Interview by Jonathan Kersting
The Tech Council's Jonathan Kersting and Cooper Munroe of the Motherhood recap their third Marketing Mash Up, focused on how the traditional marketing funnel has “mutated” into a messy maze of touchpoints, especially in B2B. They share an example of buying Panaracer tires via influencer reviews and Amazon without ever visiting the brand’s site, illustrating how purchases now happen through indirect paths. The conversation highlights long, unpredictable B2B cycles (including trade show memories resurfacing years later), AI-driven “pre-educated” customers, and the risk of AI surfacing discontinued products. Key takeaways include the need for consistently fresh content (noting top-performing content may be ~30 days old), the value of transcripts for podcasts/videos, and growing importance of channels like Reddit and the complexities of Google Ads. Tools mentioned include Scrunch AI and Profound AI for checking brand visibility in AI prompts. Below are top insights from the Mash Up.
1. The funnel isn’t dead. It just stopped behaving like a funnel.
The room kept circling back to the idea that marketing still moves people from awareness to action, but the path is no longer neat and linear. One participant nailed it with the best image of the session: it used to feel like the old mall coin funnel, and now it feels more like Plinko. People bounce between search, social, chat, Reddit, websites, word of mouth, and random reminders before they finally act.
2. Trust has shifted from brand messaging to “show me what real people think.”
A major theme was that people do not automatically trust polished marketing claims anymore. They go to Reddit, Google, product reviews, and community chatter to find validation from actual users. That is a huge change. Brands are still part of the journey, but they are no longer the referee. They are just one voice in a crowded room.
3. Social media is increasingly becoming shopping media.
One of the sharpest observations was that some channels no longer feel “social” at all. They feel transactional, always-on, and hyper-targeted. People described being followed around by ads after one click, one search, or even one conversation. The takeaway is that discovery is now ambient. The brand does not wait for you to go shopping. It barges through the wall like a Kool-Aid algorithm.
4. B2B journeys are long, messy, and almost impossible to attribute cleanly.
This was one of the richest parts of the discussion. In B2B, a sale might start with a trade show conversation years ago, then go quiet, then come back through a Google search, a website visit, a LinkedIn check, or a remembered referral. The group was pretty blunt that direct attribution can be close to useless if you treat it too literally. Reputation, repeated exposure, and timing matter as much as any single click.
5. “They don’t need it until they need it” may be the new nurture reality.
For niche and technical companies especially, buyers often do not move when they first encounter a brand. They move when a problem becomes urgent. That means your content, reputation, and visibility are acting more like stored memory than immediate conversion tools. You are not always closing a deal in the moment. Sometimes you are planting future recall.
6. AI search is changing the buyer before they ever contact you.
A big insight was that prospects are arriving more “pre-educated” than ever. They have already done a deep dive through AI tools, search, reviews, and summaries. The catch is that they may be confidently wrong. That creates a new challenge: marketers and sales teams now have to deal with buyers who feel informed, but may be carrying outdated or inaccurate information into the conversation.
7. AI search has a freshness problem, and old content can come back from the grave.
One participant shared a great example of buyers asking about a product that had been obsolete for years because older coverage was still floating around online. That sparked a key point: AI search often struggles to weight recency and context the way a human would. So if your old messaging is still more plentiful than your new messaging, the old stuff can win.
8. Fresh, authentic content matters more than content built to game the machine.
The group landed in a pretty healthy place here. Schema tags, FAQs, updated pages, and smart website structure all matter, but the deeper takeaway was that authentic, useful, expert-driven content still has the most staying power. One line worth keeping: good AEO is good SEO. In other words, if you build content that genuinely helps people understand what you do, you are still playing the right game.
9. Visibility alone is not victory. Memory and credibility matter more.
A great side thread came from the videographer in the room who explained that being seen in different places, winning awards, and having his name attached to work helped people remember him, but that still did not automatically turn into phone calls. That is a useful nuance for the video: awareness is not the finish line. It is often just the spark that makes someone remember you when the need finally appears.
10. For B2B especially, word-of-mouth still hits like a hammer.
Even in a world of AI summaries, paid search, and social algorithms, the room kept returning to reputation, referrals, and personal credibility. Particularly for technical and industrial companies, word-of-mouth is still doing serious work. The maze may have more walls now, but people still trust people.