Welcome to The B2B Marketing Brief! Your front-row seat to the ever-evolving world of B2B marketing. Where we keep it real—sharing wins, tackling pain points, and uncovering growth opportunities. Each edition is packed with stories, tips, and the latest trends to help you master the art of B2B engagement. Get your cup of coffee, and let’s get marketing!

In this issue:

• Don’t Boil the Ocean: We’ve Built the Tool to Understand and Influence AI Search

• Back to the Future: What the Past Reveals About the Future of AI in B2B Marketing

• AI Ambition vs. Readiness: Bridging the Gap or Falling Behind?

• The Future of AI in B2B Marketing

Don’t Boil the Ocean: We’ve Built the Tool to Understand and Influence AI Search

AI Search is Coming of Age

This feels like it’s been a long time coming, but Search is threatened. Ever since the first opening of ChatGPT to the public, when it became the fastest app to reach the 100 million user mark, marketing and PR professionals knew it would change the Search domain in a big way.

By observing our clients, the audience, and chatbot adoption data it’s becoming clear that AI Search isn’t just another trend—it’s a fundamental shift in how users access information. With Generative AI solutions stepping in as direct answer engines, traditional search methods are being reshaped, forcing companies to rethink their marketing strategies. As Louis Dreyfus of Le Monde recounts, AI search is on track to become the primary gateway to information for future generations. The question isn’t if businesses should adapt, but how quickly they can take control of this new landscape.

We didn’t know back then exactly where or when AI-powered search would be reaching a pivotal moment, but we were sure it would completely transform how we reach B2C and B2B audiences. Despite being 2025 today and seemingly AI overtaking everything, we as an industry all still have time to prepare. Albeit not much.

How Did Hotwire Get Here

Keeping up with consumer research trends, brands now need to understand how AI chatbots are talking about them and their competitors to develop strategies that influence these conversations. Since Hotwire is part of the tech industry, we are continuously redefining our approach through advanced tech in marketing and communications, therefore it made sense to create such a tool. Adding to those 25 years of building brand reputations, we can discern that this is the moment it is for brands to take control of their AI narrative, providing AI Search visibility, insights, and strategy.

When we started exploring this topic in 2023, the first MVP focused on extracting structured, believable data from LLMs. By 2024, our teams at Hotwire were convinced—AI Search was speeding toward us, and clients needed to understand what was happening under the hood. More importantly, they needed ways to steer it in the right direction.

The idea was simple: ChatGPT, as an interface to LLMs, is one of the best sources for understanding what influences AI decisions—and, in most cases, it’s willing to show its cards. Of course, responses can vary, hallucinations are a given, and some data is entirely restricted by OpenAI. But if you ask the right questions, crafted in a specific way to minimize inconsistencies, you can extract useful insights to act on.

Of course, making sense of this data requires seasoned PR and marketing expertise—which, we have plenty of at Hotwire. After testing the tool with our clients, we confirmed our core hypothesis: LLMs can be explored, analyzed and influenced. This wasn’t just an internal experiment—it was relevant to others, and we could make it work.

The only limitation? The prototype’s tech stack. So, for the rest of 2024, we focused on building a new and improved MVP, which we are going to unveil end of March 2025.

How Does It Work?

Hotwire’s proprietary tool is an AI search discovery platform that helps brands understand how they appear on AI chatbots—and what they need to do to improve their presence.

Built on an agentic AI framework, the tool automates interactions with LLMs, streamlines the path to better results, and corrects data flow to reduce hallucinations, incorrect citations, and logical inconsistencies.

It requires the touch of experienced PR professionals, and with their oversight, it enables companies to tap into millions of questions and answers posed to LLMs like ChatGPT, providing insight into what’s being said about their brand.

With this tool and 25 years of PR and communications expertise, Hotwire delivers the most relevant insights and recommendations to influence a brand’s AI presence. Sign up to be the first to learn more.

