
Content Amplified · 2026-06-18 · 15 min
The branded voice is losing its grip, and the people inside your company are about to replace it. In this episode of Content Amplified, Nicole Gates, VP of Global Growth at Varonis, makes the case that user-generated content is where B2B marketing is headed. She explains why what works in B2C tends to land in B2B two to three years later, and why AI is accelerating the shift by making buyers more skeptical of brand messaging and hungry for the human element. Nicole shares how she leans into employee advocacy and industry influencers without prescribing the script, pointing to her own sales reps who film videos in their cars talking about the product. She gets practical on AEO and GEO, where LLMs increasingly pull from Reddit, LinkedIn, and YouTube instead of pay-to-play search. And she lays out where to start: know your story first, build a unique point of view, and find the people already willing to share it. As she puts it, it always comes down to the story. If you are trying to figure out how to stay trusted in an AI-flooded landscape, tune in. About Nicole Nicole Gates is the VP of Global Growth at Varonis, a cybersecurity company, where she has spent about four years.