B2B marketers across APAC are nailing the majority of their marketing but falling down in one important area – cutting through with potential customers. In this exclusive op-ed Janine Pares, CEO and founder of Thinksmart Marketing, examines the customer disconnect which meant Competitive Differentiation was the weakest marketing metric for 92 per cent of APAC B2B brands she studied.
B2B marketing across APAC has become remarkably competent. It’s also become remarkably similar, and that is a huge issue.
Our recent analysis of 100 publicly observable B2B brands found the majority had all the hygiene factors covered – great case studies, slick websites and customer proof points. Where they consistently fell down was Competitive Differentiation – standing out from your competition.
In fact, that was the lowest or equal-lowest metric in 92 per cent of our brands (Thinksmart Marketing, 2026 APAC B2B Brand Relevance Index).
For buyers, the result is simple: plenty of credible choices, but very few compelling reasons to choose one over another. That distance between what buyers need to understand and what brands communicate publicly is what we call the Brand Relevance Gap.
This is not a skills problem, it’s a time, resources and focus issue. And it’s not really a surprise because on paper the job of a B2B marketer in APAC can look like a nightmare.
Take a global proposition and make it work in Japan, Singapore, Korea and Australia. Then adapt it for marketing, finance, procurement and legal without losing consistency or slowing anything down. Keep it relevant as buyer priorities shift, make sure it is different from the competition.
And do all of that with a tiny marketing team already being asked to deliver more with less.
It’s a problem because a brand can have what looks like all the bases covered – strong content pipelines, good visibility and enough proof points to sink a ship. But without real insights to understand the needs of customers in a particular market, it can all be ignored as wallpaper.
The way B2B customers are making decisions has changed hugely over the last few years. Buyers are making decisions earlier and with little appetite or time to do the interpretative work themselves.
Forrester research shows 68 per cent of B2B buyers begin the purchasing process with a preferred vendor already in mind, and that vendor wins 80 per cent of the time. (Forrester, Buyers’ Journey Survey 2025)
That is what makes the Brand Relevance Gap so commercially important. Because while a vendor can have a sound global position, they will still fail to make the day-one shortlist if the local buyer can’t quickly see why it matters to them, in this situation, at this point in time.
It’s not the customer’s job to spend time understanding why a brand is different or relevant, it’s our job to explain it in a way which resonates with them.
One answer is to use AI to produce more personalised content more quickly, but that may also be the fastest way to make the problem worse. If the underlying view of the buyer is generic, AI will simply produce beige marketing at greater speed.
Its more valuable role actually comes a lot earlier in the process to help plug the missing piece for so many regional marketers – real localised customer insights. These insights are the thing which actually moves the needle for marketers because it means they can tailor the content and get their proposition right for that market.
We experienced this first-hand while working with a global financial institution on messaging for Japan. The easy solution would have been to translate the global proposition, localise a few assets and call it done.
But the challenge was having confidence the message accurately reflected the priorities and needs of local buyers in a highly governed sector and a market undergoing considerable change.
The most valuable work happened before activation – in understanding the nuanced market dynamics, the competition, and how buyers currently perceived the brand.
That insight allowed us to develop a focused local position and messaging framework without weakening the strength of the global brand. It gave the marketing team greater confidence to support regional stakeholders and execute a position that was genuinely relevant to local buyers.
Account-based marketing (ABM) presents a similar challenge because a good program should understand what is changing inside an account, what makes the opportunity distinct and what different people across the buying group need to build confidence, trust and preference.
Without this the ‘personalised’ content being produced is just generic marketing – and it doesn’t move the buyers in those accounts.
So, how can already-stretched regional marketing teams keep up with the market insights they need on top of everything else, as traditional methods are often slow and expensive. This is where AI and automation, used within the right strategic guardrails, can make a real difference.
AI can analyse public and proprietary signals around changing buyer priorities, competitor narratives and market conditions, giving marketing and revenue teams a more current evidence base for their decisions.
With AI to help, experienced marketers can access better intelligence to steer direction, then quickly turn those insights into regional and persona playbooks before the market moves again. The access to current insights and playbook development means localisation and ABM can be sharpened and help avoid a perfectly well-established story from losing relevance.
Used well, this kind of intelligence can give teams a more current view of the buyer pressures, competitor narratives and proof points shaping relevance in a market.
Human judgement is ultimately what makes intelligence useful. Marketers still have to decide which shift matters, understand the cultural and organisational context, and turn rational evidence into a story that reaches the person behind the job title.
If you want your target customers to see how much you value them, start by doing something surprisingly old-fashioned: understand them.
Understand what they are experiencing and how you can help them.
It’s one of the most basic principles in marketing, and technology may finally give marketers the capacity to do it properly at the speed modern B2B demands.
