DEV Community: Carl Torrence

How AI Is Transforming B2B Marketing Strategies

Carl Torrence — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 08:50:50 +0000

Artificial Intelligence (AI) surrounds us in everyday life. From our phones to homes, AI is present in many popular consumer products like Alexa, Siri, and home automation systems like Nest and SmartThings. Robots are automating manufacturing and warehouse processes while car brands like Tesla are introducing self-driving features.

The stats mentioned below testify to how AI is growing —

In 2023, the worldwide market for artificial intelligence is expected to grow to $500 billion.
Moreover, 83% of businesses identify AI integration as a top strategic goal.
53% of IT firms worldwide in 2022 said they had increased their use of AI during the previous two years.

As technology evolves, many departments tap into the power of technology to streamline and simplify key tasks. Currently, technology is primarily used in building software for different purposes. There is software for product development, tools for client services, robust sales software like Salesforce, and even marketing automation tools.

All such software, at some point, uses AI. And marketing departments face an increasingly competitive landscape, pushing them to adopt AI. This helps better understand current clients, optimize campaigns, and gain a competitive edge.

Let’s explore more.

Understanding the working of AI and how businesses can use it

At its core, AI is an area of computer science that focuses on developing intelligent machines and software algorithms capable of performing tasks normally associated with human intelligence. Examples include image recognition, natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), predictive analytics, deep learning (DL), and more.

Here are some of the widely-used AI technologies for marketers —

Machine learning: Algorithms can analyze and learn from data without being explicitly programmed.
Natural language processing: It leverages AI to understand and process human languages, such as speech recognition or translation.
Other aspects like computer vision and robotics.

Marketing teams can use AI to drive more revenue while ensuring sales are targeted to those most likely to purchase. AI in sales and marketing can help understand clients better, especially for B2B companies that operate in a more complex buying cycle.

Let us now discuss how to get started with AI.

Getting started with AI

B2B marketers increasingly leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to streamline processes, generate meaningful insights, and personalize client engagement. However, before implementing an AI strategy, B2B marketers must be proactive in preparing to take advantage of AI’s capabilities.

Here are some key considerations for those looking to make the most out of AI in their marketing strategy.

1. Understanding the technology

B2B marketers must develop a thorough understanding of what algorithms can do and how they help create effective strategies. Ideally, key decision-makers will first comprehend how AI works to identify areas for improvement or involve external consultants if needed to move the needle.

An ideal pathway to AI technology implementation is to —

I. Gather information on different types of AI technologies identifying the type of AI suitable for the task.

II. Evaluate research the implications before implementing it. This includes ethical implications and potential legal or regulatory implications.

III. Learn about the technology once you identify the most suitable AI technology. Also, consider its working and how it can be applied effectively across multiple departments that push marketing results.

IV. As AI technologies can be complex, consult experts who can provide advice and guidance that help you understand the technology better.

V. Lastly, before fully implementing the AI technology, test it to ensure that it performs as expected and meets your requirements.

2. Knowing the audience

This includes knowing who the audience is, their likes and dislikes, and how they connect with the business. Marketers would rely on data collection tools to collate and analyze audience databases while leveraging AI in marketing campaigns (more on it later).

3. Know your data

This includes structured data, unstructured information gathered from social media conversations, or survey text analysis. Understanding such datasets will enable you to determine which algorithms suit your campaign needs.

4. Setup performance metrics

Set up a system for measuring success across different channels, including tracking sales figures, website visits, clicks, impressions, etc., depending on your campaign objectives. This will enable continuous measuring of progress over time to identify trends and optimize marketing approaches where needed.

5. Integrate AI into existing processes

Identify where automation might be beneficial within existing workflows. For instance, using sentiment analysis tools during client service interactions, chatbots during onboarding processes or leveraging ML algorithms when analyzing marketing success metrics. There are many ways to integrate AI into existing operations while providing value.

Role of AI in B2B Marketing

AI has become an integral part of modern business, soaking data from various sources and using it to create personalized, targeted campaigns.

The scope of AI is now extended to the marketing department which helps identify client preferences to deliver a more tailored experience.

Let’s explore how B2B marketing can use AI to the fullest.

