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B2B Marketing is Driving Forward, Looking Backward · Uphoff on Media Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Tony.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: No topic generates more discussion and debate than the current and future state
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: of B2B marketing.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Buying groups have now added a new member,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: one that is invisible to vendor marketing and sales,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: and one that is increasingly in charge of creating the shortlist that the rest of
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: the group uses to make a final decision.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Marketers are unprepared for this shift,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: and many are responding by producing more of what they've been doing,
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: not stopping and adjusting strategies for a new world.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers are adjusting faster,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: adopting agentic AI as a buying group partner to advance evaluation,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: selection, and shortlisting.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're also seeing procurement being brought into the buying process far earlier,
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps reflecting the need to have humans validate the shortlist assumptions
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: the AI agents are making.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I revisit three questions that I posed for B2B marketing back in January
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: that had become even more critical since.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The related post on Uphoff on Media also provides two diagnostic charts
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: that B2B marketers can download and use to align their AI initiatives
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: with their buyer's AI use.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also provide five predictions for B2B marketing in 2027.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today's episode is titled B2B marketing is driving forward, looking backward.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get to work.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer's AI is answering the three questions B2B marketing never did.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Get them right, your value rises.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Get them wrong, and it falls.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: 94% of B2B buyers now use AI somewhere in the buying process.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Forrester and Sixth Sense surveyed buyers separately and landed on the exact same number.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: 89% of B2B marketers use AI to create content.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Same technology, opposite jobs.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers use it to decide.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It does the research, narrows the field, and builds the shortlist.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And 95% of purchases still come from that initial shortlist.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Marketers mostly use it to produce more content,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: more sequences,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: more campaigns aimed at a buyer whose AI is now filtering most of it out.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's an industry driving forward while looking in the rearview mirror,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: and the market has started pricing the difference.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: The questions were about leadership.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're really about value.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: In January, I published three questions B2B marketing still hasn't answered.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, ownership.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who actually owns demand creation and is accountable for revenue?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, demand quality.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: What does quality mean when buyers are anonymous and AI-driven?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, outcomes.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Can the industry move from fragmented marketing tools and systems
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: to trusted outcome-based systems?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's still a leadership problem.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Nine months later, it's a valuation problem as well.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Zoom Info took a $650.5 million goodwill impairment in its second quarter
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: on revenue growth of 1.2% and cut its full-year outlook.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: In September, Clay,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: which sells Signal and Workflow to the same go-to-market teams,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: raised money at a $7.1 billion valuation,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: more than double the valuation it carried 13 months earlier
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: after quadrupling revenue in 2025.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Same buyers, same category, opposite valuations.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: It shows up inside single companies too.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Salesforce stock was down 26% by early February as software shed roughly $1 trillion
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: of market value.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: By late August,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: its agent force in Data360 recurring revenue had reached nearly $3.9 billion,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: up more than 210% in a year.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: One P&L moving in two directions at once.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Agentic AI doesn't lift or sink a sector.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It splits product lines on two variables,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: what you get paid for and whose AI you're building for.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the industry is getting the second one wrong.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Question number one, the buyer's AI now owns the front door of demand creation.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The January question asked whether marketing sales or ops owns demand creation.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: The answer came from a direction none of them were watching.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer owns it and the buyer's machine does more of the work every quarter.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the counterintuitive part.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers are reaching out to sellers earlier than they used to,
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: about 61% of the way through their journey,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: down from 69% a year before, according to Sixth Sense.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: They still start that conversation themselves roughly 80% of the time,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: and 95% of the purchases still come from the shortlist they built before
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: the first call.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier contact hasn't reopened the field.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers are calling to check a decision they've mostly made.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Gartner expects AI agents to intermediate more than $15 trillion of B2B spending by 2028.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Even if Gartner is up by a year, the direction isn't in question.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the ownership question has changed shape.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: The issue now is who owns what the buyer's AI knows,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: believes, and repeats about you before the buyer ever raises a hand.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: In most marketing organizations, nobody does.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: A ScribeWise and Scrunch survey of 602 marketers this spring found 91% claim
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: a documented AI search strategy while 62% are still measured
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: on traditional SEO metrics.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: The job moved, the scoreboard didn't.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Question number two, quality is whatever the buyer's AI trusts.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: In January, I wrote that the industry still sells leads while buyers behave like a buying group.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The buying group just picked up a member nobody counts, the agent doing the research.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Forrester's 2026 research puts the typical decision at 13 internal stakeholders
