Is Your Marketing Playbook Missing AI-First Buyers?
"For the first time in so many years, I am seeing the market come back and flip 180 from where we were several years ago." - Victoria Albert, CMO at INFUSE
Due to AI, B2B marketing is experiencing its most dramatic shift since the pandemic. Yet, many marketers are still deploying outdated playbooks.
In a recent webcast, 🌎 Victoria Frederika A. , CMO at INFUSE , and Jon Russo , B2B Founder and CMO of B2B Fusion , unpacked research findings and the latest tech buyer behavior trends.
The data is clear: organizations have moved from "growth at all costs" to efficiency-driven innovation.
AI is not just a tool propelling progress, but also a force shaping the foundation of how buyers research and make decisions, influencing the vendor consideration process dramatically.
Despite this shift, many marketing models remain stuck in traditional techniques, ultimately chasing the wrong signals at the wrong time.
The pressure is on marketers to adapt strategies quickly to the AI-first buyer reality to meet them where they are.
The 180-degree market flip
"For the first time in so many years, I am seeing the market come back and flip 180 from where we were several years ago," Victoria Albert, CMO at INFUSE, explained, citing INFUSE Insights 2025 research findings from over 2,000 tech buyers and marketers.
The shift is stark: 2022's venture-fuelled growth mindset has been replaced by efficiency as the overriding priority. "Efficiency is the number-one word that came out of our research in 2025," Albert noted.
This market shift is a fundamental change in how buying groups operate and what they expect from prospective vendors. The implications become clear when we examine where these efficiency-focused buyers spend their time.
The dark funnel reality
The INFUSE Insights research shows that 70–80% of the buyer journey now happens in what is known as the "dark funnel"—the research, comparison, and consensus-building that occurs before any sales interaction.
"About nine months of that is going to happen in the dark…It does not mean decisions are not being made—they are simply being made out of sight," Albert added.
Crafting a compelling buyer experience that enables and encourages this decision making is, therefore, key to earning a spot on the consideration list when buyers become visible. This invisible research process is further complicated by how modern buying committees actually function.
The consensus buying challenge
Today's buying committees rarely revolve around a single decision maker. "Very few buying groups, in reality, have less than 3 decision makers; most operate on a consensus basis," Albert observed.
This complexity is compounded by resource constraints, adding more pressure to the buying process. Jon Russo, CMO at B2B Fusion, noted, "Everybody is so strapped for time and resources…there is not a lot of extra headcount floating around right now."
Buyers nevertheless expect deeper engagement. "Because they are further down the funnel, [buyers] expect a solution-consulting experience," Russo said. The challenge intensifies when we consider how these informed, consensus-driven buyers discover vendors in the first place.
AI and discoverability
According to INFUSE Insights, LLMs now account for an "increasingly bigger share of the discoverability puzzle."
"We are not just working towards SEO; we are also working towards GEO—generative engine optimization," Victoria Albert explained.
The stakes are high: if you are the first vendor a buyer contacts after dark-funnel research, "you have an 84% chance of winning that deal."
Feeding LLMs and AI-fueled search is the new priority for brands hoping to increase discoverability to get in front of their buyers during critical decision moments.
Beyond funnel thinking
Focusing only on top- or bottom-of-funnel strategies is no longer viable. "We cannot afford to do that anymore. We really have to float all the way up to discoverability," Albert stressed.
Marketers who continue operating with traditional playbooks are unlikely to reach buyers during the 70-80% of their journey that matters most. In contrast, optimizing for AI discoverability and consensus buying will set you up to gain a competitive advantage.
Success now requires:
The full webcast discussion explores specific frameworks for each of these requirements—including tactical approaches for GEO, account-level measurement strategies, and consensus-building content structures.
AI drives buyer discovery #discoverability
Really resonates. Too many teams still wait for intent data to light up before acting, when in reality most of the decision-making has already happened behind the curtain.
We’ve talked a lot about GEO and how AI is reshaping content and demand strategies. Seeing chatgpt appear as a UTM source for the first time made it real. Discoverability isn’t just evolving, it’s redefining how buyers find us.
The dark funnel reminds us how critical it is to engage buyers before signals ever surface
AI is making decisions before your buyers wake up for the day. This is critical to understand and ready for.