How Can B2B Marketers Adapt To Changing Search Behaviors?

[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Nick Wells, your host for the What It Means podcast, where we asked for aster analysts for their take on the latest business and technology headlines. While the podcast is currently on a hiatus, we're revisiting some of the most popular episodes from our archive. Conversations that continue to resonate. We record this episode this time last year, but it's insights have only sharpened since then. As AI reshapes how buyers discover information and as conversations continue at the Forrest Jubilee Summit, this episode offers perspective on what marketers must rethink. So here's principal analyst Lisa Gaetley with her thoughts on changing search behaviors. We hope you enjoy the episode. So Lisa, a few months ago on this podcast, we talked about how Genie is impacting buyer behavior. One of the very surprising data points that we uncovered in our research is that nine out of 10 buyers are using Genie in pretty much every phase of the buying process. In your session in B2B Summit North America, you'll be talking about how marketers should respond to that shift. So maybe a good place to start for us would be what does this shift among buyers mean for content marketers? Yes, marketers are going to have to adapt to this new reality where buyers are searching for answers across multiple platforms. That's been happening for a while, meaning if they are not just using traditional search engines, they've also been using social platforms online communities, but now with generative AI, it's really getting a lot of attention because classic SEO strategies aren't going to cut it. Traditional metrics like your search rankings or your traffic aren't going to fully reflect success. So we know that buyers are getting valuable information just by typing in natural language queries in Genie tools. They don't have to click through to a website, and the industry's talked for a while about zero click content. But what compounds this for the marketer is you really don't have a standardized tool or report to show when is AI a tool like chat, GPT or perplexity or Claude, when are they mentioning your brand? So there's a lot of uncertainty. You can't prove what the LLMs, the large language models have in their training data or how they're weighted and how you're getting mentioned. So that's a big hurdle for the marketer. Typically, we know the SEO landscape really well and we can explain things, but now it's a hurdle. You're trying to explain to your leaders how is our brand showing up, where our buyers are doing their searching? So I imagine this could make many content marketers very uncomfortable, sort of that sense of loss of control perhaps in some way. So what are they doing about it? What are you hearing from these content marketers? I hear a lot of stories where marketers talk about how one of their executives or someone inside the company tells them how much they're using chat GPT or perplexity or some tool. And really that that is the uncertain state we're in. So marketers need to stay focused on what they can control. We have a lot of conversations about how we're in for a lot of change, even the name for a description of this new environment. You hear all kinds of things in the industry right now. So this really comes back to mastering how are some of the classic techniques going to be adapted and service well so that we're creating content that gives us authority. It's actionable. It helps the buyer and it's adaptable to wherever the buyers may be. So that's planning to be discoverable for all the places where your buyers are. We've talked about that again for a while that we know the content that's on your website, it needs to be picked up by classic search but also now by AI. It's also going to work for you in social media. And when you're appearing at industry events or all of these different tactics, all of the ways that your content gets used, you want that content to be so good that it gets shared and it gets talked about. So it's going back to some of the classic foundations of content marketing. Where in the past, it was content search and social. You really are layering some of those techniques and partnering of course with your colleagues in PR. So let's maybe spend a little bit time on the website itself. That's typically been the the door opener if you will, right, to your brand and to all of the solutions and products. So what about a company's own websites like how does Gen AI pretty much change the company's approach to content on their website? Are they doing things differently with the way that they are designing and making their websites more discoverable and engaging for their buyers? This is a really interesting aspect of the planning because our data from the buyers' journey survey shows buyers haven't abandoned vendor websites or internet search. They use generative AI to supplement those existing methods. So your website still matters. And that means your buyers may be using generative AI. They may be looking in other places, but when they eventually come to your website, they're more informed. So now it's a matter of being ready with substance for the buyers who are more educated. They may have more comprehensive questions and think of it as your mid to late funnel content doing a lot of work for you. What I mean by this is for instance, buyers who have done a lot more of their upfront education, they're going to come to you with questions like what are the tradeoffs between option A and option B? Or they're using complex phrases, sentences, even that natural language styling. So on your website, if you are getting to the depth of their question might be something like what software is better for a particular use case, you're addressing the different nuances to their queries. And you're really vigilant about helping those buyers because they now want more than a simple answer. So it sounds like it's almost changing the way that we talk to our buyers in that natural way, the way that they're already using generative AI, perhaps in other ways, before they come to your website. And that's potentially that really brings us back to being rooted in your audience's needs and style rather than our corporate, you know, jargon filled language B2B has that reputation for being boring. But you could say across websites overall, our buyers are saturated with information. So now you are looking at how can you match the real questions they have when they interact with people from your company, how are we getting good at this? And so some of that comes back to working with your customer facing teams and the experts in your company so that you sound much more natural and you sound just like your customers, the buyers are the humans. So you mentioned sort of the late funnel down funnel content is even more important. So it sounds like, you know, marketing tactics have to evolve and change. Do you expect to see less emphasis on SEO and, and, you know, maybe relying more on external partnerships that buyers are, you know, engaging with external content. Where do you see that going? It's an interesting one because really SEO will evolve. It's not going to disappear just like we were saying that internet search or websites still matter. I really see that marketers will maybe tie less of their emphasis to classic search rankings. If people are optimizing their content for discoverability in different places. So it is one of many things rather than a focal point as it's been in the past. But near term, I see a lot of marketers in conversations. We talk about how to structure content for more conversational or contextual search and also pumping up your ability to read different signals about what buyers are doing. What is resonating so that you use some of that intelligence? You're also going to be a lot more aware of their intent. At the same time, you want to optimize some of your content, you know, if you're looking at things that you have on platforms like YouTube, how does your video