• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 28, 2023

B2B marketers will enter the new with one thing top of mind: generative artificial intelligence (GAI), judging by B2B Marketing Trends to Watch In 2024, a paper from Insider Intelligence and eMarketer. 

The report offers broad predictions in these four areas:

1. GenAI will reshape B2B marketing 
2. Gen AI will either help or hinder a brand’s reputation.
3. Data will be at the center of marketing transformations.
4. With GenAI’s proliferation, human connections will be a major focus.  

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? But these are not all positive trends. 

For instance, the report states: “OpenAI’s GPT-4 with Vision can look at a photo of an item and write a product description using that image alone.”

How do you sustain a human connection when AI is essentially writing the copy? We don’t recommend this for so-called “hyper-personalized” emails. 

What’s more, the report notes that most B2B firms lack clear guidelines and a strategic approach toward GAI. “Marketers need to mitigate any negative impact GAI can have on the brand, campaign efforts, and the use of customer data,” it states.

That said, B2B brands will use AI to create unique identities. And they will leverage data analytics with GAI to do it. 

But the authors warn that “AI-generated content may inadvertently harm a brand's image by providing inaccurate or misleading information. AI models are trained on large data sets that may contain bias or inappropriate content, and thus the output may lack brand voice and consistency.”

On another front, brands will need to protect their customer data to prevent privacy breaches. “They will need to vet AI content, safeguard against privacy breaches in customer data, monitor how gen AI represents the brand, and be able to intervene when necessary.”

Here are two more predictions: 

• B2B marketers will have to employ expert talent , data management tools and outside vendors to deal with data issues. 
• They can expect a return to pre-pandemic event activity.  

Happy New Year.