Late to the Party, Early with the Takeaways: B2B Branding, Findability, and the Gems I Pocketed from B2B Marketing Leaders' forum

I jogged into the Sydney airport lounge five minutes before boarding, coffee in hand, Slack notifications piling up, sure I must have left something behind? That was me after our recent two-day marketing extravaganza at B2B Marketing Leaders Forum | 21-22 May 2025 | Sydney . I’m arriving fashionably late with my LinkedIn wrap-up, but trust me—these insights are still piping hot. First, hats off to Emma Roborgh - Founder B2B Marketing Leaders Forum, Kristy Kelly , and the entire crew for running another exhilarating show.

1. A Panel, Three Pros, and Six Truth Bombs

My panel, B2B Branding and Fundability in the Era of AI, only worked because Lexie Walker, Bernice Muncaster, and Rohan Kamra showed up brimming with candour (and the occasional mic drop).

Here’s what we uncovered together:

1. Unlike traditional or lexical search, semantic search leverages artificial intelligence to understand the meaning and context of queries, aiming to grasp user intent and retrieve conceptually relevant information, even if exact keywords aren't present.

2. AI chatbots are extracting data about our brand, products, and product categories from various sources, including publications, analyst reports, competitors' websites, and social media. We need to rethink the collaboration between the marketing and communications teams.

3. Apart from SEO, we need to focus on GEO (how to be mentioned in zero-click searches) for our owned media.

4. The website traffic of most companies, particularly on blogs and resource sections, decreased significantly. Organic traffic for HubSpot decreased by 75% over the last 18 months. Many prospects are now getting their answers directly from ChatGPT or other AI tools. But that doesn't mean we deprioritise our content marketing effort. However, we do need to be strategic and rethink our Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) effort within our content strategy. <Shameless plug> Talk to us or visit https://hotwirespark.com/ to book a demo </plug>

5. From a performance-marketing perspective, we should review the GEO suggestions and optimise our long-tail keywords based on what our prospects are asking the AI in searches.

6. An APAC marketer can run the pilot projects and take on a pioneering role to prove the use cases to the global HQ.

So What, Now What?

You might be thinking, Great Anol, but I’m staring at shrinking organic traffic and a quarterly target looming large—what am I supposed to do on Monday?

• Ask yourself whether your content answers real buyer questions or whether ChatGPT can answer them faster. If the latter, make your content the source ChatGPT wants to quote.

• Huddle with your comms team—yes, the folks who own analyst relations and media briefings. AI doesn’t respect departmental boundaries, and neither can we.

• Pilot a GEO-first content cluster in one market. If it flops, you’ve lost a little budget. If it flies, you’ve bought yourself a scalable blueprint.

2. Keynote Nuggets that Deserve a Frame

I spent the rest of the event scribbling like a court stenographer. Here are the shiniest gems:

Robert Chatwani (my favourite keynote)

Robert Chatwani

1. You are a catalyst for exponential change.

2. Your real competitor: Every delightful digital experience your customer has ever loved

3. When you think like a CEO, you earn the right to influence like a CEO

4. The Value Creation Zone — The intersection of company needs and customer needs defines the Value Creation Zone, where DocuSign focuses on three pivotal initiatives: onboarding and activation that enhance the experience to drive feature adoption; upsell and cross-sell programs that expand revenue and grow lifetime value; and self-serve help that lowers support-ticket and contact volume.

Jon Stona

Jon Stona

Trustworthiness = (Credibility × Reliability × Intimacy) / Self-Orientation

Eve Alexander

Eve Alexander

It's not 'Do more with less.' But, have more impact with less effort through enablement.

Alexandra Kelly (hands down the most entertaining session) [Paraphrased]

Alexandra Kelly

In account-based marketing, true personalisation at scale resides in the overlap between technology and humanity: generative and agentic AI provide the speed, data handling, and automation needed to efficiently reach many accounts, while people contribute the nuance, credibility, and inventive thinking that make each interaction feel distinctly human. The strategy must always lead, and the tools should follow—AI should amplify marketers' insights, not replace them—so teams should start by clarifying the outcomes they want, then deploy automation to handle repeatable tasks and surface richer signals. As the feedback loop of training data and AI use continually sharpens performance, marketers keep their hands on the wheel, trusting their judgment to refine messaging, avoid extremes, and strike the right balance between mass efficiency and one-to-one relevance. This blended approach turns personalisation at scale from a trade-off into a competitive advantage.

If your ABM programme feels like a spaghetti cannon, reread that paragraph.

3. Gratitude (and One Meme Proposal)

To every client, prospect, partner, and friend I reconnected with—and to the many new faces—I thank you for the hallway conversations and caffeine runs.

Marcelo Loustau Jon Panker Rajhev Rajkumar Shamim Narayan Lidia Lal Charles Kinsella Sulo Hardie Kellie Wheeler Mari Kauppinen Shalini Nagarajan Eagranie Yuh Krish Ruban Brett Chester Amanda Watson Jake Hird Jason Di Dio Nathaniel Parkes Anil Reddy Simon Hickox (blame my tired brain for forgetting some)

PS:

Ben Munroe, I’m still game for the “Ben Sermon Meme Series.” The internet needs it.

Hannah Tummey, you orchestrated my entire trip and made sure I didn’t accidentally rest—legend.

And a massive thank you to Ian Ball , our Group COO, for showing up and showing support. It mattered.