AI Applications in B2B Marketing

AI has already changed so many aspects of our lives that it can be easy to overlook the impact that it is having in the marketing world. AI technology is quickly becoming one of the most powerful tools in the B2B marketing tool kit. Consumers are already seeing AI applications in everything from fun toys to helpful home appliances. But it is in the business world that AI B2B marketing is really beginning to shine.

Today’s AI platforms quickly and easily analyse vast amounts of data to help businesses make more informed decisions. Benefits can be enjoyed in such varied disciplines as website engagement, predictive analytics, intelligent lead scoring and campaign optimisation.

Whether you know it or not, you already encounter AI daily as part of your own consumer behaviour. The helpful chatbot that's part of a website's user experience and the highly-personalised content recommendations you take for granted on social media feeds prove that AI is firmly entrenched in our digital landscapes.

Here at 1827 Marketing, we already use a suite of AI-powered tools. Out of the box examples include Cortana to schedule meetings and the Presentation Translator for PowerPoint. Our 1827 Amplify marketing solution uses AI technology to create arresting visuals and video content. It pulls out the key themes in a blog post, writes the first draft of social media posts, suggests hashtags, and can even pick out suitable stock footage.

AI, or machine learning, demands serious consideration. However, beware of falling prey to 'shiny new toy syndrome' if it is not specifically applicable to your business. What you need is AI that helps to sort through the data. The end result should be actionable information so you can make informed decisions about how best to reach out, connect and engage with business prospects and customers.

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence is inspired by using computers to imitate the functioning and reasoning of the human mind. One obvious example would be in the field of speech recognition. Using artificial intelligence in business applications, however, has become so prevalent that Forbes magazine predicted it will change B2B marketing forever. Some critical benefits of artificial intelligence include:

Improved B2B Lead Generation: AI can inform and improve the marketer’s capability to select an audience based on past behaviours, and help them generate buyer journeys that lead to a positive outcome.

Hyper-Targeting: AI allows marketers to communicate with a target demographic in a highly personalised and engaging manner. Based on its analysis of prior content, AI can suggest an enhanced SEO strategy that heightens interest and interaction.

Public Relations: Traditional media monitoring methods can often be quite cumbersome. PR professionals can now use AI to create search terms that provide quick and easy insights.

Email Marketing: AI is already seen in the prompted replies in Gmail, but there is so much more it can accomplish. AI can be used to analyse incoming communications to suggest appropriate responses, design communication programmes based on social media and website activity, and speed up the buyer’s journey.

Channel Selection: Interaction data allows the B2B marketer to determine both the most effective message and channel to present that content to their target demographic.

Campaign Analysis: Because there are so many more channels involved in today’s B2B marketing, the data generated is much more complicated to analyse. AI enables a faster review of data so decision-makers can quickly see what is working and make adjustments where needed.

Predictive Analysis: It can be difficult to forecast results in the beginning stages of creating and implementing B2B marketing strategies. AI can be used in these situations to analyse past campaigns, and predict the likely outcome of the current marketing campaign based on those results. This aids in forecasting potential performance, as well as conversion rates and estimated revenue.

The Benefits of Artificial Intelligence

In March 2019, the Salesforce.com blog discussed “B2B Marketing Trends: Insights From the Frontlines of B2B Marketing.” It pointed to the fact that AI usage by B2B marketers had grown 23% from 2017 to 2018. They observed that marketers are increasingly using technology within their marketing platforms to optimise mid-cycle engagement with potential customers.

They also concluded that 'data drives intelligent B2B marketing decisions'. This trend highlights the fact that organisations drive intelligent decision-making by using data to enable personalised customer experiences through AI, inform creative messaging, and measure performance.

Marketers don’t have to fear AI. They can embrace it because of the potential it brings for personal and professional growth. Future trends for incorporating AI into more aspects of the B2B marketing world include:

Better Time Management: AI frees marketers' time up so they can spend it on strategic marketing activities requiring human creativity and genuine connection. They can outsource repetitive and analytical tasks to enable more attention to detail and concentrating on the “big picture” aspects of marketing.

