Artificial intelligence-powered B2B marketing strategies are evolving in real time thanks to the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Astonishingly, these breakthroughs make it possible for marketers to dramatically scale their marketing in previously unimagined ways, often in mere minutes.
Marketers are already generating success with tasks like:
- Content creation
- Email writing and responses
- Lead qualification
- Prospecting
In these early days of AI’s use for B2B marketing, companies should consider how new technologies can affect their team structure. As manual, labor-intensive tasks shift to automated, scalable processes, resources must adapt and accommodate that change.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways AI is already transforming B2B marketing analytics and strategies and what the near future could look like.
The Current State of AI B2B Marketing
Generative AI for B2B marketing is currently a bit like the Wild West. New technologies are springing up overnight, while advancements in algorithms and machine learning are causing great leaps forward.
The good news: Everyone is in the same boat and is trying to understand the best use cases for generative AI. This means you’re on a level playing field with your competition — and your buyers — as you consider the applications of AI for your marketing team.
One of the areas of marketing where AI can make the most impact in a B2B revenue team is lead generation and nurturing. Let’s look at how today’s AI capabilities can boost your efforts.
AI B2B Lead Generation
Lead generation activities are typically time-consuming, costly, and can have low engagement.
Some of the tasks associated with lead generation that can eat up time and money include:
- Identifying the right target audience
- Crafting scalable, personalized email campaigns
- Determining what campaigns will make the most impact on pipeline
AI can assist with all of those headaches in multiple ways. Here’s how.
Uncover the Right Buyers at the Right Time
Companies waste tremendous time and money targeting the wrong buyers. If your lead generation program is roping in a ton of accounts that aren’t a fit for your product or ready to purchase just yet, you’re set up to fail.
The quickest way to improve the ROI of your lead gen campaign is to focus on buyers you know are in-market and a good fit for your products or services. This AI capability was the foundation for 6sense when we started 10 years ago.
By analyzing your company’s unique history with buyers and comparing that to the signals buyers give off online, Revenue AI platforms can confidently point you toward accounts that are ready to buy and likely to purchase from you.
Example: ACME Corp. is a manufacturer that targets machine shops nationwide. Sales data, however, reveals strong demand from the southwest region, especially from accounts with a history of searching a specific term related to their parts. ACME can dial in on prime sales opportunities by using AI to listen for this intent signal — and can also use machine learning to discover the importance of engaging key buying team members.
Personalized Email at Scale
Conversational email tools are changing the way marketers think about their email strategies. Instead of having to choose between large, generic campaigns or small, targeted ones, generative AI can be used to craft mass 1-to-1 messages.
AI email tools that tie into an ABM platform can
- Leverage insights to both personalize emails and move accounts through the buying journey as they engage with your emails or brand in general
- Handle the mundane task of qualifying leads that engage with the email, and
- Book meetings as a follow up
The Future of AI B2B Marketing
The companies who’ll reap the benefits of AI’s continued evolution are the ones that position themselves to adapt alongside the technology.
Here’s how you can plan today for the future of AI B2B marketing.
Be Ready for Autonomous AI
Autonomous AI is an advancement in AI that’ll enable these technologies to perform multiple steps of a process, then evaluate and optimize performance.
In the world of B2B marketing, this will lead to entire campaigns crafted by an AI assistant. The autonomous AI will know which audiences it should target, what messaging should be used, how to follow up, and what success looks like.
Preparing for this development requires:
- A complete understanding of your target audience
- Smartly segmenting them based on real-world intelligence
- Leveraging technology that supports AI-informed decision making
- Encouraging your teams to educate themselves on this technology and experiment with it
Autonomous AI could remove a staggering amount of manual tasks from the marketing workload, freeing teams to focus more on creative and high-value priorities.
Prepare for AI-Focused Marketing Roles
Even with the coming development of autonomous AI systems, these technologies will always require human interaction. The results and outputs of any AI tool are highly dependent on the inputs.
As these types of technologies become more integrated into the day-to-day activities of marketing teams, there’ll be a need for roles that primarily focus on interacting with AI.
Some examples of roles that could be necessary include:
- Prompt Crafter: A role that focuses heavily on optimizing prompts that are input to an AI. This will be extremely helpful for organizations that leverage AI for BDR outreach.
- AI Ops: An instrumental role in ensuring proper implementation and usage of AI tools. They’ll also serve an important purpose in “refinement,” which requires choosing and uploading source materials from a company to help the AI learn your unique messaging and positioning.
- AI Editorial: A critical role for providing guides and guardrails for tools like conversational email, where users could be crafting dozens of emails per week. The output of any AI system needs to be carefully reviewed by a human to protect quality, voice, and uniqueness.
Conclusion
AI for B2B marketers is here to stay. Every marketer should be thinking about how they can position themselves for future success. The companies that leverage current capabilities while planning for further advancements will put themselves at the front of the pack. See how 6sense is leveraging AI across our entire platform to provide deeper insights and automate processes at scale.
