AI Digital Marketing Guide for B2Bs

PART 1 – What Is Marketing AI?

Artificial intelligence refers to machines that humans program to think and learn like them. In marketing, the ultimate goal of AI is to perform tasks that once required human intelligence:

• Analysis
• High-speed production
• Repetitive tasks
• Informed decision making

AI systems can range from simple, rule-based algorithms to complex, self-learning systems that can adapt and evolve over time.

What Is Generative AI for Business?

MIT News defines Generative AI as “a machine-learning model that is trained to create new data. … A generative AI system is one that learns to generate more objects that look like the data it was trained on.”

The technology has been marinating for 5 decades, mostly out of the public eye. However, ChatGPT took society by storm in 2023, making AI B2B lead generation tools accessible to everyone. 

And, yes, these tools are professionally viable – they go beyond just generating bizarre images and poetry. Have we prompted an AI to illustrate a mascot brawl between Grimace and the Kool-Aid Man? Absolutely. Does AI offer more than a quick source of amusement? Also yes.

Is There Room for AI in B2B Marketing? 

Hubspot’s survey of over 1,000 marketers found that 64% use AI tools in some form during their day-to-day. At least some of them must have been B2B marketers, right? 

Writing about niche or complex topics is tougher for AI, but there are still other ways it can serve you. Whether it’s … 

• assisting with email subject lines,
• organizing data into tables for your monthly report, or
• splicing long-form content into bite-sized social posts

… GenAI equals manpower.

Examples of Marketing Automation

You might already be using artificial intelligence in your marketing and not even realizing it. 

There are a ton of ways AI is seeping into marketing automation and strategy – this actually started many years ago. Think about it: 

• Email campaigns: Do you have certain workflows created for website visitors or as a trade show follow-up? 
• Social scheduling: If you write a social media post and schedule it to publish later, AI is already a part of your work process. 
• Chat support: Using the kind that helps you find what you’re looking for on a website, not the tech support kind, means you have already been interacting with AI. 
  
  

Examples of Generative AI

AI can be put to use in a variety of ways, depending on the results you hope to see and how you want to use AI to make your workday easier. Using AI for content creation can be a helpful way to free up time for other tasks – but that is only true if you know how to prompt AI correctly. 

There are various benefits of AI in digital marketing. Many are obvious. Others – not so much. The six AI prompt cases explain what these tools do to streamline the completion of your to-do list: 

Example: You will act as a B2B marketer. Write a blog post about AI. 

Example: Act as an SEO expert. Read this page and develop a list of 20 SEO keywords.

Example: Synthesize a mission statement from the comments provided.

Example: Rewrite this email in a professional tone using best practices.

Example: List 3 topics this article could be classified as in a marketing automation system.

Example: What are the advantages of digital marketing over traditional marketing?

(If none of this quite makes sense, don’t worry. Check out the Real-World Examples of AI in Marketing section below.)

PART 2 – Pros & Cons of AI in Digital Marketing

The opinions on AI, much like electricity or the typewriter when they were first introduced, are many. Many people dive into AI uninformed or half-informed. Its true potential falls to the wayside when the focus is on replacing workers or stealing intellectual property. 

As with any fledgling technology, AI marketing automation and content support has its good and bad:
 

Pros of AI 💚

• Improved efficiency: AI can research, write, and analyze for you at an insane pace – without even needing a pee break. You can share your notes or existing published asset and let AI spin it into a fresh, new piece. You can’t deny the ROI opportunity.
  
  
• Enhanced decision-making: AI makes gathering, sorting, and evaluating data go quickly and in copious amounts. This in turn allows for better use of patterns and insights in forming your strategy.
  
  
• Higher job satisfaction: The use of AI to handle repetitive, non-intensive work leaves more time for work that still requires humans to complete. Workers who get to focus more on big-brain tasks and relationship building are more likely to be productive and less likely to seek other jobs.
   
• Better customer experiences: AI can personalize interactions, recommend products or services based on user behavior, and provide timely support. When customers have a more tailored and satisfying customer journey, they tend to stick around.

