Get ready to hear a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) in the B2B world in 2017. The only problem is, when most people think about artificial intelligence, the first things that they typically think of are self-driving cars and intelligent robots. Or, if they’ve been following the whole Elon Musk-Stephen Hawking debate over the future of AI, they may think of the end of the human race and how the robots are coming for their jobs.
But AI in the B2B world is not anything quite so grand. In fact, you can think of it as just the latest iteration of data analytics, in which powerful algorithms and analytical frameworks are used to find the answers to the types of questions that humans just aren’t very good at answering. This usually involves analyzing a phenomenally large amount of data in areas that may seem to be only loosely related to most humans. It also involves a process of “machine learning,” in which computers become better and better at delivering answers, the more data and examples that they’ve seen.
And that’s why AI could turn out to be such a powerful weapon for B2B marketers – it automates many of the tasks they are already trying to accomplish and does it in a way that’s much more useful. Take, for example, the ongoing quest to make sense of larger and larger sets of data. B2B marketers are already quite skilled and accomplished at making sense of highly structured data – such as demographic data – but not nearly as accomplished at making sense of unstructured data.
And, on the Internet, most of the data is unstructured. For a truly 360-degree of your customer, you need more than just a summary of their demographic data (age, gender location) — you also need insights into their preferences, behaviors and interests. And that’s why social networking data can be so powerful. If you had a tool to analyze the content of blog posts as well as updates and comments on social networks, and that was also capable of integrating that data in a meaningful way with your CRM or contact databases, you’d have an extraordinarily powerful tool.
Finally, AI could make it a lot easier to personalize content for prospects and customers. The goal is to create a truly 1-to-1 relationship with the customer. That means emails that are hyper-personalized for the interests and behaviors of the customer, as well as website content that adapts to the needs and interests of the customer.
As can be seen, AI potentially has a lot to offer B2B marketers. The important point, though, is that B2B marketers need to get over their fears of AI. If you’re already making use of data analytics in your daily marketing workflows, then it’s easier to see that AI could be the next big step. It’s the reason why companies like Salesforce.com have rolled out AI platforms like Einstein for marketers – the growing consensus is that AI is not just for tech companies anymore.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.