Name: Perpetual Idea Machine: Square’s Audience-Centric Approach to Predicting Trends on a Global Scale
Start: 2025-05-28T16:00:00Z
End: 2025-05-28T16:00:37.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 2

Industry Dive is an award-winning business journalism company with a reach of 14+ million readers
in 36 of the most dynamic industries. We dive deep to deliver news, insights, and in-depth analysis to
keep business leaders up-to-date with the latest trends in their industry. We offer marketers access to
our targeted audiences and first-party insights to accelerate their goals.

Get ready for bold predictions and unfiltered opinions on the future of demand generation. We're diving into strategies and emerging trends that will define success in 2026. 

From GenAI mastery to buying group strategies, we're pulling back the curtain on the trends that will separate the leaders from the laggards. Hear the results from our latest study to learn what demand gen professionals are prioritizing in 2026, what challenges they're facing and how budgets are being impacted. Join experts from Informa TechTarget to get unique insights into the data and what your team can do to get ahead and stay ahead.

Hot Takes: 2026 B2B Demand Generation Predictions

Join us as we put our experts in the hot seat for a rapid-fire round of hot takes based on the content marketing results of our annual predictions survey.   

Hundreds of content marketing leaders have weighed in across areas of AI-driven efficiency, budget projections, strategic shifts and beyond. See where they’re hedging their bets to stay ahead of the most crucial trends and challenges coming your way.

Hot Takes: 2026 B2B Content Marketing Predictions

Seize early opportunities. Ditch defunct approaches. Boldly go into 2026 with a cohesive content marketing and demand gen strategy tuned to the latest expert forecasts. 

Hundreds of marketing leaders have weighed in across areas of AI-driven efficiency, budget projections, channel fluctuations and beyond. Join our expert panel as they reveal the results of our annual predictions survey to keep you ahead of the most crucial trends and challenges coming your way. 

Plus, get answers to your most pressing questions in a live Q&A with our experts.

2026 B2B Content and Demand Generation Predictions

AI-powered buyers are here. And their penchant for personalized prompts over traditional search is throwing typical B2B engagement models into a tailspin. 

With more hidden buyer activity and less opportunities for direct connection, B2B marketers must make a major strategic shift: Up their indirect influence. Generate trust. And successfully fill the confidence gaps AI leaves behind.

Based on new research and key intel, join our expert from Informa TechTarget & a guest speaker from Forrester to find your way back to buyers in the new zero-click reality.

Zero Click Rising? Trust-Building Approaches for Growing Influence.

In today's challenging B2B marketing landscape, building trust has never been more critical—or more difficult. Join Mandi Tompkins as she reveals how successful marketers are navigating a world where 95% of your audience isn't ready to buy, buyers form opinions before they ever contact you, and purchase decisions involve many stakeholders and influencers.

This insightful session will explore:
- The Trust Crisis: Todays buyers demand authenticity and proof in a content-saturated world. With the rise of AI generated content consumers need to know what is real and what to trust.
- The Expert Advantage: How partnering with trusted SMEs, media voices, and analysts creates a powerful network of authority that buyers trust
- The Innovation Imperative: Strategies for creating connected content ecosystems that meet buyers at every stage of their nonlinear buying journey

The Trust Advantage: Content Strategy at the Intersection of Innovation & Expertise

Without a strong content-sales connection, how much ROI are you leaving on the table?

Empower your sales team with content campaigns designed to run the full funnel, from driving awareness to winning deals. Get actionable tips from Informa TechTarget’s Jane Qin Medeiros, GM, Brand and Content, and UPS company Roadie’s Will Walker, Senior Manager, B2B Marketing.

Marketers will learn how to:
- Bridge the gap between content and sales with best practices for content-driven sales workshops, enablement materials, and beyond
- Design full-funnel campaigns that thread intangible brand values — like sustainability — into tangible sales results 
- Rethink their approach to generating ROI to boost results at every stage of the funnel

Sales, Empowered: A Roadie Masterclass in Full-Funnel Campaigns That Win Deals

There's a new broker standing between vendors and their buyers. Enter GenAI: the rapidly accelerating, traffic-decimating, instant answer machine. In its wake, once-reliable channels are no more. Buyer activity is increasingly blurred. And chances to build inroads with your targets seem even more elusive.  
 
