Five AI Solutions Transforming B2B Marketing

Megan Wharton is an excellent sales assistant. She’s been at her job only a few months, but she’s easily the best person at qualifying promising leads on her team. Megan has a remarkable knack for chatting with potential customers over email, and knows exactly what to write to get prospects talking with a salesperson. While her counterparts disqualify leads after a few attempts, she keeps pushing. To top it off, she’s never taken a sick day in her career and is an employee any team would be lucky to have.

There’s a catch — Megan’s not a real person. She’s an artificial intelligence program designed to help B2B marketers qualify leads. As Megan illustrates, even though a lot of chatter around AI may be “hype,” in marketing, it’s becoming a practical tool in the near-term. Eighty percent of B2B marketing executives believe AI will revolutionize their field in the next five years, and a recent survey of marketers identified AI as the technology they are most likely to implement by 2020.

Marketing departments are always constrained. There’s never enough time, manpower, or money. To push back against such constraints, companies are beginning to rely on AI solutions like Megan to enhance their B2B marketing capabilities. AI marketing products can act as a force multiplier. Imagine being able to fill your headquarters with thousands of brilliant marketers, expertly analyzing massive amounts of data and providing actionable insights that increase the productivity and efficiency of your existing marketing team. That is what AI can deliver to B2B marketers.

Despite AI’s potential, marketers acknowledge they aren’t ready for this technology. Marketing executives identified AI as the trending technology they were least prepared to handle. Moreover, only 13% of marketers stated they felt very confident in their knowledge of AI.

While many companies are still investigating AI solutions, several top organizations have already taken the plunge. A recent Salesforce report found high-performing companies are more than twice as likely to use AI as underperforming companies. Soon AI integration will become a necessity for running modern marketing operations. In addition to AI chatbots, there are many AI applications marketers can wield. Here are five actionable ways marketing teams can begin using AI to improve business outcomes.

Lead Scoring and Predictive Analytics

Lead scoring generates some of the biggest excitement around marketing and AI.