Tag: b2b marketing strategies

9 B2B Online Marketing Courses to Win at AI and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence and machine learning weren’t on the agenda in most marketing courses ten or even five years ago.

Nevertheless, AI and machine learning are nearly standard practice these days as part of your business and marketing strategies.

Whether you’re a sales rep, CMO, CEO, manager, or marketer, it’s worthwhile to spend some time learning about how AI works and how you can apply it to your general activities.

Coding AI engines and machine learning systems might seem complicated but using them definitely isn’t. Tools like Hushly are specifically designed to be user-friendly with no need for coding knowledge.

These AI and machine learning courses are perfect for developing the knowledge you need for B2B online marketing applications.

9 B2B Online Marketing Courses to Help You Understand AI and Machine Learning

Below you’ll find a handful of affordable online courses from Google AI, Coursera, and Udemy. Each course is a cost-effective way for C-level employees, marketers, and sales staff to boost their AI understanding without investing in a serious degree.

1. AI Foundations for Everyone

IBM’s AI Foundations for Everyone is a three-course specialization designed to give anyone a better understanding of basic AI and machine learning. This specialization is designed for beginners with no background in technology, so it’s perfect for B2Bs and marketers.

Students learn terminology, use cases, and coding-free applications in three courses:

Intro to AI
Getting Started with AI
Building AI Chatbots without Coding

The whole specialization takes about three months to complete if you devote two hours each week and costs $39 per month.

2. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Introduction to AI is the first course in IBM’s three-course specialization mentioned in the bullet above. However, this course deserves its own attention because it’s brief, generalized, and accessible to everyone.

Like all courses in the specialization, Introduction to AI requires no IT, engineering, coding, programming, or tech experience.

Students learn the basics of AI and machine learning through four modules:

What is AI? Definitions and examples
Basic AI concepts, terminology, and applications
Ethics surrounding the impact of AI on jobs, society, and biases
The future of AI and putting use cases into action.

You can finish this course in a single day or eight hours.

3. Google AI Education

As a company on the forefront of AI and machine learning technology, Google offers a wide range of courses, games, interactive content, podcasts, and more.

You can sort resources by your background or experience level. Some resources and courses are specifically designed for business decisionmakers and “curious cats” as Google calls them.

Some courses specifically focus on preparing and managing data for machine learning applications which is especially useful for B2B online marketing.

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4. Machine Learning for All

The University of London sponsors this exciting course on AI for beginners.

Creators designed this course for people without backgrounds in mathematics, coding, or engineering. There’s no intro to Python or other types of coding either.

Once finished, you’ll understand how modern machine learning technology works, the importance of high-quality data, and AI’s impact on society.

The course takes 22 hours to complete and charges a flat rate of $49.

5. Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning for Finance

Anyone in the finance industry might be interested in Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning for Finance from NYU.

This specialization dives into the basics of using artificial intelligence and ML for stock and options trading. Students can take four courses in succession or each as a standalone to broaden their knowledge of machine learning in finance.

As an intermediate course, only those with a beginner’s background in algebra, programming, and statistics should sign up.

6. Artificial Intelligence for Business

This course on Udemy is for anyone with a basic high school math education and minimal knowledge in Python.

Students learn about a wide range of use cases of AI and machine learning in business such as optimizing internal processes, increasing efficiency, implementation, and more.

It takes about 15 hours to complete the entire course – perfect for a long weekend.

7. Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing

This course is specifically designed for anyone with at least a minimal background in digital marketing, so it’s perfect for B2B online marketing applications. Specifically, content marketers will benefit from this course.

Students learn various ways to incorporate AI into their digital marketing through tactics like content creation, augmented reality, apps, lead generation, influencer marketing, analytics, and more.

As a primer, the entire course only takes less than five hours to complete so you can walk away with practical knowledge in as little as an afternoon.

8. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Business

Billed as the “ultimate” AI and machine learning course for CXOs, managers, and leaders, this course requires no knowledge of programming or AI – just some managerial experience.

You’ll learn practical applications of AI with use cases like human resources, sales, marketing, supply chain management, and more. Individual modules break down AI in various verticals like e-commerce, banking, healthcare, and communications.

As an intro course, students also learn AI and machine learning terminology, limitations, and common programs for creating AI among other important basics.

Although jam-packed with resources, this Udemy course takes less than six hours to complete.

9. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Managers

While designed for business managers and not coders, students should have a basic understanding of algorithms and high school mathematics.

