In this Part 2 of B2C vs. B2B – Martech Challenge and AI, I will cover how B2B companies can, and need to, Scale and (hyper)Personalize at the same time to stay relevant and competitive.
“Welcome then to the era of AI solution providers who have started changing the story and educating the progressive marketing and business leaders on both the B2B challenges and the ROI myths.”
Let’s start with Scale first. Selling in the past started with a salesperson going door-to-door, ringing the doorbell, engaging in a direct face-to-face highly personalized conversation to explain the solution/offering. The buyer would indicate level of interest through verbal or non-verbal means. They may ask you to come back, meet other household members. And on and on it would go. You get the gist! While nothing beats this process for being completely personalized for the best experience, this could NOT SCALE.
With advances in digital marketing, in the last 10+ years, came marketing automation – segmentation and content journeys were developed aimed at providing engaging and relevant buyer information at scale. Done well this enabled companies to grow at a phenomenal rate and have an edge over their competition.
However, trends evolve, the buyer gets savvy and what worked starts having limited effectiveness. With increased data, the digital medium has become a nightmare giving birth to the need to find a solution that combines both 1:1 interaction at scale.
AI solutions being developed and refined over the last few years by entrepreneurs have started showing promise. Personalization or Humanization can be achieved for the marketer in the following ways:
- predictive analytics focus on identifying companies that fit well to the product offering.
- machine learning techniques process buyer intent data (both through internal engagement and external medial signals) providing a powerful framework for the marketer to personalize
- AI powered sales assistants qualify prospects
- customer experience and journey maps fine tune recommendations on product need, bundles, relevance and usage
Additionally, there are many more AI-driven use cases for providing IT services, optimizing inventory and delivery systems, resolving HR requests etc.
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning is here to stay and needs to be part of every marketer’s toolbox. Transform your marketing to SCALE and PERSONALIZE!
GrowthPath 