JULY 2026

Hey friend,

Our B2B Buying Decisions Report 2026 is out now and available to download. This report has become a bit of a labour of love (although sometimes it felt arduous to put together).

I am always looking at how people (for they are humans) make the decisions they make for their business, specifically around purchasing. The world is noisy and there are lots of different views on what type of marketing works and what doesn't; what topics you should talk about or avoid; what marketing channels work best.

The truth is, you don't really know until you study it. So that's what we've done.

If you've known me for a while, you may think of me as someone who predominantly works with social media. But for some time now, social media has become a channel that may grab attention but not necessarily move the customer towards the purchase point. In fact, in this year's and last year's report, respondents said that businesses place too much emphasis on it.

Sales can be hard, especially the last few years, so why waste time and effort on marketing that doesn't move the needle as much as you need it to? Let's review what our target market is telling us and create customer journeys that meet them where they are.

I'm a healthy sceptic on AI, so it's fascinating to me to find out how buyers are using AI in the decision-making process. When they are using it and whether it replaces or complements human decisions. We asked questions about this for the first time this year.

I urge you to read our report and let me know directly (by reply - because it's me writing this) what you thought and, importantly, what it's making you think about.

I ran a webinar the day after our report launched to go through it and share some of my personal views. You can watch this here.

I've also set up an Adobe PDF Space where you can interrogate the report with your questions and see questions other people have asked me directly. You can find that here.

I'm always up for a chat about this report so let me know what you think to it.

Good health and best wishes,

Paul

Paul Ince

CEO

LikeMind Media

Download the B2B Buying Decisions Report 2026

TEAM SPOTS

Members of the team share things they've seen that you may find interesting and helpful.

You told us you like being signposted to interesting things, not necessarily just our stuff. We like to be helpful so here you go!

FROM CHARLIE

How FIFA made room for more commercials (and helped ambushing brands win)

Despite my weak knees, glass ankles, a terrible season watching Leicester City and my 5-a-side team folding, I love football and will gobble up any chance to shoehorn it into my work, so I am.

In my latest article, I write about the advertising and PR surrounding the big international football tournament happening at the minute and see what you can learn for your business.

Specifically, analysing the hydration breaks and clever responses to brand protection enforcements.

Hydration breaks have been a contentious point throughout. A move made in the name of player welfare but receiving widespread criticism for disrupting the game in the name of profit from fans, managers, players and the media.

I consider how much harm moves like this make to a brand, as well as the brand protections put in place by FIFA to safeguard the value of sponsoring the World Cup.

Heinz, Levi’s, Gillette and many other brands have all taken a potentially bad situation and spun it into a situation beneficial to them in terms of public perception.

Being reactive and agile to your current situations, contexts and circumstances means you can capture the narrative and tell it how you want.

Learn more about the lessons we’re taking from the marketing and PR surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup on the full blog.

Click here to read Charlie's blog

FROM SARAH

When was the last time you audited your website pages?

In my spot I want to follow on a point Paul raised about making sure you spend time on marketing efforts that are actually working for your business.

One way to do this is by doing an audit of your website.

Look at your top performing pages and compare them with your worst ones.

Does a particular type of content generate more traffic and conversions?

If so, look at why they are particularly successful. You can then apply the same elements to your underperforming pages, and see if there is scope in creating more content of that type.

It's also worth monitoring these pages.

Anytime performance dips, dig into why, and aim to fix the issue before you start losing more traffic and conversions.

FROM JP

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters Us!

We’re not Ghostbusters here at LikeMind. We’ve never pretended to be, nor do we ever intend to be (as far as I know, anyway). But I’ve always loved the line from the song/film of the same name: “Who you gonna call?”

What the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man has that got to do with this week’s Learning Letter? Well, it’s that one lyric, you see.

We’ve launched a new service, designed to fix your AI ills. Whether it’s a graphic, ad copy, website content, a blog or whatever, businesses are turning to AI to do the work for them, rather than paying a professional upfront. And AI is making a mess of it, which in turn leads to those same businesses coming to us to fix it, and in turn ends up costing them after all.

So, if you’re experiencing issues with AI-generated content, who you gonna call? Exactly!

Admittedly, it’s not as catchy as the original lyric, and it’s pretty difficult to weave it all into one sing-a-long line, but you get the drift.

We’ve launched the service on our website, and we’ve written a blog about it, too. So take a look, and if you ever need us to do a fix-it job, you know only too well who to call.

Click here to read JP's blog

Any Questions?

Have a question about content creation, customer journeys or their behaviour? We'd like to address real world conundrums. Or you can share a tale of how your actually got some great results - we'd love to feature you.

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