With over two decades of experience at the intersection of content, SEO, and influencer marketing, Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, is a true pioneer in the B2B landscape. As the owner and CEO of TopRank, Lee spearheads a mission to elevate the industry through his “Best Answer Engine” framework—a holistic approach that bridges the gap between Brand, Demand, and Revenue. We sat down with Lee to unpack the findings of the 2026 State of B2B Thought Leadership report and discuss how marketers can navigate the current landscape while keeping human creativity at the core of their strategy.

For brands that treat channels as silos, what shifts are required to align them under a framework to drive brand, equity, demand, and revenue?

I think the first shift is a mindset shift, and it’s probably one of the most difficult. Our research with Ascend2 found that a third of marketers cited limited visibility into funnel performance as their top barrier to success. Another third pointed to over-reliance on just a few channels or tactics. These two problems are connected. When you can’t see what’s working across the full customer journey, you often fall back on what feels familiar.

What’s needed to integrate these departments is a unifying system. At TopRank, the framework we’ve built to address this is called Best Answer Marketing, or BAM. The organizing principle for BAM is the customer journey vs. channels. As a result, thought leadership becomes the platform that gives every marketing team, every channel and format something to rally around, so assets and narratives reinforce each other.

When thought leadership narratives are based on proof such as original research or proprietary data corroborated by industry experts and media as part of an integrated, multi-channel effort, it creates the evidence and consistency that resonates with all forms of discovery from LLMs to Google to conversations on social media.

“Buyers are already there but most B2B marketers are still catching up. That gap matters because AI engines surface content that carries authority signals like original data with clear attribution, consistent expert voices, and structured answers to the specific questions buyers are actually asking.”

With 32% of professionals discovering insights through GenAI tools, how should B2B brands adjust their strategies so they are ‘cited’ as authoritative sources by these AI engines?

That 32% number is specific to thought leadership content but overall B2B content discovery using LLMs is even higher—94% according to research from Forrester. The real story is that GenAI tools weren’t even on most marketers’ distribution lists when we conducted the research.

Buyers are already there but most B2B marketers are still catching up. That gap matters because AI engines surface content that carries authority signals like original data with clear attribution, consistent expert voices, and structured answers to the specific questions buyers are actually asking. If your content doesn’t have those things, it’s not the best answer and you’re still playing catch-up, which means you’re basically invisible in a space where attention is growing exponentially.

A lot of the B2B brands getting this right are investing in original research as a foundation. Our data found that 93% of B2B marketers using original research-based content rate it as effective at driving engagement and leads, with nearly half calling it very effective. AI tools are essentially trained on the web’s most credible signals, and proprietary research with a clear point of view is one of the strongest signals you can create. It’s the same logic that has always driven thought leadership authority, just accelerated by the way generative AI synthesizes and cites its sources.

The practical strategy evolution for B2B marketers is to optimize their content for answer engines. This an extension vs. a replacement of SEO. AEO or Answer Engine Optimization means structuring content in ways that make it easier for LLMs to identify and choose your content as the best answer. Things like formatting section headers to read as specific buyer questions, using key findings that stand alone as citable statements, and making sure your brand and contributors are clearly attributed throughout.

Content co-created with industry influencers and creators can amplify this significantly. When recognized industry voices contribute to your content and help amplify it, that’s a trust signal AI engines recognize in much the same way that human readers do. In BAM terms, the Trust System and Multi-Channel Discovery pillars are doing the same job for AI discoverability that they’ve always done for human discoverability. The principles haven’t changed. The surface area for content discovery has expanded and some might say, fragmented.

While 97% of B2B marketers view thought leadership as critical to full-funnel success, only 43% are extending it beyond acquisition to engage and retain existing customers. Why does this gap exists, and what is the strategic cost of treating thought leadership as a top-of-funnel attraction tool?

I think the gap exists because of how most B2B marketing teams are organized and measured. Acquisition has clear, attributable metrics: leads, MQLs, pipeline contribution. Post-sale is a little murkier, often owned by customer success or account management, and marketing isn’t always accountable to that. Naturally, marketing’s effort will concentrate on where the incentives are. The result is that thought leadership gets mentally filed as an awareness and demand generation tool, and the customer relationship gets handed off the moment a deal closes. That’s a structural problem posing as a content strategy problem.

The strategic cost of this disconnect can be pretty significant. Acquiring a new customer costs five to seven times more than retaining an existing one, but most thought leadership content investments focus on awareness. Our research with Ascend2 shows top performers are nearly twice as likely to use thought leadership post-sale; 47% versus 28% among the rest. That gap shows that those brands understand an existing customer who keeps learning from you is far more likely to expand, renew, and advocate than one who stops hearing from you after onboarding. When thought leadership is applied through the full customer lifecycle, it becomes a retention engine and a revenue multiplier, not just a source for name capture.

“AI tools are essentially trained on the web’s most credible signals, and proprietary research with a clear point of view is one of the strongest signals you can create.”

For the B2B marketing leader feeling overwhelmed by the current velocity of change, what is the metric or mindset they should prioritize to stay resilient and results-driven?

The feeling of being overwhelmed is real, and I think it’s worth talking about what’s actually causing it. It’s not any single change; it’s the pace of change compounding on itself.

After working in this industry for 25 years, I’m not sure I’ve seen an environment quite like the one B2B marketers are dealing with now. There are new AI platforms and myriad martech tools, fragmented discovery channels and changing buyer behaviors, tighter budgets, and evolving buyer expectations to name a few. B2B marketing leaders are now being asked to adapt faster than most organizations can actually move.

What I’ve seen that separates the leaders who stay resilient from those who burn out is pretty consistent: they stay grounded in outcomes vs. chasing the latest and greatest. With that perspective, the question isn’t “are we using the latest thing?” It’s “are we earning the trust and confidence of our buyers, and can we show it?” That’s the mindset shift needed to deal with feeling overwhelmed in an environment where there are simply too many distractions.