But with every strategy GenAI renders obsolete, a new one rises in its place. 
 
Join our expert panel to learn how to seize the most lucrative opportunities to reinvent your content strategy for an AI-driven world.

The Future of Content Marketing in an AI-Driven World

Savvy marketers recognize the importance of expanding their solutions beyond well-worn territory and into new verticals to maximize their value-capture. But breaking into new verticals swiftly and successfully requires deep expertise and an air-tight GTM strategy.  
 
Join our expert panel to learn how to translate vertical-specific data into breakthrough, smartly distributed content to make a name for yourself in previously uncharted markets.

From Unknown to Shortlisted: Leveraging Expertise for New Market Growth

As vertical markets continue to develop increasingly specialized needs and expectations, B2B organizations find themselves at a crossroads: needing to balance the efficiency of centralized marketing with the effectiveness of vertical-specific approaches.
 
Join Allison Brown, Senior Manager of Demand Generation at Snowflake and Jill Kunkes, Senior Account Director at Informa TechTarget, to find out how Snowflake built an industry-specific marketing model through their collaboration with Industry Dive, resulting in impactful business results: growing vertical footprint, audience expansion, pipeline impact, and more.

Tailored for Growth: How Snowflake’s Vertical Marketing Strategy Drives Results

Gen Z buyers are now a considerable force in B2B purchasing decisions — and this convention-breaking cohort is proving to be anything but predictable. To win their favor, marketers must gain a clear understanding of their motives and preferences. But a minefield of sweeping generalizations and misconceptions is only muddying the waters. 

Chat, we need to get offline and into the real world. It's time to separate fact from fiction. 

Join our expert panel to dispel myths and reveal truths around the new wave of buyers’ attitudes, consumption patterns, and high expectations for B2B.

Touching Grass: B2B Lessons from Real Gen Z Buyers

In the modern attention economy, not all attention is created equal. Multiple expert studies reveal advertising served in context (directly aligned to the content on-page) on trusted media platforms captures a more valuable type of attention — increasing memorability, boosting brand awareness, and uplifting share of voice by up to 65%.  

The power of context has been long-known. But savvy marketers are recognizing its renewed value as buyers increasingly turn to independent media and third-party experts to self-educate and validate. Join our seasoned pros from Informa TechTarget to learn how to play into user psychology and effectively leverage context to get more ROI out of your advertising investment.

Mindset Match: How Trusted Context Increases Advertising Attention

In today’s competitive digital marketing landscape, it’s not enough to just tout the features and functionality of your product or solution. What buyers remember as they move through the purchase process is whether you’re able to meet their actual functional, emotional and social needs. In other words, what clear customer promise can you make in your marketing messaging that both adheres to those needs and is one you can keep?

In this webinar series, B2B Content Brilliance we’ve gathered the best minds in B2B content and we’ll be exploring content from every possible angle, from using research to graphic design, and much more. John Steinert (CMO, Informa TechTarget) talks with Jann Martin Schwarz (Senior Fellow, LinkedIn and Founder, The B2B Institute) about the importance of customer promises, how insights can be used to identify a promise that customers will value and who needs to be involved to make sure the motion is fulfilled.

Creating a Memorable Marketing Message that Lasts

According to Forrester, 82% of B2B marketers agree that buyers expect a buying experience personalized to their needs and preferences, but few companies are meeting this expectation. This disconnect represents both a challenge and an opportunity.  

In this episode of our B2B Content Brilliance webinar series, David Edelman (ex-Aetna CMO and now Harvard Business School lecturer) walks us through essential thinking for competitive strategy in the AI era. Based on research that led to “Personalized” (his best-selling book), David will explain why this is so important for all of us and guide us through how B2B companies should proceed from concept, through planning and to taking specific actions. You’re sure to find the insights here both eye-opening and immediately useful to teams at every level of your organization.

Personalized: Making Better B2B in the AI Era

Today’s buyers consume, on average, 12 pieces of content when researching a purchase. When producing relevant and valuable messaging is this critical, how do you create the right assets to address every prospective buyer’s needs at every stage?