This course dives into the technical details of AI and associated machine learning algorithms.

You’ll walk away from the course with an understanding of where to apply AI in your business, what types of algorithms you’ll need, essential programs to use, and potentially what tools you’ll need or who you’ll need to hire.

For the hands-on project, you’ll design and implement a cancer-detecting AI system through Python.

The entire course takes less than two hours to finish and explains coding line-by-line so only minimal knowledge is required.

User-Friendly AI-Driven Marketing Tools Designed for You

Hushly makes it easy for anyone to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in B2B online marketing regardless of their knowledge. Our user-friendly interface lets you personalize your website experience for different segments, accounts, or individuals.

Take your B2B online marketing to the next level with Hushly AI tools.

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3 Opportunities to Improve Your B2B Marketing Strategies

In the Digital Age, it’s never been more apparent which companies are using B2B marketing strategies that earn results and which are struggling with plans that don’t work.

The former is constantly able to chase new initiatives, often breaking ground on channels the rest of their industry hasn’t leveraged quite yet (e.g. social media). At best, the latter is forced into playing catch-up.

Even if you’ve seen some positive feedback from your current strategy – say, an uptick in traffic – that’s no reason to assume your plan couldn’t use a review. Instead, look for opportunities to improve.

3 Ways to Improve B2B Marketing Strategies

While B2B content audits are one of the most important ways to improve your organic traffic and convert the leads who come to your site, it’s not the only opportunity you have to improve your company’s online presence.

1. Add Some Element of Account-Based Marketing

More and more, B2B marketing strategies that don’t take an account-based approach are going to lose to those that do.

After all, as the name indicates, account-based marketing (ABM) zeroes in on the specific needs of each prospect. Blog posts, social media posts, webinars – these are all great forms of content, but they can’t compete with the kind of tailored-approach that account-based marketing represents.

Now, maybe you’ve already considered ABM but concluded it just wasn’t a good fit. Maybe your company requires far too many leads every month to make ABM a realistic option.

Then, consider only applying ABM to your most valuable leads.

You could use lead-scoring to immediately make this evaluation the moment you’re able to get any feedback from a prospect. Chatbots will give you this opportunity, but you could also email any new leads a quick questionnaire to find out what kind of returns they might represent.

Then, anytime it becomes clear that you’re speaking with one of these high-value prospects, you dispatch your team of trained ABM specialists to reach out and start nurturing them, bypassing the rest of your normal funnel and accelerating their path to converting.

2. Get into “the Media Business”

In a now-famous interview Gary Vaynerchuk gave back in 2013, he told the story about how Guinness Beer invented The Guinness Book of World Records because research showed that when their demographic went to pubs, they largely talked about two things: soccer and trivia.

By starting their own media company dedicated to the latter, they enjoyed a direct connection with their market, which included the opportunity to advertise their product.

Interestingly, Vaynerchuk told this story to a lawyer who asked about the kind of content she could publish to grab the attention of her prospects. He recommended she take Guinness’ approach by first thinking about what her market is already interested in.

Now, does that mean you need to start your own media company to generate more leads?

No.

However, it does mean that you should be generating traffic from every possible source – including those that may not be dedicated to your industry.

Even though this advice is almost seven years old, very few B2B marketing strategies utilize it. Sure, plenty of B2B companies invest in paid traffic, but they tend not to stray too far from social media, Google Ads, and industry sites. Those are good opportunities, but competition is high.

Where else does media provide you with opportunities to connect with your audience uncontested? That’s where you should go looking for leads.

3. Add Another “Content-Type” to Your Social Media

Speaking of social media, there’s probably a lot of room on your current platforms to diversify the kind of content you post.

There are all kinds of social media content-types you could post to mix things up and stand out from the crowd. For example, if none of your competitors are posting videos, that would be an excellent opportunity. Similarly, if they never post testimonials, think how good that will make your company look if you start doing so regularly.

If your current B2B social media strategy is just industry news and little more, you have plenty of room to grow. Adopt a type of content you don’t see competitors using and start implementing it.

Using These B2B Marketing Strategies to Increase Conversions Right Away

As we mentioned at the beginning, you should always audit your approach to look for where new opportunities lie. Long after you surpass your competition, it’s worth considering other B2B marketing strategies that may help to increase that distance.

At Hushly, we’ve created a platform that is able to take any strategy and immediately improve its results. Contact us today and we’ll show you how all you need to do is add our software to your site to immediately enjoy an increase in your ABM and lead-gen conversions of 51% – guaranteed.

