go. And finally, I really do wanna hear from you during this discussion as well, so keep an eye out for a few live polls popping up along the way. I'm so excited to be joined by two amazing peers who know all about today's complicated buyer journey. First, we have Palmer Houchins, the VP of marketing at g two, and Derek Yueh, the partner lead for the b to b institute at LinkedIn. Thank you both so much for being here. Thanks for having us, Brooke. Yeah. Yes. I'm excited. So excited. I wanted to kinda kick us off with a bit of a lighter question. I wanted to ask what's a great b to b campaign or ad or email or video really anything that you've seen recently that you've absolutely loved. And I know I kinda threw this question at you unprompted. So how about I'll get us started while you guys are thinking? The first thing that comes to mind for me is Canva. I personally love Canva, and I love how thoughtfully they use marketing campaigns to tap into us on nondesigners out there. They really use video and email to get my attention because they know we, as marketers, are always feeling strapped on creative resources. And I don't know about you guys, but we just wish we had the skills of an experienced designer, but sadly, we do not. Right? So Canva is always assuring me that I too can make these beautiful designs with their product, and I love it, and I feel so seen. So that's the one that really pops out at me. What about you? Palmer, let's start with you. What great b to b campaign has caught your attention recently? Sure. Well, I I love the work Canvas is doing, but and I have half of mine to say, you know, in the era that we live in, sort of OpenAI versus Anthropic is becoming the Coke versus Pepsi in terms of a a taste test there, but I'll I'll let that one fall on the consumer side. From a from a b to b perspective, there was one campaign last year that I just loved, and it wasn't even targeted towards me. It was just one that the execution I found so great. So Spotify ran a campaign called Spreadbeats that essentially was targeted at, like, media planners, and it it was all built around a spreadsheet, which we know from folks who work in media. They're just like they live in that day in and day out. And Spotify used some really great kind of data storytelling and a really awesome interactive kind of creative element where you could essentially build a a song and a music video based off the inputs that you put into that that spreadsheet. And I just from a b to b perspective, I just loved it. It was so targeted at such a specific ICP, but also used amazing data storytelling and was just super creative and fun to look at. So that's one I'm gonna be thinking about for a long time. Oh, I like that. Spotify does a really good job of using their data with the wraps at the end of the year and everything there too, but that's a really interesting case study. I like that a lot. Derek, what about you? What caught your attention recently? Yeah. That the campaign that came to mind first when you asked this question was rippling Super Bowl spot with Tim Robinson. I think, like, your mileage may vary on his type of humor, but I think, like, the moment you see his face on screen, you know that the ad is gonna spiral into something really absurd. For those of you who haven't seen it before, he's, like, basically just trying to execute this grand world domination plan. But, like, he keeps on getting derailed at every single step by these very, like, mundane business problems, like onboarding delays or payroll issues. And it's like all the operational friction that Rippling's trying to solve for. And I like it a lot because I think it pulls off one of the hardest things for b to b ads to do, which is not only translate a customer pain point into something that's not just tangible and funny, but also something that's memorable in the right buying context. I'm really glad that you brought up the Rippling's ad because you probably saw me laughing. But first, I love Tim Robinson, and that ad really had me laughing. It caught my attention, first of all, because, yeah, you see his face and you're like, something's gonna go right here. Right? But also, you know, poking fun at the onboarding pain points, it was it caught me. It had me rolling. It was such a good example for you and our audience. Put it in the chat if you saw that ad or if there's something that's caught your attention recently as well. Personally, I just think it's so refreshing to see campaigns that are actually breaking through the noise, especially because we all know how incredibly hard it is to capture a buyer's attention right now. And the reality is is that buyers are getting better at and better at essentially tuning us out until they are ready to hear us. And they actually lead perfectly into our first main topic today. I wanna start with one of the biggest blind spots in b to b marketing today. And we talk about the messy middle as a challenge for brands, but for buyers, it's really a mechanism to avoid talking to us, to avoid sales pitches. I'm envisioning all the emails that are probably hitting my inbox right now that I'm gonna immediately send to trash. Right? My phone is probably gonna start ringing any minute now with another, you know, company trying to convince me to do a demo that I need their product. You guys can probably all relate. But we've known for years that buyers really prefer to do their