Thought leadership works, but where’s the real power in B2B influence?

According to a recent report by Dentsu, titled “The Superpowers Index Asia Pacific”, the region has moved from participant to pace-setter in global B2B marketing, setting the benchmark for how brand reputation, clarity of purpose and seamless digital experiences convert buyer confidence into commercial outcomes.

Now in its fifth year, the report highlights that trust remains the single most important factor in winning business. But the way brands build trust is evolving: word of mouth, influencer engagement, and brand reputation today, are critical and carry more weight than product features shaping APAC buyer confidence and commercial outcomes.

Dissecting the report further is Mansi Trivedi, B2B strategy lead, APAC at Dentsu. Trivedi shares that as AI becomes more embedded in the buyer journey, this is a huge opportunity for APAC brands is to combine technology with deep cultural insight.

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“This is where the region’s diversity becomes its superpower. Buyers still want to feel confident and understood, even as decision-making gets faster and more data-driven,” she said.

The research also identified influencer marketing as the fastest-growing driver of B2B decision making, with nearly two-thirds of buyers referencing influencers in recent purchase decisions yet only 42% of marketers believe they are using the channel effectively. This gap represents one of the largest growth opportunities for APAC B2B brands in 2026.

Trivedi explained that influencer marketing in the B2B space began gaining traction in 2023 through thought leadership partnerships and word-of-mouth channels. By 2024, it was a secondary lever, and 2025 marks its breakout year. She added: 

Buyers now seek credible voices and advocacy to validate decisions in an increasingly automated environment.

On the flip side however, AI-slop in B2B content is also rising and so content fatigue among decision-makers is prevalent. This means authentic voices and the real experiences will outperform carefully curated brand-owned messaging.

“Hard-coding creator, influencer or thought-leadership voices into marketing whether you are investing in awareness strategies or ABM is going to offer up insurance against being ignored for brands,” she said.

In a conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Jon Stona, VP of global marketing at Airwallex, doubled down on authentic advocacy.

“At Airwallex, we’ve seen the impact of authentic advocacy, whether it’s a CFO sharing their experience using our platform or a founder talking about how we help them scale globally,” he said.

“Consumers can see right through fake endorsements. As a brand, you don’t want to risk eroding hard-earned trust by engaging in superficial influencer relationships, and as an influencer, you similarly don’t want to undermine the trust that your audience puts in you and your opinions,” he added.

He noted that influencer marketing or otherwise, all good marketing starts with being customer obsessed and agile, adding: 

We’ll keep reminding ourselves that we’re marketing to humans not ‘business decision makers’ - it’s important that we keep creating authentic and trusted connections.

He added, “We’re in the midst of a technological paradigm shift (arguably the fifth Industrial Revolution in human history), and we need to be open-minded, experimental, and willing to be bold, especially as a challenger brand. Now isn’t the time to sit back and be passive…now is the time to be proactive and an early-adopter."

What kind of influencer marketing should B2B folks focus on?

Influencer marketing in B2B isn’t just about celebrity endorsements or mega-influencers, explained Stona. It’s about authentic expert voices, thought leaders, and real customers shaping perception through their networks - people who look to add real value to their followers. Most importantly, it needs to be grounded in trust, expertise and a shared belief.

“We’ve found a fair amount of success working with a pool of micro-influencers - while each individually may not have a massive audience, oftentimes their engagement is high, and in aggregate they can move the needle,” Stona added.

Thought leadership, though a concept which might be seen as “dated” to a few, still goes a long way in the B2B space, said Jamshed Wadia, advisor at Mavic.ai . He added that beyond content creation, reach is also important with podcasts, independent newsletters and videos on social media gaining traction with savvy B2B players.

“The most effective B2B brands are and will build a content strategy of credible voices, empower internal experts, and co-create with niche creators who shape category opinion,” he said, adding that:

The future of B2B influence will look more like a community of peers than a campaign.

Lynette Poh, senior director of marketing and communications, group consumer at Singtel, explained that with B2B decision-making today being more human than ever, influencer and creator-driven storytelling is undoubtedly gaining ground. However, as a brand, Singtel went a step further to not just influence but empower its B2B community.

To help SMEs become storytellers of their own brand journeys, the brand launched its own TikTok Masterclass in partnership with SIM Academy where participants learnt to create engaging content, build online communities, and navigate the fast-evolving world of social commerce.

Levers to decision making and selling cycles in 2026

According to the Dentsu report, in 2026, “ease” will be the new edge given the way people are now making decisions increasingly via AI-assisted journeys.

This means that brands that find efficient and smart ways to truly demonstrate their understanding of the customers' challenges while making the discoverability and decisioning easy will lead, explained Trivedi.

She added that while buying cycles remain long, the trend is shifting. Historically, cycles lengthened from 352 days in 2022 to 384 days in 2024, reflecting increased complexity and multi-stakeholder decision-making. In 2025, the average cycle shortened slightly to 370 days, thanks to brands prioritising speed and simplicity.

Commenting on 2026, Trivedi believes deal cycles will get even shorter, but the pace will be set by the brands who make buying effortless.

“Those who remove friction early can compress cycles by up to 31%. So, the real question isn’t if cycles will shrink, but which brands will have the strategy to make that acceleration work in their favour,” she added.

Predictably, credible proof and performance, will remain given buyers want transparency across all brand touchpoints. Wadia added that the lever will be ROI-aligned with credibility, transparency, and assurance.

Like Trivedi, he seconded that the brands that can simplify complexity, avoid look-alike content, and build confidence through evidence rather than hype will win deals faster and retain customers longer.

Last but not least, B2B buying cycles will become more data-driven. “Our enterprise customers – from local SMBs to global MNCs – increasingly expect real-time insights and end-to-end visibility of their business operations and performance,” said Singtel’s Poh.

Innovation and security will also be pivotal levers in decision-making as businesses scale AI, cloud, and IoT solutions.

“We expect buying cycles in 2026 to accelerate even further, as enterprises deepen their adoption of AI and transformation and seek greater agility, transparency and measurable outcomes from their technology partners – shortening the path from evaluation to deployment,” she added.

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