Easy to Mind, Easy to Find_ AI and the New Buyer Journey - Easy to Mind, Easy to Find: B2B Brand Growth and the Impact of LLMs

Introduction and Research Context

• Jennifer Shal Sweet, the Global Practice Principal at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, presents new research focused on how product marketing can optimize brand growth by being both easy to mind and easy to find.

• The research was inspired by internal conversations with LinkedIn product marketers and led by Kate Neustad. It focuses on the bridge between being mentally available to a customer in a buying situation and ensuring that mental availability translates into a seamless journey where the brand is also physically easy to find.

• The project was a collaborative effort involving the B2B Institute, the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and several industry figures, including:

  • Tom Stein

  • James Hankins (Pfizer)

  • Devang (VP of Marketing at LinkedIn)

  • Alejandro Derek

  • Kate (LinkedIn Team)

  • Magda and Jenny (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute)

The Day One List and Mental Availability

• A critical statistic in B2B marketing is that $86\%$ of B2B journeys begin with a "day one list." This list consists of the brands a buyer already has in mind before they even begin their formal evaluation process.

• The average number of suppliers considered in a day one list, at the moment a buyer identifies a problem they need to solve, is only between $2.4$ and $3.4$ brands.

• Most categories contain significantly more than three brands, meaning that those not on the day one list are ignored from the start of the journey. Achieving revenue requires being thought of first during this initial trigger phase.

• Mental availability is the psychological component of brand growth—it is the ease with which a brand comes to mind in a buying situation.

Physical Availability: The Three Pillars of Navigability

• Physical availability in B2B is often overlooked, particularly in categories that rely on technical expertise or complex journeys. However, it is a hygiene factor in the buying journey.

• The research identifies three core areas to improve physical availability:

• Presence

  • Brands must show up where buying actually occurs.

  • This includes presence at conferences, in sales engagements, and maintaining a general level of marketplace and mental presence.

• Prominence

  • This involves health-checking the consistency and standout of the brand using distinctive brand assets.

  • Consistent prominence ensures that a brand is recognizable across all touchpoints, including digital interfaces like smartphone screens.

• Portfolio

  • Product marketers must organize portfolios to be relevant to more people at more times of need.

  • This requires using insights to navigate what is provided so it aligns with various buyer needs.

Commercial and Cultural Fluency

• Frank Cooper, the CMO of Visa, emphasizes that marketers must build both commercial and cultural fluency.

• Cultural fluency means putting the brand and products in the context of the buyer's environment, work, and specific needs, rather than just being prominent on popular platforms like Spotify.

The 90-5-5 Rule and Market Dynamics

• The 90-5-5 rule, developed with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, highlights the distribution of buyers in a category:

  • A small percentage (approximately $5\%$—though this varies by cycle length) are "in-market" buyers currently purchasing.

  • The vast majority ($95\%$—based on long-term cycles) are "out-of-market" buyers who are not currently buying but will be in the future.

• Marketing must influence out-of-market buyers early. By the time a buyer enters the purchase evaluation phase, they have already decided which brands they favor. During evaluation, they are merely qualifying a decision already made mentally.

• Marketing exposure early in the journey (up to an $18$-month event horizon) creates favorability. Data from Sales Navigator shows that brands with early marketing exposure see:

  • $4 \times$ more favorability in sales conversations.

  • Better outcomes regarding pricing, speed of sale, and reduced friction.

Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs)

• Buyers must be taught to find a brand in a crowd. This is achieved through distinctive assets that serve as visual, sonic, or tonal cues.

• Examples of distinctive assets include:

  • HSBC: Use of the "bow tie" shape, specific color cues, font, and photographic styles.

  • Amazon, Google, and Microsoft: Consistent use of brand icons and cues that lead to high attribution rates.

• Discipline in applying these assets reduces misattribution. Smaller brands are frequently mistaken for category leaders if they fail to use unique, consistent brand cues. In some cases, the category leader benefits more from a smaller brand's advertising due to poor branding discipline.

• Disruption within a category is achieved by understanding category norms and then using color or visual disruption to stand out.

Portfolio Management and Category Entry Points (CEPs)

• A well-managed portfolio should have enough products to cover category needs without being so cluttered that it hinders navigation.

• The W Framework

  • Developed by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, this framework helps navigate product portfolios by need states: Who, What, Why, When, and How.

  • Connecting a portfolio to need states prevents the brand from competing solely on technical product parity and creates higher levels of preference.

• Category Entry Points (CEPs)

  • Marketers should survey which category associations are linked to specific need states for their brand versus competitors.

  • Determining the hierarchy of the day one list helps identify where the brand sits in the buyer's mind.

• Segmentation and Hierarchy

  • Karl Linnaeus, who ordered nature into Latin-based segments, serves as a metaphor for brand organization. Clear segmentation allows for "umbrella strategies," where a customer who sees a brand do two specific things will assume the brand also handles the related tasks in between.

Owned vs. Rented Prominence

• Marketers should strive to own their prominence rather than renting it. For example, instead of just presenting at someone else's conference (renting), a brand should organize its own events (owning).

• The Availability Heuristic

  • The brain of the customer is the most powerful search engine. If a customer thinks of a brand first for a need state, the brand saves money because it doesn't have to buy as much prominence through paid search.

  • Brands should measure "branded search" against the cost of buying generic keywords. Creating enough mental preference that customers search specifically for the brand can influence up to $40\%$ of the final pricing.

Large Language Models (LLMs) and the Future of Discovery

• LLMs currently impact approximately $7\%$ of buyer journeys, but Forrester predicts this will affect $60\%$ of journeys within the next five years.

• AI Impact Statistics

  • Gartner predicts a $50\%$ decline in organic search traffic due to AI-driven experiences.

  • Forrester notes that $95\%$ of B2B buyers plan to use Generative AI (GenAI) in at least one area of a future purchase.

  • The economic impact of AI is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars.

• Marketing for LLMs

  • While some view optimizing for LLMs as "hacking," it is a necessary hygiene factor for modern marketing.

  • LLMs and GEA (Generative Engine Optimization) platforms favor brands with strong, recognizable signals.

  • However, humans still assess the quality of LLM outputs. A brand must be mentally present so the human user can judge if the LLM's recommendation is correct.

Strategies for AI-Ready Product Marketing

• Content Quality and Discoverability

  • Content must be discoverable and valuable to AI systems. This includes basic tasks like labeling images and creating streamlined navigation frameworks.

  • FAQs, which were previously a secondary task for websites, are now primary navigation tools for AI.

• Evaluative Thinking

  • Marketers must question the quality of sources used by LLMs. Bad source material leads to bad information being fed to customers. Anonymous or low-quality sources should be challenged in favor of qualified data.

• Accountability on Social Platforms

  • On platforms like LinkedIn, people use their real identities and are accountable for their reviews and comments because their professional network (bosses, colleagues) is watching. This peer review creates high-quality advice that AI can use.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration

  • Preparing for AI discovery requires coordination between Product Marketing Managers (PMMs), PR, Editorial, Web Marketing, and Sales.

Summary of Actionable Tips

1. Maximize Customer Access: Ensure physical and mental availability are aligned.

2. Establish and Amplify DBAs: Use distinctive brand assets to define and amplify the brand's identity.

3. Align with CEPs: Map the product portfolio to specific category entry points and need states.

4. Rebalance Toward Owned Prominence: Invest in building long-term sustainable growth by owning the customer journey.

5. Declutter the Message Framework: Focus on "hero information" to maximize the Return on Investment (ROI).