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AEO Tools, Strategies, and Tactics for Large Enterprise

Gerry Murray — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective looks into the impact of AEO tools, strategies, and tactics on enterprises. Answer engine optimization requires extensive redesign of content marketing strategy, tactics, and technology. Success requires continuous prompt auditing, broad content distribution, and leveraging third-party validation. Emerging AEO tools and services support prompt infrastructure, semantic intelligence, and content automation. Optimizing both owned and external sources, including social and influencer content, is essential to ensure brands are cited in AI-generated responses, demanding new content supply chain speed, depth, and breadth.

"LLMs powered answer engines will increasingly disintermediate brand-buyer relationships on the open web and digital marketplaces," said Gerry Murray, research director, Marketing and Sales Technology. "IDC recommends immediate action to implement the new answer engine optimization (AEO) tools and content marketing strategies necessary for prime visibility in this dynamic new channel."

IDC Survey: The Chief Sales Officer Agenda — Challenges, Priorities, and Evolving Role of the CSO

Ranjit Rajan — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey provides insights into the chief sales officer (CSO) persona’s agenda, analyzing the CSO’s challenges, priorities, key metrics, and technology initiatives for this year and beyond, as well as the evolving role of the CSO. This analysis is based on the international respondents to IDC’s Worldwide C-Suite Tech Survey conducted in August and September 2025. Respondents include respondents across North America, Asia/Pacific, and EMEA. The survey findings are designed to help tech vendors and service providers understand the evolving agenda of CSOs and effectively tailor their value proposition, offerings, and go-to-market strategies for this persona.

Implications for Marketing and Selling AI Agents to the C-Suite

Tony Olvet — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how technology suppliers should market and sell AI agents to the C-suite as adoption shifts from pilots to enterprisewide workflows. The document uses IDC's Agentic Innovation Framework as the primary organizing structure. It outlines the implications for messaging, sales approaches, and packaging.

"C-suite buyers will invest in agentic AI when vendors can clearly link use cases to measurable business outcomes and demonstrate strong autonomy controls, governance practices, and operational readiness to scale." — Tony Olvet, group VP, Worldwide C-Suite and Buyer Insights Research, IDC

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Does the Use of AI Vary Across Buyer Segments, and What Are the Implications for CMOs?

Sudhir Rajagopal — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight analyzes the results from IDC's B2B Technology Buyer Experience Survey, conducted in September 2025. The survey explored how tech buyer behavior is shifting and the impact that will have on desired marketing practices. The survey explored the impact of digital, omni-channel, AI, and the role of the human as more buyers embrace agentic buying. This IDC Survey Spotlight focused on how AI use varies by buyer market segment and the implications for marketers.

What is clear is that, across the board, AI will increasingly disintermediate the buying journey, but its use of AI varies by buyer segment. The midmarket will lead to the adoption of AI-centric buying practices and, as such, marketing organizations must craft segment-specific, AI-centric GTM motions.

Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight: How Is AI Improving the Ability of Brands to Personalize Customer Interactions?

Gerry Murray — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight shows that creative teams are delegating about 30% of their work to AI and that performance tuning and personalization are the most valuable benefits. However, data usage remains limited to basic marketing attributes in most cases. Brands will need to improve their ability to utilize the enterprise customer record within brand and regulatory policies to get significantly more value from their personalization efforts.

Industry Personas Handbook: Worldwide Grid Operators, 2026

Jean-François Segalotto — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Grid Operators Personas Handbook 2026 is designed to provide technology vendors a better understanding of their buyer personas within transmission and distribution system operators (TSOs, DSOs) and integrated grid operators. It aims to answer the following questions:

Who are the key personas I need to address with my offering (products and services), marketing messages, sales campaign, and sales activity?
What are their strategic priorities and their day-to-day activities?
What are their major pains and challenges?
What are their KPIs?

The strategic priorities, pain points, and KPIs described for each persona are intended to support the early stages of the sales funnel such as awareness creation, interest, and consideration. It will not focus on how to approach procurement departments once decisions for purchase have been made.

"Grid operators face mounting operational and regulatory pressures, including reliability performance, capacity constraints, and large-scale DER and load integration. Understanding key personas enables technology providers to align solutions with real operational priorities. This persona-led approach strengthens partnerships, speeds decision-making, and builds long-term vendor credibility," said Jean-François Segalotto, senior associate advisor, IDC Energy Insights.

Will Buyers of More Complex Infrastructure, Software, and Services Shift to AI and Work Less with Salespeople Along the Buying Journey?

Laurie Buczek — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This subset of IDC's 2025 Business-To-Business (B2B) Technology Buyer Behavioral Survey aims to understand the impact of digital, omni-channel, AI, and consumer experience expectations on B2B buying behavior and practices and the role of the human-to-human experience as agentic AI rises. This subset of data featured focuses on B2B technology buyers' propensity to use AI to accomplish buying tasks for more complex buying processes and decisions, resulting in relying less on salespeople.

"AI is not replacing sales in complex deals, but it is redefining the early stages of engagement. Buyers are using AI to augment evaluation, compress research cycles, and enter vendor conversations more informed — and often further along — than ever before," states Laurie Buczek, group VP, market and business intelligence, IDC.

Industry Personas Handbook: Worldwide Manufacturing, 2026

Stefanie Naujoks, Heriberto Roman, Nigel Wallis — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Worldwide Manufacturing Personas Handbook 2026 is designed to provide technology vendors with a better understanding of the buyer personas in the manufacturing industry in 2026. It aims to answer the following questions:

Who are the key personas I need to address with my offering, marketing messages, sales campaigns, or sales activities?
What are their strategic priorities and day-to-day responsibilities?
What are their major operational pain points and strategic challenges?
What KPIs drive their decision-making and investment priorities?

The descriptions provided for each persona support early-stage engagement (awareness, interest, and consideration). This handbook does not address procurement execution once investment decisions have been finalized.

"Understanding the various personas in manufacturing organizations and tailoring value propositions accordingly is key to delivering relevant solutions and building credibility." — Research Director Stefanie Naujoks, IDC Manufacturing Insights

Navigating Volatility: Leveraging Technology to Optimize Liquidity and Mitigate Financial Risk

Kevin Permenter — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective discusses the importance of leveraging technology to optimize liquidity and mitigate financial risk. In a high-interest-rate environment, trapped cash has become an expensive operational failure rather than a passive balance sheet condition. By combining automated receivables acceleration with intelligent payables timing, organizations can compress the cash conversion cycle and generate a self-funded liquidity buffer that reduces borrowing exposure and improves financial resilience.

"Working capital velocity is becoming a core resilience strategy. Organizations that synchronize inflows and outflows can create an internal liquidity buffer that reduces borrowing needs and strengthens financial optionality," said Kevin Permenter, research director, Financial Applications and Agents at IDC.

Industry Analysis Perspective: Americas Retail, 2026

Jose Ignacio Diaz, Margot Juros, Nigel Wallis — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation provides technology companies' sales teams, marketers, and product and channel managers with foundational insight into the Americas retail industry in 2025.

By understanding how the business side operates, sales, marketing, and product and channel managers will see more clearly where their technology products and services can truly add value to retail organizations.