The Evolution of B2B Content: Stephanie Losee on Thought Leadership, Trust, and Experience

When I first met Stephanie Losee, it was on a conference call with our client Dell where we were discussing how my agency would engage tech influencers to write for a new publication Dell was producing. The way this incredibly competent and confident professional communicated reminded me of a longtime friend and journalist turned analyst, and university educator from New York, Rebecca Lieb. Remarkably, it turned out that Stephanie, who lives in the Bay area, and Rebecca  not only know of each other but they were very good friends.

Fast forward to 2025 and I can’t imagine a better guest to finish off our first season of Beyond B2B Marketing to talk about the intersection of content, thought leadership and of course, AI.

What you need to know about Stephanie’s remarkable career and contribution to the field of content marketing is that she is an OG in the field. She was one of the first Managing Editors for a Fortune 500 company when she was at Dell and then she founded the content studio at Politico, built the first content marketing function at Visa, worked for a top 50 fintech firm, held multiple advancing global leadership roles at Autodesk and now, she is Director and Executive Editor at Salesforce.

In this episode we talked about how B2B content has evolved from brand journalism into a strategic engine for trust, thought leadership, and business impact. Stephanie talked about why distribution isn’t just about marketing channels, but also about activating content internally with sales and customer success. We covered the role of original research and experiential content in creating authentic brand and buyer value exchanges, why AI won’t replace high-level editorial thinking, and how B2B marketers are finally gaining the personalization tools long enjoyed by B2C.

An important takeaway from our conversation is that the brands that win are the ones that stop talking at their audience and start showing up with the most credible answers to the problems buyers are actually trying to solve. In my words, that means evolving from simply pushing out information to attracting more customers as a Best Answer Brand.

Here are 10 questions about the future of content marketing for B2B that Stephanie answered in our conversation:

1. Why does thought leadership still matter in B2B marketing-especially in an AI-driven discovery environment?
2. What actually differentiates high-impact B2B content from content that just fills the feed?
3. How should B2B marketers rethink content distribution now that search, social, and AI are all changing?
4. Why is internal alignment with sales and customer success critical to content performance and ROI?
5. How can B2B brands connect thought leadership to real business impact without turning it into promotion?
6. What role does original research play in building trust and authority for B2B brands?
7. How should B2B marketers think about experiential content and formats beyond traditional articles?
8. What will AI change about content strategy-and what won’t it ever replace?
9. What does “true value exchange” mean in B2B content marketing-and how do brands achieve it?
10. What does the future of personalization look like for B2B marketers?

Listen to the full conversation here:

Watch the full interview with Stephanie here:

If you’d prefer a text summary of our discussion, here you go:

“What else is thought leadership going to do except become more important?”

Stephanie points out that as trust in traditional institutions and media continues to decline, B2B brands have a unique opportunity to fill that void by providing reliable, data-driven answers. In an era dominated by AI-generated content, high-quality thought leadership becomes the primary way for a brand to establish credibility and ensure its perspective is the one cited by “agentic” search engines.

“Almost every content marketer I speak to does not have the channel built between their function and their own customer success and sales function.”

Here, Stephanie challenges the conventional view of content distribution by shifting the focus inward. She argues that many B2B marketers concentrate on external channels while overlooking the internal pathways that make content actionable. Drawing on her experience at Autodesk, she highlights how aligning content with customer success and sales transforms thought leadership into a practical tool for ongoing customer conversations, renewals, and expansion-ultimately making content easier to measure and far more valuable to the business.

“AI won’t help marketers differentiate themselves in and of itself, creating a true value exchange with customers does.”

While AI is a powerful tool, it cannot replace the human empathy required to understand a customer’s specific business challenges. Stephanie argues that true differentiation for B2B brands comes from delivering what we at TopRank Marketing call “best answer content that prioritizes the audience’s needs over brand promotion. This focus creates a meaningful exchange where customers trade their time and attention for genuine utility. This approach ensures the brand stands out in a sea of automated content by providing the exact insights buyers need to make informed decisions..

Thanks Stephanie!

Be sure to follow Stephanie on LinkedIn.

You can find Beyond B2B Marketing wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts (links below). Of course you won’t want to miss the next conversation with a B2B marketing pro, so be sure to subscribe. And remember, there’s no better time than now to break free of boring B2B!

If you’d like to access our latest research on B2B Thought Leadership which touches on the Best Answer Marketing framework, there’s an ungated version of the report here.