62% of B2B CMOs aren't ready as AI upends brand discovery

62% of B2B CMOs aren't ready for AI-first discovery. Here's the new playbook.

AI has changed how buyers find, compare and choose B2B brands. Most CMOs say their current mix can't keep up - and the numbers back it up.

According to "A CMO's Marketing and Communications Playbook for 2026," two-thirds of CMOs lack the skills, budget or resources to compete with faster-moving, AI-enabled challengers. Traditional levers like SEO, websites and organic social are losing ground as generative engines take center stage.

What the data says

• Websites: B2B tech sites saw a 34% drop in traffic from 2024 to 2025, even as AI-generated traffic rises toward 20% share by year end.
• Search: By 2027, traditional search is projected to handle just 45% of queries - a 42% decline from earlier norms.
• Social: LinkedIn organic company content visibility slipped from 2.1% to 1.6% of users' feeds between March and October 2025.
• Readiness: 62% of CMOs say they're not ready to compete against AI-enabled companies.

From SEO to GEO: how you stay visible

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the new skill set. The goal is to earn citations and placement inside AI answers, not just rank on a results page.

The shift is from keyword placement to confidence signaling - proving to AI systems that your brand is credible, current and authoritative.

• Reformat content for AI: Use clear headers, structured summaries and skimmable formats. Listicles alone make up nearly a third of cited results.
• Refresh cadence: Keep priority pages and thought leadership fresh. Material older than 1-2 months tends to slide.
• Strengthen authority: Invest in PR. Forty-five percent of VC-backed brands plan to increase budgets to land in trusted outlets (think Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes).
• Track new metrics: AI visibility score, citation share and "share of AI voice" (the top share-of-voice metric reported to CEOs at 33%).

Fix the hidden risk: message fragmentation

Generative tools stitch answers from many sources. If your story isn't consistent across PR, content and sales, you get misquoted - or missed entirely.

Sixty-one percent of CMOs grade their companies as only "mildly proficient" (or worse) at maintaining a shared narrative. Tighten the message and repeat it everywhere.

• Adopt simple frameworks: problem → solution, before/after/bridge, or a clear hero vs. friction story.
• Standardize proof: consistent stats, customers, use cases and claims across PR, website, decks and sales scripts.
• Repetition and rhythm: the same lines, the same language - across channels - to build recall.

Formats that still punch above their weight

• Short-form video and multimedia: With LinkedIn reach shrinking, 54% of CMOs are leaning into video to rebuild engagement and recall.
• AI-friendly summaries: TL;DR blocks, FAQs, pros/cons, checklists and step-by-step guides.
• Evergreen + recency: Maintain authoritative evergreen pages and update them on a consistent schedule.

PR as a GEO engine

In a zero-click environment, trusted citations matter more than long-tail keywords. Pitch concrete insights, proprietary data and customer outcomes to high-authority publications.

• Publish data-backed POVs: benchmarks, original research, market maps and teardown analyses.
• Seed credibility everywhere: consistent exec quotes, third-party validations and expert bylines.
• Build a reference network: analysts, partners and customers who can validate your claims.

Measure what the models see

• AI visibility score: how often your brand appears in AI summaries for your core topics.
• Citation share: the percent of AI answers that cite your pages or PR hits.
• Share of AI voice: your mention share vs. competitors in answer engines (the most-used metric in CEO reports at 33%).

Deepfakes are here - most brands aren't ready

Synthetic media is a reputational threat, and response times matter. Only 16% of B2B tech brands have a general crisis playbook. Just 14% have a plan for AI-generated threats like deepfakes. Twenty-six percent would rely only on internal teams - despite lacking formal procedures.

• Stand up an incident playbook: roles, escalation paths, preapproved statements and legal review.
• Verification protocol: watermark official media, maintain a public "authorized channels" page and publish verification keys.
• Monitoring: social listening, brand impersonation alerts and media forensics.
• Response muscle: relationships with platforms, PR firms and legal partners for swift takedowns.
• Use a risk framework: align policies with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.

Your 90-day action plan

• Days 0-30: Audit content freshness, citations and message consistency. Map your top 25 buyer intents to current assets. Stand up GEO basics: structured summaries, FAQs and list formats on key pages.
• Days 31-60: Launch a PR sprint with 2-3 data-backed pitches. Refresh or consolidate overlapping pages. Ship a weekly short-form video series that reinforces your core narrative.
• Days 61-90: Implement AI visibility and citation tracking. Train sales and comms on the updated narrative. Finalize a deepfake crisis playbook and run a tabletop exercise.

Team capabilities to prioritize

• GEO and AI content ops: structured content, citation engineering and freshness management.
• PR as distribution: consistent placements in high-trust outlets and analyst briefings.
• Storycraft: one message, many formats - repeated with intent.
• Risk and response: monitoring, verification and clear escalation.

If you need structured upskilling for your team, see the AI certification for marketing specialists.

Source: A CMO's Marketing and Communications Playbook for 2026