What kind of applications will AIGC have in the ToB business model?

This article introduces several different roles that AIGC is expected to play in B2B scenarios based on the stage of the customer journey, and analyzes the value AIGC generates in the entire marketing chain. It is suitable for people who are interested in AIGC.

With the emergence of ChatGPT and the heated discussion among the public, AIGC has become the focus of the marketing industry. 2022 is considered to be a year of amazing development. It is foreseeable that the heated discussion on AIGC will continue in 2023. Experts from all walks of life in the marketing industry have begun to explore what kind of applications AIGC can have in different business models? And what kind of whirlwind it can create in the marketing industry? The most important thing is how to measure the value that AIGC applications bring to marketing and business?

AIGC stands for AI Generated Content, which refers to the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate content. AIGC is also considered to be a new content production method after UGC and PGC. AI painting, AI writing, etc. are all branches of AIGC.

For these hot words of black technology, we are more concerned about what practical value AIGC can bring in the field of marketing? Where are the application points?

Application points arise from marketing pain points. Let’s start with the pain points of marketers in terms of content:

Pain point 1: Content is scattered and messy, making management difficult

Pain point 2: The cost of manually generating content is high and the marketing budget is not enough to support it

Pain point 3: Sales do not receive enough support from the marketing department in terms of marketing content

Pain point 4: As a B2B enterprise driven by dealer channels, dealers lack content support from brands

What role can AIGC play in addressing the above pain points? Or in other words, what problems do we hope AIGC can help solve in the initial stage of AIGC development? This question is not clear enough at present.

There is no doubt that content marketing will play an important role in every link of the marketing journey (according to the classic AIPL model, from cognition to interest, purchase, and then to repurchase). From the perspective of the entire marketing closed loop, I believe that AIGC should at least be able to solve the following problems:

1. Cognitive Stage

Through diversified AI-generated advertising promotion content production and distribution, we can quickly reach targeted customers , produce higher-quality content at lower costs and distribution costs, and reach more customers, thereby enabling customers to complete the transformation to the interest stage. The specific value of AIGC is reflected in reducing content production and distribution costs and accelerating the transformation of customers to the next stage.

2. Interest Stage

Potential customers are incubated through marketing materials of various forms and contents . For example, materials can be divided into content for different industries according to specific business scenarios, and content for potential customers in different positions. People in different positions, such as decision makers, influencers, and end users, have different perspectives, and promotional content for different products can be generated for customers who are interested in different products.

At this stage, the specific value of AIGC is also reflected in the reduction of content production costs . At the same time, under the previous traditional digital marketing methods, multiple sets of content required longer time to be manually produced, and even limited resource budgets could not produce so many sets of materials. AIGC can help achieve this and turn the impossible into possible .

3. Purchase Phase

In the purchase stage, sales intervention is required. Sales visits customers through on-site visits (some dealer-driven companies also need to introduce dealers and rely on the power of channel partners) to complete the conversion of potential customers into orders. The application scenarios of AIGC at this stage can be divided into:

Part.01

Complete the batch production of digital sales materials, such as quickly customizing the production company and product introduction PPT content or product manuals for different industries and customers pursuing different products and services for on-site sales demonstrations.

Part.02

Generate product training materials for sales and dealers, and continuously iterate and optimize training materials for new sales personnel or dealers whose sales capabilities need to be improved, to help sales and dealers understand the company's products and improve their sales capabilities.

Part.03

Provide intelligent training materials for the customer service team to reduce the cost of manual customer service. In the purchase stage, under the B2B business model, in addition to the product itself, the brand also needs to provide customers with a large number of services. For example, in the software industry, it provides customized pre-sales consulting services. Therefore, software companies usually have a customer success team, also called a sales excellence team, which essentially provides various pre-sales services to help sales close deals quickly.

Then AIGC can search the database through common application scenarios, customer pain points and solutions, and generate a large amount of training materials. On the one hand, it can help manual customer service staff get started quickly, understand the company's products and unique advantages, and enable manual customer service staff to gain customer trust with faster and better service. On the other hand, AIGC can partially replace the work of manual customer service staff, preset simple pain points and solutions that already exist in the database, and directly solve customer problems in a more intelligent way, accelerating customer conversion and shortening the conversion cycle.

Therefore, the value that AIGC can generate during the purchase phase is mainly reflected in:

1) Save sales costs

2) Improve the sales and service capabilities of channels and sales departments

3) Intelligent services shorten the conversion cycle

4. Customer Loyalty Stage

At this stage, in order to make customers sticky, buy again and again, and develop brand loyalty, it is essential that customers trust you, and trust comes from reliable quality and perfect service . AIGC can be applied in the following services:

1. Produce brand marketing content at low cost, such as regularly sharing industry trends and white papers, to establish the image of the company as a leader or influencer in the industry in the minds of customers.

2. According to the data analysis of customer needs , cross-purchase and upward purchase of product content are carried out at low cost. In addition to purchasing products that are already in use, customers will also make cross-purchases, that is, purchase other brands, in the loyalty stage. Upward purchases are the upgrade needs and desires to purchase more expensive products, because at this time the customer has trust in the brand. For example, a BMW customer who bought an X3 wants to replace it with an X5. In addition to buying an SUV, he also wants to buy a sedan to meet the usage needs of different scenarios.

What AIGC can do is to process customer data, analyze customers' potential needs, and quickly search and produce content from the content library that fits cross-buying and upward buying needs, so as to fully meet customer needs and maximize customer lifetime value.

The value that AIGC can generate in the loyalty stage is reflected in:

1) Low-cost production of brand and product content

2) Enhance customer stickiness and strengthen customer trust in the brand

3) Maximize customer lifetime value.

In summary, I predict that AIGC products will hopefully play different roles in B2B scenarios based on the customer journey stage, generate huge value in the entire marketing chain, and form a closed loop of value throughout the entire marketing chain, which is reflected in the following aspects :

Awareness and interest stage : reduce the production cost of advertising and lead incubation content (but the purpose and format of the content are different)

Purchase stage:

1) Save sales costs

2) Improve the sales and service capabilities of channels and sales departments

3) Intelligent services shorten the conversion cycle

Customer Loyalty Stage:

1) Low-cost production of brand and product content

2) Enhance customer stickiness and strengthen customer trust in the brand

3) Maximize customer lifetime value.

Essentially, AIGC hopes to help B2B corporate marketing departments accomplish several things:

First, it helps brands reduce costs and increase efficiency . Reducing content production costs is reducing costs, and shortening conversion cycles is improving efficiency.

Second, improve the ability to serve customers in all aspects of marketing, sales, and service through digital means.

Third, promote better organizational collaboration in market sales.

Fourth , maximize customer lifetime value, efficiently drive sales growth, and improve return on investment.

Author: Zhu Jingyu

Source: WeChat official account "Jade Digital Marketing (ID: Jade_Digital)"