G2’s recent data on the modern B2B buyer journey that shows how prospects research their vendors is eye-opening. Over half of all B2B prospects now start with AI as their first step when researching companies to put on their shortlist before making a buying decision.
This happens now before prospects speak with anyone, including peers, and has significant implications on how to position your B2B brand (very specific recommendations are below).
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Modern B2B Buyer Journey: What the Data Shows
Look at the numbers below of G2’s data: AI chatbots are now overwhelmingly the #1 source of buyer influence. I’ve included recent quotes from reports by Gartner and Forrester as well that show the writing on the wall. If you’re not part of AI search, you’re not part of the invisible conversation that is knocking you out of contention.
G2’s report found that “Simply being mentioned by AI chatbots carries weight for today’s software buyer, as 85% think more highly of a vendor cited by AI in its answer.” This is now a key part of the modern B2B buying process.
This leads to the obvious question: How do I get cited?
The answer is less complex than you might think, but it requires addressing a reality mentioned in the report that affects every B2B company:
“AI can’t summarize what it can’t find.”
The irony is that companies disproportionately allocate financial and human resources to less effective channels. The double irony is that those other channels are usually much more expensive than the investment needed to create AI-citable content.
In other words, if you don’t have a well-designed strategy to get inside AI responses, you’ve already reduced your chances of making the shortlist for consideration – yet creating that strategy is cheaper than what you’re probably investing in right now.
Examples of Content That Drives Conversations: CEO's Guide to Content Marketing
Getting Quick Wins for Your AI Search Presence
The good news is that winning this invisible modern B2B buyer journey your prospects go through now doesn’t require a huge lift. There are several low-hanging fruit opportunities you can do right now.
These are a few ways we’re tackling it at MakeMEDIA:
- Head-to-Head Comparison Pages – Add pages that compare your brand to direct competitors. For those of you building anything AI-related, also create pages that compare yourself to LLMs (example: MakeMEDIA vs Claude) to control the narrative and reach those asking “why can’t I build this myself with AI?”
- Content As Structured Data – Structure content so it embeds lists, tables, FAQs, and organized headings within articles to make it easier for AI to digest.
- Industry Context Playbooks – Create numerous industry-specific playbooks since context is critical in addressing the nuances for every ICP and persona you’re trying to reach. See our industry content marketing playbooks for examples →
- New Content From Past Work – Repurpose existing webinars and podcasts into SEO-structured articles, newsletters and LinkedIn posts. This is an incredibly fast and accurate way to expand the reach of past work.
Does this mean you have to create a lot of content?
Yes. That’s the world we live in now, the modern B2B buyer journey.
At MakeMEDIA, we’ve spent over a year building a sophisticated executive content platform to help B2B companies do all these tactics and more. It infuses human expertise with AI efficiency, which keeps your content strategy on track, on brand, and naturally authentic. Our clients are using it to save time, money, and get results. Try it free →
Controlling AI’s Narrative
Another piece of good news is that executing just those four tactics above can gain traction inside AI responses relatively quickly, especially tip #1.
For example, here’s what we did for prospects who compare our product to the frontier AI models, just one of many comparison pages we published. Go to any AI chatbot and type something like “MakeMEDIA vs Claude for content strategy” (or vs ChatGPT). That’s the conversation the modern B2B buyer is having without us. And if we’re not in the dialog, we won’t be part of their solution.
Screenshots of the results as of Q2 2026 are below, both done in temporary chat mode to avoid historical chat bias.
Here’s ChatGPT’s response:
And now Claude’s response:
The AI response looks like a summary but notice the nuances that allude to thoughts of “When to use MakeMEDIA” and “When to use Claude”.
Those didn’t show up by accident. It’s part of our page design that AI summarized (within a day of publishing it, I might add).
Don’t be afraid that you’re uplifting your competitors when you write about them in this way. You’re actually adding credibility to your article, which increases the chances it gets cited. Buyers will ask the same questions about your competitors regardless of whether you provide an answer or not. It’s the modern B2B buying process.
The beauty of this tactic is that enables you to control the narrative.
Tip: Keep your head-to-head comparison pages updated with a new date every few months. Recency of posts is a big factor in getting cited, both in AI as well as traditional Google search.
Creating Content Fast for the Modern B2B Buyer
We’re building capabilities into MakeMEDIA to help B2B companies with content that can drive pipeline. Those who move on this marketing strategy sooner than later will dominate.
Try out the tactics I mentioned. Let me know your results. And if you’d like to discuss how MakeMEDIA can streamline your process and save time and money, reach out to me here.