own research before raising their hands. We actually did a recent study here at SurveyMonkey on b to b buying, and it showed that that behavior that I'm talking about is actually larger than ever. We found that 83% of b to b decision makers are doing their own research before even talking to sales groups. So 83%. Like, this number keeps growing. Right? And nearly a third spend several weeks just in that research phase. And so we know there's many ways now to influence buyers indirectly, you know, way going way beyond our inboxes or trade shows. So my question to you is, based on what you're seeing at g two and LinkedIn, what is that one invisible touch point that is really carrying weight today? And, Palmer, I wanna start with you. Yeah. Thanks, Brooke. And and I I literally just had to go put my phone on on focus mode so that I didn't get any more of those spam calls of someone trying to to reach you. But I I digress. So I I think the the biggest sort of invisible touch point today is whether you show up credibly inside AI generated answers. It it really boils down to that. I think b to b buyers are forming opinions before they ever touch your website or talk to sales or or give you an opportunity to go shape that narrative. They don't want it just a list of blue links to to click through and research. They want the answer to their question. They wanna know what's right for them for them at the moment. So they they turn to AI to get that. We have a new report coming out about AI search next month. Shows that 51 of b to b software buyers start with AI before they go anywhere else. So it's really becoming sort of a a a lifeblood of of that that that kind of buying process. It saves time, and it just feels more productive than the traditional Google search. So we're certainly not talking about fringe behavior anymore. Like, this is, like, this is what the mainstream in terms of b to b buying. I I think the bigger shift here is that AI isn't just speeding up research. It's shaping who gets considered from the first prompt. So more than half of the buyers we pulled said AI influences which vendors make their shortlist, and one third purchased from a vendor they'd never heard of before simply because it was what the AI, the AI recommended. So I that's a little bit scary. It's a big change, but we we see that influence is just growing. So, again, I go back to you have to show up credibly in those answers, and, you know, you may not even get on that shortlist if you're not there is is what we're seeing. Buyers are constantly using AI to build that. So it does feel a little bit like a black box, but AI chatbots are the number one external source influencing buyer shortlist. And we we do see we'll talk a little bit more about this. But review sites, peer recommendations, there's other ways that you can influence that. But I think AI runs on trust, and it's all about building trust at scale so you can kinda get discovered there. Yeah. Your point that AI runs on trust and you hearing you say that 51% of buyers are starting there. Like, I knew that number would be high, but 51% is a lot. And so people are starting there instead of Google, and that's a huge wake up call for us. Right? It really proves that our overall brand health is more critical than ever. So if we aren't seeding the market with trustworthy information and reviews, right, we won't even make it into those AI generated shortlist that you're mentioning. Derek, what about you? What's that one invisible touch point that is carrying weight today? Yeah. I think Palmer is absolutely right. Like, AEO, GEO is, like, the number one topic that all our clients are asking us about. And, you know, I think I'd even zoom it out one step further because, you know, getting your brand and your content cited by AI and these LLMs is really, I think, the newest iteration of something that's always been fundamental to the buying journey, but has also been fairly opaque to marketers. And it's this concept of secondhand exposure, right, where your content isn't encountered directly, but it shows up somewhere else. So, for example, think of your LinkedIn post that gets screenshotted and dropped into a Teams chat or your LinkedIn article that gets forwarded as an email. You know, my argument is that, you know, getting your brand cited by AI is really kind of like the same mechanism but at scale. Right? You know, before, a person might manually cite your content by screenshotting it, and now AI can do that automatically. So if you agree with that premise, then my other argument is that, you know, AI isn't inventing a new kind of influence. It might just be aggregating and amplifying the influence that was already happening, off the platform, which means that, you know, the marketing fundamentals still hold. Right? They don't really change. Like, the same two things that made content screenshot worthy is the same two things that make something citable by LLMs. So number one, it's like number one, like, content that's worth citing is important. And number two, and I think this one gets overlooked a lot, is, like, making sure your content is on a canvas where the content can be discovered and reused by these LLMs. Because I think it's important for marketers to choose those canvases that gives their content the structure and substance for it to travel. I think it's probably massively underestimated, underestimated, this type of influence, only because it's really hard to measure. I can't count how many times I've seen screenshots of my LinkedIn posts, like, circulate in emails, especially, like, from people who I know haven't actively or publicly engaged from my post, which is great. You know? I'm thankful for the support, but I would've liked the like even more. Hitting the button costs nothing to them, but it's worth everything to my ego. But, all jokes aside, I think it means, like, the job of content shifts. Right? It's not just how do I get seen. It's also, like, how do I get used? It's not just would someone click on this piece of content. It's, like, would someone send this piece of content to their boss? Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, so true. Right? That screenshot effect is so real, and I completely hear you on, like, can you just do the like? Like, I need that little ego boost on LinkedIn. But, you know, ultimately, your question is, would someone send this to their boss? Is is kind of the perfect filter to put this through, and it really illustrates that marketing influence happens so far before we see attribution. And we can't always track, like, a screenshot it to your point in a private Teams chat, but we also know it's helping to close deals. And, ultimately, both of those invisible touch points highlights this immense power of, you know I mean, customer marketing, so customer advocates. Right? So whether a buyer is promoting an LLM or they're dropping a screenshot in an email, they're looking for that pure validation, and your loudest and your happiest customers are out there creating this trust for us and those artifacts long before sales even knows that that person's a prospect. And this is that messy middle we're talking about. And since we're talking about how buyers do their research behind the scenes, I wanna turn the mirror onto the audience here for just a second. Let's see how this group actually behaves when you are in the buyer's seat. So we're gonna push a quick poll live right now. You should see it on your screen. And the question is, what channels do you use to check if a brand is trustworthy? When you need the real scoop on a company, like, where are you going? Are you going to peer review sites, you know, giving Palmer's team some love at g two, or are you scrolling LinkedIn or social media? Are you asking peers? Are you going to Slack communities? Or is it something else entirely? And if you do choose other, drop your secret sauce in the chat because we are genuinely curious. And while we're responding, let's actually hear from our panel as well. And, Palmer, I'd love to hear your thoughts first. Yeah. I I think the biggest shift is that buyers don't really go to one channel for for this anymore. It's that that linear journey has just totally kinda broken down. And and what I see is more of a a triangulation between sort of AI answers, review sites like g two, community forums like Reddit, you know, social areas like like LinkedIn where you can dive in, or even kind of Slack groups that I'm in with with with my peers. So I I I think if that story shows up in multiple places, like, that's gonna be the strongest signal for you as a as a vendor. I I think with review sites specifically, we've been become become an important part of that conversation. It's not just another channel for buyers to check at the end. Kinda we're part of this what what we think of as a trust layer between kind of the the buyer and the AI itself. Like, we we have verified reviews. We we use LinkedIn verification for folks to to confirm their identity when they're putting a review on g two. So both buyers and AI can know they they can trust the feedback that's here. This is someone who's actually using the product. So, in our in our most recent research, 45 of, buyers said citations from review sites are the most confident kind of confidence inspiring signal that they get in an a an AI recommendation. So when something feels off, they kinda go looking for those receipts. One in four will specifically seek out peer reviews from a source like g two when AI conflicts with, like, a brand they already maybe had in their mind and wanted wanted it validated or invalidated. So I I think it is it's a bit of that triangulation that we're seeing happen. I love I love that concept of triangulation, Palmer, because, you know, buyers aren't just taking one source at face value anymore. Like you said, they want the receipts. They wanna see that that same story is being validated across multiple channels. When you were saying that, an actual quick personal story came to mind. My wife and I have been spending weeks now trying to buy an electric bike. I don't know if any of you I mean, this can be kind of a spendy purchase, so we wanted to do our research. And we wanted to get the best dang electric bike out there. Right? So we actually did. We went and looked at ratings. We asked our friends and our community, and we even went in to chat GPT and asked what bikes we should be considering. So I guess without even knowing it, I was doing triangulation for this purchase. Derek, what about you? What channels do you use to check if a brand is, you know, trustworthy? Yeah. I think, like, to build on Palmer's point and maybe take the question in a slightly different direction, I find the concept of trust very fascinating on a cognitive level because I think the exact same signal can