Since the start of this year, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has spurred worldwide conversation as chatbots demonstrate human-like responses to questions and requests.
These new tools can handle everything from writing a Shakespearan sonnet to translating a doctor’s audio notes into a written insurance claim, leading to questions about how this technology will disrupt industries—including marketing. Will marketing departments suddenly become dependent on AI? Will their clients prefer advanced chatbots for crafting brand campaigns? Will generative AI one day replace copywriters?
Yet one crucial question remains largely unasked: How can AI help marketing teams target the right customer at the right time with the most effective messaging?
“The amount of data coming in is increasing exponentially as the buying journey becomes more complicated,” says Alex Southworth, Vice President and Manager for Digital Marketing Solutions at Dun & Bradstreet, the business data and analytics firm. “The number of channels a marketing team needs to engage has increased dramatically, and with each of those channels is a new data stream that requires a new way of thinking about how you’re engaging with the customer, not to mention assessing the quality of that customer.”
Chief marketing officers and other industry executives are keenly aware of this difficulty. According to the Dun & Bradstreet 9th Annual B2B Sales & Marketing Data Report, which interviewed sales, marketing, and data leaders across industries in three countries, respondents said their top concerns were all data-related: the accuracy of their customer data, the cost of third-party data, and their organization’s lack of internal analytics capabilities. Additionally, most B2B buyers are moving entirely online, bypassing direct communication with sales representatives. One report predicts that by 2025, 80 percent of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.
Going forward, marketing leaders need to adapt to stay ahead of the curve—because the companies that can provide customers with the information they want through the channels they prefer will find the most success in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.
“The only way you can really get your arms around all this is by having more data, and more accurate data, which can drive the orchestration and automation of everything you do,” says Southworth. “The CMOs that can best harness all that data and automate their processes will ultimately be the ones who succeed.”
Finding the Right Signals in the Noise
Today, marketing teams face a series of challenges on multiple fronts, including with their data. Macroeconomic uncertainties have forced companies to slash budgets, customers have become more difficult to reach through a single channel, and the regulatory environment is shifting as privacy concerns become more prevalsent. In short, data-driven sales and marketing teams must navigate the dual challenge of maintaining growth while streamlining costs in an ever-changing landscape.
So what is a CMO to do? The key is to identify and reach high-value customers with the most effective information. “You do that by targeting the right customer with the right content at the right time through the right channel,” says Southworth. “It’s the four rights.”
The landscape is expanding with an evolving list of possible channels, including phones, email, social media, content marketing, search engine optimization, search ads, and more. As a result, all that new data can help a CMO not only target specific individuals, but do so at the right time. By assessing first-party data, for example, marketing teams can look for purchase intent signals, whether it’s a return customer looking at their website for additional products or signing up for a new product demo. These are clear signals that data-driven marketers rely on. For a business, it’s a great strategy for retaining current clients and upselling them on additional services—an increasingly important strategy in uncertain times.
But to truly unlock the benefits of data-driven marketing, this behavioral data needs to be combined with larger contextual data to gain clearer insight into not only who’s buying in the B2B realm, but how and when they’re doing it. First-party data augmented by third-party data can help determine the companies these potential buyers work for, their respective level in the decision-making process, and other products they may buy or interests they have—critical information for offering the right product at the right time.
“If you just assume that every single person in a company is exactly the same, you won't achieve your objective,” Southworth says. “You have to understand them as individuals, including what their roles are, where they sit within the organization, and their behavior online. That leads you to the right next logical interaction.”
This is account-based marketing, the catchall term for more customized marketing strategies, brought down to the individual level—a business-to-individual sales approach that’s able to offer a specific customer what they’re looking for in the most compelling way.
“Ultimately, you’re trying to drive better experiences for individuals, because it’s the individual who is playing a large role in the purchase of a solution,” says Southworth. “You want to understand their needs, where they are in their buying journey, and how you can help them.”
Augmenting Data to Offer Personalized Experiences
As the digital world abandons third-party cookies due to privacy concerns, augmenting first-party data—and making the most of it—is going to be a primary concern for B2B companies. The marketing teams that can adapt to rapidly evolving customer expectations by embracing enhanced data and technology capabilities will find themselves ahead of the curve.
One of the primary ways companies are making the most of the changing data landscape is by partnering with outside firms. This can result in both enhanced analytics of existing data, and the ability to merge that data with external sources to help pinpoint new customers and prevent churn in current clients.
Dun & Bradstreet provides an off-the-shelf data platform solution called D&B Rev.UpTM ABX that enables customers to do both of those things, by harnessing all their own data and enriching it with their external data sets, all in one place and in a privacy-compliant way. With that data, a company can then activate certain segments of their potential or current customer base by targeting the most effective channels for a given person, and offering more customized information in the process.
“We are just getting better and better at applying data and doing real-time optimization in regards to how we engage with people,” says Southworth. “The segments that we’re targeting are moving from really big, like a thousand companies, to a handful of companies, with maybe even specific individuals that we’re targeting. We’re getting more refined and granular with that.”
D&B Rev.Up ABX also offers dashboard analytics to help measure the effectiveness of marketing activities, adding another powerful layer within the database. CMOs can then easily see the impact of their targeted efforts to move the needle on a buyer’s journey on everything from general product education to a specific sales opportunity.
“Having that reporting snapshot is key,” says Southworth. “It enables CMOs to not only understand what the current state of their efforts are, but also what they’ve done in terms of performance.”
All of this brings us back to generative AI and how CMOs will be able to truly harness it to reach customers with the right content at the right time in the right channel. Imagine you’re trying to reach a VP at a company, and your B2B data shows they like golf. Using that knowledge, an automated AI program and image generator can place golf imagery in a personalized email written by a chatbot that offers key insights into a product that person may have researched on the company’s website. It’s using data in an intelligent way to deliver the best possible experience for a customer, and it’s all done automatically.
“AI is not only being used to drive who you’re targeting, when you’re targeting them, and on what channel, but it will soon be able to create the content you’re targeting them with as well,” Southworth says. “Ultimately, that’s going to drive more revenue and better interactions at scale—truly a business-to-individual experience in the B2B world.”
This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Dun & Bradstreet.
