The search funnel that B2B demand gen was built around is being quietly dismantled. 60% of searches are now zero-click. 94% of B2B buyers are getting information from LLMs. And if your content strategy is built around showing up in Google search results, you are optimizing for a shrinking channel.
Devon Shaw, VP of Marketing at LinkedIn, put it plainly: as a marketer, you need to think about how to influence the LLMs. That means creating content that LLMs value and surface. And what LLMs value is content that comes from trusted voices, people with genuine expertise and a real point of view, content that has demonstrated authority through engagement and citation.
The first implication is that generic, SEO-optimized content is becoming less valuable. LLMs are not primarily rewarding keyword density. They are surfacing content from sources that have demonstrated credibility, consistent perspective, and genuine expertise. If your content calendar is mostly generic category content designed to rank for commercial intent keywords, you are building for a game that is changing under your feet.
The second is that LinkedIn specifically is becoming a source that LLMs draw from. Shaw cited data from Profound that LinkedIn is a platform where LLM-sourced B2B information is actively coming from. With 1.3 billion professionals, 70 million companies, and 100 million verified users, the conversations happening on LinkedIn are what drive B2B, and LLMs are paying attention to that.
What does this mean for a demand gen practitioner building a content program? Your company's thought leaders need to be posting consistently on LinkedIn with genuine perspective, not just corporate announcements. The content should reflect actual expertise, things your people have done and learned, not repackaged category takes. Engagement from your ICP on that content is a signal, because engagement is one of the ways that LLMs assess the credibility and relevance of a source.
The buyers who are going to an LLM to research your category right now are getting answers shaped by everything that has been written by credible sources on that topic. If your company's perspective is not in that corpus, you are not in the conversation. And if you are not in the conversation before the buyer enters the market, you are not on the shortlist when they do.
The channel strategy question is not whether to be on LinkedIn. It is whether you are showing up there in a way that builds the kind of credibility that LLMs, and buyers, actually value.