What does AI mean for B2B marketing & lead generation?

It’s no doubt that AI will continue to play a huge role in shifting the marketing landscape. Marketers have already started adapting their processes, incorporating AI to increase efficiency and help shape content. What’s more is that marketers are leveraging AI not just to make content creation more efficient, but also to make it more impactful and relevant amongst their target audience.

According to LinkedIn’s recent B2B Marketing Benchmark report, Generative AI, or GenAI, is expected to have the highest usage increase in the next year amongst B2B marketers who already use it. Additionally, it reports that “just under 1 in 2” B2B marketing professionals are currently using AI within their marketing efforts.

Some people are concerned that AI will completely replace many job roles. However, despite the recent advances in AI technology, the human element will still be crucial.

AI will not be able to replace human authenticity, and humans are still very necessary for oversight to ensure quality and accurate output. Especially in terms of recent GenAI advancements such as ChatGPT in use for things like site optimisation, data insights and proxy focus groups – this is merely meant to supplement existing support from an expert, rather than replacing it. The LinkedIn report puts it very well: “AI will not replace you – someone using AI will!”.

In terms of lead generation specifically, having a professional team is still essential, as there are many moving parts to the process.

At Emberson LeadGen, the human element is what sets us apart. While we do possess the cutting-edge technologies and systems to execute our lead flow service to the best degree, what really makes us different is not the technology but the people behind it. We have a group of experienced professionals that have worked together for over twenty years who trust each other and work well together, and they make up the team of 5-7 people who will work on your lead generation campaign at any given time. They look deep beyond the data and screen it to form insights that only humans can do properly, which leads to tangible results.

Many marketers are using AI to automate the laborious lead generation tasks like lead scoring, lead nurturing and data analysis. Programmes and platforms are available to assist with analysing large amounts of data to help find the most promising leads. However, we’ve found that while very good in many ways, these platforms are still lacking the crucial human element to sift through all of it across several platforms and spot those patterns that differentiate a genuine prospect from a bot.

Overall, AI will serve as an additional helpful tool in a marketer’s overall arsenal, particularly when it comes to automating numerous time-consuming lead generation tasks. However, it’s not meant to replace the expertise and skill provided by experienced professionals, and so the best approach would be to incorporate a mixture of both.

If you’re ready to begin accelerating your business’ growth with a continuous flow of quality leads, get in touch.