There’s more evidence that AI-powered tools are transforming go-to-market (GTM) strategies by augmenting human capabilities and addressing shifts in buyer behavior.
As the Forrester B2B Summit kicked off this week in Phoenix, the analyst firm released a report called “AI Agents: What It Means For B2B Marketing, Sales, And Product.” The report explores the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence agents within B2B operations.
In addition to discussing the near-term benefits of using AI agents to improve marketing, sales and product innovation, the report offers guidance on successful AI agent implementations while cautioning against potential pitfalls like over-reliance on hype and neglecting the human element.
Preparing your organization for AI agent success
The report touches on five critical things B2B marketing leaders need to do to prepare their organizations for success with AI agents.
Invest in understanding and strategically planning for AI agent integration
The report emphasizes that B2B marketing is undergoing a significant transformation due to AI agents. As such, marketing leaders need to clearly understand what differentiates these agents, their capabilities (such as reflection, memory, planning, tool use, multiagent collaboration, and autonomy) and their potential advantages for your GTM functions.
What to do now: It is crucial to stay competitive by proactively identifying how AI agents can augment your current marketing efforts and address changing buyer behaviors.
Focus on leveraging AI agents to enhance the buyer experience
AI agents can improve the customer experience and enable more self-directed purchasing journeys. The Forrester report highlights the potential of AI agents to act as personalized concierges that understand, guide and support buyers across various touchpoints.
What to do now: Identify specific points in the buyer journey where AI agents can remove friction, provide personalized information and facilitate the next step. Consider how AI agents can empower self-directed buying and even act as the customer in specific scenarios to gather and analyze data.
Dig deeper: Salesforce Agentforce: What you need to know
Prioritize the implementation of AI agents to automate tasks
AI agents can generate deeper insights and improve marketing productivity and pipeline generation. The Forrester report notes that AI agents can automate BDR/SDR outreach, improve productivity, engage in context-aware interactions and automate digital processes.
What to do now: Explore use cases where AI agents can streamline repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on more strategic initiatives. Leverage AI agents to mine vast amounts of data for relevant insights, enabling more informed decision-making and the delivery of role-relevant guidance. AI agents can also assist in generating meaningful pipeline through various marketing activities.
Establish clear guidelines, governance, and rigorous testing protocols
Forrester’s report strongly advises against haphazard adoption and stresses the need for guidelines and governance. To prevent undesirable behaviors, you must implement rigorous testing and validation processes before exposing AI agents to customers.
What to do now: Your human teams will need to upskill to effectively build, customize and interact with AI agents, focusing on articulating SMART goals rather than step-by-step instructions. Plan for multiagent systems and agent-to-agent interactions to maximize their potential.
Prepare your data infrastructure and marketing strategy to account
AI agents are the new stakeholders in the buying process and sources of new data. As B2B buyers increasingly use genAI tools, your AI agents can interact with vendor content on their behalf. Additionally, AI agents can become end users of products, generating new “buyer” data.
What to do now: Expand your understanding of the signal universe to include these AI agent interactions and ensure your data strategy can capture, analyze, and leverage this new information to refine your marketing efforts.
Dig deeper: AI agents will infiltrate your martech stack
The post 5 ways to help your B2B organization succeed with AI agents appeared first on MarTech.