The Deciding Factors

As important and challenging as the technology is, the most crucial element isn’t the tech itself. Just like a paintbrush, our tool is only as powerful as the hand that wields it. The flexibility and ambiguity of LLMs make it too easy to generate completely different and incohesive results, even with similar prompts and strict guardrails. Here are some deciding factors that will make or break your AI search discovery & strategy.

1. Human Behind the Wheel
   While the upcoming release and further development will make it a state-of-the-art agentic AI tool, the real value of AI search discovery lies in superb analysts, marketers, and PR professionals. Their expertise ensures that AI-driven insights are actionable, strategic, and aligned with real-world brand objectives. At Hotwire, we’ve seen firsthand how nurturing talent drives real results. If you need comprehensive support, let’s connect.

2. Quality, Unique Creative
   When it comes to content, it's becoming clear that LLMs will prioritize human-written, reputable, and quality content. After all, who better to identify poorly written, generic, or repetitive content than large models trained on literal terabytes of text from the internet?

3. Trust and Public Relations

   There are some notable experts in marketing who consider PR a future for the industry. Why? LLMs are becoming more sophisticated and smarter in detecting the reputability not just from the database with trusted links on their servers, but from active discussions on Reddit, in nuanced snarky comments of journalists and hints from corporate reports. In short, you can’t expect to easily game the algorithm as with SEO over the last 2 decades.

If we can leave you with just one insight at the end of this article, it’s to invest in AI search discovery today. Start by dedicating time to understanding the topic, using your team’s resources, and then following up with financials. It’s no longer an abstraction set in the distant future—it’s here now, on your clients’ devices, and they are using it more with each passing day.

Back to the Future: What the Past Reveals About the Future of AI in B2B Marketing

You have to feel bad for history. It’s been sitting there for centuries, waving its arms, yelling, “Hey! We’ve seen this movie before! Maybe don’t make the same mistakes?”

But who’s listening?

Now, it’s sounding the alarm again—about AI. Like every groundbreaking technology before it, AI is charging ahead, unlocking incredible possibilities. But if the past has taught us anything, it’s that innovation comes with a side of unintended consequences.

Looking back, there are some clues about where AI might be heading. The patterns are familiar—big breakthroughs, rapid adoption, and then the inevitable growing pains. By recognizing these cycles, B2B marketers can sidestep some of the tripwires that snagged those before us. Here are three.

From VM Sprawl to AI Agent Sprawl

TL;DR: Virtualization made spinning up servers a breeze. But that same simplicity fueled a VM sprawl wildfire. Could the same happen to B2B marketers with AI agents?

The Ghost of Tech Past: When enterprises embraced virtualization in the mid-2000s, it felt like IT had unlocked god mode. Costs dropped, disaster recovery improved, and provisioning became effortless. It was all upside. Until it wasn’t. The ease of creating virtual machines led to an explosion of them. VMs were popping up everywhere with no real plan, no oversight, and no one bothering to decommission them. Resources were wasted and management became a nightmare. It got ugly. Fast.

Future AI Pitfalls: Now, as AI gains traction in B2B marketing, we could see history repeat—only this time with AI agents. No-code platforms make it easier than ever to deploy standalone AI agents and agentic AI workflows. And the market for off-the-shelf AI-powered B2B marketing solutions is booming. Tom in customer support? He’s built an agent to upsell. Sasha in account management? She’s got one cranking out proposals. Before you know it, you’ve got agentic AI sprawl—a tangled mess of shadow AI agents, duplicate bots, and AI with unauthorized access to customer data. Yikes!

From Social Media Walled Gardens to AI Lock-In

TL;DR: Businesses poured time and money into social media, only to realize they were building on rented land. Agentic AI workflows could be going down a similar path.