Cons of AI 💔

• Repetition: GenAI compiles words based on the content on which creators trained it, so you’ll become familiar with certain go-to phrases and structure in AI outputs. You can give AI situational context and request a certain writing style, but results are often still too “by the book” for compelling marketing content.
  
  
• Easy to misuse: In the wrong hands, AI has a crippling effect on long-term success. We discuss bad uses of AI in Part 5.
  
  
• Data privacy: AI uses your inputs to continually train its model. Sharing sensitive trade secrets, customer data, or personal info could be dangerous.
  
  
• Ethical/legal concerns: You’ll need to watch out for outputs that are a little too similar to other sites’ published works. For example, very few image-making AIs let you use outputs commercially, as they’re trained largely on other artists’ copyrighted content. Finally, be aware that AI learns by “consuming” existing web content and thus has shown creepy bias at times.
  
  

PART 3 – How Will AI Change B2B Marketing?

While AI’s initial appearance brought fears of job loss for marketers, the fears are largely unfounded. However, marketers who embrace AI as an opportunity to streamline tasks and better manage time will see their proactive approach bear fruit in terms of ROI and content performance. 

Today’s availability of GenAI is creating new opportunities for buyers who prefer a different approach to research. The predictions and hysteria from sellers and industry experts underscore the transformative impact of AI on marketing, driving both opportunities and challenges for brands. 

Predictions for 2024 and beyond are littering every tech and marketing publication, but we’ll throw our own extensive training and experience into the fray. With GenAI platforms multiplying like bunnies, the question is HOW you should be using it when creating and executing a marketing strategy. 

Here are three changes we expect to see as AI becomes more integrated into digital marketing: 

1. The Storm (of Content) Is Coming

By 2026, a substantial majority of creative professionals are expected to use GenAI daily, leading to an increase in Chief Marketing Officer spending on strategic creative endeavors. This trend signifies the growing importance of GenAI in producing creative-yet-personalized marketing content.

In a study published in February 2024, 72% of marketers surveyed admit to using AI, although a third of those say they are doing so without guidelines. Those uses range from research for headlines and keywords to brainstorming and writing new content. 

Already it’s obvious that some companies aren’t using it in good faith, and they’re polluting the internet with a poopstorm of mass-produced, surface-level content. This won’t provide long-term ROI for most.

2. Reduced Organic Traffic

Organic traffic any visitor that arrives at your website via nonpaid search engine results. The use of GenAI in search engines like Google could reduce organic site traffic by 18-64% as more people get answers directly from an in-engine AI tool. (In other words, they’ll get an answer without having to click into the resource’s website.)

This could push brands to focus more on conversion-oriented content and reinforce traditional channels like email marketing.

As natural language processing gets better and new research tools come out, users will feel more comfortable trusting in the answers AI gives them. Plus, as the rise in voice-to-text searches has shown, a more conversational approach to research has proven popular. 

3. Integration Everywhere

In the time it took us to create this page, three of our most-used marketing tools – iStock, HubSpot Content Hub, and Canva – released or vastly expanded on existing AI tools. So, yeah, things are moving quickly.

And of course, there’s the trickle of AI-influenced features into search engines. Expect AI to continue making searches more intuitive and accurate. It may even help detect and filter out low-quality content.

Whether for marketers or for end users, the goal of AI integration is to provide better results with less effort.

PART 4 – Ways to Use AI

Artificial intelligence has company decision-makers salivating. Team leaders and boots-on-the-ground workers are seeking AI tools for tasks that are repetitive, data-driven, and predictable. 

So, how can you use AI in marketing situations?

AI’s Hard Skills

Artificial intelligence can assist you with various marketing efforts and the routine tasks that come with them. With AI and automation, some tools can streamline repetitive tasks, augment human creativity, and more!

