Artificial intelligence (AI) can help you understand and reach your customers better. AI can help you find out what your customers want, how they feel, and what they do. You can use this information to make your marketing more personal and effective.
Check out this article to learn how AI can help you know your B2B customers better.
Know your goals and data
Before you use AI, you need to know your goals, audience, and KPIs. You also need to collect and organize data from different sources, like web, social media, CRM, surveys, and feedback. AI can help you with data work, but it can’t replace your judgment or writing skills.
Some AI tools that can help you with data collection and analysis are:
- HubSpot: A CRM platform that integrates with various data sources and provides insights on customer behavior, satisfaction, and loyalty.
- Google Analytics: A web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic, conversions, and performance.
- SurveyMonkey: An online survey platform that helps you create and distribute surveys, collect responses, and analyze data.
Know your tools
AI is not one thing, but many things that can do different tasks. You need to know the different types of AI tools and how they can help you with your goals.
Some common AI tools are:
Natural language processing (NLP): This lets machines understand and make text and speech. You can use NLP for chatbots, sentiment analysis, content creation, and personalization.
Computer vision: This lets machines see and understand images and videos. You can use computer vision for image search, face recognition, product recommendation, and augmented reality.
Machine learning (ML): This lets machines learn from data and get better without being told what to do. You can use ML for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, media optimization, and lead generation.
Some AI tools that use these technologies are:
- ChatGPT: An AI-powered text generator that can write anything from blog posts to emails to social media captions.
- DeepBrain AI: An AI video creation platform that can convert text to video in minutes using photo-realistic avatars.
- Surfer SEO: An AI content writing tool that helps you optimize your content for SEO and rank higher on Google.
Know your customer journey
A customer journey map shows the steps a customer takes from awareness to loyalty. It helps you find the problems, needs, and feelings of your customers at each stage. AI can help you make customer journey maps that use real-time data and feedback from your customers. AI can also help you improve the customer journey by giving personalized offers, content, and experiences at the right time and place.
Some AI tools that can help you with customer journey mapping are:
- Fullstory: A digital experience platform that records and analyzes user interactions on your website or app.
- Zapier: An automation tool that connects different apps and services and triggers actions based on events or conditions.
- Beacons AI: A landing page builder that helps you create personalized pages for your social media followers.
Know what your customers are saying
Social listening is when you watch and analyze online conversations about your brand, product, or topic. It helps you find out what your customers are saying, feeling, and expecting from you. AI can help you do social listening better by using NLP and computer vision to handle a lot of data from different sources, like social media, blogs, forums, and reviews. AI can also help you get useful insights from social data, like sentiment analysis, trend detection, influencer identification, and crisis management.
Some AI tools that can help you with social listening are:
- Hootsuite: A social media management platform that helps you monitor and engage with your audience across multiple channels.
- Brandwatch: A social intelligence platform that helps you analyze and understand online conversations about your brand, industry, or competitors.
- BuzzSumo: A content marketing tool that helps you discover and analyze the most popular content and influencers in your niche.
Know your long and short-term goals
You need to balance your long-term and short-term goals when you plan and run your marketing campaigns. Long-term goals are about brand awareness, loyalty, and advocacy. Short-term goals are about sales, conversions, and retention.
AI can help you match your campaigns with both types of goals by using ML to optimize your budget, channel, message, and measurement. AI can also help you test and try different things to find the best mix for your campaigns.
Some AI tools that can help you with campaign optimization are:
- Phrasee: An AI copywriting tool that helps you generate and test the best email subject lines, headlines, and CTAs for your campaigns.
- AdEspresso: An AI advertising tool that helps you create and optimize Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads for your campaigns.
- Optimizely: An AI experimentation platform that helps you run and analyze A/B tests and multivariate tests for your website, app, or product.
Know what your customers will do
Predictive analytics is when you use data mining, statistics, and ML to guess what will happen in the future based on past data. It helps you predict customer behavior, preferences, and needs before they happen.
AI can help you use predictive analytics to target your customers better by using ML to group your customers based on different things, like demographics, psychographics, behavior patterns, and purchase history. AI can also help you make your marketing messages more personal by using NLP to make relevant and engaging content for each customer group.
Some AI tools that can help you with predictive analytics are:
- [Marketo]: A marketing automation platform that helps you nurture and convert your leads with personalized emails and landing pages.
- [Salesforce Einstein]: An AI-powered CRM platform that helps you predict and improve sales outcomes with smart insights and recommendations.
Know how your customers feel
A customer feedback loop is a system that gets, looks at, and acts on customer feedback to make products, services, and experiences better. It helps you measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy, and find areas for improvement.
AI can help you make a customer feedback loop by using NLP and computer vision to handle and sort customer feedback from different sources, like surveys, reviews, social media, and chatbots. AI can also help you act on customer feedback by using ML to rank and fix customer problems, and give suggestions and rewards to keep and please customers.
Here are some possible tools:
- MonkeyLearn: A tool that uses NLP to analyze customer feedback from surveys, reviews, social media, and chatbots. It can help you measure customer sentiment, satisfaction, and loyalty, and identify key topics and trends.
- Chattermill: A tool that uses NLP and ML to process customer feedback from different sources and channels. It can help you prioritize and solve customer issues, and deliver personalized experiences and rewards.
- Qualtrics: A tool that uses NLP and computer vision to collect and analyze customer feedback from various methods, like surveys, video, voice, and text. It can help you understand customer emotions, preferences, and behavior, and optimize your products, services, and campaigns.
Know your customer insight platform
A customer insight platform is a software that puts together and looks at data from many sources to give a complete view of the customer. It helps you access and see customer data in an easy and interactive way, and get actionable insights and reports.
AI can help you make a customer insight platform by using ML to automate data work, and provide advanced analytics features, like clustering, classification, regression, and anomaly detection. AI can also help you customize your customer insight platform by using NLP and computer vision to let natural language and voice interactions, and provide rich visuals and dashboards.
Here are three suggestions for AI-powered tools:
- Looker: A tool that uses ML to integrate and analyze data from multiple sources and platforms. It can help you access and explore customer data in a simple and interactive way, and get insights and reports with charts, graphs, and tables.
- Tableau: A tool that uses ML to automate data preparation and analysis. It can help you provide advanced analytics features, like clustering, classification, regression, and anomaly detection. It can also help you create and share custom dashboards and visuals with your team.
- Qlik Sense: A tool that uses NLP and computer vision to enable natural language and voice interactions with customer data. It can help you ask questions and get answers in plain language, and generate rich visuals and stories with your data.
AI not a silver bullet, but takes you far
AI can help you know your B2B customers better by helping you collect, process, analyze, and act on customer data in a faster, smarter, and more personal way. AI can also help you make more engaging and effective marketing campaigns that match your goals and customer expectations. But AI is not a magic solution that can solve all your marketing problems. You need to have a clear strategy, a good data system, and a human approach to use AI well.
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