A manager in the buying group heard about your product in a private Slack. Someone came across a ninety second clip shared on a WhatsApp group. Another teammate skimmed your pricing page, jumped to security page, and pasted a Reddit thread. By the time a demo was booked, the room already had opinions, a shortlist, and two gotchas ready. Your funnel says awareness, interest, consideration. Their reality says decide fast with proof from people they trust. That gap explains a lot of stalled pipeline.
In Edition #57 of Vik’s M.I.X., here is what we are breaking down:
The under 40 buyer rewrote the playbook
LinkedIn is not your video destination
Search traffic is shifting from pages to answers
Grab a coffee. Let’s make this practical.
The under 40 buyer rewrote the playbook
Your buyer is not waiting for a white paper. They are forming an opinion in the wild. Private chats, creator clips, internal threads, and a handful of pages on your site that either answer real questions or send them back to their peers. A large share of buying groups now sits under 45. These teams prefer to research on their own, they spend only a sliver of time with vendors, and many walk in with a preferred choice already. If you are not visible upstream with proof that feels human, you are late.
So what actually works with this buyer. Proof that travels, expertise that loads fast, and decision aids that remove risk. That is it. Notion shows how to do this without shouting. Templates, community, and creator led demos make the product feel like a friend who helps you finish a task. Atlassian turns documentation, pricing, and plan clarity into demand. Buyers can answer tough questions without booking a call. Canva floods social with short how to clips that resolve into a clean library. Discovery and activation live close together.
LinkedIn is not your video destination
No one opens LinkedIn thinking I have twenty minutes for your brand film. They open it between meetings, skim three posts, answer a DM, and leave. The feed is a crowded lobby. You pass through it. You do not camp there. So stop trying to host a screening in a hallway.
Long clips on LinkedIn are the marketing version of reading poetry on a runway. Wrong format, wrong place, wrong audience state. The sound is off. The frame is tiny. Context shifts every few seconds. The algorithm cares more about professional relevance and conversation than about letting you rack up watch time. If the point can be made with a tight sentence or a simple carousel, do that. Video is for moments where motion earns its place. A product move that needs a quick screen share. A gesture, a face, a demo that lands only when you see it.
Search traffic is shifting from pages to answers
Search still drives intent, but the shape of attention changed. More queries now serve an instant answer on top. When that summary appears, people click fewer links. Publishers and B2B content hubs are already seeing search referrals drop, often from the single digits to the mid twenties. The share of queries that trigger these summaries has grown to real scale. The biggest players are planning for fewer clicks and more on page answers. If you still measure success as page views to deep content, prepare for a shock.
This does not mean your content stops working. It means the job of your content shifts from ranking only to being findable and useful in more places. The path forward is steady.
Build owned routes. Send one weekly email that teaches a concrete lesson. Keep it short. Feature one use case and one clip. Host one community surface where honest questions get answered. Measure saves, replies, and direct landings on decision pages. These are the new early signals of intent.
Ship structured answers. Give every important page a tight TLDR block, a fast FAQ, and a short video. If a calculator or comparison table helps a buyer choose, add it. This makes your content portable. It also makes your content easier for your own team to reference in outreach.
Treat your site search like a product. Make it fast. Fix synonyms and typos. Label your best content so the right page shows up first. If buyers cannot find the answer on your site in a few seconds, they will end the session or ask a peer.
Decide your stance on AI usage. Some assets you should keep open. Some you should license. Some you should block. Tag the crown jewels so you control how they appear inside AI answers and knowledge panels. If you work with partners, make sure your most accurate descriptions and comparisons are easy to syndicate.
Rebalance measurement. Add assisted replies, saves, branded search share, and direct landings on pricing, security, and comparison pages. Clicks will move around. Intent still leaves tracks.
Run a quick diagnostic this week. Pull Search Console for your top fifty pages. Flag any page where impressions rise but clicks fall. Those pages need stronger TLDRs, richer FAQs, and short video answers that travel. Then watch if direct landings and saves rise after the change.
To conclude, Buyers are not waiting. They are deciding. Teams that win now show up where learning happens, close the gaps in distribution, and package answers that travel even when the click does not.