The way B2B buyers find vendors has changed – faster than most marketing plans have.
Forrester’s 2026 Buyers’ Journey Survey found that AI and conversational search are now the most useful source of vendor research. That’s ahead of websites, sales teams, and analyst reports. Ninety-four percent of B2B buyers now use AI somewhere in the buying process. Of course search, content, and advertising still matter, but they’re no longer the whole story.
Here’s the part I find most interesting: AI doesn’t describe your company the way you describe yourself. It describes your company the way everyone else does: Customers. Analysts. Partners. The media. Reviews…
The AI answer is a mirror. That’s why AI has become an influence engine (not just a search engine).
If you’re not appearing on vendor shortlists, the problem isn’t necessarily that AI can’t find you. More often, it’s that AI can’t confidently understand you. And if it can’t confidently articulate what makes your company different, AI is far less likely to recommend you when buyers ask who they should consider.
That’s a clarity problem, not a content problem.
A 2026 Moz study found that 88% of the citations in Google’s AI answers come from outside the organic top ten. In other words, AI isn’t simply repeating the pages you’ve optimized. It’s synthesizing what the market already believes about you. The brands AI recommends most confidently are the ones the market is most easily able to describe in one clear, consistent line.
Before you brief another content calendar, ask yourself this question: If your customers, analysts, partners, the media, and AI all described your company today, would they tell essentially the same story?
If you’re not sure, try this:
- Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and ask:
- “What does [my company] do, and what makes it different?”
- Then ask the same question about your three closest competitors.
If the answers sound interchangeable, you’ve probably found your next strategic priority: making your company easier for the market to understand, describe, and distinguish.
The big move for b2b brands to make today: focus on clarity. Because AI is a mirror at scale.
Note: If you run the exercise and don’t like what you see, don’t assume you have an AI problem. More often, it’s a positioning problem. We’d be happy to help you interpret what AI is really telling you, uncover the gap, and discuss what it would take to change the outcome.
Sources: The shift to AI as the leading source of vendor research and the 94% adoption figure, Forrester 2026 Buyers’ Journey Survey (around 18,000 global buyers). The finding that 88% of citations in Google’s AI answers come from outside the organic top ten, Moz 2026.
