Augmented Reality For Customer Engagement

Why Analyst Relations (AR) is Becoming a Smart Bet for Mid-size Firms & Startups The analyst ecosystem has evolved, and this evolution is creating new opportunities for mid-size and emerging tech players. In many recent conversations (even with large analyst firms), there is a growing curiosity to learn more about smaller, agile providers - how they are adapting to AI, innovating faster, and creating value with leaner models. What is driving this shift? • The analyst landscape has diversified to include boutique and independent voices who are open to fresh stories • AI is leveling the playing field. Smaller firms are leveraging it for operational efficiency, deal restructuring, dynamic pricing, and smarter skilling programs • Analysts increasingly recognize that innovation and agility often come from mid-market and niche players. For mid-size firms and startups, this means one thing: It is the right time to align or start your Analyst Relations program. Building strong analyst relationships isn’t just about visibility it’s about shaping perception, gaining market intelligence, and turning analysts into your champions and advocates. As AI changes the competitive landscape, those who tell their story well with evidence, customer success, and clarity will stand out. Now is the time for smaller providers to make analysts part of their growth journey. Bhushan Marathe #AnalystRelations #B2BMarketing #TechLeadership #AI #Startups #MidMarket #GoToMarket

Are you spending six figures on with a Tier 1 analyst firm, just to be invisible to 90% of your buyers? Because buyers are completing up to 90% of their research online, before contacting vendors. And 84% of the time, the first vendor contacted wins the deal. How does this correlate to your analyst relations program? If you're not also factoring in the costs of reprint licensing & distribution, that premium analyst research you invested in sits behind a paywall where AI can't access it, can't cite it, and can't recommend you. I call this the Paywall Paradox, where premium influence has become selectively blind. After leading AR programs for startups for too many years (some of which led directly to strategic acquisitions), I'm seeing a fundamental shift. The ROI equation for analyst relations is changing. In my latest article, I break down: --Why your $$$$ Gartner relationship may have less AI visibility than a $500 G2 profile --How Tier 2/3 analyst firms can deliver better ROI for AI visibility --The 3-part framework I use to evaluate AR investments for startups --The AI/AR visibility audit you should run this quarter The AI visibility gap you create—or allow—in the next 90 days will compound for years. If you're responsible for AR strategy or allocating marketing budget, this shift matters now. Read the full article on my Substack. And let me know if you're seeing this play out in your AR programs or buying journey by leaving a comment. #B2BMarketing #AnalystRelations #MarketingStrategy #StartupMarketing #GenerativeAI

You may have heard the news. According to Forrester last week, 55% of employers who cut staff in favor of AI regret that decision, and Gartner says those companies plan to reverse course. They replaced jobs that required human judgment, creativity and experience. What they realized is that they traded all of that for information retrieval instead. In B2B marketing, AI is a powerful assistant for tasks like drafting copy, analyzing data and writing code. Give an AI examples of good marketing and it will use complex math to produce something competent and impressive. It's great at aggregating and imitating. You may have noticed a trend, however. Many companies are starting to look and sound similar to each other. We're seeing landing pages built from the same templates, LinkedIn posts with the same rhythms, and content with the same patterns. None of it is "wrong." It's just not distinctive, and it's blending in with everything else. In some cases, the target audience is picking up on it. LinkedIn is actively suppressing it. Ultimately, it may do more harm to the brand than good. AI can mimic patterns, but it can't replace the judgment that's built through years of experience. It doesn't have the creative spark that sets great marketing apart. And it doesn't have the ability to empathize with an audience and truly understand what's going to resonate with them. Many of your competitors are on that path toward bland, undifferentiated marketing, looking at AI as a cost-saver. That’s the “race to beige”: a slide toward marketing that is technically polished, but strategically forgettable. The better path is using AI as a tool to elevate the impact of human expertise. That's where a great agency earns its keep. Having worked across dozens of brands, industries and campaigns, a strong agency team understands your business while still bringing a fresh perspective and the pattern recognition to know what works and what doesn't. We use AI as a tool to think faster, explore smarter and execute more efficiently. But it's the experienced professionals who provide the horsepower that makes a B2B marketing engine stronger. As more companies use the same tools, I encourage you to lean into strengthening that layer of judgment, creativity and experience to gain a competitive advantage in this era of AI. 

Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but why should Analyst Relations (AR) pros (aka: me) care and what should we do about it? According to Profound, there are "20 million B2B buying prompts per day on ChatGPT" alone. B2B buyers are starting with AI first, which means LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity are the new focus of SEO for marketers now termed AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Our team (led by Allison Squires Freshwater) has been studying and preparing for it for the past few months, and a few sessions at the Spotlight | Analyst Relations AR Summit, prompted me to think about how an AEO approach could impact the practice of AR. Here’s what I’m doing:   💡 Bringing analyst insights to the AEO and GTM teams I work with. Only then can we optimize content for prompt behaviors – not keywords. 🌟 Promote analyst recognition in reports in an LLM-friendly format. Think blogs, social copy and other citable/crawlable sources that aren’t gated. 💖 Ensuring our public presence on customer review channels is accurate and as positive as can be.   Analysts’ opinions still hold high influence on buyers. But it’s easier to leverage if that content and insights are discoverable for LLMs. You need to treat GenAI visibility as a strategic channel or risk being left out of a B2B buyers consideration set. 😱   What conversations have you had with your content or GTM teams about managing what GenAI tools "know" about your company, or how you plan to proactively change it?