So far, plotting demand generation on the calendar has worked.
We have planned quarters, launched campaigns, reviewed performance, and tried to optimize the next cycle.
But now this approach is breaking, structurally.
In 2026, in an AI-altered space that never sleeps and clicks less, demand gen will no longer be something teams run. It will be something they operate in an always-on mode.
Demand today can’t always be planned, scheduled, and controlled in advance. Buyers may not always show up when campaigns go live. And influence doesn’t always happen inside funnels we can see and measure.
Today, you must respond to buyer behavior as it happens, not weeks later, after intent has already cooled and decisions have formed.
And no, AI didn’t cause this shift. Buyers did. They now research asynchronously, across channels, across devices, and increasingly through AI systems. They don’t move in straight lines that map neatly to our dashboards.
The uncomfortable reality is this: most demand gen teams are measuring outcomes, not influence.
In this playbook for demand gen teams, six leaders across industries share how you can detect intent, build trust, and structure teams when buying behavior is always on, thanks to AI.
TL;DR
- Demand generation is no longer about launching campaigns. It’s about staying active and responsive at all times.
- AI helps teams spot real buying interest early, instead of waiting for forms, clicks, or hand-raises.
- Buyers are using AI to decide who and what to trust, so demand teams must focus less on traffic and more on being credible and visible where decisions are formed.
- Fixed plans, static account lists, and lead-based funnels don’t match how buyers actually research and decide today.
- The teams that win will treat buyer signals seriously, build content that earns trust, and clearly own how demand works in an always-on market.
How AI helps continuously sense intent and activate demand
Intent no longer announces itself through forms and hand-raises. AI gives demand teams the sensory layer to detect these patterns early and respond while influence is still forming. The themes below highlight what to watch for and how to translate buyer signals into timely demand activation.
When it comes to demand gen, AI isn’t just about automation. It lets teams sense intent continuously instead of inferring it retrospectively.
1. Don’t plan demand by quarter
Traditional demand gen is backward-looking by design. Someone fills out a form. Someone attends a webinar. We record the activity, score it, and react. But these are artifacts of buyer activity and not signals of buyer momentum.
By the time a form fill shows up in a dashboard, the buyer has already learned something or formed early opinions. Teams aren’t shaping intent at that point; they’re responding to its residue. AI flips this model by aggregating patterns.
Next steps
- Blend first-, second-, and third-party intent data to enable teams to understand where an account is in its buying cycle before any explicit hand-raise happens.
– Michael Pannone, Director of Demand Generation at G2 - Build a brand motion on one end and let triggers and intent inform how demand is executed. Teams winning right now don’t plan demand by quarter.
– Abhishek GP, Senior Vice President, Growth and Brand, Everstage
2. Go beyond scoring leads. Observe buying groups.
Once you accept that intent is emergent, not declarative, the core question changes.
Instead of asking: “Which leads should we score?”, the better question becomes: “Which buying groups are forming right now?”
AI is uniquely good at answering this because it detects weak signals humans routinely miss. This can include multiple researchers from the same company, synchronized engagement across channels, or increased activity around peer reviews.
Demand gen is no longer about capturing individuals. It has shifted to being about interpreting collective behavior, exposing another hard truth: most lead-based funnels are structurally incapable of doing this well.
Next step
View AI agents as a “24/7 sensory layer” that observes entire buying committees rather than individuals. When multiple stakeholders from the same account engage simultaneously, the system recognizes readiness, not just interest, and activates accordingly.
– Leandro Perez, Chief Marketing Officer for Australia and New Zealand at Salesforce
3. Activation is about timing, not volume
Activation is not always automation.
The goal is not to trigger more emails, more ads, or more SDR outreach. The goal is to intervene only when the timing is right.
Abhishek GP, Senior Vice President of Growth and Brand at Everstage, points out that winning teams have moved away from static ABM lists. “The best teams use AI to constantly re-rank accounts based on fit, engagement, and live intent,” he explains. The outcome isn’t more activity. It’s better timing.
