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On the Menu: B2B doesn’t know its audience anymore, it tends to take itself too seriously, and AI is making it lose its mind. Let’s dive in!
By their admission, B2B marketers are good at quantity… but not quality.
Are B2B companies even aware of the importance of content for business performance in the broadest sense (lead generation, but also branding, employer branding, CSR, etc.)? What is certain is that managers have not given themselves the means to achieve their ambitions in 2023. Perhaps because of the uncertain economic climate, inflation and the opportunity presented by AI?
According to the CMI, “content is still not seen as a coordinated business function”, and the lack of resources remains the main challenge for marketers, just as it was in 2022. Unlike in previous years, this lack of resources will not affect the quantity of content produced… but rather its relevance to the target audience.
In 2023, 57% of B2B marketers say they are struggling to create “the right content” for their audience, whereas a few years ago the challenge was to produce a lot and quickly. That’s where AI comes in.
In 2023, B2B got bogged down in reformulation: “We no longer know who we’re talking to”.
The title is deliberately attention-grabbing, but there’s truth to it. The challenge of “the right content for the right audience” cited by marketers highlights a central issue: B2B is still lagging in understanding its customers and prospects.
This is evident both in the form of the content being distributed and in the value they provide—or more precisely, the value they fail to provide.
For example: how many editorial committees have considered that Millennials and Gen Z now make up the majority in purchasing committees? Probably a small minority, because:
- The content is still too formal, cold, corporate, and bland;
- An impersonal tone dominates, whereas the current trend favours a personal and conversational approach;
- The content lacks any “entertainment” value, even though 87% of buyers believe content can be both easy to consume and intellectually rigorous (according to a LinkedIn B2B Institute study) ;
- B2B company blogs are bogged down in rehashing. For a given topic, you can easily find dozens of similar pieces online, superficially reworked to avoid duplicate content;
- The default editorial approach favours (relatively) educational articles over subjective formats like opinion pieces, editorials, viewpoints, and interviews. Yet, these formats seem to be preferred by readers and Google since the notable Helpful Content update.
As millennials and Generation Z take over purchasing decisions, B2B will inevitably become less boring initially, before adopting the “entertainment” codes of B2C.
AI: Marketers at the helm, awaiting top management support
At the same time, the web is becoming increasingly noisy. With generative AI, we can now all churn out low-quality content that copies each other.
In 2024 and beyond, we will see a rise in demand for content derived from real experiences. Brands that can offer blog articles, visual content, and LinkedIn posts directly inspired by real-world insights will have a chance to “surface” in the looming AI magma.
Google has also extensively communicated this during its latest update, hammering home to Content and SEO specialists that the acronym E.E.A.T. now holds the keys to organic visibility (for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness).
In 2023, marketers naturally embraced generative AI (72%) for two reasons:
- Curiosity, as they have been hearing about genAI since the early 2000s, at least;
- The imperative to “produce more with less” in a challenging economic environment (even though the first signs of recovery are emerging).
The applications of genAI remain traditional, notably including brainstorming new topics (51%) and writing (45%). As expected, there is nothing on audience data analysis and engagement to better understand the target audience. B2B marketing remained self-centred in 2023.
But we shouldn’t blame marketers because they are operating solo, on their own initiative, with timid support from management. Proof? 91% of them use free AI tools. The paid version of ChatGPT costs only $20 per month, yet it performs several times better than the free version. Surprising.
Another oddity: 61% of companies have no guide, policy, or charter in place to regulate the use of AI.
“It’s simply absurd… Marketing must act as an ambassador for AI internally. They should emphasize to colleagues and executives that AI is not just a technology. It’s a human and operational challenge that requires a collective, thoughtful, and intelligent response. Be the AI leader your organization needs”, concludes Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs and member of the team that conducted the study.