With a growing demand for a competitive advantage, the use of AI in B2B marketing is becoming a larger priority. Despite the potential benefits of AI for B2B marketers, there are many B2B marketers who still lack confidence in their knowledge of AI.
In fact, only 13% of B2B marketers feel highly confident in their understanding of AI according to the Everstring report.
However, the tide is turning as a growing number of B2B sales organizations are recognizing the potential of AI. According to a recent survey, 75% of B2B sales organizations plan to use both AI and traditional sales solutions by 2025.
This trend is expected to drive significant growth in the market for AI in marketing, with a comprehensive study by Market Research Future (MRFR) predicting a 28.6% compound annual growth rate from 2021 to 2030 and projected to reach market value of USD 48.8 billion, underscoring the significant potential of AI in the B2B marketing landscape.
AI in B2B Marketing
- 99% of B2B marketers believe AI chatbots improve lead conversion rates.
- 27% of B2B organizations intend to make significant investments in AI to drive content recommendations.
- 64% of B2B marketers believe AI is beneficial to their sales and marketing strategy.
- By 2025, 75% of B2B sales organizations will use both AI and traditional sales solutions.
- 13% of B2B marketers are very confident about AI, 55% are somewhat confident, and 33% are not at all confident.
- 71% of B2B marketers are interested in personalization using AI.
- 63% of B2B marketers want to use AI to identify trends.
- 59% of B2B marketers expect AI to assist them in identifying prospective customers.
- 53% of B2B marketers believe AI will improve marketing effectiveness and revenue generation.
Sources: (Botco, ZoomInfo, Everstring, and Gartner).
How B2B Marketers Should Use Artificial Intelligence
AI has the potential to revolutionize the way B2B marketers interact with their target audience, as it enables businesses to predict and respond to customer needs in real-time according to Harte Hanks Director of Strategy DeShelia Spann.
By leveraging predictive scoring, B2B companies can gain valuable insights into customer behavior across different channels, allowing them to create more targeted content and engage in more personalized interactions with their customers as 71% of B2B marketers are interested in using AI for personalisation reported by Everstring.
AI can also be used to improve B2B organizations’ analytics skills by giving real-time data on customer interactions and helping them to respond to consumer enquiries and feedback more swiftly.
One significant advantage of AI in B2B marketing is its ability to assist organizations in developing better focused marketing strategies. AI can assist organizations in determining which marketing efforts are most likely to succeed and which should be abandoned by analyzing customer behavior and preferences.
This enables B2B firms to produce more tailored marketing messages that resonate with their target demographic, resulting in higher conversion rates and higher customer satisfaction.
AI can assist B2B organizations enhance their sales processes in addition to producing more focused marketing campaigns. AI may free up sales staff to focus on higher-value activities like creating connections with customers and closing deals by automating typical sales chores like lead qualifying and follow-up.
Overall, AI offers B2B organizations a huge opportunity to better understand their target customer, generate more targeted marketing campaigns, and optimize their sales processes. Nevertheless, effectively integrating AI necessitates a large investment in both technology and training, and B2B organizations must be willing to dedicate the resources required to reap the benefits of this powerful technology.
Ways AI Is Changing B2B Marketing
#1 Customer Segmentation
According to Marketingprofs, using customer segmentation is a powerful tool for B2B marketers because it makes it easier to identify potential clients and distribution channels.
AI makes this process far more efficient, with 59% of B2B marketers banking on AI to identify potential customers as reported by Everstring.
Tools such as Baremetrics and Optimove allow for the segmentation of customers and channels based on demographic, location, prior buying behavior, and buying persona.
With the help of AI-driven customer segmentation, businesses can better understand customer needs and preferences in order to create targeted campaigns.
#2. Improves Lead Generation and Scoring
AI is significantly boosting the effectiveness of B2B marketing efforts.
By leveraging advanced algorithms, AI tools are able to quickly filter and score leads to help marketers identify which customers have the greatest potential value according to Jenna Bunnell who is the Director of Field & Strategic Events at Dialpad.
This not only allows B2B marketers to focus their energy on the most promising leads, but also improves overall targeting accuracy, thereby allowing more efficient approaches.
Furthermore, by providing real-time insights into customer behavior and preferences, AI tools are helping to improve marketing campaigns which bring desired results in far less time than ever before.
#3. Simplify the process of account selection
AI-powered technologies are helping sales teams work smarter, not harder, by simplifying the process of account selection according to Anna Clarke.
With AI tools at their disposal, sales reps can save significant amounts of time and energy by eliminating repetitive data entry and research tasks involved in lead nurturing and qualification processes; instead leaving them with more time for closing deals.
According to Alex Terry, CEO of Conversica, reported that 80% of sales representative’s time is currently allocated to emails and phone calls for this purpose, leaving just 20% available for the act of closing deals — an imbalance that AI promises to improve upon.
FAQs
How AI is changing B2B sales?
Abbi Tanton explains how AI is changing the way B2B businesses conduct sales.
AI technology can help to automate operations that would otherwise take a significant amount of time and effort, such as assessing consumer preferences before reaching out to them or ranking leads based on their potential.
This gives sales professionals more time to focus on the most important areas of their job and devote more emphasis to activities such as creating connections with clients and closing increasingly profitable agreements for their organization.
