Brand is firmly back on the B2B agenda. But as ambition grows, what separates the brands that simply get noticed from those that are remembered, chosen and ultimately drive behavior? We explore what it takes to turn renewed focus on brand into sustainable B2B growth.
Executive summary: B2B brand investment is gaining momentum, but greater focus doesn't automatically translate into growth. As AI reshapes discovery and more of the buying journey takes place before brands are even aware of potential buyers, businesses need to do more than build awareness. Farid Jeeawody explores how B2B brands can build distinctiveness, earn trust, strengthen their propositions and understand the behaviors that ultimately influence buying decisions.
Brand building has new momentum in B2B. Marketing Week’s 2026 State of Brand in B2B research found that 58% of B2B marketers had increased their focus on brand over the previous year, while 51% expected brand investment to rise over the next 12 months. Among B2B CMOs, that figure increased to 69%.
That raises a more interesting question: if brand is back, how do we make it work harder for growth?
The real B2B brand challenge is not simply being known. It is giving buyers something distinctive to remember, a reason to trust you and an advantage they can defend to everyone else involved in the decision.
Win tomorrow’s buyers, today
In B2B, growth depends as much on tomorrow’s buyers as today’s.
The LinkedIn B2B Institute’s 95:5 rule estimates that around 95% of potential B2B buyers are not in the market at any given time.
So the real competition starts before the buying process does. When buyers enter the market, brands they already know have an advantage over those introducing themselves for the first time.
The fundamentals of brand growth haven’t changed. The context has.
There is already a strong evidence base for what works. Les Binet and Peter Field have demonstrated the importance of balancing long-term brand building with shorter-term activation, reaching new buyers, building mental availability and using emotion effectively.
But B2B brands now have to apply those principles in a very different world. AI is reshaping how buyers discover and compare brands. More of the buying journey happens before buyers become visible, and marketers are looking for more human ways to connect.
At Hall & Partners, we think about how brands grow through four connected principles: See, Feel, Think and Do.
The principles remain. What they demand from brands is changing.
SEE | Distinctiveness now has two audiences
B2B brands have always needed to be remembered by people. Increasingly, they also need to be understood by AI.
Marketing Week found that 56% of B2B marketers are prioritizing brand visibility within large language models, while 48% are positioning their brands as subject matter experts to influence the information those systems draw on.
That creates a new challenge: can your brand be distinctive enough for people to remember and clear enough for AI to understand?
PayPal Open provides a good example. Its Melon Mogul campaign turns the story of a farmer whose glitter melon business suddenly went viral into a simple narrative about scaling. It brings payments, funding and global reach together without trying to explain every product feature. The creative idea gets attention. The story makes the value easier to grasp.
FEEL | Human confidence still matters
AI is making it easier to search, compare and make sense of B2B options. But someone still has to put their judgment, and sometimes their reputation, behind the final choice.
That makes emotional connection commercially important. Not manufactured emotion, but confidence, trust and reassurance.
Pepper Money UK’s Be More You campaign focused on the pressures facing mortgage brokers as people, rather than leading with its product. It won Gold for Best Brand Initiative at the 2025 B2B Marketing Awards.
There is a useful lesson in that: understanding how the buyer’s job feels can be just as important as understanding what the buyer needs.
THINK | A strong claim is no longer enough
Buyers can now compare providers, interrogate claims, read peer opinion and ask AI to summarize alternatives before they speak to sales. They can test brand claims faster and against more evidence.
Buyers need to understand what advantage you offer, why it matters and what evidence supports it. In B2B, that evidence also needs to travel because one buyer often has to persuade several others.
In our work with a major business bank, we spoke to 50 CFOs across five markets to understand what could give its campaign an edge. The opportunity was not simply to say the bank was global, but to understand what made that global position relevant and credible to CFOs.
The strongest proposition is not the one that says the most. It makes the most valuable difference easy to understand and easy to prove.
What can you credibly prove that matters enough to change the choice?
In B2B, a brand's advantage has to stand up to scrutiny. It needs to be clear enough to understand, credible enough to believe and meaningful enough to influence a decision.
DO | More of the buying journey is happening out of sight
Research from 6sense, reported by Marketing Week, found that 94% of B2B buyers used LLMs during their buying journey in 2025.
Buyers can ask AI for advice, consume expert content, follow industry conversations and seek peer opinion long before they speak to sales.
That means more of the journey can happen before brands know the buyer is there.
Understanding behavior therefore means getting beneath the final conversion: the triggers that create interest, the people who influence the decision, the friction that slows it down and the moments that move it forward.
Our BeSci x AI approach combines behavioral science, AI and human expertise to identify the motivations, habits, barriers and contextual influences behind behavior, and understand what could help change it.
As more of the journey happens out of sight, understanding why people behave as they do becomes more valuable than simply counting what they did.
Turn brand tracking into a growth tool
The best brand tracking does more than show how your brand is performing. It helps explain what is changing, why it matters and where the next opportunity for growth lies.
That might mean becoming more distinctive among future buyers, strengthening trust with an important audience, sharpening the advantage that drives preference or making it easier for buyers to act.
The real value comes from bringing these insights together. Analytics can reveal what is driving performance, insight communities keep you close to changing buyer needs, and strategic ad hoc research can explore the opportunities that matter most. Together, they help teams spot opportunities earlier and make better decisions about what to do next.
Brand is back. What happens next matters.
The renewed focus on B2B brand comes at a fascinating time. AI is changing discovery and comparison, more of the buying journey is happening out of sight and buyers have more ways to test what brands tell them.
The principles of brand growth are familiar. The questions around how we deliver them are becoming much more interesting.
How do you stay distinctive as discovery changes? What builds connection and confidence for your target audience? Which parts of your proposition genuinely strengthen preference? And what turns that preference into action?
For brand, marketing and insight leaders, these are not questions to answer in isolation. Together, they show where the next source of growth could come from.
And that is what makes this renewed focus on B2B brand worth getting excited about.
Talk to our team of experts
Learn how we can deliver actionable insights and creativity to drive brand growth.
Key Questions
B2B brands build trust by consistently delivering on their promises, demonstrating a clear and credible point of difference, and understanding the pressures and priorities shaping buyers’ decisions. Trust is reinforced through experience, not communications alone.
AI is changing how buyers discover, research and compare potential providers. Buyers can use large language models to explore options, evaluate claims and access expert perspectives before engaging with a sales team. This makes visibility, credible evidence and a distinctive brand proposition increasingly important.
B2B decisions may involve significant financial and professional considerations, but they are still made by people. Confidence, trust and reassurance influence how buyers feel about a provider and whether they are comfortable recommending and defending that choice.
Effective brand tracking should go beyond awareness and brand funnel KPIs. It should help marketers understand whether their brand is becoming more distinctive, building trust, strengthening preference and influencing behavior. Combining ongoing tracking with qualitative and strategic research can reveal what is changing and where opportunities for growth exist.
