B2B Disruptor Plays for The Artificial Intelligence Boon

You’re reading The Dose, a digest of trending topics and offerings that matter to your business, from your Networked partner, Digitas. TLDR? This edition explores how B2B companies can leverage AI to enhance buyer research, improve predictive analytics, and integrate conversational AI into their websites, thereby improving operations and customer engagement.

On the buyer side, people are already starting to use AI to support vendor assessment, build business cases, and roadmap technical implications. On the vendor side, early adopters are going beyond using ChatGPT to generate content; many companies are building powerful capabilities to support the self-service-oriented buyer, improve solution offerings, and implement predictive analytics in automated environments. It’s not just hype; you have to do something about AI, and it doesn’t require much to get started.

Here are three practical, high-opportunity areas you can start on right away with the teams you currently have.

Search Will Never Be The Same: Feed The LLM

The role of SEM has evolved in a landscape where conversational generative AI tools like Google Gemini formulate versions of truth based on a massive amount of data.

Let me get one principle out of the way: most B2B companies are bad at supporting the buyer’s research process. This is one reason browsers don’t convert into prospects and salespeople don’t trust MQLs. It’s also why the search engine experience is simply unpleasant for people looking for B2B solutions. Searchers that make it past the paid results have to wade through “top 10” style articles or navigate individual vendor websites. It’s not a productive activity and that’s why industry analysis firms like Forrester and Gartner are so important. People want a shortcut to curated and organized analysis they can trust.

Today, there’s a better way to search. Conversational AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT can accelerate research and decision-making significantly. For instance, someone looking for a base level understanding of CRM platforms can ask ChatGPT to play the role of an advisor and it will output a context-rich vendor shortlist, complete with pros and cons made just for them. It’s like having your own industry analyst. (See an example conversation here.)

Stop wasting time gaming the search algorithm and get your brand in the right conversations to get picked up by the large language models (LLMs) which fuel conversational AI tools. From analyst reports and influencer videos to media coverage and social media, the successful brands of tomorrow are investing in grassroots brand and community building that will stand the test of time.

Unlock Your GTM Analytics Superpower

Companies gain unprecedented leaps by stitching together proprietary data sources to build out bespoke predictive analytics and propensity models.

Every company has loads of data, but most marketers I speak with struggle to use it outside of measurement and reporting use cases. This leaves a massive gap in leveraging your own proprietary data to inform strategic planning, budgeting, audience targeting, pricing and bundling implications, and so on.

Here are two easy paths to get started. Both help you extract immediate analytics value from AI without requiring a massive data science team. I recommend an agile, MVP approach to these projects—get a simple AI sandbox environment and use the data you already have (e.g., customer profiles from your segmentation research, campaign performance from your marketing automation platform, and sales interactions from your CRM system).

1. Develop refined audience profiles by assessing campaign performance by audience characteristics. This can completely change the way you define audiences, or at least confirm where you have it right.
2. Generate and activate powerful propensity modeling by evaluating your customers’ paths-to-purchase and understanding what makes them renew their contracts or leave for a competitor. This will refine your ideal customer profile (ICP) lookalike model and give you reliable propensity modeling to determine the next best action at both ends of the buyer’s journey: to nudge high-intent buyers over to Sales, and to intervene months before a customer is thinking of canceling their contract.

Launch Your Brand’s Own Conversational AI

Gone are the days of salesy chatbots—supercharge the buyer’s research stage by answering open-ended questions with curated thought leadership.

The truth is, people arrive at vendor websites with the expectation that they’re being sold on every page—the information is obviously biased in favor of a single vendor, CTA buttons are everywhere, and you need to fill out a form before reading a sell sheet. Leading marketers counter this perception by building audience-centric websites that serve well-organized content based on need state. But it’s becoming harder to get people to corporate websites, and when they’re there, it’s even harder to keep them engaged.

Early adopters are integrating conversational AI into their websites to improve user engagement. This tool provides visitors with the answers they’re seeking and nudges them through the sales funnel. What can be better than a bespoke navigation system—or even better, not having to sift through content on web pages but simply getting a direct answer to a question? This is functionality that’s ready to pilot right now. You can put it on your website for people searching for solutions, include it in your app to make it easier to complete actions, or make it the front door to your knowledge base so developers can find what they’re looking for as fast as possible.

Seize The Moment

AI has presented B2B companies with a monumental opportunity to significantly improve operations and customer engagement. It also opens possibilities for improved search experiences, advanced analytics, and a more engaging buyer journey. By embracing AI and adopting it during this early stage, businesses can fill existing gaps in their processes and unlock new growth opportunities. Now is the time to start exploring these high-opportunity areas and drive your business towards a future defined by innovation.