Identify client patterns

Marketers use client data to identify patterns in consumer behavior that can create more effective marketing campaigns. For example, AI can target clients with specific types of content based on their interests, demographics, or purchase history. Such personalized marketing results in higher engagement and conversions as clients are more likely to respond to customized content.

Let’s explore how it works.

Predictive analytics
The most common application of AI in marketing is predictive analytics. It starts with analyzing historical data where AI can detect patterns from past behavior and use them to predict how clients will behave. It allows marketers to plan campaigns better by allocating resources as required.

For example, a retailer might use an AI system to recognize when certain products are purchased together by a single client. It helps run targeted discount offers for them as a part of their next purchase.

Using NLP
AI-enabled natural language processing (NLP) technology can help marketers understand clients better by analyzing conversations with support agents or on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook.

NLP systems can mine these conversations based on keywords, topics and sentiment, enabling audience segmentation. It analyzes large amounts of unstructured data, such as emails and social media posts to identify potential leads and client interests.

Also, businesses can adopt NLP to create chatbots that understand and respond to client inquiries in natural language. This helps marketers create personalized messages for each group, thus boosting client engagement and conversion rates.

Updating segmentation strategies
ML algorithms allow marketers to continually update their B2B segmentation strategies based on new insights emerging over time. This happens when more consumer behaviors and preferences data are collected, allowing marketers to not rely solely on static rules.

Instead, they can adjust their strategies dynamically in response to changes in consumer demand to keep them relevant to current market trends.

Task automation
The growing technology of AI is prevalent in many departments and applications. The innovation in automation spans across technology, including audience segmentation for marketing, sales automation, no code development to eliminate the need for excessive coding, and other tasks that can be time-consuming.

For marketers, it includes email campaigns, managing social media accounts, digital advertising content design, and much more. This saves marketers time and allows them to focus on more creative tasks.

AI is revolutionizing how B2B marketers approach their marketing efforts as there are tools to streamline many marketing processes, increasing efficiency and maximizing impact with potential clients.

Content creation
Content creators in the marketing team can use AI to generate relevant content that crafts engaging content for the target audience.

For example, natural language generation (NLG) technology can automatically generate new content from existing data sources in different formats, such as blog posts and whitepapers. Think of how NLG tools help craft personalized and targeted content effortlessly.

Personalization
AI-based algorithms can analyze client data to determine what messaging is likely to be most effective with a business client. Understanding each client's interests, needs, and behaviors enables B2B marketers to create highly personalized experiences that drive engagement and conversions.

Lead scoring
Predictive analytics can also identify lead prospects who are most likely interested in a company’s products or services based on past behavior and other indicators such as demographics or purchase history.

Lead scoring can identify and rank potential clients based on their likelihood of becoming paying clients. AI can automate this process by analyzing large amounts of data and discovering patterns that indicate a high likelihood of conversion.

AI helps lead scoring in the following manner—

Predictive modeling: Help analyze data of past clients and identify patterns that indicate a high likelihood of a lead becoming a client. This can include demographics, job titles, industry, and online behavior.
Machine learning: Learning from historical data and adapting its lead scoring models to improve their accuracy over time.
Real-time scoring: Analyzing leads in real-time and immediately prioritizing the most promising leads for follow-up.

AI can help B2B marketers prioritize leads and focus their efforts on the most promising prospects, increasing the chances of conversion and reducing acquisition costs.

Client Service Automation

Client service is gradually becoming one of the highly robust pillars of B2B marketing. Here, marketers can use AI to automate client service tasks such as answering basic queries and resolving client issues.

This can allow client service agents to focus on more complex tasks and provide a better client experience. Also, these client service executives can monitor feedback and provide insights into client satisfaction.

Overall, it opens up opportunities for businesses to use AI in the following manner.

Live chats
AI bots can interact with clients directly over the phone or live chat on websites. These robots are programmed to answer common questions, provide helpful information and ask follow-up questions. These bots reduce wait times by providing quick responses that require a real person to answer, freeing client service representatives to focus on more complex requests.

Automate feedback surveys
Client feedback surveys help gain valuable insights into what clients think about your products and services. The automated process eliminates manual labor while capturing valuable client feedback. In turn, marketers can analyze such feedback and improve future campaigns based on what works well and needs improvement.

