There are numerous developments happening in the marketing industry: an increasing number of tools, a more complex buyer journey, and a lack of specialized professionals. Will AI assist us in overcoming these challenges by 2024? According to Gartner*, that expectation certainly exists. Currently, generative AI is at the 'peak of inflated expectations' in the Hype Cycle. It's time to outline the trends in marketing and sales technology for 2024.
Trend 1: AI becomes mainstream for marketers When marketers talk about AI, they are referring to ChatGPT in 99% of cases. As amazing as that tool is, there is so much more to AI. AI is still in its early stages of development, similar to the internet in the 90s. Back then, if you wanted a website, you had to know how to code, and even then, the result wasn't always great. That's where AI stands now. Many people talk about prompts (the question you ask an AI generator) and there are even prompt engineers. Fortunately, we won't need them anymore in the near future. There are already many tools that will make the life of marketers in 2024 much easier. Here are a few examples of applications for marketers and sales professionals. Texts and SEO AI tools help marketers easily and quickly write good content, both in Dutch and other languages. The production of content using a tool like Anyword helps with formulating a good prompt, provides great input on the structure of your blog and SEO, and checks for plagiarism. Additionally, the tool considers your target audience in your content.
This allows you to achieve a high ranking on Google with very little time investment. We at Marketing Guys began doing this ourselves during the summer, which led to a doubling of the number of indexed keywords.
In addition, we have achieved great positions for important keywords and even a number of featured snippets.
Please note that AI does not assist you with everything: for instance, you still have to search for images to accompany the text, and you also have to create the internal and external link structure on your own. However, it does save you at least 50% of your time.
In email marketing, some tools have already integrated AI for content creation. Examples include marketing automation providers like HubSpot and Act-On, both of which have developed user-friendly AI interfaces.
However, when it comes to email marketing, it's not just about content. Another great feature is that AI helps you send your emails at the right time to achieve the best results. The system predicts when an email has the best chance of being opened. Lead scoring As a B2B marketer, you may be involved in lead scoring. In practice, this is often a time-consuming process: you have to determine which online actions contribute to the quality of a lead. There is typically a lot of subjectivity involved in this. In 2024, some vendors will offer predictive lead scoring based on AI: the system itself determines, based on machine learning and past data, which actions lead to better leads and assigns points based on that.
AI can help you create creative social media posts using the Anyword tool. As a marketer, it can be quite challenging to constantly come up with new and interesting perspectives. Let's look at an example of such a post:
Sales professionals are also experiencing significant advancements in the field of AI. Recently, Salesloft introduced Rhythm, while companies like Outreach (AI-powered selling) and Gong are developing solutions in a similar direction. These developments will help you proactively approach your customers with relevant outreach. How about a generated summary of a meeting and an automatic email to your prospect, including that summary? It also saves you a lot of time by eliminating the need to manually enter it into your CRM. We will discuss sales enablement further in this article, but for now, take a look at this video. Image and video As a marketer, you spend a lot of time creating the right images and videos. Just think about resizing an image for different social media platforms, editing webshop images, and finding the perfect visuals for your campaign. Tools like Adobe Firefly (in Photoshop) make your life easier in 2024. Additionally, Facebook Ads has this functionality built-in, as demonstrated by this example of an image extrapolated by AI. Advertising Speaking of ads, AI goes beyond just image editing. It assists marketers in determining advertising strategies and even setting up campaigns. While it's not perfect and requires monitoring, it can save you 50-70% of your time. As a marketer, you should definitely try out a tool like Adcreative.ai.
Trend 2: Sales enablement software becomes a necessity The purchase cycle, especially in B2B, is becoming increasingly complex. Research from Seismic sales enablement shows that an average of 9.55 interactions precede a purchase. From a marketing perspective, we already have various technical solutions to provide the right online experience. Sales, on the other hand, has lagged behind for a long time but is now making a comeback in the form of sales technology solutions like Salesloft, Outreach, and Seismic. These solutions fundamentally assist sales professionals throughout the entire sales cycle to facilitate a better buying experience. In recent years, investments in sales enablement have increased by 343%, and 65% of sales leaders expect to invest in it soon. Seismic recently released the State of Sales Enablement report in collaboration with LXA, which highlights all the trends. Read also: AI in marketing: match made in heaven or too good to be true? Here are some ways in which these software solutions will help sales in 2024: - Digital sales rooms: In a sales process, documents are traditionally shared via email and the website. A digital sales room serves as a central repository for all content shared during the sales process, from videos to quotes and factsheets. - Learning from colleagues: When you're part of a large team, there's a lot you can learn from each other. What led to the best deals? How were conversations structured? What arguments were used? - Automatic recording of conversations in CRM: After a conversation, it is automatically transcribed into a document. This is not only useful for your CRM but can also be sent as a follow-up to a customer. - Targeted presentations for specific audiences: Sharepoint, Google Drive, Dropbox... which version should I share? A sales enablement solution always has the latest version and can tailor it to the right decision-maker, saving you a lot of frustration. - Proactively providing content to share with prospects: In a sales process, you often have contact through LinkedIn or email. To grab the prospect's attention, it's helpful to share relevant content. The software provides useful suggestions. - Proactive forecasting: Traditionally, you maintain a pipeline in CRM based on your own input, or in other words: garbage in, garbage out. A sales enablement system is adaptive and can predict on its own.
Trend 3: CMOs want to expand their team, but there is a scarcity of technical people. According to recent research from LXA (The State of Martech & Marketing Operations 2023/24), the average marketer uses up to 56 tools and expects that 83% of marketing managers will increase their martech spending in 2024. A significant challenge of the growing number of tools and platforms is the need for integration, which is the bottleneck for 2024. There is a shortage of people who can integrate marketing and sales technology. Tools like Zapier provide a solution for some marketers, but not in all cases. Standard integrations are easy, but many "local" software solutions are used in the Netherlands. In practice, there is still a need for integration between custom CRM, ERP, or administrative systems to provide a solution for customer experience platforms or marketing automation. To facilitate the ultimate customer journey, you need to connect! That means working with APIs and iPaaS solutions. The people who build these connections need both technical knowledge and marketing knowledge. They are scarce, and that will be a challenge in 2024. Missed any trends? I have conversations with both sales and marketing managers daily, and I hear what they are focused on. I have mentioned a few topics that stand out to me, but I haven't described all the trends, and I probably missed a few. What trends do you see in 2024 that marketers should be aware of? Leave a comment!