B2B buyers demand personalized servics and constant engagement through the purchase journey, AI-powered tools can come handy to meet these demands
Between initial product researches, the point of purchase, there are several digital interactions that take place. When AI is used correctly, it can go a long way towards converting these visitors to loyal buyers.
In its new series of AI reports by Forrester Research, it is clear that Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the game for B2B marketers.
Today B2B marketers have more tools than ever, which are used for engaging customers as well as building lasting relationships. However, buyers are demanding a higher relevance in the information and expect personalized assistance. B2B marketers can leverage AI to design effective customer and marketing communications that have the ability to turn traditional methods upside down.
Unlike traditional marketing methods – where the standard practice is to pick a campaign, message, or promotion to create audiences after selecting attributes from a CRM system – appealing to the B2B buyers is reverse. To truly engage buyers, it is essential for B2B sellers to understand that customers need experiences and messages that are tailored for them — start with the audience and not the message. Experts believe that this is a complicated approach and requires an updated mindset and access to more insights and are gathered from advanced analytics technologies.
The B2B consumer journey is not a direct line between a search and a Buy button. According to Forrester / B2BecNews Q2 2018 Global B2B Buy-Side Online Survey, 75% of global B2B marketers with a lead-nurturing program believe that on an average it takes five or more nurturing interactions before sales qualify a marketing lead as being ready to pursue.
With the availability of extensive digital content for B2B buyers to navigate through, B2B sellers can leverage AI tools like text analytics and national language processing (NLP) for learning about the customers’ interests. This will help generate better and more useful dialogues with them.
AI-powered chatbots can identify customers’ personality traits and understand their emotional responses regarding a product selection and service and then refer it to the most appropriate website content or even a sales representative.
AI tools can develop more insights into the B2B buyer’s interests, and that helps a seller engage better with customers. AI technology then builds more valuable insights with improved customer engagements, only making the insights better. This, in turn, helps the seller produce more relevant dialogues and content.
Experts believe that through their journey, B2B buyers look for on-going engagement. The element of engagement powers the relationships after the sale is made and it further fuels customer renewals. These emotional connections have proven to increase loyalty and delightful experiences that lead to advocacy.
To improve engagement with customers and prospects, experts suggest using AI technology to meet the existing challenges, by uncovering preferences to drive clicks and conversions. They also need to design experiences based on those insights to connect with customers and keep them engaged.
