Synthetic Trust, Strategic Frugality & Data That Plays the Long Game
Guest article by Vikramsinh Ghatge
Back after a bit...
If you noticed the radio silence, you weren’t wrong. My last edition dropped in May, and since then, I’ve been neck-deep in something new.
Over the past few months, I’ve been recording some deeply engaging podcast conversations with people who are building, breaking, and rethinking the way B2B marketing is done.
From navigating GTM pivots to wrestling with AI-led operations, these chats have been fire. But they also made me step back and ask—what’s really moving the needle right now in our space?
Here’s what’s been popping up consistently, both in the studio and across the headlines.
Let’s dive in.
AI Influencers: Controlled Narrative vs Earned Trust
You’ve probably seen Lil Miquela or the AI-generated faces in Zara’s recent campaigns. But this isn’t just a B2C stunt anymore.
In the B2B world, brands are testing synthetic personas to scale thought leadership without the “human bottleneck.” IBM recently unveiled 'AIra', a virtual assistant-slash-brand ambassador deployed across internal learning and customer success training content. Startups like Synthesia are enabling companies to create deepfake-style videos featuring realistic human avatars to present technical explainers, training modules, and even quarterly updates.
The upside? Consistent messaging, 24/7 content delivery, zero risk of PR disasters.
But here’s the rub: 84% of B2B buyers say they trust peer recommendations over branded content (source: Demand Gen Report 2025). AI-led voices might be scalable, but they’re not credible by default.
LinkedIn saw a 27% higher engagement rate on thought leadership posts from verified human execs versus AI-generated brand content in Q2 2025 (internal report cited at B2Believe conference).
My take: Synthetic personas can amplify voice, but authenticity still wins trust. In 2025, the brands nailing it are blending AI-generated scale with real human POVs—think a content flywheel with SME-signed commentary layered on top.
Look out for B2B brands like Gong, HubSpot, and Notion experimenting with hybrid content strategies that balance human POV with scalable AI formats.
Marketing Resilience: Spend’s Not Dead, Just Smarter
Media budgets aren’t falling off a cliff. They’re getting dissected under microscopes.
A Gartner CMO Spend Survey released in June 2025 showed that only 29% of CMOs expect budget growth this year, compared to 53% in 2023. But here’s what’s interesting: 66% of those same CMOs are increasing spend on performance-led content and owned channels.
What’s declining?
Paid social (+ Meta’s costs are up 18% YoY)
Generic awareness campaigns
Vanity-driven ABM programs without clear sales alignment
Meanwhile... brands like Figma and Airtable are leaning into community-led growth and co-created content. They’re tapping power users to drive webinars, repurposing internal decks into playbooks, and looping in customer success teams to shape narratives that stick.
We’re also seeing a resurgence in partner marketing. Case in point: Drift’s recent collaboration with Salesforce on AI + sales alignment playbooks drove 42,000 downloads in under 3 weeks (source: Drift’s marketing team via B2BMX Europe).
What’s out:
Spray-and-pray paid campaigns
Attribution models that don’t tie to pipeline
Over-investing in channels that aren’t owned or retargetable
What’s in:
Sales-marketing handshake content (like revenue team podcasts and founder AMA recaps)
Performance-based sponsorships
Microsites with contextual CTAs
My take: Marketing resilience in 2025 is about making every dollar multi-task. If a campaign can’t deliver both reach and conversion, it’s dead weight.
The First-Party Data Shift: From Compliance to Competitive Advantage
Let’s talk cookies. Or rather, their absence.
With Chrome completing third-party cookie deprecation in H1 2025, we’re now fully in the privacy-first era. The real story? Most brands weren’t ready.
But those who were? They’re not just surviving. They’re thriving.
Here’s what’s working:
Progressive profiling: ZoomInfo’s gated content now personalizes questions based on visitor segment and funnel stage, increasing form fills by 38% while collecting richer data.
Utility-led value exchange: Canva’s enterprise onboarding now includes interactive assessments in exchange for usage data, reducing churn by 21%.
Intent-driven segmentation: 6sense and Demandbase are helping SaaS players detect mid-funnel behavior and adapt nurture flows in real time.
And then there’s this: a study by Segment (April 2025) showed that personalized experiences driven by first-party data increase B2B conversion rates by up to 2.6x, especially in high-ticket SaaS.
But personalization doesn’t mean creepiness. It means relevance with consent.
My take: In 2025, the winners aren’t those with the most data. They’re the ones with the clearest understanding of context, consent, and timing.
Want to build a first-party moat? Start with community, double down on onboarding journeys, and bake data strategy into content ops, not just MarTech stacks.
Wrapping it up
This isn’t just a year of change—it’s a year of recalibration.
Brands are rethinking what it means to be trustworthy.
Budgets are being asked to prove themselves.
And data is no longer a crutch—it’s a responsibility.
Across all of it, one truth holds:
You don’t need to shout louder in 2025. You need to resonate deeper.
Let’s get back to building marketing that earns trust, rewards curiosity, and drives momentum—not just clicks.