Generative artificial intelligence has the power to transform how B2B and B2C ecommerce marketers do their jobs.
But the GenAI landscape for which tools and programs work and which ones don’t can be daunting for ecommerce marketers to figure out and implement, says a new report from Forrester Research.
“The launch of ChatGPT and the rapid proliferation of genAI tools have created ongoing discussions and discoveries about their potential impact across many scenarios and use cases — along with the potential dangers,” according to Forrester’s report, Generative AI Brings Superpowers to Portfolio Marketers. “The sheer level of capabilities it brings to so many different fields have created a maelstrom of confusion.”
The challenges noted in the report include:
- Access depends on the workplace. Organizational practices and guidelines around the use of genAI vary widely. “Many organizations are still playing it safe and banning any employee use of genAI tools.”
- Businesses are confused about the multiple ways to access genAI capabilities. “Organizations and employees are confused about which tools to use, how, and when — due to the proliferation of tools and path to access.”
- There is a lack of defined processes or standards. Within the boundaries of organizational guidelines, many portfolio marketers are actively trying out genAI tools for different use cases. “As the number of genAI tools continues to grow, portfolio marketers often rely on word of mouth to find tools that fit their needs and company requirements.”
To make using genAI effective, ecommerce marketers need not adopt a “one size fits all” mentality, Forrester says. Instead, marketers need to figure out specific areas where AI can improve the speed, efficiency and awareness of branding and messaging campaigns.
Areas where Forrester says genAI may deliver key benefits include:
- Speeding time to expertise. GenAI can summarize swaths of information from multiple sources, allowing portfolio marketers to rapidly consume the latest information.
- Automating repetitive or time-consuming tasks.
- GenAI can automate mundane tasks like data entry, note-taking, and reporting, thus freeing up time and resources for more complex and strategic work.
- Sparking creativity and ideation. With a broad remit of responsibility and endless to-do lists, portfolio marketers can find it hard to consistently spur creativity.
- Repackaging content for different uses. Portfolio marketers can increase productivity in content creation by asking genAI to develop short- or long-form.
- Enabling personalization at scale. The ability to communicate and engage a prospect or customer based on their industry, geographic region, functional responsibility, or even buyer role can pay dividends in the level of response and engagement.
“Content-generation genAI tools can be trained on the best on-message content to help sales, marketing, and other teams when creating emails, ads, and landing pages,” Forrester says.
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Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News, published 4x/week. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
