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It's impossible to have a conversation these days without "AI" coming up. And, in 2024, its applications are only growing.
Through 2030, AI will see a projected annual growth rate of 37.3%. And according to the latest data from Exploding Topics, 82% of businesses have either fully implemented AI or are exploring its use. Nearly three-quarters are using it in at least one business function.
In today's article, we're taking a look at how B2B companies are using AI, and what's on the horizon in 2024.
AI presents huge opportunities for B2B sales and marketing teams.
According to one global study across 35 countries, 90% of marketers use AI tools to automate customer interactions. And 61% of sales teams exceeding their revenue targets are already on board with AI for sales automation.
Let's dive into some of the most exciting innovations in AI technology, and how you can leverage them to generate, nurture, close, retain, and activate more customers.
Predictive analytics for lead scoring and engagement
The business use cases for predictive analytics are far-reaching — fraud detection, sales forecasting, risk management, you name it. Lead scoring is one of the newest ways to use it.
Modern lead scoring tools use machine learning to analyze and evaluate leads based on firmographic information, past interactions, and engagement levels. From there, they automatically assign scores that indicate conversion likelihood and potential value.
Your sales reps can prioritize leads based on these scores, focusing their efforts on the most promising prospects.
In a similar vein, your marketing team can use these analytics to plan follow-up activities and marketing campaigns. For example, if a high-value lead suddenly stops engaging with your brand, you might trigger a retargeting campaign after a certain time threshold.
Conversational AI
Conversational AI combines natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to understand and respond to human language. While it's a lot more common in retail, chatbots and virtual assistants are no strangers to the B2B world.
You can use them to:
- Qualify leads through a series of questions
- Resolve basic queries about features, pricing, subscriptions, or support
- Book sales demos without back-and-forth emails
Nearly half (45%) of end-users say chatbots are their preferred method of communication with businesses.
That makes them the perfect solution to a glaring problem with B2B sales: the vast majority of buyers want to limit their time talking to sales as much as possible.
Customer insights
AI-powered analytics platforms can crunch data from different sources to reveal patterns, trends, and insights on customer behavior. They offer a granular, more conclusive view of customer interactions and preferences that goes beyond traditional data analysis.
You can use that data to:
- Monitor customer sentiment
- Segment audiences for campaigns
- Act on new and developing market trends
- Optimize send times when emailing prospects
- Identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities
- Personalize customer experiences based on preferences, interactions, and purchase history
With certain CMS and marketing automation platforms, AI can even trigger certain content, product suggestions, or email campaigns based on real-time behavior.
Collaboration tools
Thanks to AI, team collaboration is possible in ways that were hard to imagine just a few years back.
Real-time collaboration tools, for example, use AI to automatically translate voice and text into different languages — a huge advantage for companies working with global partners or clients.
For sales teams, meeting transcription is another big one. Whenever one of your reps gets on a sales call or product demo, a notetaking tool like Fireflies or Fathom automatically transcribes it.
Afterwards, reps can search the transcript for specific keywords, notes, or actions to verify they've logged and shared everything they needed to.
Generative AI
Of course, plenty of businesses use ChatGPT. But the generative AI space is so much more than that. Tons of B2B software platforms are now incorporating generative AI into their products.
Take Deeto, for instance. By curating user-generated content with the help of AI, our social proof widget makes it remarkably easy to distribute quotes, feedback, and testimonials across your website.
It works by taking authentic customer quotes, reviews, and testimonials from your Deeto content pool and turns them into visually appealing widgets. You can embed these on any page of your website. And it's all done in seconds.
You can also use Deeto to generate case studies from customer feedback and data. Then, you can use those case studies to create dynamic content for your lead generation campaigns, website content, and more.
Deeto is a customer marketing and advocacy platform that helps B2B companies activate their customers to drive sales growth. Request a demo to see how it works.
