Augmented reality and artificial intelligence aren’t just for B2C marketers anymore, and as we move into 2020 we’re likely to see a new decade of B2B that keeps moving farther away from “Boring-To-Boring” and towards more to B2C-like experiences. AR and AI are a key part of what consumers increasingly expect to find in those experiences.
The swiftly rising number of mixed-reality consumer app installations is expected to jump from 3 billion to 10 billion by 2024, with associated ad spending forecast to climb from $2 billion in 2019 to $11 billion, according to new Juniper Research data.
While AR and AI in consumer-facing efforts keeps expanding with a full head of steam, such as Warner Bros. first-ever embedded AR for its upcoming “Scoob!” film trailer and mobile app, many in the B2B landscape have scarcely begun to tap into the AI-infused technology available.
Let’s take a look at five B2B brands that are innovating with a variety of AR and AI marketing initiatives.
1 – Microsoft’s Reddit-Powered Chatbot Tech
Microsoft DialoGPT
Microsoft recently announced a natural language enhancement program that will add a new level of human-like responsiveness to chatbots, with its DialoGPT initiative that taps into an archive of nearly 150 million conversations from social news aggregation and discussion website Reddit.
The project seeks to lend a more conversational 工作职能邮件数据库 and human tone to the AI that powers chatbots, and by incorporating Reddit’s unique blend of tech-savvy online scenesters and cut-to-the-chase real-world solutions, the next generation of chatbots that arise from Microsoft’s DialoGPT endeavor are likely to be a noticeable change from those we use today.
Microsoft took efforts to clean its Reddit archive to include only relevant and helpful conversation history, but has issued a warning that despite its best efforts some of the chatbot responses could still contain the type of content that may not yet be ready for typical B2B environments.
Although the project is still in testing, Microsoft has made it available to AI researchers looking to take their chatbot game to the next level, and not surprisingly Reddit users have also turned their attention on the new development.
2 – HubSpot’s HubBot Chatbot
Hubspot
Chatbot technology’s usage has grown steadily since its introduction just a few years back, and more B2B firms are making chatbots a prominent component of their business models.
HubSpot website visitors are welcomed by its HubBot chatbot, which serves as an automated gatekeeper to put the company’s existing or potential clients in touch with the most relevant human to answer any questions it isn’t able to answer.
HubSpot also provides personalized chatbots with its HubSpot Conversations, and a variety of other AI-powered tools, so it makes sense for the firm to showcase a powerful chatbot for its own site.
3 – Drift & Sigstr’s Conversational Email Chat
Drift
Account Based Marketing (ABM) software company Drift and email marketing platform Sigstr recently joined together on a new service that joins together email signatures and real-time conversations with either chatbots or real people.
Sigstr
We’ve written about Drift before, most recently during theconference, where company vice president of marketing Dave Gerhardt shared a variety of helpful conversational B2B marketing tactics.
Sigstr has also made our previous list of “5 Examples of Remarkable Content Marketing in Action,” and now with its Drift partnership the combined firms are leading the way by merging the decidedly-classic tech of email with modern chatbot functionality in an ABM environment particularly well-suite for B2B marketing efforts.