Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence to Generate B2B Demand

B2B marketers have to be more tech-savvy than ever before. As technology continues to evolve and become more sophisticated, marketing strategies have to keep up with the times in order to remain competitive. One of the most promising developments in marketing is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). AI has the potential to revolutionize B2B marketing in the near future by providing marketers with the ability to generate more demand and deeper insights. As we move closer to 2023, B2B marketers should prepare to harness the power of AI to further their marketing strategies and gain a competitive edge. With the right implementation, AI can help to increase lead generation, uncover valuable customer insights, and optimize campaigns for maximum ROI and execution efficiency.

Insights and Predictive Analytics - AI-driven insights and predictive analytics are at the core of AI’s benefits to B2B marketers. When implemented correctly, marketers can use AI to generate insights about their customers, optimize their marketing strategies, and increase their overall marketing effectiveness. AI can help B2B marketers to better understand their customers’ buying journeys and provide them with context-driven recommendations that are personalized to their specific needs, allowing marketers to more easily see their customers’ needs and patterns with a higher level of clarity. With AI, marketers can receive a high-level overview of their entire campaign with a single click.

Marketing can craft more personalized and relevant experiences for each customer with this data and, can assess the current level of engagement of each target, identify their pain points, and even predict their future buying behavior. Potential issues and opportunities can be identified early and often with a higher degree of accuracy that ever before.?

Powered Personalization - Personalization itself, is a proven way for marketers to build trust and strengthen their relationships with customers. Why? The more marketers know about their customers the more they can personalize content and experiences to speak to customers and prospects on a more individualized level. However, typically personalization efforts are a ‘heavy lift’ in terms of the resources needed to execute. AI can help here by harvesting information at scale in order to develop personalized communications which resonate with customers’ specific needs and circumstances.

Consider a scenario where personalized email campaigns are triggered without intervention to address common issues that their customers experience with their product. This type of personalized outreach can help to build trust and strengthen the relationship between the company and its customers by addressing their needs in a timely and relevant manner.

Marketers are already using AI to personalize content across other channels as well by including customers’ names, images, and other information to tailor and inform experiences. For example, imagine combining a prospect’s physical location and the weather forecast for that area to dynamically generate ads that pull the targets to a landing page which shows an an AI generated video of that individual standing in a recognizable landmark with an individualized?CTA.

AI-Powered Content Creation - The achilles heel of personalization has always been content creation. After all, content creation can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process for B2B marketers. It’s an important element of any marketing strategy, but it often falls by the wayside due to a lack of resources. And this is where Marketers can use AI to speed up the content creation process, enabling them to produce more content in less time and once trained up, with minimal levels of human intervention.

AI-driven content creation allows teams to automate many aspects of the ideation, writing and visual design process, allowing them to create content at a faster rate with fewer resources. Content creation with AI can be used to create blog posts, social media posts, product descriptions, short form videos and more. Marketing teams of varying sizes can become more impactful and scalable than previously feasible.

AI-Powered Performance Measurement - AI-driven performance measurement allows marketers to track their progress with a higher degree of accuracy. This is particularly useful when evaluating the ROI of different marketing channels. They can track the number of clicks, leads, and sales generated by each channel to determine which channels are most effective - in real-time. They can identify unique clusters of personas and marry that with intent signals. In turn, marketers, and the teams which they support can make more informed decisions about channel effectiveness, investment levels, competitive insights and predict more accurately and granularly which investments can be most effective in the future to drive the desired business impact.

Going Forward with Eyes Wide-Open - AI has the potential to revolutionize B2B marketing but there are also some challenges and potential risks associated with its use. When implementing AI, marketers need to take into account the fact that algorithms and the data which is being fed ‘into the machine’ may not perfect. If the data is inaccurate or faulty, this could have a negative impact on the AI’s ability to generate insight and recommendations. Said differently, ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ Marketers should make sure to test their AI software before putting it into full-scale operation and to know the limitations.

Apart from these challenges, there is also the potential that AI may have a negative impact on brand perception if done ‘wrong’. Done wrong is using AI to a degree that an individual feels like your marketing efforts are creepy, perceived as Big Brother-esque or intrusive. AI isn’t an excuse to ignore the fact that there are human beings on the receiving end of your well-intentioned efforts. Treat customers and prospects with respect and continually evaluate what and how and why you are communicating. Done right, AI supported marketing efforts should be a boon to your organization’s efficiency and effectiveness and un-obtrusive to your audience.