AI for B2B Marketers – What to Expect in 2017? Posted on : Mar 22 - 2017

AI is the red hot topic that is being discussed at c-level in all organizations. We all are beneficiaries of AI in our daily lives; from Alexa and Siri to TacoBot, we are reaping the rewards of AI. Google’s AI (AlphaGo) beat the world master in the game GO. In the later half of 2016, Salesforce.com announced Salesforce Einstein while Oracle promised to do better with applications built with Adaptive Intelligence. And self-driving cars are coming soon! It’s clear that AI powered business and consumer applications have arrived and you need to be ready to have an intelligent conversation with your boss and peers.

I’m sure you’ve heard of many different terms such as AI, predictive analytics, machine learning, neural networks, deep learning etc. all used interchangeably by the industry. AI is an umbrella term, a branch of computer science whereas machine learning, deep learning etc. are some of the methods and systems of enabling AI. For example, the virtual assistants or Bots, excellent examples of AI, actually use NLP/G (natural language processing/generation) to understand and respond to human requests. There is no need to panic when you hear different terms or some vendor try to tell you that we do AI and others don’t! What’s more important that you understand what AI can do for you.

Here is what you can achieve realistically using AI in 2017:

1. Account and lead selection - AI can help you select your best accounts and leads for your inbound, outbound and ABM initiatives. AI platforms such as the one my company (Mintigo) offers, help you to build predictive models for any business scenario, from cross/up-sell to new product launches. You can then explore your total available market using discovery tools offered by these platforms. You can also get new lead names (look-alikes) for your campaigns as needed based on predictive insights.

2. Personalized 1:1 Nurtures - One of the key outputs of predictive analytics is a “set of attributes” that represents the model. These attributes, often referred to as “ideal customer DNA or profile”, defines the “why” or “the reasoning” of a predictive score. Why John Smith @IBM is more likely to buy your product or services as compared to Andy Cheng @HP. By comparing these sets of attributes for the two, you can easily understand the reasoning. Some of the AI platforms have the ability to provide you detailed attributes into your MAP & CRM systems in real-time. This allows you to nurture an inbound inquiry or send an outbound message in a very personalized manner; for example, if your ideal customer DNA includes modern marketers who spend more than average on digital marketing and use one of the marketing automation systems, you can engage your prospects by sending them offers and messages that are relevant to their needs. AI eliminates the generic messages, and engage your prospects with the right (and relevant) message at the right time.

3. Automated Campaigns -  This is an advanced application where an AI application automatically builds the customer journey to accelerate time to sales. This is accomplished by engaging the right prospects with the right offers using the right channels at the right time. Simply put, it is the martech nirvana that only AI can enable. A good percentage of MAP users still use a single step email nurture (nice way to say batch and blast!). Lack of adoption of multi-step nurture can be attributed to lack of resources and time it takes to create one. Those who do run multi-step nurtures, are doing so with limited data and utilizing the art of marketing. The Automated AI driven campaigns solve this issue. However, to take advantage of this you need to organize your content and track each LP uniquely (channel, offer, offer type) using utm codes or equivalent. The target and response data must be available or use a system that offers test and learn abilities.

4. Sales Engagement - Helping sales to intelligently engage with the precious leads and accounts is crucial for the success of your business. AI applications are changing the conventional B2B sales in many different ways; automated conversational Bots (such as Conversica) and other task management bots are good early examples. Other AI applications, such as the one from Mintigo (Mintigo’s Predictive Sales Coach), are enabling sales to engage their prospects intelligently. These applications use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the “Who, What, Why, and How?” of the sales process. To be more specific, “Who” will buy from your company, “What” will they buy from you, “Why” they need it, and “How” you should engage them in a meaningful conversation. Selling is a tough business and require tremendous amount of research despite enormous efforts put in enabling sales. Many enterprises hire fresh grads to ‘dial for the dollars’; the churn could be high if they were not continuously enabled. Marketing creates content that is often buried behind corporate firewalls in content stores. What is needed is ‘always-on’ intelligence and messaging/content that enables sales to easily find the right prospect and then quickly understand his/her needs and has messages and content at their fingertips to have a meaningful conversation. AI applications are here to help you not only build trust relationship with your counterparts in sales but impact revenue directly.

This list is by no means complete or even close. Numerous AI driven applications are being born everyday. This provides a starting point that will help you navigate the world of AI for marketing. And finally, don’t forget to watch ‘ex machina’ to explore the art of possibility. Source