It’s been a week of generative AI showing up in everything, everywhere, all at once. From GPT-4’s arrival to the announcement of generative AI tools coming to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and three major CRM solutions, the AI news cycle just won’t stop. For B2B marketers, it increases the pressure to define the usage of generative AI in their organization. With its promise of 10x the productivity and creative possibilities, generative AI capabilities give rise to questions such as:

  • How do we use AI to create quality content at scale?
  • How does this change the way that our teams work?
  • If every company creates AI-generated content, how do we stand out with our audiences?

Most organizations face bottlenecks in content production. Marketers know firsthand that their organizations need to improve collaboration and efficiency in this regard. In Forrester’s 2022 State Of B2B Content Survey, 65% of B2B marketers said that their organizations struggle with significant content waste. It’s time that marketers figure this out as they’re called to do more with less in 2023 and are adjusting to ongoing scrutiny of budgets and headcount. Generative AI holds appeal for efficiency in content creation. But more importantly, for organizations committed to advancing their content engine maturity, generative AI forces a major turning point for stepping up content operations and driving alignment on content quality and innovation across the enterprise.

Plan For Enterprise AI And Content

This is a recurring theme in the B2B world, with the best marketing, product, and sales teams joining forces to power growth. This theme continues with generative AI adoption, because these teams all create, store, and activate content with audiences everywhere. Although individuals or single teams may experiment with a variety of AI tools, keeping track of dozens of different tools across an organization creates an untenable burden. Instead, innovative B2B organizations are piloting and using generative AI platforms that can be brought into the workflows that their teams use.

Successful B2B adoption calls for content expertise and marketing savvy. Content marketers and brand, communications, and portfolio marketing experts are critical for incorporating brand voice, style guidelines, and company knowledge into generative AI tools. Their expertise and partnership with marketing operations to fine-tune workflows enhances cross-functional coordination and collaboration. Although a pilot program may start within one team or function, generative AI’s enormous potential has to be managed like an enterprisewide application, with attention to security and privacy features and governance around content processes.

Use Generative AI Across The Content Lifecycle

So does this change the way that B2B teams work? Most early adopters see benefits in using generative AI as a thought starter, writing prompt, or research tool. Having an audience-centric focus and the content operations capabilities to manage and measure content utilization and performance is critical for curbing content waste. That’s where marketers can guide the organization on specific activities across the content lifecycle and drive improvements in quality and scale while the organization learns.

Generative AI takes some time in terms of onboarding and setting up templates. As team members gain more experience, they get better at writing prompts and iterating on outputs more effectively. AI can help with summarization and transcription, providing content-brief-like input and generating raw drafts and meta descriptions — but marketers stay involved, editing and refining content for quality and providing unique input, whether that’s data points and quotes or perspective from company experts. In the longer term, more marketers will use generative AI to repurpose content into different formats and promote it for different audiences.

Adapt Your Content Strategy For Future Relevance

The reality for B2B audiences is that they are saturated in content — and that’s before the widespread use of generative AI. When every organization has crossed the chasm, audiences will recognize and appreciate content that shows human qualities (empathy, humor, and emotion) and that demonstrates source accuracy and credibility. Marketers who guide their organization’s editorial perspective on this will be invaluable — and will lead their content and marketing strategies well.

Want to get more perspective about using generative AI to scale content with quality? Contact us for a guidance or inquiry session to uncover opportunities to scale content with both quality and impact.