land completely differently depending on, like, what the buyer already believes. So, like, for example, a 4.4 rating on g two can mean two completely different things to two different buyers. Right? So, for example, if I already like the brand and it's on my day one shortlist, I'm like, great. That 4.4 checks out. That's great. But if I don't, it's like, you know, what's going on there? And I think, you know, it's an example of how the human brain is really tricky because it's subject to this phenomenon that we call selective processes, right, where our preconceived notions determine what sources we pay attention to, how favorably we interpret those sources, and ultimately, how likely we are to remember those sources. So I think the question of a lot of marketers have to answer is, like, you know, are you only showing up for buyers when they are kinda double checking their gut instincts, or are you actively shaping what they trust before they do the double check? That's such a good point. Be about shaping trust before they check. Because, you know, what we're really kinda talking about is this, like, confirmation bias. Right? Like, when they go and look at that 4.4 rating, trying to win them over, it could already be too late because their preconceived notions have made that decision for them. You know, they probably spent the last three months hearing nothing but great things from their peers in some private Slack channel. They look at 4.4, and they're like, this is a winning score. But if they haven't heard of you or they've heard mixed reviews, that exact 4.4 could look like a risk. That's a really interesting point. And it just kinda proves that our jobs as marketers, our job is to seed those private channels with happy customer voices so that by the time that prospect hits the review site, they're just looking for a reason to say yes, and that four. point four is gonna be glowing for them. Let's look at what our audience said to this poll. No surprise. The number one voted was asking peers or colleagues. So this kind of perfectly aligns with what we're talking about, that it's incredibly clear that buyers trust peer validation way more than they trust what we are saying about ourselves. Those real buying decisions are being shaped in those private channels, whether they're triangulating on review platforms or maybe going to their professional networks or asking, you know, questions in private, like LinkedIn communities. It's really about humans talking to humans. Right? Which I think actually brings up a really interesting tension because and this this is our second big discussion point, so this is all coming together nicely. But how does human to human validation survive the rise of AI? In our, AI sentiment study, we found that Americans who use AI daily or weekly, 43% are applying it at work. So that's about half of our workers, which honestly isn't a shocking statistic. I think we would expect that. But we know that buyers are now using AI tools to summarize the reviews, to compare the features, to draft shortlist, like my bike example earlier. You know, what should I be looking at? And at the same time, we're seeing more reliance on peer input and community validation. So our research found that 73 of decision makers trusted peer insights or online communities over all other sources of information. We see this in our poll too. Before we hear from our experts, I wanna get another pulse from our audience. So we're pushing our second poll live right now. The question is, do you think AI is making human validation more or less important in the early buying stages? So your options are more, less, or maybe somewhere in between. So go ahead and lock in your votes. And while those answers are rolling in, let's turn to our panel. Palmer, let's start with you. Is AI making human validation more or less important in the discovery phase? Great question. And my view is that AI is making human validation more important, not less. It's speeding up research, but it's not eliminating the need for proof. I I think we've we've probably all heard the phrase human in the loop more in the AI era than we ever did before, and I think that's certainly true. Buyers are are using AI to get to an answer faster to summarize, compare, or kind of winnow down the field, but they still wanna know that that answer is grounded in something credible or real. So the role of human validation hasn't gone away. It's actually just moved earlier in the journey. Buyers are validating while AI is shaping their thinking, not just at the very end. That's where review content and social proof become really, really important. So in some ways, it's just raise the stakes on trust because buyers are making judgments earlier, usually before they've even engaged with a vendor or a salesperson. The the key I think the key shift for marketers to know is that human validation is no longer just something that happens after interest is created that you've got some some signal you can action. It's just part of how interest is getting created in the first place. So the question is really about whether an AI generated impression is being reinforced by real proof from real users. I think only a human can provide that, so you still need that human context. Yeah. Not to influence you, Derek, but I do completely agree with Palmer here that, you know, that idea from human validation has moved from you know, we