Making a Global B2B Software Brand the Default Answer for UK Small Businesses

The client is a global B2B software provider whose accounting, payroll, HR, and ERP products serve millions of small and mid-sized businesses. In late 2025, it engaged us to grow visibility in the UK market across the searches its buyers actually make: accounting software comparisons, payroll tools, invoicing platforms, VAT compliance software, and ERP solutions.

B2B software selection has quietly moved to the same places consumer decisions have. Business owners ask Reddit which accounting platform is worth it, and increasingly they ask ChatGPT. With Making Tax Digital deadlines pushing thousands of UK sole traders and small businesses to choose software, the brand needed to be the name that came back: in community threads, on page one of Google, and inside AI-generated answers.

We designed a dual-channel campaign: Reddit discussions to earn authentic community recommendations, and AI-SEO articles on Yahoo and Business Insider to build the authority signals AI engines cite. The two channels reinforce each other: community proof from real user conversations, editorial proof from high-authority publications.

The keyword map targeted the highest-intent B2B queries in the category: "best accounting software for small business," "payroll software for small business UK," "best invoicing software," "best software for Making Tax Digital for VAT," and "best ERP software." Discussions were seeded in the communities where UK business owners genuinely compare tools: r/smallbusinessuk, r/AccountingUK, r/UKPersonalFinance, r/freelanceuk, and r/Payroll, with views, rankings, citations, and clickthroughs tracked throughout.

Between October and December 2025, we published 40 Reddit discussions across accounting, small business, freelance, payroll, and manufacturing communities, covering every product line from self-employed accounting to ERP. Several discussions individually passed 20,000-30,000 views, and view counts kept climbing months after posting as threads ranked in Google.

From late December, we layered in 24 AI-SEO article placements: 12 buying guides published to both Yahoo and Business Insider, targeting the same keyword clusters. Together the two channels put the brand in front of a combined potential audience of 1.2 billion readers and sent over 12,500 clickthroughs directly to the brand's site.

On reach, the 40 discussions generated over 460,000 cumulative Reddit views, with nine threads individually passing 20,000 views. Growth continued long after posting: top threads were still adding 3,000-5,000 views per month into 2026 as they ranked for their target keywords.

On editorial, the 24 placements drew 60,000+ article views and 57,000+ Google and AI engine hits, converting into more than 12,500 tracked clickthroughs to the brand, proof that authority content built for AI citation also drives direct response.

On search, campaign assets ranked on page one of Google across the keyword map: Reddit threads in the organic results and the Discussions and Forums module, and the Yahoo guides in Google News, giving the brand multiple placements on a single results page for its most valuable queries.

Campaign content earned citations across all four major AI surfaces. Google's AI Overview cited both the Reddit threads and the Yahoo guides for accounting, payroll, and sole trader software queries, in several cases citing a campaign discussion and a campaign article in the same answer. ChatGPT referenced campaign content for ERP and VAT software prompts, and Perplexity drew on the Reddit discussions when summarizing community-recommended accounting platforms.

Ahrefs tracking showed the brand's AI mentions, impressions, and citations all trending sharply upward from the October launch, with share of voice climbing steadily against major competitors in both Google AI Overview and Gemini, and momentum still building in early 2026 as content continued to be indexed.

By March 2026, Reddit ranked among the leading domains AI engines cite when answering questions about the brand, with the campaign's editorial channels appearing in the same source mix. All three of the campaign's channels now feed the brand's AI visibility directly.