Improved Customer Experiences: AI is the foundation of improving cross-channel marketing in order to deliver exceptional customer experiences. AI technology can categorise website content by relevance to the visitor. It can deliver personalised content experiences suited to each individual user. A marketing automation platform can also track users behaviour on a site and other channels in real time. This data lets us understand interest and intent, and suggests what kind of messaging will be most relevant to these leads.

Enhanced Personalisation: Personalisation opportunities for AI go beyond that of merely using the prospect’s first name in communications. Behavioural insights allow lead scoring and the ability to prioritise and personalise sales messaging for the most valuable leads.

The Risks of Artificial Intelligence

AI requires a large sample set of data to train on in order to provide meaningful results. Sometimes, this data is simply not available.

Particular attention also needs to be paid to the issues that B2B companies face vs. B2C companies. We're often asked if our email and social scheduling tools select what times to send messages out based on AI. While B2C companies generally have large enough data sets for robust analysis, B2B marketing clients don't. Instead, our analysis can be based on aggregate reports produced on this subject.

A vivid example of B2B vs B2C is Phrasee. This company generates and optimises email subject lines. To do this it needs a set of client input data to learn from. It then runs multivariate testing on nine or so iterations of the subject lines it generates. That concept works well for major B2C clients. B2B businesses often don’t have the data to get a clear analysis.

That doesn’t mean that AI is totally outside the reach of B2B. Powerful tools are available that can be used for active targeting, automated experiences, perfectly timed content, results tracking and smart integration. 

B2B can also borrow the insight of AI even when it doesn’t have sufficient data itself. SEO research to find keyword themes, or Google Analytics that unveil people's search intent, can be used to formulate useful hypotheses which can then be applied.

While AI is altering the decision-making process, resulting in better qualitative results and improved efficiencies, there is also the matter of the ethics to be considered. Beyond the consideration of job losses, Harvard Magazine also cited several examples of the limits of AI. 

Using historical data to forecast future events can automatically build in existing biases that could perpetuate inequality. In 2014, Amazon’s recruiting tool began discriminating against women because they did not have the attributes of the data set it was trained on. That is because historically, Amazon had hired more male software engineers.

Best Uses of Artificial Intelligence

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) produces some very emotional reactions among marketers – and that’s largely because there’s so little solid information about what the technology can actually do for them.

In the absence of facts, hype and fear tend to take over.”

In a fascinating report entitled, “AI in B2B Marketing: Going Beyond the Hype,” LinkedIn and B2B Marketing looked at the attitudes around AI in the marketing universe. They agree that there is indeed a lot of hype surrounding AI. Some of it naturally tends to increase fear about the possibility of job losses, especially in marketing departments.

In the end, though, they fall firmly on the side of the power of AI for themselves and others, concluding that: 

“The more you adopt AI, the more you tend to realise that it’s far less threatening – and far more accessible and useful than many people have made out. It’s not a magic-bullet solution to every marketing problem – but it’s certainly not the end of marketers and marketing, either.” 

As our Innovation Series suggests, it is up to marketers to answer the challenges of AI by being sure to continue innovating in their personal career development.

To counter the disbelief which has grown around the claims made for on the applications of AI solutions, the report focuses on real-world stories about businesses leveraging it to grow. They summarised four case studies showing how a focused approach to using AI and data can change customer experiences for the better, and help to create marketing that’s more inspiring, and more effective:

1. Service Max: using customer journey-predicting AI to ramp up demos

2. Artesian: using AI to develop insight-driven engagements

3. VMware: streamlining and accelerating its content creation programme

4. Ingersoll Rand’s Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning division: reimagining marketing automation to create dynamic content to appeal to different roles.

We incorporate the best of AI to create great customer experiences and personalised buyer journeys for our B2B clients. Our talent network, expertise and platforms create campaigns that deliver results. Get in touch to find out more.