Breaking the Tech Comms & Marketing Deadlock: Why Your Brand is Invisible to AI Search

The US B2B tech sector is locked in a fierce debate over pipeline efficiency. CMOs nationwide are grappling with ballooning customer acquisition costs (CAC), shrinking returns on traditional outbound marketing, and operating under the pressure of having to justify every cent spent in the boardroom (what else is new, right?) 

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In a nutshell, the traditional marketing and comms playbook is fracturing, leaving industry leaders battling to be heard above the ‘sea of same’ noise. If you're curious about what’s coming ‘unstuck’ with legacy marketing methods, dig into our blog from earlier this year about the tyrannical reign of MQLs.

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But back to the issue at hand. What can B2B tech marketing and comms leaders actually do to improve the bottom line? The answer doesn't lie in shouting louder - it lies in understanding how today’s buyers actually discover the technology they purchase.

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Babel recently partnered with Sapio Research to survey 400 B2B enterprise tech decision-makers across the US and UK, auditing major Large Language Models (LLMs) - including ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity Pro - to map out how purchases are made today. We set out to answer the question: Does human mental availability still reign supreme (in other words, is brand marketing still king?), or has AI search introduced a challenger into the B2B buying matrix? 

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The data from our Mental Av-AI-lability Index points to a fundamental behavioural shift that US tech brands can no longer afford to ignore.

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1. AI is the New B2B Discovery Engine

For years, US tech brands poured millions into Analyst Relations and legacy SEO tactics to guarantee visibility on the vendor shortlist. Our report reveals a stark new reality: when enterprise buyers opt for a net-new vendor, rather than a legacy partner, 32% use an AI tool to discover them. This means generative search has officially outpaced traditional search engines (26%), analyst reports (19%), and trade events as a discovery engine. If your brand isn't primed to surface through AI recommendations, you’re essentially closing yourself off to a third of your potential market. 

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2. The Multi-Channel Reality: Machines Filter, Humans Decide

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. While 94% of B2B tech purchases now rely on AI tools to evaluate and compare vendors, human memory/bias (or mental availability) still has the casting vote. In fact, a massive 87% of buyers ultimately selected vendors they were already familiar with at the start of their purchasing journey. Meaning brands still have a little time to make the necessary changes to avoid drifting into obscurity. But make no mistake, the relentless onward march of AI is only going in one direction. 

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Our findings also highlighted a classic misconception, that US-based tech brands must choose between necessary brand-building campaigns or more performance-led demand generation strategies. It may come as no surprise to those in the know, but you need both! AI models may provide buyers with a shortlist, or a set of recommendations (interestingly, these also change dramatically, depending on which engine you’re using), but human familiarity and trust still seal the deal.

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3. Specialisation beats broad strokes, every time

Generative AI models function as rapid researchers, crawling the web to absorb and digest highly specific answers to niche user prompts. They’re looking for the easiest and best-fit answers to their question. In other words, they don’t want to see broad, generic messaging - particularly challenging for large conglomerates (the US is home to many) that have mammoth portfolios of services. LLMs prioritise deeply technical and highly structured content. As a result, the winners in the US (across Cyber, Telecoms and Enterprise) are the agile, domain-specific specialists (or “algorithmic disruptors”) - the very same that are nipping at the heels of the “Sleeping Giants”.

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4. The Risk of Being a "Sleeping Giant"

The US is spoilt for choice when it comes to established, ‘household name’ tech brands. Giants that enjoy massive human recall among tech purchasers, but are relatively unfamiliar to AI platforms - a category we’ve termed “Sleeping Giants”, and actually one of the riskiest positions in our brand matrix. Remember the old story about the hare and the tortoise? Brand fame is no longer enough to safeguard future pipelines. If your research is locked behind lead-generation paywalls, your PR footprint is fragmented, or inconsistent, or your digital ecosystems lack clear messaging (see above for the danger of being too broad), the LLMs won’t find you - no matter how famous you are. 

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So, what next?

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The rules of vendor discovery have officially been rewritten. It's time to build a comms and marketing strategy brave enough to match the new playing field. We’ll leave you with these tips for the time being, and if you’d like to hear more from Babel on the topic of braver comms and marketing, check out our Brave Collective.

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• Prioritise human-first content: Focus on good PR and search-based content that is actually by and for humans, not algorithms.
• Develop proprietary expertise: Create your own, distinct brand identity with a foundation of expertise, and ideally original data. ‍
• Be original: The old SEO game was all about imitation. But the GEO game requires you to do the exact opposite. Come up with something genuinely new and differentiated.

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