AI is no longer just a tool for productivity. It’s changing who makes buying decisions, how they evaluate vendors, and what they expect from every interaction. For analyst relations (AR) professionals, that means a new mandate: turning complex buyer insights into influence across executives, marketing, and sales teams.
During IDC’s recent webinar, Turning Insights into Influence: Leveraging Buyer Behavior Research, Laurie Buczek, Group VP of Executive Insights and Thought Leadership Services at IDC, explored how AI and shifting buyer behavior are reshaping go-to-market strategies. At the end of the session, Laurie answered audience questions about the role of AI, how buying committees are changing, and what AR professionals can do to help their organizations succeed.
How can AR professionals use AI, especially agentic AI, in their roles?
Start with secure, ring-fenced AI tools that are approved within your organization, and avoid external large language models (LLMs) that may compromise your IP. AI can help AR leaders:
- Synthesize analyst insights into key takeaways executives can act on.
- Draft executive guidance aligned to business goals.
- Offload repetitive tasks to agentic AI, such as generating AR plans, drafting key messages, or synthesizing analyst feedback.
Think of AI as both an assistant (helping optimize content) and an agent (able to draft or manage elements of strategy that humans then refine and execute).
How are buying committees using AI, and how shold vendors align with them?
Buying groups are expanding, and each persona approaches discovery differently. Increasingly, they start with AI-powered chat functions to research solutions. That means vendors must rethink how their content is created and structured.
It’s no longer just about keywords and SEO. Content must be optimized for prompts, designed to answer the jobs-to-be-done that buyers will type into chat engines. In other words, organizations need to rebuild their content supply chain for an AI-first buyer journey.
Many companies collect buyer insights but struggle to act on them. How can we ensure insights actually influence executives?
Too often, buyer insights live in a persona document or slide deck that gets shelved. AI can change this by:
- Implementing insights in real time through optimized buyer journeys and engagements.
- Measuring impact continuously: Using AI to track how journeys are performing and where optimizations are needed.
- Speaking the executive’s language: Turning insights into meaningful KPIs that demonstrate business outcomes.
This helps AR professionals not just share insights but prove their value to leadership.
Buyers rely on AI, but do they still trust peers and analysts?
Absolutely. AI doesn’t replace the importance of trusted experts and communities.
Buyers are:
- Attending events to learn from peers.
- Visiting vendor websites for direct information.
- Turning to social communities and networks for validation.
The takeaway: AR leaders should help their organizations influence across multiple channels: AI, digital platforms, peers, analysts, and social networks.
Learn more
The buyer journey is no longer linear. It’s omnichannel, AI-led, and persona-rich. For AR professionals, that means a new mandate: translate insights into influence across executives, marketing, sales, and peers.
Watch the full IDC webinar on-demand: Turning Insights into Influence: Leveraging Buyer Behavior Research.
