In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and seek to win.” A 5th century strategist may seem an unlikely reference for today’s B2B buying cycle, but in fast-paced, competitive markets where technology enables competitors to quickly gain an advantage, and buyers are overwhelmed with information, the ancient strategist had a point.
A new joint study by Edelman and LinkedIn proves that thought leadership is a powerful tool for shaping the battlefield, influencing target audiences before they even realize they are looking for potential service partners.
Most deals are not won or lost in the boardroom. They are defined by corridor chats, Teams conversations, Slack threads, AI-driven search, word-of-mouth, and quiet vetoes you never saw coming. With much of the B2B buying journey increasingly self-guided, the people you meet in sales conversations or in the pitch room have already decided what they think about your company and its capabilities.
Hidden buyers have more power than you think
The B2B Institute reports that 40% of B2B deals are abandoned because the buying group cannot reach a consensus. This is often due to “hidden buyers,” stakeholders who significantly influence business purchases in areas such as procurement, finance, compliance or IT operations, who, while not end users, play a pivotal role in shaping purchasing decisions. These hidden buyers are hard to identify and often overlooked in favour of decision makers who are easier to define, such as CEOs, CIOs, or departmental leaders, but they are a critical lever for earning trust, creating differentiation, and winning deals.
In fact, nearly three-quarters (71%) of hidden buyers say they have relatively little interaction with sales and so thought leadership is the Trojan Horse which gets you inside an organization to shape perceptions before the buying process starts.
Hidden buyers view thought leadership as more effective than conventional marketing or sales materials in demonstrating a vendor’s potential value. As this group is less likely to be directly marketed to, they are more focused on:
- The quality of thinking demonstrated on a company’s website.
- The expertise and opinions demonstrated by a potential partner’s executives and experts.
- The content they see shared by people in their professional network.
- Trusted, respected sources of information like media, analysts, and industry bodies.
The rise of generative AI adds urgency to this shift. The use of Generative AI is growing faster than the adoption of the computer or internet, with Gartner predicting that brands’ organic search traffic will plummet by 50% by 2028 as B2B decision makers switch to Large Language Models (LLMs) to help them evaluate companies and potential service providers. All of the decision makers on a project are likely to be influenced by the results which come up on ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude when they ask about a brand. But this is especially important for hidden buyers, who may be less familiar with a potential service provider and more likely to rely on AI search and AI summaries on search engines.
Thought leadership is particularly effective here as LLMs prioritise trusted sources, quality backlinks, domain authority, as well as original thinking and creative, which earns attention and consistency across diverse content types. It is important that thought leadership is not an isolated activity focused solely on awareness but one which is aligned through all sales, marketing, and business development activities. This ensures your company is showing up consistently with your target audiences directly as well as in AI search.
Generative AI engines such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude also tend to have a ‘recency bias,’ trying to find the answer needed as quickly as possible. This means companies need to invest in ongoing, quality thought leadership content to keep relevant, topical, and visible in search.
Help your customers uncover challenges they did not know existed
While many assume hidden buyers, especially in procurement, legal, finance or compliance, will only be interested in a specific technical or functional aspect of a buying decision, Edelman research shows this group is actually more interested in original thinking and fresh perspectives than the main target decision makers. Almost all (91%) of hidden buyers say that a hallmark of quality thought leadership is that it helps uncover challenges or needs a company has not recognized, compared to 81% of more visible decision makers.
Hidden buyers can also become powerful advocates. Over three-quarters of hidden buyers say that during the ‘request for proposal’ process, they are more likely to actively champion submissions from companies that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership (versus those who do not). Half of hidden buyers say that quality thought leadership helps them convince C-level executives and other members of a buying group to support their choice of vendor.
Over seven years of research from the Edelman-LinkedIn Thought Leadership Impact report have identified the attributes which enable ‘Generals’ (or marketers and communicators) to plan the most effective campaigns:
- White space thinking: Tell bold stories with unexpected angles
- Relevance: Align with timely, societal and cultural topics
- Vision: Define a unique role for your brand
- Trust: Showcase expertise, partner with credible voices, and in drive tangible, meaningful action with the target audience
Rise to the top of the shortlist
Marketers and communicators should consider thought leadership as the forward reconnaissance advance team, ensuring current customers already understand the value and expertise of a company and have trust and confidence in the service provider. It is a key driver of future pipelines, priming the market for when customers are ready to buy.
As the B2B Institute articulated in its Better, Bolder Business Brands study, the strongest B2B brands outperform because they’re remembered when the shortlist is formed. They’ve already shaped perceptions, demonstrated the quality of their people and thinking and shown they can bring new perspectives so that a company is top of mind amongst all the decision makers (even the hidden ones you may not know about!) before a pitch is called.
They have won the war before their rivals even realize the battle for business is underway.
Andrew Mildren is Managing Director of Edelman Business Marketing EMEA.
Sources:
The Edelman Thought Leadership Impact Report 2025 is based on research with 1,934 US business decision makers across a range of industries and company sizes. Data was collected online through the LinkedIn platform in March and April 2025. To view the latest report, click here.
The B2B Institute, Better, Bolder B2B Branding’
Gartner, ‘How Marketing Can Capitalise on AI Disruption’