Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained significant traction in the past couple of years and has become an important part of today’s business. Its practical application has entered almost every field, bringing innovative solutions in retail, production, marketing, and more.
In B2B marketing, the use of AI is exploding, especially so in the segment of marketing technology or MarTech, where AI has opened countless opportunities. Its popularity is increasing so much, that spending on AI-based MarTech solutions is predicted to reach $52.2 billion by 2021.
According to a study, 36% of customer experience (CX) leaders and 33% larger organizations are already using AI and Machine Learning (ML) in generating and distributing personalized content, offers, and customer experiences. Comparatively, only 17% of smaller companies reported implementing it in 2019.
Aside from those already using it, a further 28% of CX leaders, 39% of large organizations, and 26% of smaller organizations have expressed their intention to invest in AI/ML in 2020.
If done right, AI and ML have the potential to improve and amplify many of today’s ever-growing marketing agendas. Some of the areas where they would especially come in handy are predictive analysis and automatization of human tasks, where AI and ML can save time, money, and human resources, as well as boost growth, improve efficiency and facilitate smarter decision-making.
Must-haves
Some AI applications are a must-have for every company’s growth-oriented marketing, and they include:
Predictive analysis – Aggregating and analyzing available and accurate historical data, trends, and patterns from multiple sources allows you to draw conclusions about future outcomes in the process called predictive analysis.
In marketing, this allows businesses to identify and predict which prospects are more likely to buy or become clients. The process also allows prioritizing prospects on the basis of their likelihood to convert or perform the desired action.
AI-based predictive analysis can supply businesses with projections about other aspects, such as which clients are likely to make an additional purchase or the quoted price that will result in a conversion.
Data-driven market segmentation – Essential for aligning a company’s products and services with the market’s demands and requirements is the process of successful market segmentation. This process categorizes customers that have purchased a service or product into groups according to their similarities (demographics, buying preferences, etc.). Doing this allows sales managers to compare trends in each of the groups and discover more sales potential.
Leveraging AI and ML will allow businesses to get a better grasp of the personality traits in order to segment their customers and buyer personas. Combining their attributes like workplace, industry, title, and so on, with observed behaviors like attending a specific event can help create well-defined customer segments. This, in turn, will facilitate adjusting marketing campaigns to be more personalized for each segment.
Nice-to-haves
While the above-mentioned AI technologies are certainly essential for a B2B company in this day and age, there are some that aren’t as necessary but can give you a competitive edge and boost growth. They include:
Psychographics
A step beyond analyzing an individual’s buying behavior to make predictions on what they will purchase next, psychographics uses the demographic information for your target customer or buyer persona to draw conclusions about their lifestyle, habits, personality traits, and buying patterns.
This knowledge allows you to tailor marketing strategies for successfully winning them over. For instance, this way you can find out which particular product appeals to the specific customer group you wish to reach and make dynamic product recommendations and offers.
Leveraging AI and ML optimizes the process by facilitating simultaneous testing of more combinations than can be done manually. The outcomes include increased processing speed and more reliable results.
Image recognition
An AI-powered technology that allows a machine to accurately process, identify, analyze, and categorize elements of images and videos, image recognition is gaining traction in various spheres. For instance, Facebook uses it to recognize you or people you know in photographs and content providers use it to identify inappropriate elements in images.
Image recognition has many potential applications in the world of B2B marketing as well since marketers tend to heavily rely on the use of visuals. Using AI image recognition to analyze images that the target audience shares and interacts with every day allows marketers to gain deeper insights into their brand preferences and buying habits, as well as to what content they respond the best.
This technology can also tell you which of your visuals produce the best marketing results. In other words, it can make your marketing more intelligent.
AI is future of B2B marketing
Despite the ever-rising real-world applications of AI and it being one of the most talked-about topics in marketing, it is still largely underutilized in many spheres – B2B marketing included. This may be due to marketers still not fully understanding its potential – what it can do for them and how it can add value to their business.
Another problem is that AI needs large quantities of data to make accurate predictions, which marketers sometimes don’t have. They may also lack the skills to manage challenging AI projects which requires extensive knowledge across multiple disciplines.
However, AI isn’t going anywhere and will only fortify its presence in B2B marketing. At Comarketers, we know this as we work alongside the best AI-powered marketing tools to drive customer-centric growth and accelerate B2B marketing efforts, so we can witness the power of this technology every day.
There are plenty of ways in which AI can improve strategies and bring outstanding results. Not only can it be of immense help in analytics, market segmentation, and targeted marketing, but also in a wide range of other areas.
These include content generation, virtual assistant interaction and search, email marketing, real-time personalization, customer feedback analysis, social media optimization, and many more.
The sooner marketers realize this, the sooner they can start adapting, implementing, and benefiting from it. There is still a lot to be learned and the learning curve is steep but ultimately, it’s worth it.
Sead Fadilpasic
Sead is a freelance journalist with more than a decade of experience writing news, bylines, whitepapers, blogs, and ebooks. He focuses most of his efforts on new technologies and content marketing. Based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.