For years, marketing teams believed the first real opportunity to shape perception happened when a prospect agreed to talk to sales.
That world is gone. According to Forrester, nearly all business buyers (94%) use AI tools such as generative search in their buying process, with many naming these tools as a more meaningful source of information than traditional channels.
Today, B2B buyers are forming opinions long before a meeting ever happens. They are searching, reading AI-generated summaries, scanning analyst commentary and noticing which companies appear consistently across media, analyst research and social channels. By the time a rep gets on the calendar, a narrative is already in place.
If you didn’t actively shape the narrative, someone else did.
AI Discovery Is Reshaping B2B Brand Perception
AI-powered search tools and large language models (LLMs) now influence how buyers interpret market position.
A prospective buyer can type in your company name and instantly see:
- What buyer challenges your brand is associated with
- Which executives are quoted in industry coverage
- Whether analysts reference your company
- How often your company appears in credible industry conversations
- Which of your competitors show up more frequently
This information becomes shorthand for the authority and credibility LLMs operate on.
When companies assume they’ll “tell their story once the sales cycle starts,” they’re already behind. At that point, they have to react to a version of themselves assembled from publicly available signals across the ecosystem.
If that picture is thin, outdated or dominated by competitors, that becomes the baseline perception.
Why Brand Authority Must Be Built and Maintained Between Announcements
Press releases and product launches generate attention. They do not create sustained authority.
Authority is built through consistent thought leadership, executive visibility and ongoing industry participation. It develops in the space between announcements.
If your market only hears from you when you have something to promote, your brand will not be associated with the broader industry conversations shaping buying decisions. Over time, that silence creates ambiguity.
Buyers may ask:
- Is this company actively innovating?
- Are you contributing meaningful expertise?
- Are they visible in analyst and media conversations?
A proactive thought leadership strategy answers those questions before they are asked.
It ensures executives contribute perspective on the issues buyers are navigating right now, not just the features being launched. It positions your company as part of the ongoing dialogue.
Consistency turns visibility into familiarity. Familiarity builds trust.
Integrated Visibility Strengthens Narrative Control
Brand perception improves when visibility is coordinated across channels.
Media mentions, executive LinkedIn content, analyst engagement, contributed articles and digital amplification should reinforce the same strategic themes. When those signals align, repetition becomes validation.
Sales teams experience the impact directly. Instead of establishing credibility from scratch, they build on existing familiarity. Prospects have already encountered the company narrative across multiple trusted sources.
Without that reinforcement, everything sounds like an assertion. With it, your positioning feels verified. Integrated communications reduce friction because buyers feel informed before they engage.
How to Design for AI Discoverability
In an AI-driven discovery environment, companies must design their visibility intentionally.
This includes:
- Clear articulation of focus areas and differentiation on owned digital properties
- Consistent executive thought leadership aligned to strategic messaging
- Earned media placements tied to key industry conversations
- Analyst engagement that reflects market positioning
- Monitoring how AI-generated summaries describe your company
What appears in search results and AI-generated overviews becomes shorthand for market identity.
This requires active measurement. Marketing teams need visibility into:
- Which themes are surfacing in AI summaries
- Where competitors dominate share of voice
- How analyst commentary frames category leaders
- Whether executive insights are being cited
If those signals are not monitored, brand perception is left to chance. In crowded B2B categories, chance is not a viable strategy.
The Risk of Passive Brand Management in the AI Era
If CMOs don’t adapt to this AI-shaped discovery environment, they are effectively allowing others to define their company narrative.
AI systems synthesize information from:
- Past media coverage
- Analyst reports
- Industry commentary
- Competitor comparisons
- Executive content
- Social Influencer posts
If that footprint is inconsistent or underdeveloped, AI will still generate a narrative. It simply may not be the one you intended.
Once perception hardens across search results and AI-generated summaries, repositioning becomes more complex and resource-intensive.
Buyers now arrive informed. The only question is whether the information they find reflects the story you want told.