content perform well in search results? That is just an example of where buyers go to different places because eventually, you will have partnerships, of course, to your point. Marketers are going to partner with influencers or industry experts. The things that you're doing out in, let's say, an industry forum or at conferences. Those are really great opportunities for you. And a lot of importance also on maybe it's pursuing co-branded reports or joining in with some online events where you can amplify your reach and borrow credibility when you partner with others. So I see it as a split, you're back to your point of you want to work with some established experts and build that credibility in-house and externally. But Plastic SEO is only one of many things you're going to be looking at now. So this is a really interesting irony, right? Or at the same time that marketers are trying to you know, adapt their content strategies for buyers using GenieI. They themselves as content marketers are using GenieI to create content. Is there anything in particular that marketers kind of balancing this irony or balancing this trade off? What should they be thinking about? How are they thinking about this? What should they be careful about in these scenarios? Yeah, that's so true. In these early phases where marketers and different states of adopt and gen AI, really people are drawn to it for productivity or the usual of streamlining some workflows, but it's really a commitment to maintaining quality and consistency and the role of the humans. So I usually offer three major things that people are taken with the speed or how much you can improve your time to market, but you really have to go back and commit to your content strategy and how audience centric you are, meaning do you understand the personas and their role in the buying group, who this content is for, that you're addressing their needs, their pain points, you're speaking their language as we were saying, but also you're understanding when in the buying process, this content might be consumed, you're also building on some messaging frameworks that don't think that because you're getting into these new tools, which can have issues of its own, it doesn't mean go faster because you can, you wanna have some quality that is very meaningful and substantive content for your particular audience. The other things I would say really quickly is, you also step up your human oversight and the editing. We've talked for a while about why you need to fact check anything in your use of generative AI, but it's also that partnership back with your experts on are you talking about things that it doesn't just sound good, but it is as relevant and you're taking in the nuance that's really specific, let's say, if you're doing industry or vertical marketing, or if you're getting really role specific, AI can help you, it is a definite supplement, but you wanna make sure you are being specific about buyer intent or some of the nuances as you start to personalize or customize the content. The other thing, I'll just say a quick word about this is if you're prioritizing originality and depth and this kinda goes hand in hand that people say, AI leads to very mediocre or average content, it should give you the marketer some time back so that you're doing research, you're partnering with different experts in your company in the industry that you can offer original perspective. And that's back to what we're talking about if you're offering the substance to answer your buyer's questions really well. Some of that comes from lived experience, so you've gotta have great collaboration with other people in your organization, your customers, partners, anybody with those real life experiences, make sure that you're developing content that reflects that. - Okay, so we've talked about AI safety as well, right? There's a lot that we have to do to trust the output of AI. So I'm curious how these content marketers who are using Gen AI and also adapting their content strategies for new buyers, how are they collaborating with PR teams, with brand and comms, colleagues to essentially safeguard their brand on wherever they appear in the Gen AI output? - Yeah, some of the best efforts that I hear about are in marketing organizations that are very serious upfront in how are they leveraging some brand guardrails? Anytime they're introducing these tools, so as much as possible, you're not leaving it to an individual creator to make decisions about voice and tone, for example, or you're not getting into, let's say, anything that goes out without some human fact checking. So in terms of company facts or the credibility, like you said, of some of the any claims or depth of any topics, again, where AI can make things sound good, but that may not be going in a direction or even factual accuracy that your company would back up. I also look at this as a partnership in those teams where best practice would be there's usually some visibility across in plants and there's some smart reuse. So ideally you wanna see if your comms team is working with an expert, they are getting excellent placement for them, through media interviews, they're doing many things with executive communications. If you in a content role are helping to complement that, you may be working with other experts or you may be helping to repurpose and extend some original content that's produced between those teams, they're working back and forth. So great use of AI, if you've got recordings, transcripts, summarization, you're able to go back and forth and extend or repurpose reformat content really well. - And I think that's a great point in terms of that reusability of content across teams. And another thing struck me was, all of this conversation is basically saying that marketers really have to up their game more on personalization, right? It can't get away with some of the simple techniques out there. I know a lot of automation has driven that, but this is a whole different ball game when it comes to personalizing content. - It is a huge opportunity for the marketers. And we know really improving the personalization and experience you're providing for your buyers is so important. It also gives you with these brand guard rails to that mindset of you're making some really important decisions, understanding the nuance of your buyer, their industry, their role. There's opportunity for you to use AI and to create better content that fills gaps compared to anything else they find in the marketplace. - So Lisa, you're going to be talking a lot more about this topic at our upcoming B2B Summit, which kicks off end of March. Can you give us a little bit of a preview of that session? You know, you're doing a session and a keynote, you know, a lot of lot focused on AI and content. So give us a little bit of a preview of what's coming up. - Yes, this is an exciting time where this particular session will really focus on some actionable advice. And I really want to help a lot of the marketers who are setting some realistic expectations with other people in their organization. So many people have questions about how they are discovered and found in AI. So it's really going to focus on steps to prepare both in understanding the current environment, but also how can you support more informed buyers? How if you are working across teams, you really can take a stand for content quality and for being very audience-centric and collaborating. Really importantly, how are you working with some of your company's own experts? - This is going to be a must-see session and a kind of way to engage with our B2B marketers, product leaders and sales leaders at our summit, March 31st to April 3rd at Phoenix in Arizona. Thank you, Lisa. Look forward to your session. - Thanks for having me. Really excited for summit. - If you like what you heard today, subscribe to Forrestors what it means podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. To continue the conversation, follow Forrestor on LinkedIn or drop us a note at [email protected]. Thanks for listening.