Understanding AI for B2B Marketers: 3 Useful Tools to Get Started

Adam Smartschan

Partner & Chief Strategy Officer

Artificial intelligence is all around us – even in places you may not realize. But what role can AI play for B2B marketers?

AI tech is mature and increasingly cheap. And marketers are always looking for ways of automating and simplifying their workload. Basically, it’s a match made in heaven.

First, What Is AI?

When you hear the term AI, it may elicit thoughts of advanced robotic technology, or even supercomputers bent on world domination. While not entirely realistic (rest easy, John Connor), it is true that AI is beginning to envelop much of our everyday lives.

When time is more precious to us than anything else, it’s natural to seek opportunities to boost our productivity. B2B marketers use many AI applications to improve their work lives. Think of these AIs as computers programmed with code to think and problem-solve like us. As a result, they learn and improve upon themselves over time as they interact with users and data. This makes them quite diligent workers.

For marketers, the upshot of AI is making life easier by automating tasks and optimizing the solutions.

Can I Really Use AI for Marketing?

Sounds a little complicated, doesn’t it? Don’t worry; it’s way easier than you think.

In fact, you already use artificial intelligence software everyday. Google is a prime example!

On Google, each user has their own individual experiences while surfing the net. Google personalizes ads and search results you see based on your preferences and history. This is automatically done by algorithms within Google to encourage that ever sought after *click*.

Yes, that’s Google. They’re huge. But marketers like you have access to countless examples of pre-made and easy-to-use AI-based applications. Here are three.

Example Use Cases: AI for Marketers

1. Unbounce Smart Traffic

Conversion rates are critical in running any form of digital marketing. Generating leads is a top priority, and conversions on your landing page is a big part of that.

As we mentioned, AI is all about automation and optimization. The Smart Traffic tool uses AI to boost your conversion rate based on user data. By looking at the specific attributes of each website visitor, it automatically sends users to the page most likely to drive a conversion). It’s kind of like A/B testing, but you don’t have to do a thing, and you get immediate results.

Unbounce’s Optimize plan starts at $120 per month. With it, you get Smart Traffic as well as close to a dozen other helpful tools and features.

2. Snazzy.ai

Snazzy.ai is an automated copywriting tool recently acquired by Unbounce. It’s all about providing inspiration and a jumping-off point.

Whether it be idea generation or actual written content, Snazzy has an tool for it. You can get help creating:

  • Landing Pages
  • Google Ads
  • Sales Emails
  • Meta Descriptions
  • Blog Ideas

And that’s just the beginning. You enter keywords and basic audience data, and Snazzy’s GPT-3 spits out near-instant results after you click “create.”

How’s the quality of what Snazzy generates? To give it a try, we loaded up some basic information about a client that helps companies optimize shipping and supply chain issues. Then we asked Snazzy to spit out a list of ideas for blog posts. Here’s what we got:

AI-generated blog post ideas

Honestly, not half bad. Apart from one odd one about winning bronze in a nonexistent competition, these could all be written and posted tomorrow. Call it a great jumping-off point.

With a free account, you can use Snazzy for five tasks a day. For those that wish to get a little more utility out of it, payment plans start at $25/month for unlimited use.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is one of our favorite enterprise marketing automation platforms. It’s particularly good at enhancing your email campaigns with – you guessed it – AI.

Of particular note is predictive sending, which automatically delivers emails at the time a specific recipient is most likely to open it. Here’s how ActiveCampaign defines it:

“We collect opens data for each contact who engages with your emails. When a contact in your automation reaches an email action with “Send with predictive sending” selected, we’ll use that contact’s opens data to predict the best time to send them your email. The email will then be queued to send at the contact’s predicted time in their own time zone, within 24 hours of reaching your send email step.

tl;dr: AI for B2B Marketers

There’s no gimmick to marketing AI. There’s no trick. In truth, these tools really do exist to make your life easier. So work smarter, not harder, and reap the benefits of new levels of productivity.

Adam Smartschan

Adam Smartschan heads Altitude's strategic marketing and branding efforts. An award-winning writer and editor by trade in a former life, he now specializes in data analytics, search engine optimization, digital advertising strategy, conversion rate optimization and technical integrations. He holds numerous industry certifications and is a frequent speaker on topics around B2B marketing strategy and SEO.