Data-driven feedback analysis
Marketers can use client feedback to enhance their strategies. One strategy includes leveraging data-driven feedback analysis that uses natural language processing and sentiment analysis to analyze client feedback. Here, AI can identify client sentiment and key topics in client feedback which help determine client satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the product or service.

Optimize ad spend

AI analyzes existing client data and targets clients with ads more likely to convert. When it comes to paid marketing, businesses can test different ad variations and determine which ones perform best.

AI in ad spending can help in the following manner.

Niche marketing
AI algorithms can automatically target the right audience at the right time with the right ad message. AI-driven segmentation and targeting help pinpoint ideal client profiles and create hyper-personalized campaigns tailored to client interests and behaviors. This ensures that ads reach their intended audiences more precisely, resulting in higher click-through rates (CTRs) and improved return on investment (ROI).

Automate bid management
AI also automates bid management strategies based on business goals. With machine learning algorithms, marketers no longer have to adjust bids across multiple channels and platforms manually. AI tools measure data points such as demographics or geography to maximize visibility for certain audiences.

This helps save considerable time and money, allowing B2B marketers to focus more on the creative aspects of campaigns rather than spending hours researching keywords or analyzing trends.

Campaign insights
Get insight into campaign performance in real-time with AI in place. Marketers can identify what exactly works best for their particular approach. This data helps quickly decide where to allocate ad budgets for maximum effectiveness.

AI-driven campaign insights help build new campaigns around areas where conversions are high or need shifting resources away if an activity needs to yield desirable results. Such readily available insights offer greater value to the business from their investments as they reduce ad spending over time due to increased efficiency within their digital marketing strategy.

Wrapping up

The time has come for small and medium businesses to use technology that helps them compete with larger corporations. One such technology is AI, which can optimize campaigns in real-time, helping businesses maximize ROI from advertising campaigns. AI has the potential to redefine B2B marketing by providing a more personalized client experience and opening up new opportunities for businesses to engage with their clients.

As mentioned above, a brief overview of AI technologies for B2B can help one get started in the right direction. Marketers can start with solutions that help automate tasks, provide more accurate customer segmentation, personalize messaging, and predict customer behavior.

Cover Image Source: Unsplash

Leveraging JAMstack for Boosting Business Website Sales: Top Tips

Carl Torrence — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 13:09:26 +0000

You do not need us to tell you that online browsing before purchase is the global norm. But did you know just how much potential your business website has when it comes to increasing sales, building a community, and elevating your online brand?

Companies across the globe have not only accelerated the digitization of their sales operations by 3-4 years due to the pandemic but also they have successfully pivoted and transformed their website browsing experiences to engage their intended audience.

In addition to listing all your products for any time anywhere shopping, your website serves as a one-stop shop for people to become acquainted with your brand. It is a 24x7 platform — whether they are acting on a 3 AM impulse buy or simply want to look up your client portfolio, they can do it regardless of the time or time zone. That is the beauty of websites.

Websites also offer convenience to you

From a business perspective, having a website does not just help you increase online sales, it also empowers your sales team to do their job more efficiently. For starters, they can track down the leads coming into the site through the integrated CRM. And with CPQ implementation, they can automate key sales processes and create personalized proposals based on customer data retrieved from the site. This helps improve customer satisfaction and ultimately leads to higher sales.

Then there is the knowledge base element — all the details about your brand, your products or services, and your customer stories exist on your site, which is why any new customer will check out your site before trusting you with their money.

And last but not least, having a thriving website helps your physical business flourish — an impressive 80% of final sales occur through online research and offline buying.

JAMstack takes the cake (and for a reason)

It goes without saying, for all of this to work optimally, your website needs to be built in the best shape possible. And the good news is that JAMstack is one of the most user-friendly platforms for designing world-class websites.

An acronym for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, JAMstack is a modern and intuitive web app development service that allows you to build a site statistically, offering dynamic content and an exceptional user experience through JavaScript. Brands such as PayPal, Nike, and Shopify have built their sites on JAMstack.

However, to eliminate issues such as poor user experience, slow page speed, high maintenance costs, and faltering organic website traffic, you first need to build your business website on a solid foundation.

Did you know there was an 85% increase in desktop web pages powered by JAMstack and a 147% increase in mobile web pages in 2020? It is clear the reliance on JAMstack sites is growing. To help you out, we have put together this handy guide to all the to-dos when it comes to optimizing your JAMstack site.

