AI in B2B Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide
AI in B2B marketing undeniably creates an opportunity for companies of all sizes. An opportunity worth creating to unlock time, resource and revenue.
Especially when we as B2B companies can end up running multiple projects, complicated or inadequate prospecting pipelines and being short of time.
And no need to think of AI as a buzzword for dodgy chatbots, or basic automation. It is a complex technology but now typically has user friendly interfaces.
AI is a technology that can unlock time, knowledge and opportunities for business growth.
How AI in B2B Marketing Reshapes Strategic Content
Firstly, ChatGPT seemed to take over the world in late 2022, sometimes feeling like it is all we read about in business and technology news.
Since ChatGPT launched the speed of evolution of AI has been rapid. Now we have the likes of Gemini by Google and Claude by Anthropic. Both offerings being highly trained large language models.
And that is to name a few, there are many many more. Mostly these tools are the ones we ourselves rely on for insights, support on strategic thinking and content creation.
The advancements we see, and have seen in the platforms over the last few years have been huge. It is these advancements that allow you as business leaders and marketers a game changing opportunity.
For example to use AI tools to enhance your prospecting and conversion.
Additionally you can create high performing content that resonates with your audience. No longer leaving a valuable team member struggling to create tactical content (slowly) without AI support.
Tactical Content How to Generate Excellence
Firstly a slight caveat on the word excellence!
As always excellence looks different depending on you, your requirements and potentially your industry.
However to us generating content excellence isn’t to create a stand alone piece of art.
It is a piece of tactical content. That engages with your audience, conveys a relevant message (maybe educational or light hearted).
And is something we can evaluate its performance. To make decisions whether to double down with more similar content. Or generate different styles and topics to resonate with your followers and industry.
Naturally for us embracing the excellence AI can offer requires a clear understanding on you and your businesses uniqueness and your USPs.
For example it is you and your team that have the deep industry knowledge, customer knowledge and product knowledge.
So, if you wanted you could give very little (poor) prompting and AI will generate okay results..
But to turbo charge the output and your opportunity add in your detail. Creating thought out prompts to enable AI to excel, benefitting you.
AI in B2B Marketing: Strategic Content Planning
Unlike an industry magazine PR campaign, we can be deeply analytical.
As I have said above we can assess each posts performance. Learn from it in real time and create more in line with what works.
Additionally tools can support you to uncover the right message and tone and publish content at the right time.
For example if your alarm goes off at 6am what is the first thing you do?
Maybe look at your phone?
In marketing our wake up time is precious and for Instagram users these early hours can be a good time to post. However that isn’t quite so good for LinkedIn as a business orientated platform.
The decisions on timing and which platform to use truly matters. As we want to get engagement when your customers and prospects are thinking work, growth and solutions.
And tools like Sprinklr can help get that content delivered to your audience at the right time.
This is how we view AI tools ability to help your B2B business:
- Analyse engagement across platforms. And interpret the sentiment.
- Identify when to post for your industry auidences.
- Suggest content focused around industry trends.
- Support the operational task of ideating, planning and creating content in line with business objectives.
Maximising Digital Reach with AI
We agree with Tequia Burt who highlighted in a LinkedIn blog that the relationship that forms organically is the strongest.
However the creation of organic content is certainly the most time consuming, but can deliver the greatest long term upside. And therefore can be your greatest opportunity and advantage as competitors don’t commit to the workload and effort.
Don’t let that stop you either. Especially if you struggle for inspiration! Whether polls, pictures, comments, blogs, thought leadership posts, infographics and case studies you can be inundated by AI with ideas to create content that connects.
Not only will it help connect and engage, great content brings value to your audience, your industry and your team members.
Consequently doing this elevates your digital activity and increases your communication.
AI in B2B Marketing Delivers Smart Content Optimisation
Content that creates good reach must resonate, be relevant and be engaging for the industries you serve. Gone are the days of launching a project from a boardroom. Letting it out into the public domain and then months later assessing how it performed.
You can start tomorrow with AI to make smart decisions and optimise your content.
AI helps achieve this balance by:
- Analysing the performance of content, its engagement and the comments sentiment. Tools like BuzzSumo let you gather the intelligence you need to make decisions.
- Get AI suggestions to optimise for engagement. There are tools out there for SEO improvements. However, using ChatGPT or Claude will give suggestions for blogs and social media.
- Identifying relevant trending topics within your sector isn’t always obvious. Tools such as Feedly, collect, analyse and prioritise what you need to see.
- Finally, using tools like Sprinklr as highlighted above to optimise the timing your content is distributed.
Leverage AI: Practical Implementation Steps
If you have read to here, hopefully any doubts or concerns about AI are disappearing. Replaced with confidence that your team can strengthen what they do with AI.
Let us look at a methodical approach to bring AI into your business and your content strategy:
1. Practical Content Audit and Planning
We need to start with a clear understanding of your current content.
We need to question its relevance to your target audience. Does it bring value to them. Help them make a purchasing decision. Is your content distributed via the best platforms for your audience at the right time.
