Marketing News: Can artificial intelligence give you maximum B2B marketing impact?

AI has become a bit of a buzzword in recent years, with many companies adopting elements of this technology to great effect. Indeed, John-David Lovelock, Research Vice-President at Gartner, recently stated: ‘AI is being embedded in many existing products and services, as well as being central to new development efforts in every industry. Gartner’s AI business value forecast predicts that organisations will receive $1.9 trillion (£1.51 trillion) worth of benefit from the use of AI this year alone.’

The power of AI to drive efficiency and open new avenues for marketers to explore is therefore immense, including everything from smart content creation/optimisation through to chatbots, dynamic pricing and ad targeting/retargeting.

And what’s more, the applications for AI in marketing are growing all the time.

What’s so great about AI in marketing?
Ultimately, AI helps to transform B2B marketing teams by reducing the time professionals need to spend on repetitive, basic or data-heavy tasks. Indeed, in many cases the technology is being developed specifically for this purpose.

By removing the mundane, repetitive or overly-complex jobs from the daily duties of their marketing staff, companies can increase efficiency, while at the same time ensuring marketers are freed up to spend more time on achieving human-centric goals that require a greater degree of creativity to get right.

AI can do the heavy lifting of number crunching, analysis and dealing with repetitive tasks, meaning marketers can be given more time to focus on blue sky thinking and helping your business more effectively stand out from the crowd.

Where can AI deliver the greatest B2B impact?
Overall, B2B marketers have a wide array of responsibilities to uphold, from content creation and curation through to lead generation, nurturing and, ultimately, driving sales. As a result, AI has a lot to offer in this area, with many tasks simply becoming more achievable when AI is involved. Here are a few examples:

Chatbots
Companies today are increasingly turning to technology to free up time for their staff through the use of chatbots to deal with straightforward customer support and queries. Indeed, Gartner predicts that up to 85% of all customer interactions will be managed without human input by 2020.

Retargeted leads
AI has the potential to significantly boost the number of leads that are followed up on by your marketing/sales teams by putting together the “weak learners” that help to identify the best approaches to re-engage with leads who may have gone cold in your marketing funnel.

Data collection/analysis.
AI is adept at discerning patterns far better than a person ever could. As a result, data collection and analysis are an ideal use for AI systems, where a deeper interrogation of data sets could potentially lead to wider insights that can then be interpreted by your marketing team and transformed into action.

Tracking customer sentiment
In today’s interconnected world it always pays to know what is being said about your business. As a result, AI tools can trawl a much wider net of online communication than their human counterparts, helping to ensure a fuller and more realistic picture of your online presence.

AI in B2B marketing therefore has a wide range of uses and, for many businesses, marketers are increasingly seeing how AI can be game-changing for their day-to-day responsibilities.

Now, with uptake expected to explode in the coming years, could there be a more opportune moment for your business to take the plunge?

Sources / Further Reading
Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Grow 1.1 Percent in 2019. Gartner
15 Applications for AI and Machine Learning in Financial Marketing. The Financial Brand
The Future is Now: Technologies Shaping Commerce. Pros
Why it’s time your business went all in on chatbots. Business Insider
How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Content Marketing. Curata