• Content optimization for search engine visibility: AI can blend keywords and other SEO suggestions to get you found in Google Search.
• Test subject lines and copy variations: AI can see which keywords, formats, and variations would work best for SEO.
• Amplify content: AI can reword or add to content to improve your writing. 
• Repurpose your content: AI can rework old content to become relevant and fresh. 
• Translate for your growing audience: AI can translate your content to resonate with a certain audience, whether that be translating for language in another country or slang for a younger demographic.
• Content ideation and brainstorming: AI can give you a starting point for your ideation. This is especially helpful for those who experience chronic writer’s block!
• Outlining and mapping thoughts: Applications such as ChatGPT can help organize your thoughts while making them strategic and relevant to your goals.
  
  

AI’s Soft Skills

There are many key "soft" benefits of AI tools in marketing. These are the big-picture perks that can improve your budgeting, growth, and team and customer happiness:

1. Drives content production costs down
2. Automating repetitive tasks can actually humanize brands by freeing up time to get creative
3. Predicts consumer needs and behaviors, offering actionable insights from data
4. Increases employee happiness – reduces time spent on mundane tasks
5. Gets more out of existing technology stacks

There’s always more to learn about our robot friends. Here are a few options for expanding your company’s knowledge and AI strategy:

• Listen and read (a lot): There are various resources available to learn more about AI. For example, we recommend The Marketing AI Show, hosted by the Marketing AI Institute.
  
  
• Find those with stories to share: Listen to others’ experiences with AI, especially at companies of a similar size or industry. Search for a community, such as those on Slack, to interact with people who have the same interests/questions as you.
  
  
• Avoid the "hacks" and quick fixes: The best tools are the ones that will most likely require more effort. Be patient and learn alongside the AI.
  
  
• Pilot your first use case: Identify why you’re looking to use an AI tool, and jump in and try it! Dive into free/trial versions of platforms your company is considering to see if they meet your expectations. If the tool doesn’t comply with your use case, move on to another.
  
  
• Fail fast: The best way to learn is from your mistakes. Try new things and accept failure.
  
  

PART 5 – Ways NOT to Use AI

AI is not a sole solution. Let us repeat: AI is not a sole solution.

Although it can be useful, it can’t replicate content the way a human would. Human creativity and connection are essential to telling your company’s story – and AI can’t do this alone. Here are some examples of why AI can’t run solo:

Examples of Bad AI Use

You knew it was inevitable. As soon as folks got their hands on AI and brought the wrong mindset, there’d be much worse consequences than images with seven-fingered hands. (Though those are grotesque, too.)

Offenses in B2B AI tool usage are happening daily, from the C-suite down to entry-level marketers. Here’s how you shouldn’t use AI in marketing:

• To lay off staff – Using AI as a “your position is no longer needed” excuse is 99% certain to backfire. Creativity and human insight are crucial in selling to B2B decision makers who value relationship building during the long sales cycle. While AI can foster productivity and innovation, it can’t sense nuanced customer needs and emotions.
  
  
• Churn out nonstop crap – Just because you can’t force employees to work 80 hours per week doesn’t mean you should jump at the chance to make AI do so. Publishing too much anything – whether it’s blog posts, promotional emails, or LinkedIn posts – will dilute your brand message. You’ll overwhelm your audience (and Google’s search algorithm) with low-value, repetitive content that looks just like everyone else’s.
  
  
• Build your strategy for you – Don’t devise a marketing strategy completely from AI suggestions. While AI can provide valuable data insights and suggest direction, you should drive the core strategy based on company-specific needs and goals. Follow your unique buyer persona, business growth focuses, and past successes.
  
  
• Act as an entire customer support team – While chatbots can efficiently handle routine inquiries, relying on it exclusively can result in a lack of personalization and missed nuances in customer interactions. Trust your team to address complex issues and provide the empathy and understanding that AI can’t duplicate.
  
  
• As a single source of truth – Using AI as a fact-checker is like crossing a rural road with your eyes closed: You’ll probably get away with it, but … just don’t. Even the vaunted ChatGPT spits out falsehoods on occasion, and it’s more likely to if your topic is obscure. Also, remember that AI systems can have inherent biases or limitations based on the data used to train them.