AI doesn’t make demand generation faster by doing more. It makes it more effective by doing less at precisely the right moment.
Next steps
- The key isn’t just sensing intent; it’s triggering the right response automatically: personalized nurture sequences, SDR alerts, account-specific web experiences, or paid media suppression.
- Treat AI as an orchestration layer that activates demand continuously based on buying-stage signals, not as a replacement for human judgment but as a system that ensures we act on opportunities we’d otherwise miss.
– Andy Ramirez, Head of Growth Marketing at GitLab
AI search is now a software marketplace: How demand gen teams must adapt
AI is no longer just a discovery channel. It’s turning into a marketplace, a space where buyers compare vendors, evaluate credibility, and form shortlists before ever visiting a website. As large language models (LLM) turn into researchers and recommenders, demand gen teams must rethink how they show up, earn trust, and influence decisions.
1. View LLMs as the new audience
Traditional search rewarded whoever ranked highest. AI search rewards whoever is most credible.
When a buyer asks an AI system what software to consider, they’re not browsing. They’re outsourcing judgment. They’re asking the system to summarize the market, reduce options, and surface what’s “safe,” “proven,” or “recommended.”
“We’re building an agile track for AI visibility and GEO. This is our insurance policy. It protects our market share with the ‘power users’ who now bypass websites and go straight to AI for answers.”
Leandro Perez
CMO for Australia and New Zealand at Salesforce
Leandro notes that AI-powered search and recommendation engines are now overtaking traditional search as the starting point for many enterprise decisions. At that moment, demand gen teams are no longer marketing and creating content just to buyers but to the systems that advise buyers.
This changes the role of content. If your content can’t be retrieved, interpreted, and cited by AI systems, it doesn’t shape the decision.
Next step
- Treat LLMs as a new layer of audience. The priority is becoming a trusted source of truth. That means moving away from gated content and toward open, structured expertise that is RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) ready.
– Leandro Perez, CMO for Australia and New Zealand at Salesforce
2. Create content that answers buyers’ queries
Demand gen teams are used to thinking in terms of traffic: clicks, sessions, conversions.
AI search breaks that mental model.
Adam Kaiser, Vice President of Growth Marketing at 6sense, points out that buyers are forming preferences long before they engage vendors. “Research tells us 81% of buyers have already selected a preferred vendor before they engage sales, and that preference rarely changes,” he shares.
In an AI-mediated discovery environment, influence doesn’t come from clever messaging. It comes from repeatable truth. “Marketers have a new job: train the AI to know all the key aspects of our brands,” says Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media Studios.
Next steps
- Run an AI competitive analysis audit to figure out what AI thinks of you in the competitive context. Ask it to make a little buyer guide with the pros/cons of your brand and theirs.
– Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media Studios. - Create strong third-party validation and content that answers the questions buyers are asking AI can help you be more intentional about showing up where AI systems are learning.
– Adam Kaiser, Vice President of Growth Marketing at 6sense
3. Tell the same story across platforms
You can’t easily attribute an AI recommendation to a campaign. You can’t always see when your content influenced a shortlist. And you can’t retarget an AI system the way you retarget a visitor.
But that doesn’t make this influence any less real.
Abhishek argues that demand leaders need to stop thinking in terms of SEO mechanics and start thinking about how AI understands their brand. That means clarity over cleverness, consistency over volume, and presence in the places buyers actually spend time. “Make it easy for AI to explain what you do and who you’re for,” he advises.
The goal is no longer to drive the most traffic. It’s to become the most referenceable.
Next step
Your story needs to be the same across your site, review platforms, social, docs, and community discussions. AI rewards clarity.
– Abhishek GP, Senior Vice President, Growth and Brand, Everstage
Rethink planning cycles and team structures
Once we accept that intent is continuous and that discovery is increasingly mediated by AI, we must admit that demand gen operating models are obsolete.