kinda thought about it as our final check checkbox at the end of the journey, which is now really at the very beginning of the discovery phase, and it's a massive shift for us. We can't really treat that social proof as just a closing tactic anymore. But, Derek, I know you have some strong feelings about this human element here. So what's your take on this? Yeah. My perspective, and I agree with both of you, and, like, the hill that I'm currently willing to die on is that it's still the human brain that is the first and last LLM that matters the most to marketers to influence. So for example, like, even when buyers are using AI, it's still the human brain that's writing the prompt. And those prompts aren't coming from, like, a neutral space or neutral observers. Right? We know that the average b to b buyer is very experienced. They've purchased from the category at least eight to nine times before. We know that they're also very well connected. Right? 75%, personally, no sellers from the vendors on the shortlist. And, you know, frankly, they're biased. Right? 85% of them have already worked with the eventual winner, and that's just one half of the story. Right? The other half is that even after, you know, AI generates the answer, it's still the human brain that's, like, judging the output. And what we know is that there's a still a huge trust gap. You know? Only 2% of b to b buyers put their full trust in LLMs. In fact, you know, we know that 92% of the heaviest users of LLMs still check the outputs, and 90% of them are going to still click the linked sources that are being cited. And I think this ultimately, like, begs the question of, like, do we think LLMs function more like bouncers that decide which brands make it past the metaphorical velvet rope or whether LLMs are functioning more like mirrors that reflect the buyer's existing biases and preferences? And I don't think it's either or. It's probably both and, but I think understanding which of your customers are using LLMs to like, just for cognitive offloading and which ones are fully surrendering their cognition and decision making to LLMs will kinda dictate how a marketer approaches their AEO strategy. There I I really like that that human brain being, like, the first and the last LLM. Like, that kind of makes my brain explode a little bit in a great way. And hearing that 92 of users are immediately fact checking those AI outputs makes a whole lot of sense. Right? And it looks like our audience largely agrees with all of us. The results here, 20 the the most votes by far was more that we think that making AI is making human validation more important important in the early buying stages. And listening to both of you, it really just, you know, highlights the balance that we have to strike. The AI is obviously an incredible tool for data synthesis, but if a buyer needs to crunch a massive feature matrix or summarize a 100 reviews, AI is gonna give them that efficiency instantly. That's its bread and butter. But like Derek pointed out with the fact checking stat, we can't forget what's actually training these models. The summaries those LLMs are spitting out are fed directly by reviews written by humans, forum discussions, human to human. You know? So when a buyer is talking to an AI, they're still relying on fundamental human inputs. And, ultimately, buyers can and will always use AI for efficiency, but trust is still built by and comes from humans, which I think we're all agreeing on that, which is incredible. You know, ultimately, buyers are really bouncing back and forth between AI summaries, talking to peers, private groups, and trying to synthesize all this information to figure out what is real and who they can rely on. And because they're now jumping all over the place, that old way of mapping their journey kinda feels broken, which brings us to our third topic for today, which is the death of the linear funnel. Right? For many, many years, marketers have measured success through a very linear linear funnel, awareness, consideration, decision. It was so easy. Right? But I think my fellow panelists and all of you who are watching know that that's just not the case anymore. Over half, 55% of b to b buyers struggle with identifying trustworthy sources. So because of that, my next question is, if the traditional funnel is broken, how should marketing leaders rethink measurement? And, Derek, I'm gonna start with you this time. Yeah. You know, at the b two b institute, our POV has is that, like, the traditional funnel has always been kind of like a broken model, more or less. You know, I think the easiest way to rethink the funnel is, like, instead of just, like, throwing it out completely is turn it on its side. So instead of, like, thinking of it as, like, top of funnel versus bottom funnel, we think it's a lot more helpful to think of it as either have one group of out of market buyers and then one group of in market buyers. And this thinking is really based off of, like, the ninety five five rule, from the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, but it kind of underpins all the research that we do here at the institute. And it basically tells us that, you know, at any given point in time, most of your b to b buyers are not going to be in market. So the implication is that, you know, marketing is less about, like, persuading and pulling and moving people down the funnel. It's more