As the leading B2B webinar and video provider, the Informa TechTarget team has learned a thing or two about creating content that converts. Join us as we demonstrate how to build a well- balanced asset library that blends rich and static media throughout the buyer’s journey. We'll teach you to leverage different content types and demonstrate how to build a robust editorial calendar to create meaningful marketing touches as your buyers progress deeper down the sales funnel.

Mapping B2B Content to Each Stage of the New Sales Funnel

The outdated battle between brand or demand marketing is over. Today’s savvy marketers aren’t choosing one over the other. They’re blending both approaches to craft content that captivates, engages and converts IT buyers. Join Jane Qin Madeiros (Informa TechTarget) as she explores the future of brand-to-demand marketing and how class-leading B2B marketers bridge the gap between brand awareness and revenue-generating activities with powerful, results-driven content strategies.

Create, Engage, Convert: The Brand-to-Demand Playbook

The way B2B buyers research and make decisions isn’t just changing—it’s being reimagined. Today, it’s no longer enough for your message to stand alone; it’s the trust signals behind it that truly matter. Discerning buyers turn to a mix of sources—expert insights, media voices, and industry influencers—to guide their decisions. The trust equation has fundamentally shifted. Join Lieu Pham (Informa TechTarget) to discover how building a robust validation network through strategic partnerships and influential voices can help you establish unshakeable market authority.

Beyond the Message: Building Trust Signals in B2B Networks

Thanks to modern technology, B2B marketers now have seemingly infinite possibilities at their fingertips to dramatically scale marketing capabilities. But the real opportunity isn’t just about reaching more people. It’s all about engaging them in smarter, more meaningful ways. In this keynote, Ben Legg, CEO and Co-Founder of The Portfolio Collective, will reveal how innovation in martech, data and GenAI have leveled the playing field and why the brands that thrive will be those that adapt fast, think creatively and focus squarely on maximizing customer value now and for the future.

Keynote by Ben Legg: The Future of  Marketing: Innovate or Perish

The marketing playbooks we’ve used for years just aren’t working anymore. Buyers don’t fill out forms. MQLs are outdated. ABM programs aren’t showing the ROI. SDRs aren’t making quota. Pipeline requirements are up but budgets are down. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting better results.

We need a new playbook for B2B. In this lively keynote discussion, John Steinert (Informa TechTarget CMO), and martech guru Jon Miller, former cofounder of Marketo and founder/CEO of Engagio, will discuss the four pillars of the New B2B Go-to-Market Playbook, including practical tips you can use in your organization right away.

Nothing Works Anymore: Why B2B and ABM Need a New Playbook

The most successful content marketers don’t react to audience trends and issues. They predict them — and set them — to keep their unique segments one step ahead with solutions-based content.

Get actionable tips from Travis Gonzalez, Strategy Director, studioID (Informa TechTarget), as he sits down with Mallory Russell, VP, Global Content Marketing (Square), to present a masterclass on the audience-centric approaches that have cemented Square as a trusted partner for their global community.

Marketers will learn how to:
- Implement novel models to predict and set trends for their diverse audience segments
- Deliver solutions-based content that effectively addresses trends for both local markets and on a global scale
- Adopt an empathy-first approach that involves your audience in the creative process via real-life interactions and digital simulations alike

Perpetual Idea Machine: Square’s Audience-Centric Approach to Predicting Trends on a Global Scale

Content Marketing

Marketing

Demand Generation

Digital Marketing

B2B Content Marketing

Artificial Intelligence

Branding

Brand Positioning

Demand generation is the process through which a business integrates marketing and sales to move potential buyers down the sales funnel from interest to payment. The BrightTALK demand generation community is made up of thousands of professionals sharing and learning best practices for engagement marketing, demand generation and lead scoring and nurturing through interactive webinars and videos. Register and join the conversation to attend live webinars and have your questions answered by demand generation professionals and thought leaders.

The marketing community on BrightTALK is made up of thousands of engaged marketing professionals. Find relevant webinars and videos on marketing strategy, branding and more presented by recognized thought leaders. Join the conversation by participating in live webinars and round table discussions.

Perpetual Idea Machine: Square’s Audience-Centric Approach to Predicting Trends on a Global Scale

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Industry Dive