AI search and social influencers are the new go-to sources for B2B buyers

When asked in a buying survey to name the most impactful interactions that they had in the journey to making a purchase, the top five included the usual suspects: product experts, industry websites, other customers and internal associates. In the last few months, however, two new avenues have shot to the top of that list: AI search and influencers.

Social media has always been a way for buyers to gather information, but this year, influencers are in second place for the most impactful ways to obtain information, “providing critical perspective,” and CMOs need to adapt to this, Forrester analysts stressed throughout the three-day event.

And what’s taking the top spot? AI search was the most selected impactful interaction. Buyers use it to find vendors at the beginning of the process to determine which they should be talking to. They use it to compare vendors and then make the final purchase. According to Forrester, 94% of buyers now utilize ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or some other AI search engine in the buying process.

“They use it everywhere. We need to wake up and smell the coffee that we must treat these as a representation of the buyer, because that’s what they are.” Paul Ferron, Forrester’s research director, said in a presentation. “They are searching, cruising for information on behalf of the buyers, and we need to find a way to deal with this.”

However, what the chart shown to the room of delegates didn’t reveal was that AI search and social influencers aren’t neck and neck with these other interaction types. They are rising at an exponential rate, while others drop off. And Forrester analyst Daryl Wright predicts that when the next survey of circa 18,000 buyers is conducted, that picture will be all the clearer.

“They’re using these generative AI systems to do the initial sort of filtering work. But then, they are asking, ‘How do I validate this?’ Social influencers are part of that validation process.”

He told The Drum that CMOs are becoming aware of this new reality and recognize the need to evolve their brand and content marketing strategies to adapt. “If I look back six months ago, nobody was talking about AI optimization. Now, all the clients I’ve spoken to in the last six weeks are talking about AI search optimization,” he says.

Wright says the biggest problem for marketers right now is that they’re not exactly sure how to optimize for AI Search. They don’t yet have a full understanding of what their buyers are searching for, which is necessary to optimize their content and ensure they appear in AI recommendations. Then, they’re wondering how much longer until they (or their competitors) will have to pay to appear in an answer – and what will that mean for the long-term credibility of AI search results among buyers.

“We know search engine results are highly manipulated. And there’s an arms race right now. Most of the large language models (LLMs) are in the process of trying to work out how to monetize themselves. They are burning cash like nobody’s business,” continues Wright.

“You’ve got this double whammy of CMOs working on how to optimize it so that they appear, but [questioning] what will it mean for trust [in the results] when it’s monetized. That’s an interesting question, because right now most people believe the answers [AI search returns] to be correct.”

Then there’s the question of how B2B brands show up in their buyers’ in-house models. Take PwC, WPP or Publicis; they have all been working on creating their own LLMs for internal use. Buyers are turning to these as their first stop for vendor searches.

“In our most recent research, we actually asked the question this year: was it a public large language model or an in-house model you used. And it’s a surprising number of people using in-house models,” he says.

“Keeping up with the rapid change is going to be really hard. I think ultimately this will settle down. But in the short term, it’s pretty wild west.”

Content strategy 2.0

Regardless of how B2B brand leaders weigh this up, they can’t deny that the buying journey has fundamentally changed and that success when it comes to AI search will depend on showing up in a differentiated way. They’ll need a renewed focus on balancing brand-building activity with short-term, demand tactics. And a solid content strategy is now essential.

Wright advises all B2B brands to adopt good content hygiene practices. All the things you were meant to do for SEO and your content that you stopped focusing on? Well, get back on it. And properly this time.

“Well-written content that’s unique and authoritative. Think like a machine to some extent. Yes, humans are going to consume it, but you can write things that are better consumed by a machine. Tagging things, good schema of content, you know, using consistent language, lots of really basic good writing techniques. And don’t use generative AI to write your content, because it’s too vague and LLMs are going to know about it,” he says.

“Think about the hub and spoke model for content again. In many ways, this isn’t news, but it is now really important because soon you just won’t appear in any search. Marketers aren’t doing this as an active strategy, but that’s absolutely how you need to go about it. All that stuff that you were meant to do with your content strategy and your message consistency, you’ve actually got to do it now because if it’s patchy or a bit all over the place, you’ll get penalized for that inconsistency.”

The theme of Forrester’s B2B Summit 2025 was ‘Buying Mayhem’. Catch up on the key trends from the event here.