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October 25, 2023
| 6 mins read
In today’s digital economy, the need for organizations to meet customers’ evolving expectations for responsive, personalized experiences has never been any more significant. Brands are increasingly integrating newer content formats into their B2B marketing strategies to engage their followers and audience.
Fortunately, leading-edge technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR), have revolutionized how brands interact with clients.
AR and AI in B2B marketing help B2B marketers optimize messaging and provide it to the right client at the speed of thought. Moreover, these two transformative forces enable brands to fine-tune interactions with clients to streamline workflows and execute critical marketing tasks with better accuracy.
In 2022, the businesses generated worldwide sales of €3.13 Mn from AR in advertising. This number will balloon to €5.73 Mn in 2027, says the report. Let’s understand how this immersive technology is making inroads into B2B marketing.
AR in advertising has made product visualization a reality, significantly impacting marketing strategies. The technology allows B2B companies to showcase their products in a more immersive manner. For instance, a manufacturer can use AR to overlay digital information on a physical product, more effectively walking potential clients through its intricate features and benefits.
With virtual product demos, B2B brands can reduce costs and reach customers irrespective of geographical constraints. Plus, clients can interact with and experience products without needing physical shipments.
Further, AR enables 3D modeling and prototyping, letting businesses quickly design and visualize new products. This particularly benefits the automotive and aerospace industries, which involve complex design processes and precise visualization.
Employing 3D product modeling enables businesses to offer customers realistic representations of their products, facilitating more informed purchasing decisions.
AR in eCommerce blurs the lines between the physical and digital (“phygital”) worlds, building immersive experiences especially valuable in B2B marketing. By overlaying virtual elements onto the physical world, AR-driven experiences let clients feel more connected to the products.
For example, industrial equipment manufacturers can use AR to enable clients to visualize their products in real-world contexts rather than relying solely on static images.
This understanding of how products fit into their intended environments has minimized instances of mismatched expectations, resulting in heightened levels of customer satisfaction and fewer product returns.
Suggested Read: Top AR Commerce Trends in 2024
Here is how AI in B2B advertising is impacting businesses across industries:
Predictive analytics, a subset of AI, has transformed the way companies understand their target audience. It uses machine learning (ML) algorithms to analyze vast datasets and identify patterns in historical customer behavior. This enables B2B marketers to segment their leads more effectively before developing a tailored-made promotional scheme.
By understanding which leads are more likely to convert, marketers can prioritize their efforts and allocate resources more efficiently, resulting in higher conversion rates and ROI.
B2B clients often require immediate assistance and information. With conversational AI in B2B marketing, companies can offer immediate real-time assistance, addressing client queries and concerns 24/7.
Whether it's answering product-related questions, providing technical support, or guiding customers through the sales process, chatbots and virtual assistants are always available. This improves customer service and helps in converting leads into customers.
Further, AI-powered chatbots help with lead qualification by engaging with potential clients, gathering critical insights, and identifying warm leads. Also, they assist in lead nurturing by sending targeted content, following up on inquiries, and guiding prospects through the sales funnel.
AI-driven sentiment analysis has enabled businesses to assess consumer reactions and perceptions accurately. By analyzing customer feedback, reviews, and social media interactions, companies can gain insights into brand perception and identify areas for improvement.
Besides, AI-enabled sentiment analysis identifies emerging trends and shifts in client sentiments. B2B marketers can detect these changing preferences or concerns and tweak their strategies accordingly. For instance, if a new pain point emerges within a target market, B2B marketers can tailor their messaging and solutions to address it.
That way, B2B marketers can tailor their marketing efforts. They can modify content, recommendations, and messaging to align with the specific preferences and needs of different customer segments.
Various B2B firms that integrated AR and AI into their advertising programs have recorded incredible success. Here are some examples.
Tanishq has joined hands with mirrAR to deploy an AR platform – “Experience Zones” – at its Mumbai and Bengaluru airport stores. The jewelry giant hosts over 200 designs and serves over 3 lakh customers daily through the AR-based platform.
These mirrAR experience zones let visitors sit and try on multiple jewelry pieces virtually. People need to pick the design they wish to try on from an AR-enabled mirror without undergoing several physical trials and testing out a wider variety. What is more, the jewelry piece follows the person’s movements for a realistic effect.
Not only the experience zones, Tanishq has also partnered with mirrAR to integrate webAR and in-store AR solutions, and achieved an impressive milestone by implementing virtual try-ons for over 20,000 SKUs.
The result? They have seen a whopping 20% reduction in returns, 16x higher purchase probability because of webAR and in-store AR solutions integration.
Toyota’s frontline employees use Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 AR headset to install components on its automobiles effectively. These headsets offer workers access to all of the tools needed without loading up a PC. The HoloLens 2 collects the instructions that are further used in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 guides system. As such, they can see through other worker’s eyes and understand how to install vehicle components.
ABN AMRO Bank uses IBM’s WatsonX to build a conversational AI chatbot – Anna. This AI-enabled virtual agent looks after the bank’s retail and commercial banking customers.
Anna gets trained from the data captured from ABN AMRO Bank’s contact center. Available round-the-clock on the bank’s chat channel, it analyzes customers’ needs and profiles to provide accurate responses. Anna’s net promoter score (NPS) is over 50 from customers seeking specific answers. Moreover, it interacts with more than a million ABN AMRO Bank’s clients every year.
The combined application of AR and AI have brought a new era in B2B advertising, but companies still face some problems while deploying them into already existing marketing systems.
Incorporating AR and AI in B2B marketing schemes is challenging mainly because of limited resources and knowledge in these areas. Besides, privacy is still a big issue that limits the potential use of such technologies, although companies are obliged to secure their sensitive information when using them.
Most B2B companies have experienced challenges ensuring smooth compatibility or interoperability among different AR and AI systems or platforms. Incompatibility arises due to a lack of standardized protocols and formats in combining various technologies leading to a lack of seamless integration. Therefore, organizations have had to allocate large funds towards creating specialized solutions enabling seamless communication between different tools.
Nevertheless, the involvement of AR and AI in B2B advertising will intensify. It is probable that over time, adoption of such will converge to become normal and firms will increasingly prioritize offering clients immersive and tailored experiences.
Finally, innovation in the B2B advertising space can be further enhanced by emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR) and advanced AI algorithms. These are seen as reshaping the industry’s contours with new means for businesses to connect with audiences and convert potential buyers.
B2B advertisement’s perspective towards the future will likely be one that seeks to achieve total customer engagement by including AR and AI to create uniform engagements. As AR and AI continue to evolve, they will empower B2B companies to offer consumers at-scale immersive and interactive product experiences.
Suggested Read : Sell on Facebook: The Ultimate Guide for Jewelers
In the end, it is impossible not to see AR and AI’s transforming implications in B2B advertising. These modern technologies empower B2B companies to find innovative ways of presenting, promoting, and selling product lines.
Today, clients want brands to reflect their values and build meaningful connections instead of just producing more content. Businesses are using AR and AI in B2B eCommerce to offer hyper-relevant experiences for long-lasting ties with clients. At the same time, that clientele will likely become increasingly comfortable interacting and communicating with AI and AR as their ubiquity flourishes and they become less recognizable.
Nevertheless, businesses should keep up with the dynamics of these technologies to harness their maximum potential for better product offerings while updating the B2B marketing strategies accordingly as the digital world constantly evolves.
As the number of channels for content consumption grows exponentially, brands must embrace these technologies to provide hyper-relevance to break through.
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