1. Don’t neglect brand building

Building brand awareness is often overlooked by B2B marketers. Mohammad Danish, Head of Marketing ANZ at Oracle, told the forum that at any given time, only 5% of a firm’s target market is ready to buy. The challenge is to stay top of mind for the other 95%. For Mr Danish, the solution is great content. Buyers have questions, and they’re looking for answers on their buying journey. If your content provides those answers along the way, it will help you convert buyers, he says. Kimberley Marlay, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Alliances ANZ at Kyndryl, agreed, noting that about three-quarters of a B2B buyer’s journey happens before they engage a vendor. Eight out of ten buyers choose the first vendor they speak with.

The takeaway: Use quality thought leadership to establish credibility, build awareness and trust, and nurture your audience until they are ready to talk to you.

2. One-size-fits-all content is out, personalisation is in

Corporates, tech companies and financial institutions are actively tailoring content for key clients and prospects. In Australia, localisation is critical: it’s no longer good enough for multinationals to serve their clients generic global thought leadership content. 

Extreme segmentation is the way to do this effectively, or ‘personalisation at scale,’ according to Alexandra Kelly, Head of Account-Based Marketing at IBM Australia. Likewise, Kat Chia, Global Head of Marketing and Comms at Telstra Health, noted the importance of tailoring the message to multiple people within your target organisations. A CEO is likely to want different content than her front-line team. 

Several speakers emphasised that a strong relationship between marketing and sales is essential for effective personalisation. This is something we talk about a lot with our clients at The Action Exchange. The marketing teams that truly leverage thought leadership do so in conjunction with their sales teams; they actively utilise the research and insights from their thought leadership to ignite and empower their sales teams to engage in meaningful conversations.

Marketers often worry that personalisation leads to the dilution or misinterpretation of messages. However, both Mark Joshi, Executive Director of Communication and Marketing at QIC, and Helen Kerr, Head of Institutional Marketing at ANZ, outlined the ways in which their teams create playbooks to ensure they're always equipping their people with the right collateral, the right messages, and the right tools to customise their content.

3. PDFs are dead (or are they?)

Caroline Raj, Senior Marketing Director for Australia and New Zealand at ServiceNow, drew audible gasps when she suggested that PDFs should be banned. ServiceNow has introduced a no-PDF rule, which Ms Raj claims leads to more innovation and creativity. 

Lexie Walker, Senior Marketing Director of Corporate Solutions for Asia and Emerging Markets at Thomson Reuters, agreed, saying that while long-form content is still critical, PDFs are dead. With Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT now able to quickly summarise long reports, the vehicle for delivering thought leadership insights must change. 

As a thought leadership agency, we frequently create reports for our clients in PDF format, so this discussion left me feeling slightly panicked on one hand and a bit excited on the other. "To PDF or not to PDF" is a common conversation we have with clients who initially express enthusiasm about exploring new ways to share long-form thought leadership content with their audience. However, after considering all the options, they often end up publishing a PDF. 

That’s because thought leadership isn't just marketing content; it’s collateral that executives and client-facing staff share with their contacts directly and use to build relationships. Foundational research is crucial to any credible thought leadership campaign, and a PDF is often the most effective way to present it. However, the story shouldn't end there. After investing in in-depth research, it's a missed opportunity if you don’t tailor the content into different formats that can reach various audiences in diverse ways.

4. Surviving the AI transition means going back to basics

LLMs have rapidly changed the way we find information online, rendering search engine optimisation and marketing far less effective. The new challenge is to understand how to get noticed by LLMs, which prioritise high-quality editorial content from trusted sources.

Content creation is now so easy that there is an overabundance of it. To stand out, the oldest trick in the book rings true: deliver quality insights that are relevant and targeted directly at the right audience.

With LLMs favouring content from established media, PR is making a comeback. This means that original, data-driven research that is timely and future-focused will win over generic copy every time.

5. Quality matters

This may seem obvious, but it remains true. C-suite executives are inundated with content. The problem is that very little of what they are being served is of actual value. Adapt, a research firm serving the IT sector, found in a 2025 survey of 182 Australian chief information officers that more than two-thirds of the outreach they receive from vendors is either a ‘waste of time,’ ‘ill-informed,’ or ‘generic.’ Only 3% offers ‘valued insight.’ 

When offered something genuinely useful and insightful, C-suites still show up. But the only way to get into that 3% is to deliver high-quality, engaging, editorial thought leadership.

Are you struggling to deliver valuable insights to your C-suite audience? Get in touch with The Action Exchange to find out how we can help you stand out from the crowd with quality thought leadership.