The 2026 B2B Playbook: How to Leverage Brand, Performance and Embrace AI

Thursday, 6th November marked the launch event for Better B2B, with speakers from Hallam and LinkedIn hitting the stage for The 2026 B2B Playbook: How to Leverage Brand, Performance and Embrace AI. Read on for our key takeaways from the four talks.

The changing media landscape: Redefining reach through Paid, Organic and SEO with Dan McCartney and Safyah A. Malik

The media landscape is constantly shifting, demanding B2B marketers adopt a smarter, more holistic approach to reach, relevance and measurement.

The audience-first approach

The modern audience is complex: users are simultaneously searching, streaming, scrolling and shopping. In this fragmented environment, the key to success is becoming smarter, not louder.

• Focus on insights: Adopt an ‘audience-first approach’, not just an audience-led approach, in order to challenge assumptions and biases.
• Validate with data: Use performance data to validate insights, not just opinions. Leverage tools like Spark Toro for clickstream data to gain competitive insights into your audience’s media consumption (both organic and paid) compared to the average
• Diversify: A holistic strategy and a diversified channel mix are essential to achieve multi-platform discovery and to move ‘Beyond Google’

In the world of B2B search, a fragmented approach won’t cut it. The future is about synergy and looking beyond the traditional SERP.

1. Traditional Search: Primarily focused on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
2. Unified Search: Combining paid and organic efforts for synergistic results and more efficient spend
3. Total Search: Thinking beyond Google and diversifying your platform strategy in order to show up wherever the user is searching

SEO fundamentals remain the same

Remember: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Success rests on the three core fundamentals:

• Technical: Ensuring your website can be easily found and crawled
• Content: Making sure the content on your website matters and is relevant
• Authority: Building domain trust through quality backlinks from other websites

Measurement & Budget

To keep budget-holders happy, it’s vital to measure what matters and demonstrate commercial impact:

• Measure 1st and 3rd party metrics
• Use an Effort vs. Impact Matrix to prioritise initiatives
• Plug in your CRM data for quick wins and a clearer picture of commercial impact
• Always allocate an innovation budget (5-10%) for testing new strategies and channels

The power of video: Driving influence and lead generation on LinkedIn with Danny El Zein

The media landscape disruption, coupled with a major generational shift in B2B buyers, has made video an essential tool for driving influence and lead generation on LinkedIn. Here are the key findings from Danny Walsh’s talk.

Why video on LinkedIn now?

There’s a major disruption in the media landscape, fueled by an operational shift where 70% of B2B buyers are Gen Z and Millennials. This new demographic consumes media differently.

Buyers today don’t search – they get prompted. The path to purchase has changed: the B2B moment of truth is now primarily about research that precedes the buying decision. We need to be on their ‘Day 1 list’ when a need arises.

Video is naturally more memorable, offering up to 95% message retention. This creates credibility and drives top-of-mind awareness, which is the ultimate goal.

Video’s role in lead generation

Video is not just for brand building; it’s a powerful lead generation tool. Key stats include:

• Higher lead rate: Combining video with lead generation tactics results in a 1.6X higher lead generation rate
• Conversion power: Someone who views a video is 18% more likely to become

Introducing LinkedIn video tools

LinkedIn offers specific ad formats designed to leverage video’s power throughout the funnel:

• Brand Lift (pre-roll Video): Video ads run for the sole purpose of driving influence and building brand awareness
• Reserved Ads (locking sSpot): This is for guaranteed visibility, often used for first impression ads, which are the first ad your target audience sees in a feed on a given day. This helps ensure your high-impact video reaches the right users first.

Video is fundamental to content strategy in 2026. Speak to our experts to see how video can work better for you.

There’s no such thing as B2B: Building brands that speak to people with Francis Williams and Chris Bliss

The most impactful B2B marketing treats customers as people first, not businesses. Francis Williams and Chris Bliss’s talk, There’s No Such Thing as B2B: Building Brands That Speak to People, highlighted that emotional, human-centric creative is the key to memorability, differentiation and long-term profit.

The human-centric B2B truth

The assertion is that “there’s no such thing as B2B”, only marketing to people. Marketers must stop oversimplifying things and instead build brands that speak to people. You must find a way to do something unique that the whole category can’t or won’t do. Thinking about Monzo as an example, they entered the banking category with an entirely fresh look and feel and they’re remembered for it.  

Some top tips to for brilliant creative:

• Avoid clichés: Generic claims like being ‘future-proof’ or ‘scalable’ are used by everyone and fail to differentiate your brand
• Focus on benefits (not just features): While people often talk about features, the conversation should shift to what the product does for the user and how it benefits their life

Remember, creative drives purchase. 71% of buyers say that memorable creative draws them to a brand.

The emotional power of creative

Emotion is not just for B2C. It’s a powerful, instant driver in B2B as well. IIt takes only 12ms to have an emotional response (it’s instantaneous!) You are 13X more likely to recall something if it was a story well told. Storytelling is deeply rooted in how humans create deep, meaningful connections. Marketers must tap into the emotion that drives people and use more to trigger empathy. Think about how John Lewis has done this amazingly well with their 2025 Christmas TV ad.

The B2B Institutes‘ How to win mindshare In the GenAI race with David Walsh

David’s talk brought together the themes of brand, reach, and memorability, stressing that in the age of Artificial Intelligence, mindshare, not just product superiority, is the ultimate currency. Our top takeaways from the final talk of the day are:

• Ad relevance: True ad relevance is achieved by solving problems, not merely selling features.
• Widespread targeting: To effectively grow your mindshare, you need to use widespread targeting.
• The B2B purchase reality: The B2B buying journey is long and complex, making prior brand awareness critical for success. B2B buyers are only purchasing roughly in one quarter of the year.
• The critical shortlist: A staggering 91% of purchases are from brands already on their shortlist. This shortlist is typically very small, containing only 2-4 brands. This highlights the immense value of being a memorable brand that is considered from the start.

Interested in learning from other B2B marketers or want to explore the content from the event? Sign up to Better B2B here and be the first to hear about our online and in-person events, as well as so much more.