In Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Report, 81% of B2B marketers say their teams are using Gen AI tools. In the same report, Ann Handley of MarketingProfs shared that “43% of B2B marketers struggle with differentiating their content from their competitors. We struggle standing out in the sea of same. Yet, at the same time, 56% of B2B marketers are looking to prioritize AI-powered automation in 2025.”
This is the AI compromise many marketers are facing. Efficiency at the cost of quality because GenAI tools aren’t quite advanced enough to easily replicate human level creativity and most humans haven’t mastered prompt engineering and GenAI tools enough to achieve better than average outputs.
Anyone in B2B marketing that consumes information digitally has seen the uptick in AI-generated content from the Midjourney aesthetic of graphics to social media and blog posts littered with em dashes and overenthusiastic use of adjectives. I’ve talked to many marketers over the past month and there’s a consensus that often when content is recognized as AI-created, there’s a reaction to dismiss it, ignore it, and keep on scrolling.
Why? There are quality and trust issues with GenAI created content. CMI’s research shows that only 17% rate GenAI content as excellent or very good and only 4% have a high level of trust for AI outputs. At best, most raw GenAI content output is average. And no B2B brand will win with average.
The thing is, B2B marketers are gaining efficiencies in their workflows with AI and that means they will continue to use it to research, plan and create content.
Without question, the age of artificial intelligence transformation is here and as a result, B2B marketers face the challenge of how to best position their brands in a world that is under greater pressure than ever to perform with fewer resources and also increasingly saturated with AI-generated content. While there are efficiencies and scale readily available with GenAI, the value of humanizing B2B brands has become more important than ever.
In a sea of sameness, how do B2B marketers stand out with credibility and trust, and create more meaningful vs. mechanical content experiences with their customers?
Buyers are hungry for human connection and that connection requires credibility and authenticity. What better way for a brand to achieve those things than by partnering with the most relevant and trusted voices in their industry? Achieving authenticity and influence with business buyers is the signal in a sea of artificial noise that can help B2B brands create the meaningful connections that can maintain and grow revenue, even in uncertain times.
So what can B2B marketers do to achieve this new humanized AI? Here are a few areas to focus on:
1. Build Always-On Influencer Relationships to Navigate Uncertainty
In a climate where political and economic disruptions challenge buyer confidence, human relationships are an important differentiator. Everyone feeling this uncertainty, including business buyers, are seeking information sources and connections that offer credibility, continuity and confidence. B2B brands that develop ongoing relationships with industry experts that have credible and relevant expertise can better establish their own credibility and confidence amongst buyers as well as connect with influencers’ audiences.
According to the 2025 B2B Influencer Marketing Report, 81% of marketers with advanced influencer programs are using an always-on approach, with consistent engagement and campaigns driving higher success rates. An always-on approach to influencer engagement means moving beyond transactional campaigns to developing authentic relationships that inspire advocacy.
How:
- Identify and create long-term partnerships with a core group of trusted industry experts.
- Move beyond one-off campaigns to continuous collaboration that reflects the market trends and challenges customers are facing.
- Leverage industry experts (inside and outside your brand) to contextualize how the economic changes happening affect your industry with human insight and real-world relevance.
2. Co-Create Authentic Thought Leadership Content with Micro-Influencers
The days of celebrity business influencers with massive followings joining brands in pontificating the industry go forward in ways that create credibility are pretty much over. Today it is engagements with micro-influencers that tend to drive higher engagement and trust due to their niche expertise and authentic relationships with the communities they are a part of. Buyers want to see themselves and their challenges represented in brand content.
According to research from LinkedIn, 87% of B2B buyers prefer content from trusted industry influencers over branded sales messages. Thought leadership co-created in partnership with niche experts adds authenticity that attracts, engages and inspires.
How:
- Identify the specific niche topics that underscore the key narratives of your brand’s thought leadership message, then identify the best niche influencers to partner with.
- Engage those relevant business influencers in brand content development including blog posts, newsletters, webinars, industry events or LinkedIn Live videos, especially around the topics that are driving the most uncertainty for your customers right now.
- Collaborate with influencer partners to shape narratives rather than simply leveraging influencer audiences to amplify brand content.
3. Showcase the People Behind the Brand
Not surprisingly, humanizing a B2B brand means showcasing humans in brand content. Influence can be found inside your company and giving your community a behind the scenes look at the experts that make your company relevant and special can be a great way to connect with customers. Partnering internal subject matter experts with industry influencers blends B2B celebrity with authenticity in a way that captures attention in a time where attention is fleeting.
TopRank helped SAP implement a podcast with a B2B industry influencer as a host and featuring internal subject matter experts from different business units. The podcast reached an audience of 52 million and the format resulted in a 66% increase in podcast downloads over the previous season.
How:
- Partner with business influencers to host roundtables, podcast interviews, or panel discussions featuring influencers, your internal experts and even your customers.
- Use short-form video (like LinkedIn Live or YouTube Shorts) to share authentic, unscripted insights on how your brand is responding to the most important challenges customers are facing.
4. Align B2B Influencer Voices with Buyer Concerns in Real Time
For some B2B companies, it’s tempting to wait and see, but the current economic situation is creating tremendous uncertainty in every aspect of business and marketing. This uncertainty is an opportunity for B2B brands to be a voice of credibility and to provide leadership where it’s lacking elsewhere. Influencers can play a role in this leadership. Collaborating with credible industry experts in areas that customers are most concerned with can humanize brand messaging and show customers a level of care they are not seeing from other institutions.
How:
- Ensure strong influencer relationships with an always-on approach to influencer engagement.
- Develop agile influencer collaborations to react to timely issues (e.g., a sudden AI regulation, or a shift in global sourcing due to tariffs).
- Work with trusted influencer partners to create or comment on “explainer” content that can simplify complex and urgent topics for B2B buyers.
5. Integrate Influencer Content Across the Buyer Journey
A lot of B2B influencer engagements have focused on enlisting the commentary and even advocacy of the most popular business experts. Huge followings have often been equated with potential impact. The truth is that different types of influencers are appropriate for different kinds of content and stages of the buyer journey. Humanizing B2B customer engagement isn’t just a top-of-funnel opportunity. Buyer trust must carry through the entire customer journey through to decision-making and even into customer success.
How:
- Map the correct influencer types to corresponding content and expected outcomes. For example, celebrity business influencers are best for top of funnel content. Whereas internal subject matter experts might best fit for middle funnel content and customers with case studies might be most appropriate for bottom of funnel content.
- With an understanding of influencer types and matching content topics and types, embed influencer content appropirately in demand-gen workflows, ABM campaigns, and post-sale communications.
- Collaborate with relevant influencers to deliver authentic use cases or work with your clients on communicating success stories that mirror a true customer journey experience.
It’s a bit cliche, but I think it’s important in an age of automating workflows, shiny GenAI and the forthcoming agentic AI systems, that the B’s in B2B are people too. In times of uncertainty as we are certainly experiencing right now, there is a hunger for authenticity and continuity. The authenticity buyers are seeking could be found in the authentic relationships your brand has developed with the most trusted voices in your industry. The question is, do you know who those voices are? What are you doing to build real relationships with them? How are you then converting those relationships into meaningful vs. mechanical content experiences?
As AI continues to evolve, the human elements of B2B marketing including empathy, authenticity, and personalized engagement will become important differentiators. By focusing on the new AI, the 5 Authentic Influence recommendations above, B2B marketers can create meaningful connections that set their brands apart. To learn more about how influence can become part of your B2B marketing mix, check out the 2025 B2B Influencer Marketing Report or our B2B Influencer Marketing Solutions page.
