The “do more with less” mandate has reached new heights. According to Gartner, not only have marketing budgets fallen to 9.1% of total company revenue this year (from 9.5% in 2022), more than 70% of CMOs believe they do not have the necessary funds to fully execute their marketing strategies.
At the same time, B2B companies are doubling down on resource-intensive marketing endeavors such as personalized omnichannel marketing and video marketing—and marketers are expected to deliver them faster and more effectively than ever.
As marketers grapple with how to do more with even less, the rise of generative AI over the past year—and the early positive results it has yielded—is proving to be a way forward for marketers. In fact, 67% of B2B organizations are already using AI to enhance customer experience, Forrester reported.
But how exactly are B2B marketers incorporating AI into their marketing strategies and what real-world outcomes have they seen? As early adopters of generative AI ourselves, we’ve witnessed first-hand how it can scale content production and increase marketing’s impact.
Many companies that use AI for marketing have leveraged these technologies to create highly creative marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience.
For instance, employing predictive analytics has enabled marketing teams to tailor their ad campaigns more effectively and achieve better results in their content marketing efforts.
- Increase multi-threaded campaign impact with unique content and creative
Every brand wants to be distinctive and creative, but creating original illustrations can be costly and time-consuming. That is why 65% of B2B organizations rely on stock images for their creative, but the trade-off for this convenience is running the risk of having images that resemble other brands’.
Employing generative AI technology to co-create will allow professional graphic designers to streamline the design process and create a broader range of images quicker. It also serves as a rapid prototyping tool for designers to test different ideas and styles for different audiences. This capability can also be utilized in digital marketing, helping to create content that is visually appealing and effective.
This ultimately means B2B marketers can now provide tailored visual experiences for a variety of buyer personas more efficiently, besides creating unique imagery that stands out from the competition. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in this way can transform not only visual content but also other aspects of social media marketing.
2X has seen:
- 33% faster ad creative production vs. stock imagery
- 63% lift in CTR using AI visuals vs. stock imagery
- 12x faster production vs. illustration from scratch
- Boost personalized content offerings
Although personalization has been the hallmark of B2C customer experiences for years, research shows that B2B customers actually have even higher expectations for personalized content. A Forrester study found that 66% of B2B customers expect the same or better personalization in their professional lives as when shopping in their personal lives. This is crucial as personalized content leads to a better personalized experience for the target audience.
And it creates a real impact on an organization’s bottom line. According to McKinsey, companies with faster growth rates derive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts. Analyzing customer data can provide the insights needed for effective email marketing campaigns.
But creating personalized content is slow and laborious … until now.
From researching and writing to editing and translating, AI content creation tools like Jasper ease the load of writers significantly. This means marketers can spend less time creating assets and more time curating and crafting unique experiences for their customers. Additionally, incorporating user-generated content can further enhance the personalization and relatability of marketing efforts.
2X has seen:
- 25% less time spent on research, 60% less writing time, and 50% less editing time for long-form pillar content
- 30-50% reduction in build time for most content types
- Scale video marketing efforts
In Wyzowl’s the State of Video Marketing 2023 report, 92% of marketers agree that video content gives them great ROI, but 10% of marketers find video too expensive, and 30% of people find it too time-consuming to produce. Effective data analysis can pinpoint the most impactful types of video content for a specific audience.
With the help of generative AI, video teams can produce more videos, faster than ever before—without compromising on quality.
For instance, developing compelling storyboards and scripts is a crucial first step of your video production process, and generative AI helps transform raw ideas into captivating narratives. Hours of tedious post-production tasks can also be significantly expedited, from creating human-like voiceovers to tackling production quality issues and even enhancing the background of raw footage.
At 2X, we use a combination of generative AI tools such as Leonardo for image assets, Jasper for video scripting, and ElevenLabs for AI-generated speech and voice cloning.
2X has seen:
- 40% faster video production
Effective AI adoption: 3 steps to get B2B marketers started
Generative AI is not a plug-and-play solution. It requires time and dedicated focus to reap its benefits, from learning to write high-quality prompts to integrating a new piece of AI with the rest of your MarTech stack.
Here are 3 steps to get you started:
- Set up an AI council: Having a specialized team dedicated to pioneering the use of AI across your organization will help set internal guidelines for its ethical and effective usage and shape your strategy for applying AI to create a competitive advantage.
- Be intentional when purchasing AI tools: Before making a purchase, understand and outline the needs of your organization, the expertise you have at hand (and if you require outside experts), and the outcomes you hope to achieve.
- Invest in training and creating an AI-driven culture: Human-machine partnerships deliver exponential business value, which is why an integrated approach that aligns both tools and people is key. Allocate time and resources to onboard and train employees, helping them see how they can approach their work differently with AI.
It doesn’t stop there. Post-deployment, besides requiring constant human supervision to weed out inaccurate output, you need to continue to push the envelope on what AI can do for your organization, optimizing your prompts and finding new ways to apply AI to your operations. Organizations who take a set-and-forget approach often come up short on their AI initiatives.
Maximize AI ROI with 2X
As AI use becomes more widespread, B2B companies who are slow to leverage AI technologies to produce business outcomes stand to lose. In fact, some companies have moved on to even more sophisticated AI-driven marketing tactics such as hyper-personalization, and achieved a 10% increase in market share.
Working with an experienced partner like 2X not only ensures a successful AI adoption initiative, we help B2B companies leverage AI for revenue generation from the get-go. The 2X Revenue Marketing Resource Center boasts a team of B2B marketers with a wealth of experience incorporating AI into marketing programs and achieving real-world client objectives. Meanwhile, our 2X COE Lab constantly stress-tests new AI technologies, developing benchmarks and best practices to deliver true marketing impact.
Interested to learn more? Watch our webinar, Beyond the Hype: Real-World Outcomes of AI in B2B Marketing, or contact us.
Vikram Ramachandran
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