I’m thrilled with our new supercomputer, ChatGPT. Over the past decade, I’ve written about B2B visions for the year ahead. Facing that moment again, I thought: ‘what about doing it together with artificial intelligence – ChatGPT – predicted to be the killer of Google’? ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022.
So here we go.
As a director of a leading B2B marketing agency, I was intrigued to see how ChatGPT could create a shortcut for my article on next year’s B2B marketing landscape. I quickly framed a question: “What are the 10 key success factors from all articles handling B2B marketing in the year 2023?”
ChatGPT politely answered me:
“I'm sorry, but as a language model, I don't have access to current or future events and cannot provide information about specific key success factors for B2B marketing in 2023.”
Stupid me: ChatGPT’s source data stretches only to the year 2021.
BUT she continued to answer:
“However, I can provide some general insights about factors that might influence the success of a B2B marketing strategy.”
Next came a 10-point list with pretty fair points for everyone to remember in their B2B marketing:
1. Clearly defined target audience: It’s important to have a deep understanding of your target audience, including their needs, pain points, and decision-making processes.
2. Strong value proposition: Your value proposition should clearly communicate the benefits of your product or service and how it addresses the needs of your target audience.
3. Effective lead generation: Developing a robust lead-generation strategy can help you attract and convert potential customers. This may involve tactics such as content marketing, email marketing, and social media marketing.
4. Nurturing leads: Once you have generated leads, it’s important to nurture them through the sales funnel with targeted messaging and personalized content.
5. Strong relationships with customers: Building strong relationships with your customers is key to maintaining their loyalty and generating repeat business. This may involve providing excellent customer service and developing personalized communication and marketing strategies.
6. Data-driven decision making: Leveraging data and analytics can help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategy and optimize your efforts for maximum impact.
7. Integration of traditional and digital marketing channels: A well-rounded marketing strategy should include a mix of traditional and digital marketing channels, such as in-person events, email campaigns, and social media advertising.
8. Strong brand positioning: Differentiating your brand from competitors and clearly communicating your brand message is essential for success in the B2B market.
9. Collaboration with sales team: Aligning your marketing efforts with the goals and strategies of the sales team can help ensure that leads are effectively converted into customers.
10. Continuous improvement: Success in B2B marketing requires a continuous effort to stay up to date with industry trends, gather feedback from customers, and adjust your strategy as needed.
Empowered B2B marketing success factors for 2023
As ChatGPT does not have a vision beyond 2021, could it provide foresight? Next, I Googled “B2B marketing trends for 2023” and copied the available textual content from the first two result pages. Then I asked ChatGPT to “write 10 key success factors from the following content:” and gave 40 pages of content for “him” to chew through. Out came the following list:
- Investing in brand building
- Grounding creative risks and experimentation within data-informed guidelines
- Leveraging existing content and repurposing it for new campaigns
- Focusing on high-impact tactics with low costs
- Collaborating with other teams and departments to align marketing efforts with business goals
- Utilizing social media and digital channels for cost-effective and targeted marketing
- Prioritizing lead generation and nurturing activities
- Creating and nurturing a strong company culture
- Leveraging partnerships and collaborations with other companies or organizations
- Being strategic and data-driven in decision making and resource allocation
Most of these points align with the comments I’ve gathered from my global colleagues and published in my last article. Its focus was more on ‘survival mode’ – how to succeed in the year of downturn to come.
We’ve come quite a long way from the times of playing tic-tac-toe against the computer. The pace is accelerating. That should be point #1 in the previous list “Leverage the capabilities of AI”. You can start by learning how to use AI for content creation.
