Saas Marketer - AI & B2B? That's a Lot of Acronyms

We’re back babyyyyy, bringing you some of the most interesting B2B stories we’ve come across this week.

Now apparently, 2,991 of you opened the last email, and that’s really amazing - genuinely, it’s warmed our hearts. Granted, it doesn’t really tell us what you thought; you could’ve felt an enormous apoplexy towards it and sent us right into the spam folder. If you did, then whatever man, we don’t care.

Why would we care? 

Seriously, we don’t. Like, we’re really not bothered. 

Pfffft, okay sure, I chain smoke and then cry myself to sleep every night over the idea you hate us, but it doesn’t mean I care.

I don’t crave your validation bro JUST DROP IT!!

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Okay, Tom, our Founder, just entered the Google Doc I’m writing this on and told me this isn’t a good look, and that it comes across as really defensive and emotionally immature so, erm… here are the B2B stories.

Just forget this ever happened.

​Honey, We Need to Talk About ChatGPT and Its Impact on B2B Marketing 

🤖 I Like My A.I. Like I Like My People: Sentient​

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ve probably heard all the hubbub over artificial intelligences like ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E, and countless others. Your social media accounts have probably been flooded with really boring looking, A.I. generated paintings of your friend’s sister’s boyfriend who you didn’t even realise you followed.

But over on LinkedIn, A.I. (ChatGPT in particular) is starting to impact the way B2B marketers are approaching their work. On the one hand, it’s a quick, certainly effective way of proofreading, generating ideas for copy, writing out emails and articles (not this one, don’t worry), or conducting research.

On the other hand, however, it is instilling a smidgen of fear into the hearts of B2B marketers who don’t want to be replaced by a robot - can you really blame them? Obviously it’s not quite at a world dominating level yet, so don’t worry too much… but it is all very surreal isn’t it?

Let’s delve a little deeper...

🛌 Wake up Babe, New GPT-4 Just Dropped

About a month ago, OpenAI released their new and improved, shinier version of ChatGPT: GPT-4. Whilst some were ecstatic over its existence, amazed with just how advanced and impressive it was, there were some who were, quite rightly, a bit frightened. Someone even went to ChatGPT and asked it to name twenty jobs GPT-4 could replace, along with the human traits replaced (already that sounds a bit dystopian, doesn’t it? Human traits? Bloody hell). Here’s how it replied:

The fact that it learns from human-computer interactions and generates language based on it is no doubt impressive; I’ve even seen some of my fellow co-workers, as well as other B2B marketers, use it to generate the foundations of ad copy and emails, becoming ‘master prompters’ and getting as much out of it as they can.

But will this damage our ability to take risks in the world of B2B marketing? Are we in danger of advancing future technologies to such a level that we will cease to even try and creatively challenge ourselves, remaining still and docile in our work as our abilities depressively stagnate?

Or are we overthinking it?

😱 It’s Not All Doom and Gloom, Alright? Chill Out

There is a chance that you’re reading this and thinking, ‘Christ, this guy is a bit paranoid about A.I., isn’t he?’ Well, perhaps ‘cautiously optimistic’ is a more apposite phrase for it.

Lev Myskin, Head of Content at Fame, the B2B podcast agency, went as far as to say AI and ChatGPT is barely at the level people expect yet. “ChatGPT is still too gimmicky and we've already got better AI automations in place,” he told us. “We also can't use ChatGPT because its writing style is too generic and removes the human voice from the writing. It has its use but I think the majority of people in positions like mine would be able to tell the difference.”

On the other side of the spectrum, however, Paul Roester, CEO of Marketing AI institute, said at the recent MarTech Conference, “I think we’re entering a very disruptive phase for creativity for designers, illustrators, video producers and writers. I think AI came for knowledge work and creative work way faster than we were prepared for as an industry, and I think that 2023 is going to be a very hard year for a lot of people to grasp what is really possible now and what that means to organisations and writers and content teams.” 

Remember, folks, just because it’s going to be a hard year for B2B marketers, it doesn’t mean it’s an inherently bad one. Anything disruptive gives way to change, and change is almost always a chaotic process, it just takes a lot of time.

Read on the web >>

Copy of the Week:

This is a fairly new segment, one that I can’t promise will be super consistent or successful, but every now and then we come across some copy that stands out from the rest and brings a smile to our faces. 

Slack, the workspace equivalent to Discord (seriously, they’re very similar), updated their app the other day and the description for it was just brilliant. Take a look:

The Sudden Influx of B2B LinkedIn Influencers

🐘 It’s a Jungle Out There, Man

Have you been on social media lately? It’s mental. Just, absolutely mental. How the hell have we gotten to a point where Elon Musk, the man who fires people for simply having an opinion and also wants to insert chips into our brains as though we’re in some Cyberpunk 2077 society, is in charge of the world’s biggest social media platform, Twitter?

In fact, last week Twitter made their algorithm codes open source, and over on LinkedIn Steve Nouri, Chief AI Evangelist and Founder of AI4Diversity, took it upon himself to break down what it all meant for the layman (what a king). Here’s a quick look:

🤔 But What Does This Have to Do With B2B Influencers? 

LinkedIn and Twitter couldn’t be more different: 

• LinkedIn: a place made for working professionals to build their networks and learn. 
• Twitter: an echochamber of information and opinions for literally anyone (that’s not us being edgy or opinionated, just look at their algorithm. The proof is in the pudding).  

But this doesn’t change the fact that most social media algorithms have a lot in common. If you have a high following, then you’re more likely to garner more engagement, and more engagement means more reach, and more reach means more followers, and the cycle goes on. 

B2C marketers have taken advantage of this in every way possible, hiring influencers left, right and centre to promote their brands on all socials. Only recently, however, have B2B brands finally decided to jump on the influencer bandwagon. 

Lavender, an AI email assistant, has gone as far as to hire Todd Clouser (15,304 followers) and Jen Allen-Knuth (25,720 followers) for their unbelievable reach and their impressive ability to create engaging, interesting content. 

Ellie Middleton, Founder of the (un)masked community for neurodivergents, has 232,736 followers and is being hired by a multitude of companies to speak about her experience in the workplace as a neurodivergent individual, and how we can make the workplace environment feel safer for that community.

😧 There Are a Few Sceptics Among Us…

Naturally, there has been some criticism of this influencer approach to B2B marketing. Mike Roberts, Head of Growth at Forma.ai, isn’t so convinced that these influencers will deliver such phenomenal results for the companies they’re hired by.

It’s entirely possible that he’s right, painful as it may be to admit; we’ve all seen influencers, for whatever reason, slowly lose traction over time and be pushed to the sidelines. Just how long is an influencer’s lifespan?  

Read on the web >>

Well, there you have it. As promised, we delivered a couple of B2B stories and had a few laughs along the way, didn’t we? Again, we have no way of knowing whether or not you laughed, but I reckon you must have cracked at least one smile, or even just a smirk. Surely?

If you liked what you read here, be sure to let us know and, if there’s anything you’d like us to improve on, again, let us know! We’re all ears!

Cheers for reading, and we’ll see you next week 😎

Keep growing,
SaaS Marketer Weekly

P.S.

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