Where AI Needs Humans

Don't let the robots take over just yet (or ever). AI doesn't function at its full potential without a capable human steering it.

AI needs the human touch for:

• Prompt crafting: Without humans, there would be no artificial intelligence. Without humans to prompt an AI, there would be no response. Drafting thorough and clear directions will help the AI generate a useful response.
  
  
• Use case identification: Before using AI tools, you should have a reason for using them. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, neither will the AI. Therefore, you won’t receive the response you’re looking for.
  
  
• KPI/OKR/strategy development: You know your company’s goals and strategies the best out of anyone. Providing an AI with your KPI/OKR/strategy will help the AI draft specific and relevant responses that couldn’t be accomplished otherwise. 
  
  
• Personality, humor, nuance: Artificial intelligence struggles to detect certain parts of human communication, including tone of voice and sarcasm. Therefore, after an AI outputs a response, human editing is necessary for the content to align with your personalized style.
  
  
• Make a human connection: Artificial intelligence is not sophisticated enough to convey emotion and directly engage with customers. This would include cases such as communicating a product recall or reassuring a partner that their business is essential. Edit your responses to include emotion and empathy.
  
  
• Facts and accuracy: AI can’t necessarily detect what is true and what isn’t. Review and edit your content to avoid copyright problems and misleading statements. 
  
  
• Ensure lack of bias: Artificial intelligence can’t detect bias, discrimination, or stereotyping. Review your responses for each of these elements.
  
  

PART 6 – AI Marketing Tools

To become indispensable, you must adapt to internal and customer expectations.

There are over 11,000 AI tools at your disposal – and most aren't out to get you! This number continues to grow daily with the rapid development of technology.

Content creation tools generally assist with images, videos, copy, and advertisements. 

Content optimization tools will help you reach your target audience using SEO (search engine optimization), links, meta tags, and more.

• MarketMuse: Suggests content your brand should be creating
• LongShot AI: Writes credible content for SEO
• Research AI: Evaluates content performance

Content promotion tools distribute content through various platforms.

• Hootsuite: Popular social-scheduling tool now offers OwlyWriter caption generator
• Rasa.io: Helps retarget emails
• Lately.ai: Generates custom social content/evaluates performance
  
  

AI Tools We Haven’t Mentioned Yet

We know that LLMs are predictors, but what do they predict? There are four mechanisms for effectively using LLMs:

Prompt engineering: Prompts can complete various tasks, but there are still considerations when composing prompts:

Never insert confidential information into a prompt. AI can’t ensure that your information will be secure. In June 2023, over 100,000 ChatGPT accounts were hacked and made available to the public.

Building a prompt library can help you store prompts and their results. A few prompt library resources include:

• Evernote
• OneNote
• Joplin
• SharePoint

Prompt deployment: It can become strenuous to copy and paste your prompts repeatedly. When you find good prompts, work with your technology team to write code and build systems around your prompts. 

Fine-tuning models: A fine-tuned model is tailored to a specific task. Karen the Editor is one AI model trained specifically to correct grammar in more sophisticated pieces of writing. Another common use for fine-tuned models is evaluating a blog and its articles to identify the author’s tone of voice.

App construction: You can use AI to perform complex tasks such as constructing an entire app or novel. This way, anyone and everyone can be a developer. 

Remember -- using prompt databases comes with unique challenges and concerns, including: 

• Introducing bias (which is already risky with AI writing and research)
• Overfitting the prompt to the task and missing information or perspective
• Complexity as the large language model evolves – prompting must as well
  
  

Real-World Examples of AI in Marketing

B2B companies are already effectively using AI in their marketing strategies. We polled a few to share their real-time experiences with the effectiveness of strategic AI:

• Content Analysis for Brand Voice: ChatGPT is effective for content analysis and accurate representation of brand voice and terminology use. This boosts authenticity and helps cut down on time needed for humans to write, edit, refine for the same results. 
  
