How lean teams scale B2B digital experiences with AI

Highlights

You’ll learn how AI helps lean teams scale B2B digital experiences.

• Intelligent automation: Automates repetitive tasks, saving time
• Personalizes content: Delivers dynamic, relevant and tailored content at scale
• Improves decision-making: Real-time analytics fuel smarter strategies

AI lets you do more with less. See how you can deploy it to deliver personalized experiences at scale.

B2B buyers expect personalized solutions and seamless journeys, but lean marketing teams lack the resources and tools to deliver at scale. This is one of the reasons why the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in B2B continues to grow. 

The use of AI enables leaner operations, saving time and costs via automation. Among its many users, AI can handle data analysis, automation and personalization to suit the needs of customers.

AI in the B2B context

AI in the B2B context is mainly applied to complex and large-scale repetitive processes that are otherwise costly and time-consuming. In that sense, its use case continues to expand to the point where it is deployed to create dynamic customer experiences (cx) and improve workflow efficiency in the following ways:

• Automating tasks with rule-based systems 
• Creating natural-sounding responses 
• Personalization with real-time data 
• Creating on-brand content with generative AI and LLMs

Powering this evolution are various AI components, including:

• Machine learning (ML): ML studies patterns in data and improves its forecasting accuracy, helping B2Bs predict sales patterns, score leads and segment customers.
• Natural language processing (NLP): NLP replicates human language to generate contextual responses. It powers chatbots that B2B teams use to manage customer support.
• Computer vision: This field of AI enables systems to scan and interpret visual inputs, making it useful for visual product search, AR product demos and similar tasks.

The difference between simple automation and intelligent AI

The components of AI rely on advanced intelligence, rather than simple AI, to work efficiently. Simple AI is incapable of performing tasks that require reasoning, as it operates with pre-programmed rules.

For example, a customer service tool can direct requests with the keyword “support” to a help agent. Since it notes only the keyword, it cannot understand support requests written with different terms.

However, intelligent AI mimics human intelligence by:

• Studying data to find patterns that inform decisions
• Using NLP and computer vision to interpret human language and visuals
• Checking probabilities before responding

Intelligent AI learns continuously, understands context, reasons and adapts. 

AI technologies for B2B digital experiences

Most B2B companies use traditional digital tools. However, with limited resources, it is hard to meet buyer demands, so marketing teams are adopting AI to enhance digital experiences. Here are some AI technologies that can help you optimize customer journeys.

• LLMs and generative AI: B2B marketing teams use generative AI to create, translate and localize marketing materials and digital content. Generative AI can also be deployed to customize visual assets and multimedia to align with your brand style. This increases the speed and efficiency of content creation and publishing.
• Conversational AI: Businesses use tools like AI-driven virtual assistants and chatbots to scale their customer experience (CX) strategy and resolve issues in real-time. Statistics show that chatbots can answer 80% of inquiries, therefore saving time. 
• Marketing automation AI: B2B teams can use this AI to automate email campaigns, lead nurturing and customer segmentation based on behavior patterns. It scores leads, delivers personalized content at scale and triggers actions that guide prospects through sales funnels.
• Intelligent search: This AI system understands user intent and context to deliver relevant search results. It learns from search patterns, suggests related content and helps B2B buyers locate products, services, solutions and information.

Imagine you could integrate these tools into a single platform that creates a cohesive ecosystem to scale your digital experiences.

A composable digital experience platform like Contentstack EDGE allows you to do just that. You can combine the best-of-breed AI tools and microservices to orchestrate customer journeys, enabling you to deliver impactful digital experiences. It is MACH-driven, which means you can integrate new-age technologies, such as AI, IoT, the metaverse and more.

How lean B2B teams use AI to scale digital experiences 

Here are the various ways in which B2B lean teams use AI to enhance and improve the digital experience for customers.

Automating routine marketing and sales tasks

Lean marketing teams use AI systems to perform demanding tasks like:

• Lead scoring: Research shows that using AI for lead scoring improves qualification by 40%. AI checks signals like content downloads and email open rates and uses interaction levels to score leads. Identifying high-quality leads helps B2B teams prioritize and nurture those that are most likely to convert. 
• Tailor email campaigns and follow-up: AI uses behavioral data to tailor emails, create subject lines and customize offers. This helps to personalize content and improve clicks and open rates. 
• Content scheduling and sharing: AI uses engagement data to find your audience’s most active times and schedule delivery. It also repurposes performing content and shares it across platforms.

Enhancing customer experiences through personalization

Lean teams use AI to analyze data and gain insight for:

• Customized interactions: AI tracks user interactions and heatmaps, and creates profiles for customers. This information makes it easy to understand intent and preferences, providing insights for tailored offers, demos and content.
• Dynamic content delivery: Marketing teams in B2B firms can use AI to automatically target messages and send them to customers across online platforms.
• Personalized solutions: AI analyzes transactional and behavioral data to gain insights, which helps B2B businesses recommend products, services and solutions to customers.

Data-driven decision-making and optimization

Lean teams at B2B firms may lack the technical skills or big data tools to handle vast amounts of data from multiple sources. So, they can deploy AI to fill this gap. Here are specific ways they can do that.

