GenAI offers companies significant benefits. Marketing is one of the areas with the greatest potential. We explain here why GenAI has what it takes to become the new success formula for effective B2B marketing.
The year 2023 was characterised by the hype around ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). This initial hype is now being followed by a new phase: the productive implementation of these powerful efficiency levers. Potential use cases are being scrutinised for their practical suitability. Strategically minded managers are calculating the benefits. Corporations are adapting their strategies.
How great is the potential of GenAI in marketing? The answer is particularly high. According to a study by Bain, marketing and PR are among the five functions with the greatest potential productivity gains. Here, GenAI-based automation saves an average estimated 32% of working time. This is time that is effectively gained which marketing teams can use for things like new growth initiatives.
GenAI tools can improve employee productivity by 100% (BCG). Let's take a closer look at what's behind this and why this technology is so exciting for marketing managers.
GenAI Adds Value
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in themselves are nothing new. However, the new chatbots – created on the basis of large language models – make the power of AI available to users without any prior knowledge for the first time, simply by entering instructions in natural language ("prompts"). In addition, unlike "classic" AI, GenAI does not require any task-specific training.
These two points explain the incredibly rapid triumph of GenAI, even in business. With GenAI, companies can automate processes, generate content more efficiently, enhance their customer support, analyse extensive data, personalise interactions and much more. According to a Google study, GenAI could increase annual gross value added in Germany by 330 billion euros if the technology is implemented in more than half of companies.
GenAI Offers More Than Just Cost Reductions
By no means is efficiency only about reducing costs by cutting the number of employees. It's true that job cuts at large corporations have recently been justified with this argument, but this is only one side of the story. After all, cost optimisation alone is not a sustainable growth strategy.
The arguably much greater advantage of GenAI lies in increasing the productivity of the existing workforce: on the one hand, because employees are relieved of repetitive tasks by intelligent little helpers and can devote themselves to more productive topics; on the other, because they can also use GenAI for completely new approaches in their own work.
The technology does not (yet) come close to human creativity. But it can help us harness our creativity much more effectively. And your B2B company should capitalise on this productivity boost.
GenAI Solves Current Marketing Challenges
Marketing belongs to the domains with the highest GenAI potential. This is because the possible applications in marketing are especially broad. GenAI can help with the optimisation of strategy development as well as with the implementation of projects, the analysis of marketing data and the creation of frameworks, briefings and content. This means that the technology helps to solve key current pain points for marketing teams, like:
- Scarce Capacities: In times of a shortage of skilled labour, the productivity gain from GenAI is extremely welcome.
- Time-Consuming Content Creation: GenAI brings new efficiency to content processes.
- Poor Performance: GenAI can improve KPIs such as lead volume and conversion.
- Lack of Automation: GenAI automates marketing workflows.
- Unutilised Data Treasures: GenAI helps to analyse data more efficiently.
- Digital Marketing isn’t Scaling: GenAI helps create a strategically integrated approach.
GenAI Optimises B2B Marketing
The Strongest Marketing Use Cases
The amazing capabilities of GenAI become immediately apparent once you start interacting with the chatbots, for both the private sphere and in business. The tools are extremely helpful as brainstorming partners – after all, you can have a perfectly normal conversation with them. Chatbots can also take on a buddy role and act as a virtual team member, for example as an assistant who supports projects with tips or additional work. But what about more marketing-specific topics?
McKinsey asked managers this exact question in a study. For individual applications, they indicated whether they see a significant or very significant impact of GenAI. The use case with the most mentions is lead identification (60%). This is followed by marketing optimisation (55%), personalisation (53%), dynamic content (50%), up- and cross-selling (50%) and success analytics and marketing analytics (45% each).
Of course, GenAI cannot manage marketing in your B2B company on its own – at least as things stand today. But if the marketing specialists in your team integrate the technology into their workflows in a targeted way and use it as a booster for their existing expertise, amazing productivity gains are possible. BCG has quantified the potential optimisations in B2B in its own analysis. Here are the impressive results:
100% Improvement in Lead Generation
30% Improvement in Lead Management Capacity
500% Improvement in Time-to-Market
100% Improvement in Employee Productivity
100% Improvements in Cross-Selling and Upselling-Rate
50% Improvement in Lead-to-Sale Conversion
Getting Started with GenAI: from Strategy to Risk Management
The possibilities of GenAI for B2B marketing are almost infinite. The important thing now is to identify the applications that will really benefit your team – and implement them quickly. A whole range of use cases can already be easily implemented today.
That's exactly how we do it at &weekly. Based on the experience of our marketing team, our new GenAI guide explains how this works practically in individual marketing areas:
- In strategy development and planning, GenAI helps with researching target markets, target group segmentation and optimising campaign strategy.
- Content and design benefit from efficient creation, SEO optimisation and idea generation.
- For campaigns, GenAI optimises the bidding strategy, improves forecasting models for paid campaigns and develops sophisticated engagement strategies based on social listening.
- Automation and CRM also see extensive gains with GenAI, such as in data analysis and reporting or workflow automation.
To give you a strategic overview, we have differentiated over 20 use cases in our GenAI guide according to the expertise required, the effort involved and the potential efficiency gains available. You can even find dedicated GenAI solutions for some of these applications on the market.
When using GenAI, however, you should bear a few basic considerations in mind, such as risk management. After all, chatbots aren't perfect. They can make false statements ("hallucinating"), which is why GenAI results must always be checked by a human.
Want to find out more about GenAI strategy, risk management and the best use cases for B2B marketing? Then check out our new GenAI guide with over twenty GenAI applications that can double your employee productivity.
