Why B2B marketers must rethink data, content, and visibility to succeed in AI-driven buyer discovery and decision-making
Generative AI has transformed how buyers discover, evaluate, and choose solutions, creating a new competitive arena where your brand must earn visibility inside AI-generated recommendations as much as in traditional search. New research from Croud and ImpactSense shows the shift is already here: 39% of AI users discovered their favorite brand through tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, and 42% switched brands based on AI recommendations. While the study focuses on consumers, the implications for B2B are immediate. Decision-makers now rely on AI assistants to shortlist vendors, compare options, and inform purchases worth millions.
According to the Croud and ImpactSense study, AI-assisted shoppers spend roughly twice as much per transaction, not because they have higher budgets, but because AI gives them confidence through clear comparisons and relevant recommendations. Confidence compounds into trust, and trust drives action. B2B buyers carry these expectations into work: instant clarity, personalized guidance, and credible proof.
Visibility in AI results will soon matter as much as search rankings. The catch: AI can only recommend what it can understand. Fragmented data, siloed insights, and inconsistent messaging create blind spots that prevent AI from grasping your full value proposition. Without a complete, consistent, and machine-readable brand footprint, you risk invisibility in an AI-mediated market.
Across the buying journey, business professionals now lean on AI to accelerate due diligence and reduce risk. They use AI to:
This changes the game. Your website, content, and sales enablement may never be seen if AI cannot parse and connect them to buyer needs. Winning in this environment requires more than better SEO. It demands an information architecture and data discipline that makes your brand intelligible to machines and indispensable to buyers.
Modern buyers don’t compartmentalize their lives. The same person researching ERP platforms at 2 PM may be shopping for running shoes at 7 PM, often using the same AI assistants and expecting the same quality of recommendations. Data Axle’s recent research underscores this: 72% of consumers feel more connected to brands that recognize their complete identity, yet fewer than 40% of marketers integrate psychographic or cross-contextual data into targeting.
As Andy Frawley, CEO of Data Axle, notes:
“True customer insight comes from connecting the dots between who someone is as a consumer and who they are professionally. That connection helps brands synchronize their data, messaging, and activation across both identities.”
For B2B marketers, this means moving beyond job titles and firmographics. A CFO evaluating financial software brings consumer-grade expectations for speed, relevance, and personalization. Meeting them requires a unified view across channels, contexts, and moments.
Creating an AI-discoverable, AI-trustworthy brand requires disciplined execution across five areas:
Forward-thinking organizations are investing in unified data platforms to power this shift. Data Axle’s ProfileFuse™, for example, connects business and consumer profiles through advanced identity resolution to give marketers a more complete view of customers and prospects.
The benefits extend beyond personalization. Unified data enables:
Execution requires both technology and operating model changes. Start with a data audit to pinpoint quality issues and duplication. Map journeys across B2B and B2C contexts to reveal behavioral patterns. Invest in enrichment and identity resolution to connect the dots. And align teams, marketing, sales, success, product around a shared customer view with clear data ownership and governance.
Traditional metrics still matter, but they’re not sufficient. Expand your scorecard to include:
Listen closely to how customers say they found you, which questions they asked, and which comparisons they made. Monitor how AI tools portray competitors and where gaps exist that you can exploit. Build adaptable measurement frameworks and analytics that can ingest and interpret AI-driven interactions as platforms evolve.
We are early in the AI transformation of B2B buying. Assistants will grow more context-aware, more specialized by function and industry, and more capable of handling complex purchasing with minimal human intervention. To prepare, get the fundamentals right now, and cultivate the capabilities to adapt.
AI has permanently altered how buyers discover and choose B2B solutions. Thriving in this landscape requires more than incremental tweaks; it demands a fundamental shift in how you collect, connect, and activate customer data, and how you present your value in machine-readable, buyer-centered ways.
The brands that win will see customers completely, engage them intelligently, and iterate continuously as AI evolves. Your path to AI readiness starts with a decision: lead this transformation, or follow competitors who move faster. Ready to get started? Reach out.
As Content Marketing Manager, Natasia is responsible for helping strategize, produce and execute Data Axle's content. With a passion for writing and an enthusiasm for data management and technology, Natasia creates content that is designed to deliver nuggets of wisdom to help brands and individuals elevate their data governance policies. A native New Yorker, when Natasia is not at work she can be found enjoying New York’s food scene, at one of NYC’s many museums, or at one of the city’s many parks with her two teacup yorkies.