AI: Your Not-So-Hidden Asset in B2B Marketing & Sales

On July 2nd I'll be one of the hosts of the event "AI in B2B - Hype or Career Killer?", so as a sort of preview, I want to take a look at how AI is currently being used in B2B marketing and sales, its' pros and cons and some examples of good usage.

By now everybody knows that B2B marketers are using AI to increase their efficiency. But is it really helping with anything other than productivity? The trick lies in understanding why AI is difficult to use for B2B and what are the main issues you need to work out before seeing great results.

AI use cases in B2B marketing are very similar to B2C Marketing:

• Creating copy
• Inspiring creative thinking, providing new ideas and perspectives
• Generating asset images
• Structuring content pieces (e.g. presentations and reports)
• Data segmentation
• Lead and behavior scoring
• Campaign and audience insights
• Automating customer interactions (managing customer interactions on messaging apps and social media)

• Providing ideas for outreach messages
• Adapting messages for different audiences
• Changing the tone of messages
• Adjusting messages to different formats

However, most B2B marketers find that using AI just doesn't seem to be working for them in B2B. And the reason lies in the nature of GenAI.

While we love to pretend and be scared of AI being sentient, the truth is that AI is currently still far from it and it's based on very complex statistics and trained on public data. The more niche the topic is, the harder it is for AI to "understand" what you're asking from it and generate good results.

In that way, AI is like any external graphic designer or copywriter. Even if they know the industry, the chances are that very few providers will know the nuances separating your niche from another.

And that's where the secret is. Most marketers never bother to actually invest time in AI. They try a few writing samples and discard it completely. Instead of training the AI and adapting it to their needs.

If you take an hour to detail what you do, the differences between your ecosystem and another and what separates your product in the market. You'll be amazed how good and accurate the results are. They still need some work, but it will do 80% of your work for you.

Examples of good AI use in B2B marketing and sales

• ServiceMax, a PTC Technology deployed DemandBase’s Site Optimization solution which takes all the available information about a visitor and uses that to predict the next page they will go to. As a result, bounce rates have decreased by 70%, while time-on-site & pages-per-session have increased by more than 100%.
• VMware used AI-enabled content solution Acrolinx to automate basic editing, allowing VMware’s editors to be redeployed to higher-value activities, such as taxonomy, classifications, training better writers, and successfully onboarding new team members. 73% of VMware editors who have used the software say it’s helped them improve the quality of their content, while 60% say it’s made them more efficient content creators.
• Find more AI B2B marketing success stories here

Do you have an AI B2B marketing success story you'd like to share?

In our July 2nd event, we'll feature a few of your stories, but the winner has a chance to win FREE 6 MONTHs use of nRich platform's Growth Edition - no strings attached. Submit your AI success story here>