The Ghost of Tech Past: When organizations jumped into social media, it was all sunshine and rainbows. Brands engaged directly with audiences and drove visibility, loyalty and growth. All that juice made it worth the squeeze. And there was plenty of squeezing. Companies poured time, money, and effort into building communities, setting up analytics, and tailoring content strategies. But there was a catch: These weren’t their platforms. When algorithms changed, features disappeared, or platforms shut down, businesses realized they couldn’t migrate all their investments to another platform easily; the switching cost was just too high.

Future AI Pitfalls: Fast forward to today, and B2B marketers are making the same kind of investments—this time in AI-driven workflows. Platforms like Lindy AI, Gumloop, and n8n lure marketers in with user-friendly interfaces and seamless automation tools. Soon, teams have poured countless hours crafting complex, production-ready AI workflows—deeply embedding themselves into platforms that don’t offer portability. Classic Hotel California.

From Mobile Overload to GenAI Fatigue

TL;DR: Mobile apps once felt like magic—until every brand launched one, and users went from excited to exhausted. GenAI-powered B2B marketing experiences could be heading in the same direction.

The Ghost of Tech Past: When mobile took off, it changed everything. B2B brands found new ways to create personalized touchpoints, from customized tradeshow apps to AR and VR demos. On the B2C side, businesses pushed geo-targeted deals straight to customers' pockets. Everyone wanted in. Companies scrambled to launch apps like it was the last chopper out of Saigon. Soon customers were overwhelmed. Downloads stalled, opt-outs soared, and digital exhaustion set in. Freshness faded to fatigue.

Future AI Pitfalls: Now, GenAI is the next frontier, and businesses are diving in, racing to build AI-driven experiences. Chatbots, AI-powered panelists, and immersive AI experiences—we can’t get enough. And this is just the beginning. No-code platforms are making AI more accessible than ever, paving the way for mass adoption. Which is a problem. When we all use the same democratized AI tools to generate the same kinds of interactions, everything starts to feel... the same. Customers tune out. Engagement fizzles. You know the saying about a rising tide lifting all boats? That’s right. Everyone’s certainly floating, but no one’s ahead. If we aren’t careful, GenAI-powered experiences could go from magical to meh in no time.

None of this is meant to be a downer. AI is the future. And it will transform B2B marketing in remarkable ways. But every big leap in technology comes with side effects, and if we aren’t paying attention, we might just find ourselves singing along with Britney: Oops!... We Did It Again.

AI Ambition vs. Readiness: Bridging the Gap or Falling Behind?

AI is the buzzword dominating boardrooms and water coolers, with leadership eager to integrate the tech and coworkers sharing their latest ChatGPT prompts (or is that just us?). The excitement is palpable: large language models (LLMs) and other “Deep Research” reasoning models can help with faster decision-making, new lines of revenue, and slicker sales motions. The tools exist, the potential is undeniable, but the execution? That’s where the proverbial you-know-what hits the fan.

Strategy stalls, infrastructure gaps emerge, and internal know-how falls short. Fears of AI unreadiness are a growing sentiment, as well. A recent Cisco study surveying 2,503 Global CEOs reveals a striking disconnect between ambition and readiness:

• 97% of CEOs plan to integrate AI into their operations, convinced of its transformative power.

• 80% believe AI will drive process efficiencies and spark breakthrough innovations.

And yet…

• Only 1.7% feel their organizations are fully prepared to implement AI successfully.

• 53% feel they’re already losing ground by not investing enough in the right technologies.

• 70% fear an eroding competitive edge due to insufficient IT infrastructure that can handle AI initiatives

The takeaway? AI isn’t coming. It’s already here. The question is whether your team is adapting to take advantage of this brave new world.

AI Adoption: A Climb, Not a Destination

Let’s take a step back. Is it realistic to expect full AI readiness overnight? We don’t think so.

AI isn’t a departing train that businesses either catch or miss, even if some surveyed CEOs feel as much. We see it like Miley Cyrus in her 2009 Hannah Montana movie mega-anthem: it’s the climb! (and not just because that song is still stuck in our heads). AI adoption requires constant adaptation to new altitudes. Every challenge tackled, every workflow optimized, and every experiment tested prepares your organization for the next step.

