B2B Reads: CFO and Marketing Alignment, AEO/GEO, UX Trends, Influencers, and More

Summary

Some of our favorite B2B sales and marketing posts from around the web this past week.

Every Saturday morning we share some of our favorite B2B sales and marketing posts from around the web last week (so it’s fresh!). We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please let us know.

CFOs and B2B Marketers Are Aligned on Growth, But Not on Brand by Bill Zengel

CFOs and B2B marketers actually want the same thing: faster, more profitable growth. Marketers talk about brand in terms of trust, storytelling, and awareness, while CFOs see it through risk mitigation, efficiency, and margins. The trick is getting them to see that brand isn’t just a cost center, but a strategic driver that can boost demand.

AI Is Transforming Productivity, but Sales Remains a New Frontier by Ann Bosche, Jue Wang, Peter Bowen, Tamara Lewis, Justin Murphy, and Mark Kovac

AI is already boosting productivity everywhere across organizations—but sales hasn’t really felt the full impact yet. Bain argues that’s because sales is messy: tons of fragmented tasks, patchy data, and inconsistent processes make automation tricky. If companies rethink the sales workflow, pick a few high-impact use cases, clean up their data, and get executive support, AI could free reps to actually sell and improve win rates by 30%+.

Five UX Trends Every B2B Marketer Should Know by Steve Ohanians

Websites for B2B are no longer just static brochures…they’re increasingly dynamic, intelligent, and integral to growth. This article highlights trends like voice-enabled navigation, AI-driven layouts that adapt to visitor intent, and “micro-AI agents” focused on specific tasks. Plus, it argues for “intentional friction”—small nudges or questions that slow things down just enough to make users think more deeply rather than rushing through mindlessly.

B2B Marketing 2025: Influencer Partnerships and AI Trends Drive Growth by John Smart

B2B marketing in 2025 is leaning hard into influencer partnerships, with 81% of marketers now budgeting for them and many planning to up their spend. It’s not just big names…brands are tapping micro-influencers and mixing AI tools to help choose the right voices and content. Ethical AI use, long-term deals, and blending tech + human insight are becoming the winning combo for trust, leads, and growth.

SEO Is Tanking. How to Win With AEO / GEO by Carilu Dietrich

SEO as we know it is losing steam, so marketers are shifting toward AEO / “Agent Experience” (also called GEO)—optimizing content not for humans first but for AI agents that crawl, read, and cite answers. The article suggests that your job now is to build content that wins against questions and prompts (e.g. comparisons, listicles, Q&A), ship fast (new pages can be indexed in ~48 hours), and syndicate off-site to boost authority. If you don’t supply strong, structured content, these AI agents will pull in someone else’s (or even hallucinate), so it’s better to lean into transparency, citations, and smart prompt mapping.

Have a wonderful weekend and thank you for reading!  If you have B2B news sources you rely on we’d love to hear about them.  Please share them with us.