To start using AI tools like we have discussed we have listed the ones we discuss at the end. To start with let’s discuss how we use them:
Content Performance Analysis:
Take your historical content data and feed it into AI tools. If using tools like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini part of your prompt is telling them how to act. I.e. Review this content like a data analyst.
AI can construct the data points and identify the data points around what content created engagement. And the content that did not generate engagement.
Then prompt AI to identify the data to inform content creaton. For example get feedback around blog article length, social media topics and the content format that performed best.
Gap Identification:
To understand the differences you can analyse competitor content. Therefore appreciating what formats, topics and keywords work for them.
Getting closer to their output will serve up opportunities for new content. And can highlight industry topics where your expertise and USP’s can be utilised for content.
Content Placement:
Your brand tone will differ depending on where you place your content across the different platforms. In fact compare this to body language mirroring as we build rapport.
As mastering the nuanced differences allow you to connect more with the mindset of the user. Making your content more relevant as they use that platform.
Through AI prompt questioning, its output to that and your own assessment your knowledge on what content performs will develop. Additionally you will clearly understand which content and importantly why that content differentiates you from competitors.
Alongside knowing what content creates engagement and supports business growth also learn via prompt questioning the detail on what content worked on the different platforms.
For example content on LinkedIn may take a more inspirational and leadership stance. Versus Facebook with a slightly different B2B audience who are more reactive to a friendly, supportive tone. Versus X with its conversational tone and almost live updating of activity and events.
2. Practical Content Creation and Optimisation
Now shifting from the planning and assessing what exists currently, we are ready to create.
Take your human knowledge and unique insights. Leverage AI to create scale, multiply content ideas and add personalisation for different industries and platforms. Finishing with your human oversight to deliver real world situations and authenticity.
What does this look like:
Initial Draft Generation:
With your AI prompts create the first drafts. To create tactical content that is all interconnected use a skyscraper method.
Firstly for your first piece of content prompt the creation of a detailed, informative blog post. Follow that with a prompt to use the blog sections to inform the ideation of infographics. Following that prompt for each infographic ideation to create written longer-form social media content, such as LinkedIn articles. Then use a prompt to break those into multiple short posts and polls.
From the foundations of just one blog you have creatively used the information to form many types of content to help connect and resonate with your auidence.
Right back to the generation of a draft.
Regardless of what your prompt is we find it useful to end with a key statement. ‘Ask any questions to clarify before starting’. This typically helps cover off any information from the below list you may have forgotten.
As the key to get good AI output is to have a good prompt (and the question captures any missing information).
Detailed prompt information should include:
- Detail on who the target audience is.
- What are the key messages and/or the keyword to focus on.
- Additionally, should it be a fun tone and style, formal or a thought leadership approach.
- Make sure to include key industry-specific terminology.
- Finally, what call to action may you want.
Refinement Process:
Subsequently, now AI has done its thing and created your content draft. It is time to ensure your content includes your personality, perspective and personal experience.
- In brief bring to your content your own unique experiences and industry insights.
- Add in company-specific case studies that our industry relevant.
- Furthermore, ensure technical accuracy on industry words and processes.
In fact you can even use your above information as follow up prompts. Letting the AI amend and fine tune the original piece. From there you can complete your editing and get it ready to post.
Tools We Have Highlighted
Below are the those we have mentioned in this article on AI in B2B marketing. They don’t represent an exhaustive list, either of what is available of all the software and tools we ourselves use.
However, hopefully they give a good starting point. Especially the first three being large language models to start interacting with AI.
And if you are after more AI software that can aid your business have a read through this blog, right here.
Conclusion: AI in B2B Marketing
AI in B2B marketing is not a fad, just like the internet was not a flash in the pan.
Many articles site AI as the demise of human interaction and significant future cause of job losses. However, where technology enhances what we do. Think the mobile phone for sales reps and BDM’s. And the technology improves what our teams and staff responsible for sales can do, it really does provide significant opportunity.
Therefore it is through thoughtful usage of AI tools that will move you forwards. And be confident in the knowledge that ‘people buy from people’. Doing so means AI is an integration that enhances the reach and accesibility of your team, not takes away.
It is about training and connecting your teams with AI, appreciating how to create authentic content. And what that means for engagement, relationships and growth.
Editorial process
Our articles are curated by experts in B2B business with expertise in AI. And are focused on the technological opportunities that exist for B2B businesses.
The reviews are constructed through the analysis of hundreds of actual experiences and condensed into our concise thumbs up or thumbs down format.
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James Ambel
With over a decade of B2B expertise across multiple industries and a passion for integrating new technology to elevate his ROI James’ writing allows all of this to come together. His belief is many B2B businesses could maximise their time, focus and ROI to an even higher level.
Experiment with different messaging, content formats, and communication channels to determine what resonates most effectively with your target audience. Use A/B testing and data-driven insights to refine your approach and maximise results over time.