about, like, building memory structures across the entire funnel so that when they eventually enter the market, the buyer, your brand is the brand that they remember the most. So in that sense, I always tell, you know, our customers, you know, the main main job of marketing is, like, architecting memories. You know, you're trying to build and reinforce brand memories so that when customers are finally ready to make a purchase, that memory is the thing that guides their decision. And if you agree with that premise, you know, then the goal of advertising is to build memories rather than to persuade. That changes not just how you advertise, that changes how you measure the success of your advertising. So, you know, in the old world, if you're trying to measure, you know, persuasion in a very messy, nonlinear journey where 95% of your customers are out of market and aren't ready to be persuaded yet, then your measurement results are ultimately gonna betray all your marketing efforts. But if you focus on, like, measuring memory, you know, the metrics become a lot clearer and paint a much more holistic picture of your marketing efforts of, like, understanding, you know, are more buyers aware of you? Do they associate you with more of the right customer pain points? Do you come to mind in the buying situations that matter, etcetera? And I think the reality is and, like, the best way to measure memory is still asking customers through surveys. And I'm not saying that just because we're in a SurveyMonkey webinar. It's because I'm biased. I was born and raised as a market researcher. Hey. I love the name drop, Derek, so thank you. But I also absolutely love the concept of being memory architects. And you're totally right. You know, sometimes the most innovative way to measure if those memories are sticking is just to ask with a survey. Right? Palmer, what are your thoughts on rethinking measurement? Yeah. I I I think the big shift for marketers right now is realizing that the buyer journey is kind of increasingly happening before your systems ever pick up on it, before they ever recognize that. By the time someone fills out a form on your website, they may have already done, you know, hours and hours of research on AI elsewhere, talk to talk to peers, check review sites. That's why I think the old measurement model is starting to break down. If you're only looking at clicks, MQLs, sort of last touch, you're mostly measuring the end of that journey, kind of not the not the part that, like, shaped preference in the first place. I LinkedIn, the b two b Institute have done great work around this, completely aligned to that ninety five five rule of, like, you're you're mostly advertising to those 95% of folks who not in market right now, and you wanna be able to shape that preference. We saw it in some of our own data in our last kind of buyer behavior report. Two thirds of b two b buyers said they prefer engaging sales as late in the journey as possible. So, like, shortlist are continuing to shrink. Buyers are doing that work upfront and just kind of showing up more decided than ever before. They're more informed, and they they're they're ready to move versus kind of do more and more evaluation. So I I I think because of that, marketers need to start measuring things a little bit differently. Absolutely, pipeline still matters. But you also need to understand, are we showing up the right way in AI Answers? Are we present on sort of the category and comparison pages buyers use to validate those answers? And are we earning kind of fresh reviews and peer proof whether it's on g two or elsewhere? If you're not, you're gonna be at a disadvantage. That's that's really the story that we've been been telling our customers. It's not just about being cited. It's about understanding how your brand appears in AI search, whether the answer is accurate, and whether there's kind of enough third party proof around it to keep you in that consideration set, both both on sort of these AI answer engines and elsewhere. So to be that shift is is kind of from pure late stage attribution to kind of more presence to trust to consideration Because if buyers are making up their minds before that first touch, those are the signals that tell you whether your brand is actually winning and whether you're gonna matter in the end. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, listening to both of you, it seems to just kinda come together perfectly. Derek, you're talking about building the memory, and, Palmer, you're making sure that we actually show up when they're trying to validate that memory. So I love how those two responses really complement each other. I really think the biggest, you know, mind shift for us as marketers is realizing, you know, just like you said, Palmer, that discovery begins way before your CRM even registers a first touch. You know, they're thinking about it six months more before you even know they're thinking. So by the time a prospect finally fills out a form, they've spent quarters making up their mind based on those brand memories that Derek mentioned. And because of this, you know, massive invisible timeline, our metrics simply just have to evolve. We need to shift our focus away from thinking about those traditional, you know, really short term lead gen and looking way more closely at category presence and trust signal. So and we think about what does that mean in