B2B marketing hasn’t been on easy street this past year and I think we all understand that zero-click search, AI Overviews, and large language models have our full attention in how they’re changing the way buyers discover, evaluate, and trust brands.
Research from 6sense reports that 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during their buying process and Gartner predicts search engine volume will drop 25% this year, due to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.
At the same time, while awareness of these AI-driven challenges and opportunities has increased, there’s still debate. Is traditional SEO enough? Or do AEO and GEO need to be layered in as distinct tactics? Can “more content” still win, or has the proliferation of AI-generated content already diluted the impact of content overall? With all of that in combination with paid placements to soon show up inside of AI experiences, it’s easy to see that disruption in search is far from over.
In a time where answers are increasingly chosen and summarized by AI, B2B brands need to earn their position as the most probable best answer. That means more than optimization tactics. It means building credibility, consistency, and consensus.
From visibility to belief
Search is now multi-channel (71% of B2B buyers consume content across three or more channels before engaging with a vendor – Demand Gen Report) and multi-modal (67% of buyers consume multiple content formats during early and mid-stage research – NetLine).
Buyers validate decisions across search engines, social platforms, communities, analysts, influencers, peers, and increasingly, AI powered platforms that synthesize all of those signals. For B2B brands, the challenge goes beyond being easy to find. The challenge is about being trusted across that ecosystem of content discovery.
“Strong B2B brands are those that stand for something and can tell a clear story through the lens of buyer questions that need answers.”
It’s tempting to see that as a mechanical SEO exercise, but it’s certainly more. Creating consensus is an intentional effort to create continuity of story and signal so that every member of a buying group experiences a credible, relevant narrative they can trust and believe in.
As Brian Solis has shared on the Beyond B2B Marketing podcast,
“Audiences can tell when content is engineered to rank versus created with empathy, perspective, and intent.”
Traditional SEO has already emphasized quality signals ala E.E.A.T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust). And with AI-powered answer engines, the distinction is even more important because AI powered search raise the bar even further on many of these same signals: trust, credibility, and recognizable brands.
The way forward for B2B marketers is to move beyond the idea of a single channel campaign and toward tapping into a system designed to build belief where it matters. It is about tapping in to a marketing operating system that can orchestrate a brand transition from blending in to becoming a Best Answer Brand.
Introducing a new B2B marketing playbook
To help B2B companies make that transition, we developed The Best Answer Marketing Playbook. Informed by more than a decade of work with enterprise B2B brands and grounded in original research on thought leadership, influence, and discovery, this new playbook provides a practical framework for building relevance, trust, and visibility in an AI-powered world. The playbook includes research data, models, case studies and a strategy checklist.
At the core of the playbook are six interconnected pillars. Each one delivers value on its own, but their real strength comes from how they reinforce one another.
The six pillars of Best Answer Marketing
1. Data-Informed Clarity
Best Answer Marketing begins with understanding what buyers actually want to know. Data-informed clarity uses data sources such as customer research, CRM insights, search behavior, and audience intelligence to surface the real questions driving discovery, engagement and decision. The benefit is focus. Instead of guessing or over-producing content, marketers can concentrate their effort on the topics that matter most to buyers and to the systems that surface answers.
“In a world where AI can generate infinite content, it cannot generate truly original research… And as a result, it gets cited, it gets shared, it gets remembered.” Jon Miller
2. Integrated Strategy
Data informed insight only creates value when it leads to action. The integrated strategy pillar of BAM aligns brand, demand, content, influencer, and channel decisions around a shared narrative and corresponding measurable outcomes. The benefit is momentum for your brand through the right answers, content formats, channels and experiences. In this way, integrated strategy connects data-informed clarity to tactical execution and orchestrates trust building activities with content experiences in the channels that matter most – all tied to KPIs that follow the entire customer journey.
“Integrated marketing means all of the instruments are singing from the same songbook.” Heike Young
3. The Trust System
Trust is built through proof vs. promotion. The BAM trust system is an organized effort for brands to earn credibility with the community and audience you want to engage through tactics like original research and thought leadership, customer advocacy, industry influencers and creators, employees, and third-party validation through the media. Orchestrating signals of trust creates best answer momentum that can grow organically if you continue to feed it. These trust signals are multi-purpose: they can create credibility with your ecosystem of buyers as well as with AI and search platforms.
