Small-Business Marketers Invest Big in AI and Automation

Big business-to-business firms often get their hands on artificial intelligence first, but their smaller counterparts need the technology just as much. A report from data and analytics firm Integrate found that 38% of b-to-b marketers are facing budget cuts in 2023, while 40% are eliminating staff. While those budget cuts are decreasing field and event marketing (with 20% of brands pulling back) and content creation (18%), 44% of marketers are actually planning to spend more on marketing technology. That’s especially true for small businesses. According to a LinkedIn study conducted by YouGov, 76% of them are investing in automation, AI and online communities this year. Of that group, 26% are getting into AI to increase creativity (36%), improve efficiencies (33%), create written content (31%) and free up staff for more complex work (28%). Small b-to-b firms are embracing AI even more rapidly, investing a greater portion of their budgets in marketing (26%) than their business-to-consumer counterparts (20%). Of those small b-to-b firms, 54% told LinkedIn they hope to use generative AI to increase their efficiency so they can focus on higher-value work—like long-running campaigns with a long-term impact on a company’s bottom line. G/O Media Has Begun Using AI to Generate Content “From small businesses to enterprises, investing in brand-building to stay relevant has never been more important, especially as economic uncertainty continues,” said Greg Willis, vp of global sales for LinkedIn. With only 5% of b-to-b buyers in the market prepared to make a purchase under the best circumstances—a figure that drops to 1% during economic downturn—AI and automation are being pitched to small businesses not just as technology, but also as the luxury of long-term planning. “Even in what can feel like a short-term transactional sale, consumers have choices, so the long game matters,” said Willis. “The relationship you build with your buyers matters, too.” Aided by AI AI has already helped grow small business like Roletape, which Rahiem Thompson founded in 2017 to promote his own video and photography efforts. As demand for his work expanded, he drew in other photographers, graphic designers and artists, turning Roletape into a creative collective promoting both their work and its own merchandise. "I've used AI in a lot of ways,” Thompson said. “I used it to write product descriptions, draft emails, create PowerPoints, write video script templates, generate concepts for photo shoots and more." Roletape already invests in a host of marketing technology through GoDaddy, which is trying to help its small-business clients navigate rapidly evolving AI tools. It recently developed a library of AI prompts covering needs like productivity, copywriting and social media advertising. With upward of 60% of its customers already experimenting with ChatGPT, Bard and other AI tools—and offerings like its conversations tool and content studio now using embedded AI—GoDaddy asked its customers about their business experiences and culled relevant prompts from those conversations. “We know the benefit that it can provide us as business leaders in terms of saving time and automating tasks, and often tools like this hit big business first,” said GoDaddy CMO Fara Howard. “Our focus has always been supporting the everyday entrepreneur and making certain that they have access to similar tools and know how to use them.” LinkedIn, meanwhile, is developing a new feature that uses data from a customer’s LinkedIn page to generate “Copy Suggestions” for ad headlines and text. That feature adds to a suite of tech offerings aimed at increasing efficiency, as small data platform Census did when it asked for LinkedIn’s help boosting revenue during the third quarter of 2022. LinkedIn’s data and guidance helped Census narrow its target audience, refine its ads and lower the cost of new business. Within a quarter, the number of potential clients Census converted to sales increased tenfold while their return on investment quadrupled. Compared to the first half of 2022, Census tripled potential clients during its second half while quadrupling the number of deals it completed. Both Census and LinkedIn see potential for even greater growth with help from AI, but Census said it still needs to advance further to accurately address the technical nature of its cloud data services. “We embraced AI from the beginning,” said Nathan Corliss, performance marketing manager at Census. “We see it as a playground for idea iteration … While we have seen it outperform human-written content, it's crucial to continually validate its accuracy.”