1. Invest in web design

They say the first impression is the last impression, and in the case of websites, it is true. A whopping 75% of people judge a website’s credibility based on its appearance, and 38% will stop engaging with a website if it is clunky. Give your website a thorough once-over to ensure it is designed optimally, including an attractive and responsive layout, clean colors and page structures, and strategic links and call-to-action buttons.

2. Go all in on SEO

You will not make sales if you do not rank high in search engine results. Period. So do your research and invest in adding the right keywords, tags, and links so that search engines know what your site is about. JAMstack offers access to SEO features such as:

Title and meta descriptions: Write unique meta tags for each page and view the results in the search engine preview snippet.
Alt tags for images: Optimize your website images to include the relevant keywords.
Social sharing: JAMstack allows you to create social sharing buttons to appear on specific page templates by using any templating language and some CSS.
Fast loading: JAMstack websites are faster because the static files are hosted on CDNs.

What is more, you want to attract the right kinds of traffic — people who are genuinely interested in and likely to buy your products or services — rather than just vast numbers of people who will leave your site after a few seconds of aimless browsing. If you do not feel confident handling SEO in-house, it makes sense to hire a professional.

3. Ensure your site is mobile-optimized

By 2025, around 73% of online users will access the Internet exclusively through mobile devices. If your JAMstack site does not work optimally on smartphones and tablets, you will lose most of your audience.

Tweak your JAMstack website design to ensure that text, graphics, links, and layouts look as professional and work as smoothly as they do on a desktop. Tools like Google AMP can help you test page load times so that you know what to modify for faster mobile browsing. However, JAMstack takes care of that and more.

Luckily, all JAMstack website themes are mobile-responsive, to begin with. Many Static Site Generators (SSGs) are set up to practice Responsive Web Design. You can define rules for various screen sizes using CSS media queries.

4. Craft an expert sales landing page

This is the page your customers will arrive at after clicking on your ads or email CTA button. This is where you make a sales pitch for the core product or service you are looking to sell to your intended audience.

There are several aspects to crafting a landing page. Still, at the very least, you need an attractive visual of the product, some testimonials or success stories so that customers know your product is worth it, and a strong call to action.

Even minor adjustments to your landing page could significantly impact your conversion rate, so run A/B tests on it to ensure that every element is exactly right. Practice makes perfect!

5. Use plugins for lead generation

When you build a website on JAMstack, you get the flexibility to integrate a wealth of plugins you can install on your site to enhance its performance.

From lead generation plugins like Mailchimp to eCommerce plugins like WooCommerce to SEO plugins like Google XML Sitemaps, running a business website and building a loyal brand following has never been easier.

Simply list your requirements and pick the plugins that make sense for your strategy — some of them are free. The ultimate goal of your business website is to drive leads. Plugins will help you greatly in this endeavor.

6. Have a foolproof content structure

How you organize your content is as important as writing good content. Your business website’s content structure impacts both SEO and UX, so be sure to download a sitemap plugin on JAMstack and structure the flow of the website in the most engaging way.

You will also want to keep your site URLs concise and specific so that customers can easily find them online. JAMstack will automatically generate static URLs for your primary pages (static URLs look like www.example.com/about-us, as compared to dynamic URLs that contain random numbers and letters and can be hard to navigate).

For blog posts or products, you can adjust the URLs by adding relevant keywords and separating them with dashes. And finally, make sure you have a clear header menu with all pages either listed separately or under drop-down menus.

7. Do not forget about analytics

How do you continue to delight your customers while attracting more? You study them. Using tools like Google Analytics for JAMstack to monitor customer behavior will help you predict their needs and adjust your business strategy to meet those needs.

Google Analytics gives you complete insights into your sales funnel, including where your site visitors are coming from and how long they stay. You can customize your sales content to connect with them optimally at each stage.

Over to you

In conclusion, when building a JAMstack store, it is vital to focus on providing an attractive, user-friendly experience that makes shopping or browsing easy while also investing in lead generation and analytics to nurture current and future leads.

Hopefully, this guide helps you start on the right track — and if you need some extra help, it is never a bad idea to call in a professional. Nearly half a billion websites run on JAMstack, so you have already made the right call by choosing it as your business’s online foundation. Good luck!