Around 18 years ago, Kingpin bought some ads on a new search engine called Google.
Google had 10 employees in the UK in a small office in Soho Square. They had an impossible to find phone number, didn’t generally answer emails and had no online bidding system. You gave them keywords; they estimated searches and then sold you ads on a cost-per-thousand basis. They were also just another search engine with AltaVista (remember them) and Yahoo sitting nicely alongside them.
A lot has changed in 18 years. That’s because we live in the digital time and space. What starts as an idea becomes a global reality in days rather than years.
For example, CNN took nine years before it went from the bedrooms of business hotels in the US to the launch of its international arm. Google achieved international the second it appeared in a browser.
"More than a third stated the focus for their machine learning investments would be front-end sales and marketing efforts"
So where does it go from here?
According to Gartner, conversational AI is at the ‘innovation trigger’ of its hype cycle. It’s early days but people are adopting it. This is backed up by a recent survey of enterprise IT leaders by CIO Crowd.
When asked “Are you planning to deploy AI-powered ‘intelligent’ apps in your organisation in the next 12 months?” more than a third of respondents stated the focus for their machine learning investments would be front-end sales and marketing efforts.
That’s because customers expect information at any time, on any device, in any place – and if you can’t deliver it, your competitors can. In fact as one of participant said: “Conversational engagement is where customer engagement is heading. It takes a while to train AI and you need to start now to be ahead of the curve.” Those in the B2B space will expect highly personalised experiences that can only be delivered at scale using AI as it’s faster, and ultimately more accurate.
AI’s place in B2B marketing
For B2B marketers that means better data. We can start to learn patterns of customer behaviour in a way we never could before and start applying these learnings to content. We can, like social platforms do, start amending the information people see when they visit our sites, turning it from a generic overview of products and services to a personalised page that appeals to their interests.
We can also apply AI to customer journeys so we can understand behaviours to build a compelling case on who to call first – advanced lead scoring if you will. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by vendors with everyone from CRM providors to automation tools now including AI as standard.
Organisations are embracing AI because they want more information. Customers want better integrations and brands want more accurate data. B2B marketers focus on information, customer experience and attribution – all of which can be improved with machine learning.
So don’t run scared, embrace it. If you don’t, your competitors will.