practice. That means value sharing of conversation, of advocacy, of reviews just as highly as an MQL, which, you know, as a customer marketing leader is absolutely music to my ears. You know, our work is more important than ever because ultimately surviving the death of that linear funnel means we have to, you know, get comfortable prioritizing influence over attribution, and we have to be comfortable with that we can't perfectly track every single touch point anymore. But if we optimize for trust and presence, then the revenue will follow. Very interesting discussion. Thank you both so much. We're actually getting close to wrapping up today's discussion. Major bummer. But before we move on to the audience q and a, which, by the way, I see quite a few questions in the q and a. So if you're sitting out there like, oh, I had a question. I didn't submit it. Now is the time to do it. Before we get there, though, one final lightning round question. My final question for this panel is, what's one thing b to b marketers should start doing differently today or tomorrow? It's tomorrow on the slide. I'm saying today. Like, right now, what do we need to do differently to meet buyers where they actually discover products? And I wanna hear your rapid fire take. So, Palmer, thirty seconds on the clock. What's your one thing? Sure. Mine is to get an AEO tool and start running the prompts your buyers are running. Ask who the best vendors are in your category, who they shortlist, and why one stands out over the others. Then sort of ask yourself the the tough questions. Are the answers accurate? Am I showing up the way that I want to? And is there kind of enough proof to keep me there? Mhmm. So it's I I think it's just not enough to be discoverable on your own site. You have to understand how your brand is being kind of represented out there. If if the answer is weak then or wrong, like, it usually points back to the same fixes. You need stronger review presence, better third party proof, and and stronger kind of brand visibility. And and, frankly, that's okay. AEO is something that didn't exist two years ago, so we're all this is like doing SEO in 1999. Like, we're all in it together, but it is something that can be addressed with the with the right tool. Yeah. Okay. Right. Palmer, you definitely understood the assignment. Right? I love how actionable that is. We could all do this right now today. Actually running the prompts yourself. It's a brilliant immediate reality check, you know, to see if that third party proof is strong enough to make the cut. So let's all promise ourselves we're gonna go do that today. Thank you, Palmer. Derek, over to you. What's your one thing? Yeah. I would say it's more of, like, a mindset shift. So it's like stop thinking about discovery as something that buyers are actively doing and start thinking about it as something that passively happens to them as well. Because, like, while most of your buyers are gonna be out of market, they can still be window shopping. And I think that changes, like, your marketing strategy, right, when you shift that mindset. And, like, we explore this concept of, like, physical availability, making sure that your brand is available where those window shopping moments happen and making sure that your brand is sticking out so people can find your brand. And, ultimately, once you get them into your theoretical your metaphorical storefront, you have the right portfolio so that when they step into the store, they don't leave empty handed. Yep. So good. Yeah. That discovery is something that happens to them. That that that hit hard. You know, completely changes how we should think about showing up where they're window shopping. It kinda reminds me, you know, as a from a customer marketing perspective to add a little color and just kinda kinda tie your your two points together. I think probably the biggest untapped lever to achieve that prominence and proof is really leaning into your existing customer base. If we know buyers are out there window shopping and they're desperately searching for this peer validation, then your single best marketing asset is a happy customer. Somebody who's willing to talk about you, and we need to, you know, spend time and resources empowering them to share their stories. I love that. Alright. I know I've been asking this panel a lot of questions, but let's go ahead and get to your questions now. If you have any burning question that you haven't yet submitted, you still have time. Go ahead and submit it into the q and a panel, and we're gonna get started. Let's start with how do you approach and I either of you can jump in on this, but how do you approach the justification to leadership for every dollar spent when some of these are, you know, untrackable like we've been talking about? Yeah. It's a it's a real one. I mean, every c f every CFO is gonna ask that question. But I but I think you have to go back to some of what we talked about earlier that I I think the the ninety five five rule carries weight here too. But then it's also the the the the proof of, like, if you're hey. We need to invest in our brand, and here's why, and you're showing that that prompt that you ran on ChadGPT or Claude or whatever it is, and you're not showing up. Like, that should be, for any forward thinking kind of leadership, that should be an alarm call that, hey. We need to do something about that. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And it might even be just you know, we I I think we said it in here as kind of expanding what metrics define success. You know, Mhmm. we might not be able to say, you know, somebody taking a screenshot of something of a post on LinkedIn, you know, like we've been talking about. We can't really track that, but, you know, maybe we send out a survey or we, you know, try to think of other metrics that we could look at to track that success. It's not gonna be an MQL, but, you know, another version of an impression that I think is kind of what I'm thinking about here. Yeah. I think it's, a million dollar question, right, that we get all the time. And I think what has been helpful is just to, like, get the person who's asking the question to do, like, a thought exercise. And it's like, if you I like to use this example. Like, if you were to be marketing a movie and you could only do one of two tactics. One, create an amazing trailer that gets people into the theater. Or number two, only spend all your marketing dollars at the theater when you know people. are at the register, what would you actually do? So I think that usually helps shift some of the mindset. That's such a good example. Yes. We need to create some excitement around it. You know? Have some, you know, people that they trust, you know, say, I wanna go see that movie. It's gonna be so awesome, and that's how we're gonna get people in seats. I love that so much. This is kind of an interesting question, from Julie, and and I'm not sure any of us are gonna have the answer, but let's give it a good a good shot here. She's talking about LLMs. And how do you judge whether LLMs are picking up your company product or not since it's learning from us and knows that we're the ones assessing responses? Yeah. That's a a great question. And I I mean, I think there is a level of personalization that does happen with these, but that's why, some of the AEO tools are are really useful because what they'll go do is force run force run, you know, thousands, millions of different prompts and to kinda show you unfiltered results and sort of how you're how you're showing up there. I I still think, again, like, there's a bit of a black box that's happening, you know, at the at the ChatGPT's and and Claude's of the world. But at the same time, a lot of those SEO fundamental fundamentals still hold true with these, and so that's what I'd encourage folks to continue building on just just for for that maximum brand visibility. Yeah. Right. I agree with Palmer in that, like, it is a black box. Right? Like, the AEO, GEO tools can tell you if you have a problem or not, but I think it won't necessarily tell you why you have that problem. So I always think it's, very helpful to not just do a LLM audit, but also a human audit. So if customers can't find your product on your website homepage within ten seconds, you know, chances are the LLM won't be able to either. Like, LLMs in a certain way kind of work the same way as humans do. Right? If LLMs are confused, then it's probably because humans are confused as well. Yeah. Really good point. That's awesome. I actually have a question. I think this is gonna be for you, Derek, because earlier you were talking about a Canvas, putting content on a Canvas, and David wants just a little bit more information on it. What are you specifically referring to, and how could somebody actually do that? Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So when I'm talking about canvases, I think it's we're getting a lot of questions about, like from marketers, like, how much to invest on my own website versus other platforms like LinkedIn? And I think, two things. Right? The first is that we know that LLMs are always going to weight third party signals more heavily than first party websites just because they're seeking, like, cross references and, amplified signals. But the other thing also is that updating websites is just, like, logistically complex and takes a really long time. So in the time in the months that you are spending, like, ripping out the plumbing underneath your website, you have the canvases like LinkedIn articles and newsletters that you can literally publish with a touch of a button instead of, like, waiting months to run experiments on your website. But the other point is also, like, I feel like I see so many so much advice floating around the Internet saying, oh, the things that get cited the most have, like, x like, 800 to 1,000 words, etcetera, or it is x y z. But I think so much of the time, we're confusing the symptom for the root cause. And I think, ultimately, like, having a canvas that allows you to write enough content that is dense enough with signals should be, like, the North Star, not a specific number of words to hit or the specific number of engagements or likes to get in order to be cited. Awesome. Thank you. Yes. That's so helpful. I think that will help everyone get get this implemented, and, hopefully, that answered your question, David. So we have come to the end of our time here. Palmer, Derek, thank you so much for being so candid sharing today. Thank you to everyone in the audience as well. Just to recap, the buyer journey hasn't disappeared, but it has evolved, and the orgs that are gonna win will be the ones that are meeting their buyers where they actually are. So thank you again, and we'll see you all next time. Thank you.