How to Audit B2B Marketing Strategies

Nothing is quite as frustrating as putting lots of time and money into your B2B marketing strategies only to be disappointed by their results.

However, before you go investing even more into improving your funnels, take a step back and conduct an audit first, so you can be sure of what’s wrong.

3 Ways to Audit B2B Marketing Strategies

The only way to consistently improve the ROI on your B2B marketing strategies is to continuously audit them.

Here are the three best ways to do it.

1. Audit Individual Marketing Assets

Today’s B2B marketing strategies may use any number of different assets to generate leads and nurture them towards conversions. Even social media platforms have become extremely popular in B2B industries.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all equally effective, though, which is why you should audit your company’s individual marketing assets regularly.

This seems obvious enough when you have, say, blog posts with no social shares, comments, or clicks. Clearly, that needs to be addressed ASAP, either deleted completely or updated.

A simple content audit could be all it takes to improve your conversion rates, even when it involves getting rid of whole pages on your site.

Where most B2B marketers struggle is assuming that, as long as a piece of content is bringing in leads – no matter how few – it’s doing its job. Marketers put a lot of work into creating these pieces, so they just assume that it’s doing as well as it possibly can.

Even if that was true when it was first published, its effectiveness may drop over the years for countless reasons. If there’s not a way you can improve it now, you may need to replace it with something better.

We recently talked about one of these misconceptions. It used to be that time spent on an asset led to higher sales. This was taken for granted for years until it became impossible to ignore it was no longer the case. Companies that haven’t adjusted or replaced assets designed to increase the time that leads spent on them are going to continue to see funnel problems until they do.

2. Actually Speak – and Listen – to Your Sales Department

It should come as no surprise that one of the most common ways to judge if B2B marketing strategies are working or not is to look at their conversion rate. If you know you’re generating leads, but you’re not seeing new clients, that’s a logical place to look.

Usually, this “audit” involves looking at the sales teams’ numbers relative to the amount of leads the marketing team is generating for them. If there’s a costly disparity, it’s usually assumed that the marketing department needs to be more careful about focusing on qualified leads.

The problem is that the sales department is rarely consulted for specifics. Maybe the leads are qualified, but they’re getting sent to the sales team far too early. They still need some nurturing before they’ll convert.

Maybe the problem is fraudulent contact information, an extremely common problem that often ruins the potential ROI on otherwise valuable lead magnets.

Of course, there could be a number of different issues at play, too. The only way to know for sure is to sit down with the sales department and find out what their experience is with trying to convert the leads your marketing team generates.

3. Understand Sales Velocity

Finally, this next method is absolutely essential to auditing B2B marketing strategies if for no other reason than because most marketers don’t even know what sales velocity is.

Simply put, sales velocity measures the efficiency of your marketing funnel. In other words, not just how many sales your funnel nets you, but what kind of timeframe is involved. This concept is absolutely essential for effectively auditing your funnel because it provides you the most comprehensive view of its performance.

For example, without this kind of perspective, you might think the problem is an insufficient number of leads. So, you start investing in lead-generation without realizing that it’s the average ROI and the conversion rate that’s killing you.

Fortunately, the equation for sales velocity is extremely simple. It’s:

Number of Leads x Average Deal Size x Conversion Rate Percentage

Then, take that number and divide by the average amount of time it takes to get a conversion.

This equation – not just its product – will help you better understand why your results aren’t satisfactory.

Are B2B Marketing Strategies Falling Apart Right at the End?

Finally, if you’ve checked every other box on your B2B marketing strategies but are still losing qualified leads after they visit your site, it’s time to start using Hushly.

We are so confident in our platform that we actually guarantee a 51% increase in lead-generation and ABM conversions. Contact us today to find out why.

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B2B Marketing – Strategies You can Borrow from B2C Marketers

In the world of B2B marketing, one of the fastest ways to get laughed out of the room is to suggest a strategy that only works for B2C marketers. Try telling a bunch of B2B marketers that they need to start making time for Facebook Live, and you probably won’t find them to be a […]

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The 4 Most Cost-Effective B2B Marketing Strategies

In the Digital Age, B2B marketing has never been easier. Modern-day marketers have more options than ever before to attract leads, engage with them, and lead them down the path to converting. Of course, many would argue that all of these options have actually made marketing more confusing than ever before, as well as costlier. […]

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