How B2B Marketers Are Using Generative AI Today

The age of Generative AI (GAI) has well and truly arrived. According to the 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark, two out of three B2B companies use GAI in their marketing efforts — a 20% increase since 2023. Most of these companies are also making a concerted effort to standardize their usage of GAI moving forward, with 59% having established company guidelines for GAI use. 

As marketers leverage GAI more often, they’re growing more confident in applying it to their work, but there’s still room to grow. Only around one in four B2B marketers surveyed say they have an “extremely good understanding” of how to use AI in their marketing activities, and just 55% of organizations offer training programs on GAI.

Savvy B2B marketers are already leveraging generative to revolutionize virtually every aspect of their marketing processes, allowing them to spend more time on the work that matters. Here’s an updated overview of key stats and insight about GAI usage in B2B marketing.

Improving productivity by generative AI

Marketers surveyed for the B2B Benchmark say they use GAI most frequently to “gain efficiency/productivity” (40%). The primary way they’re using GAI to save time is by having it help them generate text: 39% of marketers surveyed in the Benchmark report cited “accelerating content creation” as their No. 1 use case for the technology, 78% of the B2B CMOs surveyed in Intercept Scale’s“Leading the Future AI Marketing Study said they use it for “text generation.” 

These results align with larger trends related to marketing automation. As Kory Kantenga pointed out in the Benchmark report, “According to the Census Bureau’s survey, US businesses report marketing automation as the most prolific current and future use of Artificial Intelligence at the business level, so it comes as no surprise that AI tops the list of fastest growing digital skills among all CMOs.” 

As AI usage continues to proliferate, B2B marketing teams are clearly invested in using it to automate their processes and save time. The Content Marketing Institute’s survey of 704 content marketers conducted in May 2024 found that 68% of marketers said GAI saved them time at work. 

AI skepticism remains, but it only affects use cases, not overall use

Despite marketers adopting GAI for text generation, many remain skeptical about the quality of its output. Nearly seven out of 10 (69%) professionals surveyed by CMI said they think writing output from AI is mediocre or even “soulless,” while the most common downside to using AI cited by B2B marketers in the Benchmark report is that the content it produces “lacks humanity” or is “too robotic” (40%).

However, this skepticism largely only affects how marketers are leveraging AI, not whether they choose to use it at all. Only 11% of surveyed content marketers said they didn’t use GAI for any element of their work. The other 89% said they were using it for “brainstorming topics” (61%) and “summarizing content” more frequently than they used it to “write drafts of content” (44%), “write their articles” (37%), or “write email copy” (34%). 

As AI continues to improve, the perception of its output may be changing. This is especially evident at the highest level: 55% of the CMOs surveyed by Intercept Scale reported being “satisfied” with their GAI tools’ text generation output and 28% said they were “very satisfied,” compared to only 2% who reported being “dissatisfied.” 

Overall, GAI is clearly revolutionizing the way B2B marketers are writing marketing copy. Most B2B marketers have incorporated the technology into some stage of their text generation process, whether to brainstorm ideas, research, outline, assist in writing first drafts, or proofread their writing. In his interview for the B2B Benchmark, Kipp Bodnar summarized how GAI text generation is helping save his team considerable time and acting as a “creative confidence booster” in the process:

Generating images and videos

B2B marketers aren’t just using GAI to help generate text content; images and video are catching up fast. According to Intercept Scale’s survey, more than half of CMOs currently utilize GAI to create images (61%), and a majority are either very satisfied (21%) or satisfied (39%) with the results.

By comparison, only 22% of these respondents said they currently leverage a GAI tool to help them generate videos. This may be because GAI tools for video generation are, as Intercept Scale puts it, still “in beta.” While a minority of respondents said they were either very satisfied (19%) or satisfied (23%) with their video generation tools, half (50%) were neutral about their tool’s performance. 

Expect to see B2B marketers embrace AI capabilities for image and video more frequently. HubSpot’s survey of 1,200 marketers in October 2024 found that one in four marketers plan to use AI to “turn text into multi-modal campaigns” in 2025. As our benchmark report highlights, this reflects popular trends in B2B, where video was expected to remain the leading content type this year.

Measuring results and improving customer experiences

Perhaps the most exciting way B2B marketers use GAI today is to directly improve how well they understand and speak to their target audiences. The Intercept Scale survey found that a majority (62%) of B2B marketers are using AI for data analysis and audience segmentation, in efforts to make their advertising strategies more effective. Likewise, the

Benchmark report found that 33% of B2B marketers have found a way to use GAI for better targeting and personalizing marketing campaigns. Another 45% use it to increase their customer’s brand experiences. 

Many B2B marketers even believe that GAI will help them solve one of the most frustrating challenges: directly proving ROI. According to a recent LinkedIn survey, 53% of B2B marketers believe that over the next five years, AI will prove to be the most valuable in measuring ad effectiveness (53%). This optimism is already paying off: the same survey found that 90% of respondents report improved ROI when leveraging AI to build and optimize campaigns.

GAI won’t replace you, but it can be one of your greatest tools

To paraphrase a saying you’ve probably heard before: “AI won’t replace you, but someone using it might.” Those marketers who are most savvy and proactive in adopting this fast-evolving technology will be at a major advantage, and poised to usher in a new era of efficiency, effectiveness and impact. Make sure you’re staying up to speed on the trends and taking advantage of all that generative AI has to offer for marketing.

Source: LinkedIn