You cannot run an always-on demand engine with episodic planning.
Annual plans assume predictability. Quarterly plans assume stability. Campaign calendars assume buyers will wait.
Adam from 6sense admits AI has made rigid, long-term plans impractical. “Quick adaptation requires flexible planning cycles, with regular check-ins and room to adjust based on real-time buyer signals,” he says. Let us examine how AI in demand generation is prompting a rethink of team and role designs.
1. Start with processes, not people
Traditional demand gen planning is built around what will be launched and when. AI-era demand gen needs to be built around how the system learns and adapts.
“In the age of AI, driving engagement, pipeline, and revenue is a team sport. It takes content strategy, customer marketing, social media, web, PR, and yes — demand gen — to effectively show up, be discovered, and win deals.”
Michael Pannone
Director of Demand Generation at G2
When demand gen becomes system-driven, every campaign is provisional. Every asset is a hypothesis. Every outcome feeds the next iteration. Success is no longer measured solely by pipeline contribution, but by how quickly insights compound into better decisions.
Michael reinforces this by noting that AI compresses timelines but raises expectations. What once took weeks now takes days.
Next step
Start with processes, not people. Break down all of your standard procedures into tasks and look for opportunities to drive better performance with prompts and automations. Develop the methods, then train the team on when and how to use them. Then do it again. And again.
– Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media Studios.
2. Create owners of AI strategy
As planning cycles shorten, organizational design has to change with them.
Abhishek observes that the best teams are intentionally staying lean, using AI to remove friction from scalable channels like SEO, paid, and lifecycle. “AI runs the engine while humans steer.”
Next steps
- Teams need new hybrid roles: “growth engineers” who can prompt AI systems and interpret outputs, “orchestration specialists” who design multi-touch journeys AI can execute, and “performance scientists” who establish testing protocols and kill criteria.
– Andy Ramirez, Head of Growth Marketing, GitLab - Nominate at least one internal owner for AI marketing strategy. These individuals must monitor new developments and trends in discoverability, stay abreast of research, analyze performance and mentions in LLMs, and activate the rest of the team around AI.
– Michael Pannone, Director of Demand Generation at G2
What demand gen leaders must do next
The next moves demand gen leaders make will determine whether they’re shaping demand or reacting to it.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
- First, stop treating demand signals as marketing inputs. Treat them as executive intelligence. Intent data shouldn’t just live inside campaign dashboards. It should be reviewed in the way leaders review financial forecasts or product telemetry. This means weekly, cross-functional, and tied to decisions.
- Second, redesign content as infrastructure, not assets. Most content strategies are still built for humans scrolling feeds. That’s no longer enough. Demand leaders should audit whether their content can be retrieved, trusted, and reused by AI systems.
- Third, appoint an owner for AI-mediated demand. A single accountable leader whose job is to understand how AI systems are shaping discovery, monitor how the brand shows up in those systems, and orchestrate the response across content, web, reviews, PR, and demand.
The work ahead is simple but not easy. Build a demand engine that notices those traces, interprets them correctly, and knows exactly when to act.
Deals aren’t lost in a dramatic boardroom explosion. We lose them in the micro-moments we aren’t even tracking. Discover these critical moments in our latest article.
FAQs
1. How to use AI in demand generation?
Use AI to spot buying signals earlier and act at the right moment, not just to automate emails or ads. The most effective teams use AI to monitor patterns across content usage, account behavior, and research activity, then respond only when interest is real and timing is right.
2. How to capture demand when buyers research software using AI search?
Focus on being trusted and easy for AI to reference. That means publishing clear, consistent content, showing up in reviews and comparisons, and making it easy for AI tools to understand what you do, who you’re for, and why you’re credible.
3. How should demand generation campaigns change with AI?
Campaigns should be more flexible and signal-driven, not fixed in advance.
Instead of launching everything on a set date, teams should use AI to adjust targeting, messaging, and timing based on live buyer behavior.
Edited by Supanna Das
