Sure Fire GenAI Content Tips to Captivate B2B Buyers
How to use GenAI to make your B2B content sing, not suck
With 22% of companies spending more than 50% of their total marketing budget on content marketing, it’s clear that its role in generating leads is critical. That said, 82% of B2B buyers find it dull. In my last B2B Marketing Bulletin I explored ways to tackle this. Now, with more of us embracing GenAI as a content generation tool, it’s imperative we use it wisely. A study by Forrester highlights the pitfalls, saying “thinly customised generative AI content will degrade the purchase experience for 70% of B2B buyers.” So how can we avoid this nightmare scenario, making already dull B2B content worse? Indeed, how can we use GenAI to meaningfully enhance B2B content to captivate ideal buyers instead?
Let’s dive right in with some dos and don'ts!
Do: embrace GenAI as your capable assistant, not your replacement
The best advice for B2B marketers is to embrace GenAI to boost your productivity and quality of work. It’s about finding the sweet spot of co-creation between us humans and AI. Prashant Puri, CEO, AdLift, Inc., highlights this point. ‘In 2024, relying solely on AI for content won’t cut it. If brands want to connect, generate quality leads, and tell their story, AI can assist with 45 to 50% of the job, but human-written content will be essential for impact, connection, and conversion’. In short, without humans running the show, GenAI isn’t fit for purpose. Us humans still make the magic happen.
Do: boost (don’t lose) human creativity with GenAI
Explore how you can use GenAI to streamline your more repetitive tasks, freeing up your time to work on more rewarding tasks such as enhancing your creativity, so you can co-create more interesting content for your buyers. You may assign AI to generate the initial drafts and outlines, for example, while retaining the essential involvement of a human editor to shape it into something much more memorable.
Do: use GenAI to stand out, not to blend in
Building on the last point. There’s frankly enough dreary generic B2B content out there already. With most B2B companies increasingly using the same GenAI tools for content generation there’s a risk B2B content will become even more commoditised and tedious. Losing valuable leads from your pipeline in the process. Back to the nightmare scenario! If instead you view GenAI as a tool to stand out, not blend in, you’ll buck the trend and reap the rewards. For example, by keeping a close eye on your competitors' content you can use GenAI to create content that’s always fresh and different, with your unique take on things. So instead of clustering around the same topics with similar bland content as everyone else, you’ll slice through the soulless clutter with content that delights your leads.
Do: use smarter prompts with your GenAI tools
There are many sources out there to help you boost your content game with GenAI through smarter prompts. I’ve been road-testing seven great suggestions in a recent article by Connie Smart and Alli Berry. My top four are how to train your AI tool to get your brand tone of voice, enhance your sentences, easily turn features into emotional benefits and how to breathe new life into old content by repurposing it.
Topline, think of your prompt as a brief. Marketers know that great work comes from great briefs and, of course, that crappy briefs result in, well, crappy work. So enjoy experimenting with your prompts to keep your content alive and captivating for your leads.
Don’t: neglect content measurement
While it’s tempting for many businesses to go full steam ahead with GenAI tools, without effective measurement processes in place they do so at their peril, according to a Tofu blog post. Topline, they risk sacrificing quality for quantity. Tofu encourages companies to ‘use metrics such as engagement and conversion rates to measure the effectiveness of AI-generated content and adjust accordingly.’
This is a really important point, because so many companies fail to see the value in measuring the impact of their content. According to Forrester, just 41% of B2B organisations can view content performance metrics by audience, and only 34% can view by theme or topic. Sadly, the quantity over quality approach is deep rooted within B2B content creation. Whether or not the content is effective seems an afterthought. And that’s scary. Instead of using GenAI to widen the chasm here, it must be used to bridge it, and that can only be done by having the content performance metrics in place from the get go.
GenAI for better, not worse
If B2B companies hand over the content marketing controls to GenAI, everyone is worse off. Quantity (and much more of it) over quality will continue to be the norm and B2B buyers will continue to sift through this tasteless pap.
In contrast, if we embrace these tips, with a concerted emphasis on quality (without sacrificing quantity) GenAI will be the catalyst B2B content needs to finally deliver enticing content its buyers deserve and have long been clamouring for.
