The AI Search Content Playbook

Industrial marketers now have two audiences to optimize for — humans and AI.

The Q3 2025 Industrial Buyer Pulse Report revealed that 85% of buyers already use AI tools to research suppliers, often shortlisting vendors before ever engaging sales.

While marketers have learned to tailor content for different roles within the buying committee, few have truly adapted to how AI search engines actually surface information. To stay visible, industrial marketers must publish information that AI engines can parse, trust, and cite with confidence.

In this POV, we explore:

Why AI search now determines early-stage supplier visibility
How industrial marketers can align with LLM-driven discovery
The content formats most likely to be surfaced by AI engines
Practical publishing standards that make content “LLM-ready”

Industrial brands that translate their technical credibility into structured, citable, AI-legible content will dominate supplier shortlists long before a salesperson is engaged.

The Industrial Buyer Pulse is a quarterly research initiative capturing the evolving perspectives of industrial decision-makers across North America.

This inaugural release summarizes responses from 263 North American industrial buyers across the manufacturing landscape. Participants include operations leaders, engineering/technical buyers, and procurement professionals. While the numbers will change quarter to quarter, the lens will not: we track a consistent set of KPIs so executives can distinguish noise from signal, and we pair those metrics with practical guidance for marketing and sales teams tasked with converting sentiment into revenue.

Our goal is to provide an always-current, decision-grade readout of industrial buying behaviour that helps manufacturers focus resources where they will matter most.

The AI Search Content Playbook

WHAT IS THE INDUSTRIAL BUYER PULSE?

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