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Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is hard work. Successfully implementing digital marketing campaigns requires time, resources, and marketing expertise. At the same time, buyers have high expectations—and if your B2B organization doesn’t meet (or, ideally, exceed) those expectations, you are going to lose out on a lot of business.
One tool B2B marketers are using to gain a competitive advantage and revolutionize their digital marketing strategy is artificial intelligence (AI) software. The growth and popularity of AI technology makes it easier than ever before for B2B marketers to target ideal prospects throughout the buyer’s journey, engage with customers, uncover new revenue-boosting opportunities, and create long-term growth.
Does your B2B company want to increase the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaigns? It’s time to consider what AI marketing technology can do for you.
What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Artificial intelligence is the science of creating machines, algorithms, and computer systems that replicate or simulate human cognitive abilities. In other words, the goal of AI technology is to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence to complete, such as learning, problem-solving, language processing, reasoning, visual perception, or decision-making.
As an interdisciplinary field, AI incorporates many different technologies and branches of science. AI applications include everything from search engines like Google to social media algorithms to smart assistants to self-driving cars.
Two branches of AI are natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML):
- Natural language processing is the ability of machines to understand human language, including text and spoken words. Examples include predictive text and smart assistants like Alexa and Siri.
- Machine learning is the ability of computer systems to use algorithms and data to make more accurate decisions. Examples include social media feed algorithms as well as algorithms for products such as Netflix or Spotify.
By simulating human intelligence in machines, AI technology can be used in a variety of industries to save time, money, and other resources—and, when it is implemented correctly, complement (rather than replace) human intelligence.
How AI Is Transforming the Landscape of Digital Marketing
Advancements in AI have created opportunities for B2B companies to develop more effective digital marketing strategies.
AI marketing technology is a subset of AI software that uses ML and NLP to conduct various digital marketing tasks. These tools can help B2B marketers improve marketing campaigns and engage with customers at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
There are several benefits to using AI in digital marketing:
- Analyze large amounts of data
- Make more accurate predictions about customer behavior
- More effectively analyze your B2B competition
- Automate digital marketing processes
- Improve lead generation and nurturing
- Have a better understanding of your target market
- Achieve an increased ROI on marketing investments
- Personalize marketing efforts and engage with customers
Over the past few years, more and more B2B companies have been leveraging AI technology in their digital marketing strategies. And as this field continues to grow, it will continue to transform the B2B digital marketing landscape.
7 Ways to Leverage AI in Digital Marketing
Whatever challenges your B2B marketing team is facing, consider how the use of AI software can help automate, personalize, streamline and improve your overall approach to digital marketing.
Your B2B company can incorporate AI technology into your digital marketing strategy in a wide variety of ways, from social media management and content optimization to conversational marketing and persona development.
1. Manage Social Media Channels
Effective social media marketing is more than just publishing a few tweets, and it can be challenging for B2B marketers to manage multiple social media channels at the same time. AI tools can help you automate many social media management tasks and make data-driven decisions about how to make your social media channels more efficient.
You can use AI social media tools to automatically create and manage posts, monitor and respond to conversations, identify trending topics, analyze the effectiveness of your social media posts, and provide insights as to what social media content is working well.
2. Use Chatbots to Automate Conversations with Customers
Chatbots are software programs that use NLP technology to simulate human conversations. As used in the B2B marketing space, chatbots can both understand questions from customers as well as automate responses to customer queries.
More and more B2B companies are adding chatbots to their websites to communicate with customers. Chatbots can conduct surveys, answer basic questions, and provide buyers with next steps. Since the response is autonomous and (nearly) instantaneous, customers can more quickly move to the conversion stage.
AI technology breakthroughs such as ChatGPT are continuing to change the B2B marketing approach to chatbots. ChatGPT (short for “generative pre-trained transformer”) responds to user questions with answers that are much more “human” than other chatbot programs. As the use of ChatGPT and other similar technology increases, customer conversations will continue to improve.