“Influence now happens in places like communities, Reddit, Quora, and peer networks. A lot of marketing organizations are not set up to participate meaningfully in those environments.” Rishi Dave
4. Experiential Content
Experiences are not easy to replicate and with AI leveling the playing field of mediocrity in content, distinction is more important than ever for B2B brands. Standard format content isn’t going away when well structured and using appropriate mark-up to assist LLMs and search engines. But at the same time, experiential content combines insight with narrative storytelling and formats people remember, such as video, audio, interactive tools, and in-person or virtual events. As I’ve said for years, it is no longer enough to inform B2B buyers, we must make them feel. Experiences can create emotional connection and improve mental availability across long buying cycles.
“We realized executive engagement events would be a very good outlet. The research became the anchor of the keynote, and then we set up interactive iPad kiosks where attendees could benchmark themselves and receive a customized report. People really enjoyed that experience, and it delivered objectively strong results.” Stephanie Losee
5. Multi-Channel Discovery
McKinsey reports the average B2B buyer interacts with 10.2 distinct channels on average during their journey. Best answers only matter if they can be found. Multi-channel discovery ensures content is structured and activated across search, social, communities, media, influencers, and AI-powered platforms where it matters most for the buying group you’re focused on.
Reinforcing story and trust signals across multiple channels makes it easier for AI search and traditional search to understand your brand as the best answer for what buyers are looking for. This multi-channel visibility is also important for human interaction. Even with increasing popularity of AI discovery surfaces, multiple touchpoints are still necessary for most B2B buying journeys as the McKinsey stat above illustrates.
“Good marketing shows up where your audience already is, with something worth their time.” Ann Handley
6. Unified Analytics
Unified analytics connects brand, engagement, and revenue signals from potentially 10’s or even 100’s of disparate data sources into a single view so teams can understand what builds trust and drives decisions. Purpose-built dashboards can be created for executives, marketing, sales or customer success to account for full buyer lifecycle measurement, analysis and marketing performance optimization. How will you know your brand is the best answer for what buyers are looking for? Unified analytics.
“You can be the greatest storyteller in the world, but if you can’t figure out how the story that you tell actually translates into measurable outcomes, you’re screwed.” Steve Kearns
Together, these six pillars form a sort of operating system for building Best Answer Brands.
A practical use case for a Best Answer Marketing approach to B2B
A B2B SaaS platform facing AI-driven search disruption
A mid-market SaaS company sees declining organic traffic as AI search absorbs their organic search visibility. The goal is to protect demand and rebuild their authority. Best Answer Marketing will help expand focus from keyword visibility to brand strength and decision credibility.
BAM in action for AI powered search optimization:
- Data-informed research to identify buyer questions, PAA topics and query fan out topics
- Thought leadership content anchored in original research answers those questions
- Influencer and practitioner participation in a research report and promotion to strengthen trust signals
- Topic repurposing according to buyer committee interests including the hidden buyers of IT, finance, HR etc
- Experiential formats such as short video explainers and interactive benchmark tools elevate the research content and earn media mentions
- Multi-channel activation across LinkedIn, YouTube, earned media, relevant answer communities and influencer audiences creates visibility to buyers and bots alike
- Measurement tied to share of voice, influencer distribution and engagement, branded search, demand gen and pipeline influence
By shifting from solely chasing shrinking keyword visibility to earning brand and decision credibility, this SaaS brand can turn AI-driven disruption into an advantage by building credible authority that buyers and AI systems both recognize. Best Answer Marketing can create a compounding system where trusted insight, credible voices, and measurable influence protect demand and strengthen long-term growth even as search behavior changes. The result is being chosen by AI systems, search engines and other sources of influence on the buying committee.
For real-world BAM case studies, download the playbook below.
Why a Best Answer Marketing strategy matters now
Research consistently shows that relevance, consensus, trust, and credibility are central to how modern B2B buying groups make decisions. Buyers are not just looking for information. They are looking for confidence that they can defend a decision internally. Best Answer Brands earn that confidence by working to address the questions of the entire buying committee.
This is the strategy the current moment of B2B marketing demands. In an environment shaped by AI-driven discovery and fragmented attention, becoming the best answer goes beyond volume or tactics to building a system that delivers value to people and to the machines that increasingly guide them.
The Best Answer Marketing Playbook was created to help B2B organizations do exactly that. Get your copy today.
