"We are all professional buyers ourselves", says Dustyn Smith from ON24, pointing out that research plays a huge role in purchase decisions today, whether they're looking for a lawyer or a smartphone. 

As a result, marketing is playing a bigger role in influencing buyers than ever before. So where in the past the evaluation and consideration stages of the funnel would be taken over by sales, today, they are owned by marketing. This shows just how blurred marketing and sales are. 

One technique that Dustyn advocates, which is one I am a big fan of too, is extending your content's reach by reworking it in different formats, so that you can drive awareness, gather leads, nurture leads and so forth, all using the same basic content to be digested in different ways. So for instance, he plans to make a blog out of his talk, and then a webinar with his co-presenter, Cerri Mac at Vuture.