Welcome to What We're Reading, a weekly rundown of news stories, marketing columns, and B2B industry news that caught our eye.

The importance of brand advocacy for B2B businesses

With so much of the search process now driven by AI discovery and self-service buying, The Drum says that human relationships and experiences are fast becoming key differentiators.

“Many organizations assume brand consistency because their external messaging is aligned across campaigns, platforms, and content,” it says. “But a company’s brand isn’t just what’s communicated; it’s what is understood, repeated, and delivered by people inside the business.”

This is the perfect reminder that the best brand advocacy starts internally, and often with good conversation. It’s only by taking the time to align voices and documenting that on the inside that your team will start embodying your brand well to everyone else.

B2B buyers are making their minds up before reaching out

According to a new study from Forbes, 95% of the time, the winning vendor is already on the buyer’s day-one shortlist and the vendor that buyers contact first wins the deal roughly 80% of the time. That offers some important insight about not just the current buying journey, but how much happens before someone books that initial sales conversation.

We’ll be the first to admit that it’s tough to show up in a part of the journey you can’t control, but there are things you can do. One of those is making sure a potential customer has everything they need to complete their research independently, and feel confident you're the right choice. That could be with case studies, FAQs, or just somewhere on your site that offers a transparent look at how you get things done.

Is your checkout experience losing you business?

There are, of course, times when a client doesn’t interact with your sales team at all and will complete a sale without you, right there on your website. Demand Gen Report outlines how unclear pricing, slow pages, mandatory account creation, and limited payment options are all things that could push a buyer to abandon a purchase.

It continues to say that speed and clarity are table stakes, which is something we agree with. The more you can free your website from friction, the better. That doesn’t just apply at the checkout either, but on your homepage, product pages, the way someone search your site, and how they filter through products.

Time to change your checkout experience?

If you're seeing more abandoned carts than you’d like, our team can help. Start the conversation to see how we can design an ecommerce experience that’s seamless, intuitive, and ladders up to your marketing and sales objectives.