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: and nine external influencers.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: When the product itself has generative AI features, the group doubles from seven people to 14.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lead is one person.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: An agent doesn't fill out a form.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: For 20 years, the seller defined quality, a scoring model, a MQL threshold, a handoff rule.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer's AI defines it now and it isn't grading on machine logic alone.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It rewards what's verified across independent sources specific enough to answer
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: a real question and solid enough that someone in the buying group will stand
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: behind it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It discounts volume.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Volume is where most seller side AI went.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: A tenfold survey of 400 B2B tech marketers found 46% of them producing three
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: to five times more content than the year before on budgets up 10% or less.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Content Marketing Institute found 87% of marketers using AI
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: for content report productivity gains and 39% report better content performance.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Output multiplied, but results didn't.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Compare what happens when quality measurement follows the buyer.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Palo Alto Networks dropped MQLs for buying groups and per a Forrester case study saw
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: a 17% higher win rate with multi-stakeholder opportunities eight times more likely
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: to advance.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: The value math follows.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Anything sold by a unit, the buyer's AI makes redundant.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Think content records,
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: gated content leads,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: undifferentiated intent, outbound volume is being repriced down.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Verified signal that a buyer's agent needs and can't scrape is being repriced up.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: The market is paying for signal and marking down records.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And question three, trust moved from the tool to the result.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: The third question asked whether the industry could move from fragmented tools
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: to outcome-based systems.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: The software market answered for it this year.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: As I argued in the post,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: the stack that broke marketing, the fix for sprawl was never more technology.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was a different application of it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers have stopped trusting claims and started testing them.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: More than 60% now run a trial before they buy,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: according to Forrester,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: and only about a third of those end up buying from the vendor whose trial they ran.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: The trial has become the place where short lists flip.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And buyers trust the machine about as much as they trust you.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Gartner found 51% of buyers worry about misleading information from generative AI
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: and 49% worry about misleading information from sales reps.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they check one against the other.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: 69% want a sales rep to validate what the AI told them.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Trust sits with whoever's accountable for the result and can prove it.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Features,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: attribution models,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: and dashboards still don't answer the CEO's questions from January.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Evidence does.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Both org charts are being redrawn.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Only one side is doing it on purpose.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer side added people to check the machine.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Buying groups double when AI is a part of the purchase.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Procurement is a decision maker in 53% of buying cycles per Forester
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: and is increasingly involved from the earliest stages.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sixth Sense found 58% of buyers engaged sellers earlier specifically to evaluate
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: the vendor's AI.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers built a verification layer and it's getting larger.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: The seller side added machines and subtracted titles.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Spencer Stewart found that 31% of S&P 500 companies no longer have an enterprise CMO
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: and the ones who remain averaged 4.1 years in the job.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Postings for go-to-market engineers,
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: the people who wire data, AI,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: and workflow into the revenue engine,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: grew 205% year over year to roughly 3,000 open roles in early 2026,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: according to one job market analysis.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And 91% of the companies that have hired one employ exactly one.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Gardner expects AI agents to outnumber sellers 10 to 1 by 2028,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: while fewer than 40% of sellers will say the agents made them more productive.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: The money follows the same pattern.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey puts marketing budgets at 7.8% of revenue,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: with 15.3% of that going to AI.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Only 30% of those CMOs say their organizations are ready to use it,
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: and 56% say they lack the budget for their own AI strategy.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Both sides are running into the same wall.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Gartner's procurement research calls it a productivity paradox.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: AI makes individuals faster and the gain shrinks at the team level.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer side is answering with more judgment.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: The seller side is answering with more output.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: One side is building a windshield.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: The other is polishing the mirror.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Five predictions.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I expect to happen from here and what I'm watching for.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Each one cuts against the consensus that AI makes B2B simpler, cheaper, and less human.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Number one.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: AI is making B2B buying more human, not less.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Groups double when AI is involved.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Two-thirds of buyers say they prefer a rep-free experience,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: and more than two-thirds want a rep to check what the AI told them.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Both are true at once.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The seller's job is moving from persuasion to verification,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: and the best-paid sellers of 2028 will be the ones buyers call to check