As with any major industry shift, AI presents as much opportunity as it does challenge. The key is looking not at the summit, but the next hand- or foothold in front of you. Small AI workflow wins get you that much closer to AI integration mastery.

How AI is B2Being Leveraged Today

The good news is that the tools to bridge the AI readiness gap are already here. It’s not about if you should integrate AI into your marketing strategy. It’s about how. Check out some of the ways ROI·DNA is leveraging AI’s power.

Streamlining Research? Tap into Reasoning Models

Some of the most time-consuming marketing tasks involve sifting through massive amounts of data — finding the right journalists for outreach, identifying high-value PPC targets, or pinpointing competitive content gaps.

Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 can step in to:

✅ Analyze past coverage, social profiles, and interest areas to surface the best journalists or influencers for your pitch

✅ Generate a curated list of the most relevant YouTube channels, websites, or publishers to maximize reach and results

✅ Pinpoint content and keyword gaps you can exploit to outmaneuver competitors

We’ve used o1 to identify keyword use, topic coverage, and even tone of voice of dozens of competitor pages. Those insights help us determine where a client can stand out and swing big to capture attention on their own site.

Too Many Recurring Tasks? Try AI-driven Workflows

From industry news tracking to competitor monitoring, AI can turn your endless task list into automated intelligence.

OpenAI’s “Scheduled Tasks” function can:

✅ Set up a daily news summary so you never have to visit five different blogs before 9 AM

✅ Flag newly published content from your key competitors, eliminating the need to manually check their blogs and press releases

Our Senior Manager of Content Strategy, Blake Calamas says, “There’s a lot of great publications talking about content and GenAI these days, and a few digital watering holes I usually return to. Setting up a daily summary means I can catch the highlights on a busier morning, or click through to read more when I have time.”

Want to Supercharge AI marketing? Enter Custom GPTs

If the journey to AI mastery is like a certain Disney Kid-turned-Grammy winner’s summer song, think of AI tools themselves as super-powerful Swiss army knives you can bring on the climb. What’s more: we can customize them in seriously creative ways (not to brag, but we’ve done it).

Custom GPTs can:

✅ Offer UX feedback in real-time, helping marketers refine their approach without formal UX expertise (like Intellimind’s Roast My Landing Page custom GPT)

✅ Act as a training tool, guiding new and existing employees through product knowledge, FAQs, and best practices

For instance, if you wanted to ‘quiz’ your sales team on their understanding of a competitor's offering, provide just a handful of inputs (like solution page URLs) and you're good to go.

Fuel for thought 🚀 The real AI advantage isn’t just about automation. It’s about knowledge enablement. Teams that harness AI for internal learning accelerate their growth curve exponentially.

And, it’s worth noting that the GenAI tools we love using are just that: tools. They don’t replace the expertise or professional intuition that comes only from (in our case) 15 years of marketing wins. Like all tools, AI can only do what it was designed to do. And that means, sometimes, what AI provides is like a loose handhold that crumbles…you probably should have tested it before using it. It’s why we rely on human-in-the-loop QA to make sure that AI’s output conforms to what we know is true.

AI in B2B Marketing: The Tipping Point is Here

The findings from the Cisco study make at least one thing clear: nearly every CEO sees AI as a game-changer, but only a small fraction are ready to make it work. Those who move beyond the hype to leverage AI-powered reasoning models, automation, and custom GPTs one step at a time? They’re setting the foundation for mountain-climbing and ballad-belting success.

The Future of AI in B2B Marketing

How AI-powered Insights can Unify Sales and Marketing Like Never Before - if Applied Correctly.

