AI has been in the news a lot lately. It’s making headlines for technological breakthroughs and AI is expected to revolutionize B2B marketing. But is AI something marketers in a small business should look at? AI can automate parts of many different B2B marketing functions, but it’s not magic and nothing comes for free. Whether you’re just getting started with AI or are curious to learn more, this article will give you some insights on how AI is applied in everyday B2B marketing tools.

Using help from AI to build B2B Buyer Persona’s

Crystal Knows is a truly remarkable tool. It is the least expensive, yet most in-depth tool out there for buyer persona, and with it you’re able to calculate a buyer persona for anyone using DISC. But it’s more than just a rip-and-replace DISC personality assessment. With Crystal Knows’ deep data mining and artificial intelligence capabilities, you’re able to identify everything about a prospect’s psyche — from their deepest fears to their ultimate desires. This allows you to craft marketing messages that are hyper targeted to ideal client personas to ensure that every single penny of your advertising budget goes straight into the pocket of your target customer.

Have AI help you write content

Have you ever been unsure of what to write on your blog? Or maybe you would love to know what your ideal audience is thinking. In either case, copy.ai is a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can help you find out exactly that and more to deliver the right content at the right time. With a mission of democratizing language, anyone who desires great content can now create it easier than ever before, without the need for outsourced work or hefty investments in localization. We actually had copy.ai help us write this very blog 😉. Another example is HelloWoofy, an AI based tool that helps with writing and autocompleting entire blog posts using millions of data points suggesting the right words, emojis etc. in real time.

AI in social media marketing

AI is a key component of the popular social networks you use every single day. Facebook uses advanced machine learning to do everything from serve you content to recognize your face in photos to target users with advertising. Instagram (owned by Facebook) uses AI to identify visuals.

You can also use AI to engage on social media, for instance by using Netbase, an AI-based social media analytics platform. Nextbase provides you with thoughtful recommendations and insights, encouraging your company to focus on being proactive, rather than reactive about your social responses.

Using AI for the next best step

Based on engagement and intent data, machine learning powered tools can predict which content your consumers want next, with a high degree of accuracy. It’s the same idea as Netflix showing you the next great thing to watch, right when you’re ready. For example OptiMonster, a highly popular WordPress plugin to convert more visitors to leads, uses exit-intent behavioral technology that tracks and monitors movements of website visitors and detects when they’re going to leave your site without making a purchase or leaving their information.

AI in influencer marketing

Want to jump on the influencer marketing train but don’t know how to begin? No worries, Influential‘s got you covered. Influential is a smart matchmaking platform that connects businesses with influencers across major social media outlets.

Influential uses AI to research your social media profile from top to bottom. It looks at who’s engaging with your content and how they’re engaging. The more Influential researches you and your followers, the more it learns about your target audiences. This information is then used to pair you with influencers who match well with your brand.

Using AI in advertising

AI is hot in advertising, the algorithms in all major platforms like Google Ads, Facebook and LinkedIn already use AI without you noticing it. But there are also tools optimizing campaigns of these platforms like thenextad. Thenextad uses machine learning models built from anonymized data from more than 1 million online advertising campaigns, served to tens of millions of users on a daily basis. Collected from all major ad exchanges, app developers and data providers, this unique dataset has been formalized into mathematical algorithms to enhance the way we target both online and offline audiences. The core platform is an automated decisioning engine that periodically adjusts campaign budgets while controlling the cost per action and cost per acquisition.

Using AI in email marketing

Mailchimp recently announced a new set of AI-based tools that give small businesses easy access to the same kind of capabilities that their larger competitors now use. That includes personalized product recommendations for shoppers and forecasting tools for behavioral targeting to see which users are most likely to buy something, for example. But there’s now also a new AI-backed tool to help business owners design their own visual asset as well as a tool to help them write better email subject lines. Finally here’s a new tool that helps businesses choose the next best action. It looks at all of the data the service aggregates and gives users actionable recommendations for how to improve their email campaign performance.

Using AI to monitor KPIs and conversion

Did you know that the new Google Analytics 4 comes with a bunch of key features that make it very different from the old version. One of the biggest differences is the new data modeling feature that uses AI to fill in gaps in data where traditional Analytics may be blocked by cookie-consent rules, blocked JavaScript and a focus on privacy.

Conclusion

AI is emerging in many B2B marketing tools today. So is AI something B2B marketers in a small business should look at? Yes! And you probably already do.