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: the machines.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, 10 agents per seller will make outbound worth less.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: When every seller has 10 agents writing to buyers whose own agents read the mail,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: unsolicited volume gets filtered at machine speed.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of a message falls towards zero.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of a real meeting with a real buying group goes up.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone pricing on outbound volume is pricing the wrong side of that trade.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, more content will actually make you harder to find.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Teams producing three to five times more content are not seeing three to five times the result.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers' AI rewards sources that are specific, verified, and consistent.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I expect the strongest marketing teams to publish less,
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: prove more, and show up on more short lists because of it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, procurement not marketing will set the new unit of value.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Procurement already holds a decision boat in more than half of buying cycles
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: and it will be the first function to hand comparison work to agents.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Activity pricing per lead,
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: per impression,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: per seed is the easiest thing for an agent to line up in a spreadsheet and squeeze.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Outcome pricing is the hardest.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: That asymmetry will reprice whole categories faster than any analyst model expects.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And prediction number five,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: the most important marketing hire of 2027 won't carry a marketing title.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: The CMO role is already splitting.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: One half is becoming the owner of what machines know and say about the company.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: The other half is becoming the owner of the outcome number.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: The leaders who hold both will keep the job and the budget.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: The ones holding neither will be reporting to someone who does.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where your business sits on the windshield test.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uphoff on Media on Substack.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Here is a framework you can download and use as a diagnostic tool in your business.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It plots each product line,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: rather than the company as a whole,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: on the two variables that decide whether Agentic AI is adding value
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: or taking it away.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: The vertical axis is what you get paid for,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: from activity, leads,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: impressions, content, seats, hours, to outcomes, pipeline, revenue decisions made.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Questions one and three set your height,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: who is accountable for the result,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: whether the customer trusts you for a result or for a tool.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: The horizontal axis is whose AI you're building for,
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: from your own,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: more output,
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: lower cost, to your buyers being what their AI finds, trusts, and recommends.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Question two sets how far right you sit,
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: whether your idea of quality matches what the buyer's machine rewards.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the quadrants.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: The rear view mirror,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: activity your AI, Your AI makes more of what you already sell, faster and cheaper.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer's AI filters the volume and the unit price follows it down.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Most content syndication,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: contact data, and outbound volume businesses sit here today, value destroyed.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Quadrant number two, margin without a moat, out comes your AI.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your paid home results, an AI cuts your cost to deliver them.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: The margin is real.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: The risk is that the shortlist is built before you see the buyer
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: and efficiency doesn't get you on it.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Value enhanced for now.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Quadrant three, right road, but the wrong meter.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Activity, your buyer's AI.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: You show up where buyer's agents look.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Verified data, cited research, trusted reviews.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You still build by the lead, the impression of the seat.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So someone else captures the value you create.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Value created, not captured.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And quadrant four, the windshield.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Outcomes, your buyer's AI.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Buyer's agents rely on your data, proof, and judgment.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you're paid on the result.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Valuation premiums are moving here.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Value compounding.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Most businesses will find product lines in more than one quadrant.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: The same company can be creating and destroying value at the same time,
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: and the P&L will blend the two until the market separates them for you.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: What to do with the next AI dollar?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you're wanting one of these businesses,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: split your AI budget into two columns,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: money that makes your own team more productive and money that makes you findable,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: credible, and verifiable to the buyer's AI.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the first column is most of it, you're looking in the mirror.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then put a name next to the second column and a short list number next to the name.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're funding one, ask two questions before you look at the AI slide.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: What unit is on the invoice?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whose AI does the product serve?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: AI efficiency on an activity unit is margin on a shrinking base.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Price it that way.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're building one, move the meter before you scale the product.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: The step from activity pricing to outcome pricing gets harder
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: with every customer you sign on the old unit.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're starting one, start on the buyer's side of the machine.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Proprietary data their agents need and can't scrape,
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: proof they can verify, and a price tied to the result.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: In January, I said progress starts by answering three questions honestly.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer's AI isn't waiting for your answer.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's giving its own.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: One short list at a time.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, that's it for the episode.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you found this useful, please do one thing.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the Uphoff on Media podcast on Apple or Spotify and leave a rating.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's the single best way to help another operator find this.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Tony Uphoff, back at it next week.