Can you confidently say your sales and marketing teams are working seamlessly together? Many clients still find it challenging to create a true partnership between these teams—one that drives unified programs and a continuous flow of insights from both sides. So, it’s hard to optimize programs. It’s an age-old blocker. And the financial (and mental) strain of this disconnect can be significant. Cracking that continuous flow of insights is the game-changer… Has this finally been solved with AI? Or has AI made things even more complicated?

The Age-old Alignment Challenge AI Solves

If you’re feeling a disconnect between your sales and marketing teams, you’re not alone. A whopping 65% of sales and marketing professionals still believe there is a lack of alignment between their leaders (Forrester 2024). This means inconsistent messaging, poorly qualified leads, minimal feedback between teams and cross-functional friction. One key reason for this is a lack of actionable insights that block a collaborative feedback loop. The ‘actionable’ part comes from understanding how sales leads can leverage the insight in their outreach strategies. There has to be analysis and translation.

Fear not. 2025 is set to be a pivotal year for addressing these challenges. According to McKinsey, generative and agentic AI could unlock $0.8 trillion to $1.2 trillion in annual productivity value across sales and marketing functions. The reason? AI brings data-driven precision to targeting and engagement strategies, helping teams focus on high-value prospects and tailoring outreach and messaging more effectively.

A New Era of Communication and Collaboration

AI-powered tools can act as a 'universal translator' between sales and marketing. Through predictive analytics and real-time insights, AI creates a unified view of the customer journey. No more miscommunication. This transparency ensures that marketing campaigns align with sales strategies, meaning the transition from lead generation to conversion is seamless.

For example, AI-driven platforms can analyze engagement data to identify which marketing assets lead to the highest conversion rates. This data can then be shared with sales teams to refine their pitches, ensuring that both teams are speaking the same language when engaging with prospects.

Efficiency Reimagined: Optimizing the Feedback Engine

Another big pain that AI takes away is repetitive tasks. Through automation, AI frees up teams to focus on strategic initiatives. AI-driven sales and marketing automation can reduce admin by up to 30% (McKinsey 2024), allowing teams to focus on building relationships and closing deals.

Beyond efficiency, AI enhances the notorious but critical feedback engine between sales and marketing, creating more intimacy between teams. By continuously analyzing data from CRM systems, email campaigns, and sales interactions, AI provides real-time insights into what’s working and what isn’t. It allows teams to be more agile in pivoting strategies and responding quicker to market changes.

Cracking the New AI-driven Alignment Challenge: Strategies for Success

However, AI is obviously not without its challenges. The new alignment challenge to watch out for is mainly around data interpretation and decision-making consistency. While AI offers powerful insights and automation, it also introduces complexities in how teams interpret and act on the data. If sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned on how to use AI-driven insights, it can lead to conflicting strategies, miscommunication, and a disconnected customer journey. It’s important to have the right strategy in place and to collaborate every step of the way to prevent any misinterpretations.

Another key thing to keep in mind…

The. Human. Touch. Is. Still. Crucial. An over-reliance on AI-powered research and content creates diluted insights and a diluted brand voice. Buyers want to feel recognized through authentic communication. You need to ensure all teams are using AI to enhance their processes - not to completely replace them. AI content without human refinement is shallow and can be spotted a mile off. An AI tool without constant injection of human data and feedback is like a junior member of staff without any training. The more you feed the engine, the more depth you get from the insights and the more effective your results are.

Use AI to speed up the ‘busy’ work, like the hours of account research, and free up time to add more human value - the personal touches and tailored outreach that get deals over the line.

So, to summarize, yes. AI can transform the connection and cohesion between sales and marketing teams. But it is not a silver bullet. You need a robust AI-enablement strategy to avoid data misinterpretation, misaligned strategies, and the risk of widening existing gaps.

Key Takeaways

• Sales and marketing misalignments still exist

• AI bridges alignment gaps

• AI transforms the feedback engine

• But AI brings its own misalignment challenges

• The human touch is still crucial

• A proactive AI strategy is key

Catch our next issue out on 30 April 2025!

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