3. Create and Optimize Content
While AI isn’t a replacement for well-written content, B2B marketers can use AI content optimization and creation tools to develop valuable content more efficiently. Writers can use these software programs to achieve a variety of goals:
- To produce new content ideas
- To generate outlines
- To optimize existing content
- To choose relevant keywords and topic clusters
- To analyze competing content pieces and identify the one with the highest possibility of success
- To convert content into different formats
Additionally, AI technology can compare content to customer segments, making it easier to determine what content will most resonate with which audience group.
4. Find the Right Influencers
Influencer marketing is on the rise, even in the B2B world. If your B2B organization works with influencers in your industry, you can reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and generate more revenue.
The challenge is finding the right influencers to work with.
AI tools and software can help you find the ideal influencer. This technology will analyze your B2B company’s social media profiles and digital presence and, using these insights, match you with influencers that are a good fit for your industry, audience, and organization.
5. Simplify the Personalization Process
Personalization is a key part of effective B2B marketing. Buyers want to feel listened to and develop trusted relationships with companies, and personalizing marketing campaigns whenever possible is an important part of establishing that B2B relationship.
AI technology simplifies the personalization process. By collecting and analyzing behavioral data on buyers, AI software makes more accurate customer personas. B2B marketers can use those personas to create targeted, personalized marketing materials that initiate conversations with customers.
6. Optimize Website Content for Search Engines
AI-powered SEO tools can assist B2B marketers in enhancing their website content for search engines by identifying popular topics, locating relevant keywords, discovering content shortages, and improving existing content.
One of the challenges of getting your web pages to the top of a search engine results page (SERP) is managing the optimization of both old and new content. AI tools make this process easier, analyzing content and providing data-driven recommendations to help increase SERP rankings.
7. Target Key Customers
As part of your digital marketing strategy, you are likely already using analytics tools that collect data from customer interactions on social media, on your company’s website, with chatbots, etc. That means you have a wealth of customer data that you could use to make strategic marketing decisions—if, of course, you could extract value and meaning from that data.
That’s where AI technology comes in.
AI excels at analyzing large amounts of data and drawing helpful, insightful conclusions. This technology can take your customer engagement data and return suggestions for who to target as well as when and how to target them. Then, you’ll be targeting key prospects in exactly the right way and at exactly the right time, making them more likely to make a purchasing decision with your B2B company.
What Is the Future of AI for Marketing?
AI software is improving quickly, and the B2B marketing landscape will continue to benefit from emerging AI technologies.
With advances in NLP, we will likely see more chatbots and other conversational bots being used by B2B organizations in various industries. Improved natural language processing capabilities will allow brands to have more efficient methods for communicating with customers, conducting market research, and interacting with buyers in a personal manner.
Similarly, as algorithms evolve, B2B marketers will have access to more options for segmentation and personalization. These recommendations will get more accurate, which means brands can make better decisions about how to target the right customer at the perfect time.
Who knows where AI and machine learning in digital marketing will go next? We’re excited to find out.
OneIMS: A Full-Service Digital Marketing Agency
AI is here to stay. Now is the time to incorporate AI technology into your B2B digital marketing strategy. By leveraging AI software, you can more effectively implement your marketing campaigns, reduce costs, and generate more revenue.
And there’s better news: You don’t have to do this work alone.
Let us help.
OneIMS is a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in helping B2B organizations develop, implement, and measure data-driven marketing campaigns. Our team of digital marketing experts is ready to help your company streamline your marketing efforts, adopt AI technology, and work more efficiently. We have the strategies, solutions, and tools you need to launch a new B2B marketing strategy that will transform your business into a revenue-generating machine.
We have a long history of working with companies in a variety of industries to develop innovative and data-driven marketing solutions. We pride ourselves on producing measurable and sustainable results.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. View testimonials from our clients and read our blog to get an idea of our training, experience, and track record of success.
Are you ready to invest in the future of AI technology and your B2B company? Schedule a consultation with us today to get started.