  
• Data Management: ChatGPT is also useful for complex formula creation to assist with data management and organization. Something that could take an individual a significant amount of time is greatly reduced by streamlining the process with a repeatable formula
  
  
• Social Media: Bouncing ideas off of GenAI for posts can help a user refine the message and find the right tone and flow without spending too much time reaching the finish line. 
  
  
• Brainstorming: Finding new content ideas and taking existing content and repurposing to maximize its value can be time-consuming. With the availability of GenAI, the process does not need to include multiple staff members. One staff member can “bounce ideas” off of ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini and generate multiple potential opportunities. 
  
  
• Note-taking: Fathom is a great example of GenAI that can be integrated into multiple virtual meeting platforms to take notes and set action items. The app also provides accurate records of who said what and who took on what responsibilities during the meeting, so participants can fully focus on the topics at hand and still come away with a detailed account of what occurred. This also streamlines recap emails and accountability for all involved.
   

Surprise – You’re Already Using AI Marketing

Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines smart, as described by Demis Hassabis, co-founder & CEO of Google DeepMind. Similarly, AI in marketing is the science of making marketers bright, as stated by Paul Roetzer, CEO of Marketing AI Institute. Artificial intelligence is learning what we’re doing so you don’t have to work as hard!

Your life is already AI-assisted. So is your work day. .Your marketing will be too, and probably already is. 

Many of the things you do daily use AI technology:

AI will begin to disrupt your business’ marketing activities – if it hasn’t already. Getting familiar and accustomed to AI will keep your marketing relevant and help your team keep pace. 

The State of AI as a Long-Form Content Tool

Generative AI is currently unable to replicate the depth and nuance of human thought, especially new thoughts. When it comes to crafting niche, technical content that resonates with engineers, the irreplaceable touch of a seasoned human writer becomes more apparent than ever.

Your prompting skills certainly impact the results, but even with significant context given to tools such as Jasper and ChatGPT 4, they just can't beat our writers yet.

They seem to do a great job pumping out "fluff" content, but when you are looking for the substance, the actual answer to your question, it's hard to find and very thin.

AI falls short in comprehending and reproducing intricate technical concepts, which is where human writers excel by distilling them into easily understandable and captivating narratives. Humans continue to bridge the gap between engineers and the wider audience by translating complex jargon into plain language.

Unlike AI, human writers bring creativity and innovation to content creation. They can provide completely new concepts, fresh perspectives, and unique angles, ensuring that content remains engaging and thought-provoking.

Effective Content Marketing = Human Empathy

Human writers offer the invaluable quality of empathy. They can anticipate the questions, concerns, and interests of their audience, tailoring content to address these needs effectively.

B2B engineers and procurement teams, like any other audience, appreciate content that speaks directly to their pain points and aspirations. This empathetic approach, born from human understanding and experience, is critical in building trust and rapport with the target audience. This remains challenging for AI, which cannot empathize.

PART 7 – How to Prompt an AI

Short prompts are one-word statements that an AI can identify. There are four short prompts to use with ChatGPT for AI marketing and content creation applications:

• Continue: Move forward after reaching the character limit (referenced further on).
• Expand: Receive more details from a response. A nice way to generate long-form content.
• Analyze: Break down text.
• Summarize: Explain text in a nutshell.

When you want to use a short prompt in ChatGPT:

Advanced Prompt Crafting

Ready for more? There are advanced AI prompting methods to use with the 4.0, paid version of GPT. 

How to Ethically Use AI Prompting to Write Content

Artificial intelligence is a new technology that we’re all trying to figure out. Even governments are starting to step in and regulate AI. For example, in June 2023, the European Union approved the EU AI Act, the first regulation for the AI industry.

Even in its infancy, there are ethical concerns we’re starting to wrestle with when it comes to artificial intelligence and marketing, including: 

• Plagiarism: Ensure your work is original and cited. Don't make AI prompts for blog posts your entire personality.
  
  
• Contextual understanding: An AI may not comprehend context, cultural nuances, or ethical considerations like a human would. Evaluate responses to ensure they make sense.
  
