According to a survey by Demandbase, marketing cloud purpose-built for B2B, in the next five years artificial intelligence is expected to revolutionize marketing and sales.
Out of 500 B2B marketers that took part in the survey, 80% of them admitted that they are expecting Artificial Intelligence to revolutionize marketing in the near future. 26% of the survey participants were positive that they understood how AI can be used to‘re-invent’ the marketing strategy, while only 10% admitted that they are already using AI to revolutionize their marketing and sales.
Aman Naimat, SVP of technology at Demandbase said for CRM Buyer that Artificial Intelligence “has the potential to help marketing and sales teams hyper-personalize the customer experience at an entirely new level,” while adding that AI use “will allow for one-on-one conversations with marketers who have the background information necessary to successfully interact with prospects.”
According to an article posted by TechNewsWorld, here are the main benefits of AI as of the latest survey:
- 60% of respondents to Demandbase's survey expected that AI would provide them with better insights into accounts.
- 56% expected more detailed analyses of marketing campaigns, while 53% expected AI to identify prospective customers, and 53% expected it to expedite daily tasks.
- 59% said AI must generate a better sales close rate to be worth pursuing. 58% wanted it to increase revenues, 54% wanted it to improve website traffic and engagement, and 52% expected it to convert more leads.
“The fact that 80 percent of respondents believe AI will revolutionize marketing but only a very few know how or are using it themselves yet is a perfect example of an industry on the cusp of exploding,” Gary Gerber, head of product marketing at Conversica said for CRM Buyer. Gerber added that “the leading driver of AI in the sales lead conversion process is the simple fact that it takes, on average, about a dozen follow-ups to engage a prospective customer, and most humans stop after two or three. They're leaving the vast majority of their hard-earned leads on the table.”
There are still a lot of concerns related to AI. One of them is how challenging it is going to be to integrate AI into existing technologies many companies and businesses are already using. Existing employees will have to be trained and spend a good part of their working time into trying to understand how the integration process will work and how to interpret the results.
Another one is the privacy issue. No matter how many great things can be achieved by using AI, and how much it can develop the world we live in, Artificial Intelligence does have a lot of bad consequences. “It's our responsibility to think about all of the consequences good and bad. We've had the same debate about atomic power and nanotechnology. With any powerful technology there's always the dialogue about how do you use it deliver the most benefit and how it can be used to deliver the most harm,” Professor Hawking said for BBC.