• Real-time analytics dashboards: AI dashboards collect live data from multiple digital channels to visualize customer behavior and trends, enabling marketing teams to monitor customer experiences. With that, they can deliver proactive customer support, address gaps in the customer journey and address changing customer needs.
• Performance tracking and ROI measurement: AI tools track how customers interact with campaigns to determine which converts the most. This way, marketing teams can identify effective channels, creatives and campaign strategies to focus on.
• Continuous improvement: AI learns from data, enabling it to offer useful ideas that help B2B teams refine their product and content strategies.

Content creation at scale 

Using generative AI for digital experiences, lean marketing teams can scale their operations through:

• AI-powered content generation: AI writing tools generate high-quality content that marketing teams can use to market their services.
• Automating content optimization: AI provides automatic suggestions that improve content relevance and visibility. It can suggest readability improvements and SEO adjustments to align your content with your audience’s needs and pain points.

How to implement an AI strategy in a lean team

The success of AI technologies depends on how your team implements them. Follow these steps to build an effective plan and implement AI for digital experience:

1. Start small: Begin with time-consuming tasks that you can pre-program with a rule-based AI system. Consider high-impact, low-lift use cases such as lead nurturing, content tagging or meeting scheduling. 
2. Consider integration: Confirm that your AI tools can integrate with your tool stack. Choose API-friendly platforms or native integrations, as changing your tech stack will create disruption.
3. Prioritize budget-friendly approaches: Avoid committing to subscriptions without testing a tool first. Several AI tools provide free tiers, which you can use for pilot tests before upgrading to a paid plan.
4. Manage change: Communicate how AI improves sales cycle, personalization, automation and workflow to present it as a support system and encourage company-wide buy-in. Promote smooth adoption by training your staff to use AI systems. 
5. Implement robust data privacy and security: Deploy robust data governance policies to safeguard sensitive information. Ensure your chosen tools have strong security storage protocols and comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Also, adhere to system and organization controls (SOC 2, Type II) rules.

Although AI can help you provide customers with seamless experiences, remember to use it to support rather than replace human expertise.

How to balance AI and human elements

Although AI technologies are effective, lean B2B marketing teams should not depend solely on them. Excess automation and AI content affect authenticity and lead to a negative customer experience. Here are strategies to strike the right balance.

Determine which tasks should remain human-led

Intelligent AI has shortcomings like the inability to reason or be empathetic. Unlike AI, humans have emotional intelligence, empathy and advanced reasoning. So, while AI handles simple, repetitive tasks, human experts should focus on deeper interactions, such as:

• Creative functions like brand storytelling
• Relationship-building activities and client management
• Complex decision-making on matters that require ethics and context, such as vendor evaluation.

Create effective synergies between AI tools and team members

Adopt a workflow that leverages AI technology and collaboration between your team members. To achieve this, you must:

• Use AI as a support tool 
• Train team members on how to understand, prompt and use AI efficiently 
• Create feedback loops so team members can review and correct AI responses
• Monitor AI performance on tasks to know if your role division is effective.
• Implement human-led quality control for activities you automate with AI

This way, you can use AI to deliver authentic and scalable interactions that lead to great customer experiences.

Case study: Scaling content experiences with Contentstack AI

Golfbreaks

Golfbreaks struggled to scale content publishing to its multiple audience segments. This hindered their ability to respond to new market opportunities. They participated in Contentstack’s AI Accelerator program and were trained on AI Assistant, Brand Kit and Automate. Now, they use AI to scale content, such as generating AI course descriptions and course categorizations. The changes allowed them to save seven hours per week and reduce time-to-market by 78%. 

Simkins said. “I can say ‘I’d like to optimize nested references on our location pages’, and I know that Contentstack will provide valid and relevant ideas, and that the team has actually considered what we’re trying to achieve. It’s a breath of fresh air.”

Read more on how Golfbreaks implemented AI to scale its content and digital experiences.

FAQ section

What is the role of AI in B2B digital experience delivery?

AI personalizes, automates and provides predictive insight that enhances content relevance, workflow efficiency, speed and proactive outreach in B2B digital experiences.

How can B2B teams prioritize AI technologies?

Identify pain points in high-impact areas, define your goals, evaluate AI tools, select a fitting option and then create a roadmap for proper implementation.

What are the common challenges in adopting AI for B2B customer experience?

This includes data quality and privacy concerns, lack of technical expertise, integration complexity and resistance to change.

How do lean teams balance AI automation with a human touch?

The key is to focus on synergy and adopt AI as an assistant or support tool, deploying it to handle repetitive functions, analyze data, segment customers and suggest personalization ideas. Meanwhile, humans can handle creative, strategic tasks and quality control to ensure that AI outputs align with the business strategy.

Learn more

Customers expect lean B2B teams to deliver smooth interactions, personalization and proactive service. With limited staff and budgets, these teams need AI to automate tasks, run predictive analytics and personalize messaging. However, success depends on strategy. So, integrate AI into workflows, focus on high-impact areas and refine based on performance data.

To scale B2B digital experiences, your team needs tools that enable AI-powered efficiency, personalization and speed. Contentstack’s composable DXP and AI platform is built to support that journey. Talk to us today to explore the right mix of technologies to power your digital experience.