The longer humanity is online, the more data we have about the species. Humans have more data on themselves than ever before because of the internet.
The natural progression for this data is the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Because of social media, search, and retail, we know more about what humans do, question, and buy. With this massive amount of data, it was only a matter of time before we attempted to create artificial intelligence to learn from the data.
This is especially true in marketing.
As each organization gets ahold of more and more data, we are then turning that data into products and services, both inside- and outside-facing.
First, we’ll look at the current state of AI in B2B marketing, then we’ll talk about other AI technologies that are growing in popularity.
IBM Watson (Question-Answering)
Whenever I think of AI in today’s business-scape, I think of Watson (Watson is a supercomputer that combines artificial and sophisticated analytical software to serve as a question-answering machine. It processes massive amounts of unstructured data very rapidly.
An exciting example of Watson in B2B is Wayblazer, a B2B company that offers those in the travel industry to connect with their customers using AI.
It allows the customers interacting with these websites to ask user-specific questions and receive appropriate and informative answers.
It uses data to help personalize and give the correct results to whoever is asking the question. In turn, it’s easier for the hotels to sell their rooms to someone or for a tour company to get booked. This hyper-specific audience targeting is one of the future applications for AI like Watson in marketing.
Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation built off data and AI is leading marketing to new heights. There is a growing number of software that takes pre-made data sets and segments the people in it to determine who receives what email, etc. Marketing companies and companies who are marketing their products are already using this technology heavily.
This leads to higher conversion rates because instead of simply blasting out a piece of content to every single person, emails are tailored to those who receive them.
This immensely powerful tool can only grow in the future.
Microsoft Translator(Language Recognition)
Microsoft has started offering a translator for businesses, covering a good many of its platforms. This is another example of AI at work, allowing translation to be an integral part of communication tools (other examples include: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, etc.).
This technology allows business, especially B2B, to reach further than ever. With the option to translate all messages, it is possible for two people who don’t speak the same language to reach a (rough) understanding of one another. In theory, two people can close a business deal while speaking two entirely different languages.
Because of the one-on-one nature of deals in B2B, this function is critical to converting prospects into customers.
Beyond the text side, Microsoft has also released a feature allowing text translations to appear on live talks on its Skype for Business Meeting Broadcast feature. The feature gives marketers the potential to reach a greater audience than ever.
Product Pricing
Much of today’s pricing online is controlled by AI to reflect the state of the market and optimize revenue to figure out what prices will make businesses the most money.
That means that pricing is often out of the hands of humans and into the hands of algorithms, who make decisions not out of greed but based off data. Check out some of these applications, which give you the option to use AI in your digital dealings.
Customer Service/Product Assistants
Almost every website you visit these days has some sort of chatbot that guides you to ask a question about a product or service. This can either be in the context of customer service (post-purchase) or just a general bot to answer specific questions about the product.
Both of these bots are supposed to mimic human interactions, and they can sometimes do so quite well. Both also reduce friction that might be related to a purchase. Giving the user a pressure-free way to ask specific questions reduces friction, which could lead them to purchase sooner.
A bot to start off a customer service interaction for someone who has already bought can give them positive customer experience and potentially lead to them buying again.
There are a lot of smaller or newer technologies that have yet to hit the mainstream. I would argue that these growing AI technologies are the future of B2B marketing, as well as the future of our world in general.
Social Media Based AI
Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have astounding volumes of data about those that use their services.
While failed AI experiments (like Microsoft’s Tay) might make some companies hesitant to release AI in social media, AI that learns from the social habits of humans will likely be the standard of the future.
Some users that pour every detail of their lives into social platforms, from where they live and work to conversations with their friends. This is data which AI can learn from and will be invaluable to marketers once it is harnessed correctly.
It will be interesting to see how marketers utilize social media and AI in the future to make more and more accurate predictions as to who buys what and why.
Content Generation
My fellow content writers and I might be out of a job with the advent of AI that can produce a news story from a structured data set (one that is organized). Once an AI system is developed that can take unstructured data and create a news story, those that write hard news will have a difficult time matching the speed at which AI will be able to interpret data and churn out a story.
It might take longer for AI to write subjective pieces, but it seems likely. This is an area to watch, especially in marketing.
Content will be cheaper and faster to produce if this sort of technology catches on, allowing it to be more accessible to more organizations. Watch this area closely.
As more and more data is collected, it is only natural that our AI will get more and more advanced. There are countless technologies already that use AI, even if you barely notice them. And in the future, as products become more interactive and personalized, those who are simply consumers will only notice how much better their current experience is.
Let us know what you think:
- What technologies do you think will grow in AI?
- What technologies will die out?
Yes that’s exactly correct. I know, it sounds like sci-fi, but it’s real and works amazingly well.
Nice post Acadia! Your examples are great but interestingly in none of them is the AI component actually interacting with the public in a truly human way (i.e. the AI is either internally-facing or, if externally-facing, the customer knows they’re dealing with an AI). I bring this up because Conversica’s AI is unique in that it presents itself as a human sales assistant; one who engages a company’s sales leads in true two-way human conversations, determines intent to buy, gathers useful information such as valid phone number, and then passes the hot leads to the human salespeople to close. Huge companies like Epson and Oracle are using the product today to sell more and to provide an excellent experience for their customers.
So those who talk to Conversica’s AI aren’t aware that it is AI? That’s really interesting. And then from there the leads are passed on to actual people?