  
• Bias and sensitivity: An AI may resent filtering bias, stereotypes, and harmful contexts. Make sure your prompts and responses use inclusive language.
  
  
• Misinformation: Do not prompt an AI with misinformation and expect it to be corrected. Verify that all information is accurate when offered a response.
  
  
• Safety and harm: Avoid prompts that mention self-harassment, violence, or illegal activities. Use positive language when prompting an AI.
  
  

PART 8 – AI in Sales

AI technology is most famous for churning out skin-deep blog posts and images of people with mangled hands. Despite that rep, you’ll find it can be a useful B2B sales tool.

Merging AI into day-to-day sales efforts, it may seem like an unnecessary step – selling is all about relationships, right? The truth is, AI can be a valuable sales resource because of what it doesn’t do.

AI is not prone to:

• The human fear of rejection while reaching out
• Lack of general efficiency due to kids/appointments/traffic
• Lack of motivation to work 24/7/365 to meet an outreach quota

These are all qualities humans have yet to perfect. 

You might already be using these tools in the form of marketing and sales automation. For example, you can set up triggers that tell the platform to automatically release a follow-up to a potential lead in a certain timeframe or after they take a certain action. AI also can be assigned the task of reporting and data mining and will accomplish said tasks with accuracy and within a timely manner. 

Can Generative AI Be a Helpful Sales Assistant?

AI is also great as an assistant to capture notes for you efficiently and without additional cost. Fathom, for example, is an AI assistant that logs into meetings on Microsoft Teams or Google Meet with you, attributes comments and action items to the relevant speakers, and provides a detailed transcript after you log out.

Here are a few other examples of AI that can be helpful in sales (remember though, there are tons out there and more introduced regularly):

HubSpot Tools & AI Integration

One of the cool features of sequences in HubSpot is the ability to automatically assign tasks. 

Let's say you have three emails going out in 10 days – you can set an automated task to remind you to make a phone call to the customer in between.

Furthermore, sequences can be sent directly from your inbox if you're using the HubSpot sales extension in Gmail or Outlook, which is particularly handy if you work primarily via your email client rather than in HubSpot. 

Then we have the workflows tool which, while a little trickier to personalize, is great for less obvious leads – someone you're unsure of, or someone who converts using a Gmail account, from whom you want to glean more information. 

Internally, workflows can cut down on those admin tasks that sales teams dread, and automate repetitive tasks, such as, among other things:

• Creating contact records 
• Setting up tasks
• Changing property values

The playbook is another internal tool (at the Enterprise level) that provides a script for sales reps to follow during calls. It populates questions automatically, which is especially useful during long discovery and exploratory calls. You can also use it to change and update properties on contact and deal records.

The Sales Enablement dashboard is another area where AI can boost the efforts of the company’s sales reps. This dashboard offers the sales team a central location of organized data. It not only tracks daily tasks and suggests next steps for leads at various points in the buyer’s journey, but also allows for personalized organization to best suit each user. 

Recognizing the importance of different data and information modules to your sales staff helps set them up for success on a daily basis. Hubspot does that – efficiently. 

Create email sequences, assign call tasks, and set general task reminders into your process using this dashboard – so none of the day’s important tasks are forgotten. 

For more on how AI is helpful to Hubspot users, consider the following resources: 

• How the HubSpot Blog Team Uses AI
• 17 AI SEO Tools and How to Use AI [New Data]

AI in Digital Marketing: Your Next Solution? The integration of AI in marketing is a reality, whether you’re doing it or not. The most successful digital marketers will be those who leverage this powerful technology to enhance their processes (without losing quality). Treat AI as the world’s brightest intern on his first day at the job, and it’ll actually increase your value as a marketer.  AI changes weekly with ever-evolving capabilities and the release of new platforms. Partnering with an agency that has AI expertise may be your best option for keeping up. Or, continue to educate your in-house team on the efficiencies and risks of AI! To get started, see our free webinar on how to use (and not use) AI in marketing: