As buyers increasingly turn to large language models for product research, B2B marketing strategies must evolve to accommodate for this shift, according to a panel of CMOs speaking at HubSpot’s INBOUND conference earlier this month.

Chief marketers from G2, Notion and Deloitte—companies at the forefront of the AI marketing revolution—emphasized the importance of brand marketing for B2B organizations, rethinking owned communications and the benefits of AI experimentation.

“I think a lot of us took advantage of the fact that we could buy demand without investing in brand for a long time. And now you can’t,” said Sydney Sloan, CMO at software review platform G2. “Your brand has to play a larger role because you still want people to think about the brand, if the LLM is not indexing on it yet,” she said.

Though it’s not always perceived as such, buyer decision-making is an emotional process rather than a rational one, according to Lena Waters, CMO at AI workspace tool Notion. “The fallacy in B2B marketing is that we assume that people make decisions via logic, and really we know they make them with emotion … That doesn't go away with B2B. I think we accept it for consumer, so why not through business? … That’s where the brand is going to come in and play that huge part.” Read on to learn how B2B companies can keep pace in the AI era.

Best Buy is enhancing its retail media offerings to leverage its physical stores and the products within it, Lisa Valentino, President of Best Buy Ads, told Chief Marketer. The retail chain hosted a showcase last week for media and advertisers touting the benefits of its retail media network Best Buy Ads. It also announced new features, such as store takeover ad spots, partnerships with popular demand service platforms and expanding its self-service reporting platform. CM Retail has the story.

Lastly, 81% of consumers say rewards impact their shopping and payment behavior, and 59% say rewards make them more loyal to a brand, according to a new study from PayPal and research firm Reach3 Insights. We review the study’s key insights, including how consumers prefer to redeem rewards through loyalty programs.

Until next week,