Did you make it to Content Marketing World in Denver? Don’t worry; I’ve got you covered with top B2B marketing highlights and takeaways from this year’s conference.
Insight to Impact— the theme of the 2026 Content Marketing World (#CMWorld). What does that mean in the world of B2B marketing?
#CMWorld Main Stage Highlights
The event kicked off with insights from top brands like Procter & Gamble. P&G leaders Marc Pritchard and Kirti Singh provided proof points on effective marketing for B2C that also applies to B2B:
- Deep dive into the data
- Give human meaning to what AI is bringing to the table
- Use insight to unlock the full value of superiority of the brand (example: Tide Free and Clear)
- Project the truth across the brand experience
They reminded the attendees to bring humanity to everyday deep learning.
B2B Thought Leadership in the Spotlight
Ninety-three percent of B2B marketers use original, research-based content that drives engagement and leads, according to TopRank’s State of B2B Thought Leadership in 2026. our CEO Lee Odden, spoke on thought leadership driving brand, demand and revenue outcomes. Key reminders:
- Impactful thought leadership centered on original research or proprietary data eliminates the competition.
- Everyone has an opinion. Anyone can create a report. Best Answer brands stand out with content experiences and stories that inspire belief.
- Top-performing B2B brands engage with influencers frequently (74% top performers vs. 29% others), fueling trust, validation and distribution – including AI search visibility.
- Thought Leadership itself doesn’t sell; it informs and inspires brand confidence. Leave the selling to your ecosystem of demand, lead gen & sales content.
Lee shared that, “A Best Answer Trust System” can help you build trust across the customer journey with influencers, analysts, and earned media.” You can read a full recap of his session in the How to Be the Best Answer in AI Search post.
B2B Influencer Marketing Case Study
Who doesn’t like a good case study? Pulling in from their influencer campaign, Julie Weber and Staci Bradbury of Siemens EDA outlined how they helped launch a new version of their software for a younger SMB audience.
They began by grounding their strategy in a survey, which showed that a younger, highly technical audience of engineers often gets their information from new media. Their competitive research showed the main competitor utilized social creators to show their software. There are not a lot of new buyers in this market, so the team understood they needed to show the advantage of the Siemens software over the competitor.
What stood out in this influencer program:
- Look for influencers with an established audience who are also credible, trusted voices to engineers
- Competitive mentions did not disqualify working with an influencer
- Quality over quantity is key. They wanted experts who were willing to go deep.
- Influencer programs take considerable buy-in and support from multiple teams.
- Plan for longer than you expect. The program took 6 months to ramp up.
B2B Influencer Creators Are Here To Help
B2B influencers are not new, but the wave of brands using them is growing. I had several conversations with folks about the increase in brands looking to start B2B influencer marketing campaigns.
Heike Young, Goldie Chan, Zoe Hartsfield, Obaid Durrani and Jared Kleinstein allowed attendees to ask questions about their work, how to build their own brand, and what works on social media for B2B. One insight: post 2-3 times per week on LinkedIn for personal brand building.
When looking at what the word “viral” means (in relation to social media and creators) for B2B, we were reminded it can mean different things for different creators and brands. It is not a one-size-fits-all meaning. What really matters is the goal of the campaign. So, don’t get hung up on “going viral”.
AEO Strategy Takes Center Stage
We all know AI Overviews are changing the search landscape. Brightspot‘s Lauren Yanez and Jessie Kennedy took it head-on with practical advice for getting your B2B content found.
Hot AEO Strategy Tips:
- Stop gating your content. The LLMs cannot crawl it.
- Refresh good content that is ranking so it continues to rank.
- Publish product comparison content, so LLMs have competitor context to pull from.
- Build a long-game narrative with SMEs and publish widely.
For a good AEO page, follow these structural patterns that get pages cited by the AI tools.
- Direct-answer opening
- Question-shaped subheads
- Scannable body copy
- Real numbers, real sources
- Self-contained FAQs
- Structured data markup
r/B2BMarketing – Listening and Marketing on Reddit
Reddit is the world’s largest community, which gives it “influence” over your potential audience. Mandee Nguyen of SICK Sensor Intelligence took on the challenge of reaching engineers on Reddit. The SICK team observed:
- Engineers trust peers more than vendor messaging
- Technical discussions were happening before the buyers reached their website.
SICK’s main Reddit presence is through listening and ads. When a comment could use a response from SICK, Mandee contacts an internal SME to give their perspective, while being upfront about where they work. Overall, Reddit conversations are more impactful for finding market intelligence.
Reddit Ads are challenging but impactful. You need to keep them very short and make them look like other Reddit posts. But the cost per click and CPM were lower or comparable to other B2B platforms. Reddit provides a place to discover problems, find peer recommendations, and receive solution validation.
A key takeaway: Measure influence, and not just attribution.
Make Memories and Experiences That Stand Out
With all this talk about AI and how it can help you create content faster, Robert Rose, Content Marketing Institute, recommended asking, “Where is the human in this (content)?” And noted their research showed that both buyers and vendors are looking for leading expertise, not the safest choice.
One of my favorite quotes from CMWorld was from Hailey Sullivan of the Denver Broncos. She said content and experiences “Need to make memories with a smidge of weirdness.” And these robots added the weirdness that we will all remember!
This year’s Content Marketing World provided many insights and with a theme of insights to action, TopRank Marketing would love to be your partner in creating action and outcomes when it comes to B2B marketing. If you’re looking to elevate your marketing, let’s talk.
Did you attend #CMWorld? Please let me know what stood out to you. Until next year, I’ll see you on LinkedIn.
