Let’s start with the elephant in the room: this isn’t another blog about whether ChatGPT is good at writing marketing copy (we’ve all read the many think pieces). Instead, I want to talk about some of the other unexpected ways that large language models (LLMs) can help B2B brands — from boosting revenue to unearthing nuggets of strategic insight.
Let’s jump in.
1. “Debate” with your different buyer personas.
Content marketers know predicting how your audience will respond to your content is hard. LLMs can help by role-playing specific buyer personas.
Let’s say you’re creating top-of-funnel content for CTOs in a specific industry. You can ask an LLM to play the part of this persona and raise potential objections about your product.
Here’s a basic prompt to get started:
“I’m a marketer at <company name>. You’re a CTO at a <company name>. Tell me why you think <product name> might not be a good fit for your organization.”
As a follow-up, you could ask for a rationale to help overcome these objections and use it to craft persuasive arguments within your content. To get the most accurate output, you must provide as much upfront context as possible about your product, industry, and persona.
I should also say that these role-playing scenarios aren’t a replacement for a solid strategy based on audience interviews and knowledge. But they’re a great way to experiment with ideas, interrogate assumptions, and structure your thinking in a creative environment.
2. Eavesdrop on your competitors.
What makes your brand distinct from your competitors? The answer to this question is rarely obvious, and yet fundamental to effective marketing. And the only way to find it is to do the research.
Once again, LLMs can do the heavy lifting in a way that’s particularly helpful (and easily accessible) for strategists.
Let’s say you want to create new product messaging. You could drop your competitors’ product portfolio descriptions, homepage copy, and customer reviews into an LLM like ChatGPT and then ask it to suggest ways to differentiate your product.
A potential prompt here could be:
“Provide a list of features that my competitors are missing, not promoting, or describing in confusing ways. Are there any obvious messaging gaps my brand can exploit to appeal to our target audience?”
Again, this process is only a jumping-off point for further exploration. But, in the early stages of planning, it’s a brilliantly easy way to brainstorm ideas, establish basic positional messaging, and inform a deeper competitor analysis.
3. Build relationships that go beyond the sale.
B2B brands rarely spend enough time building post-sale relationships. Since loyal customers will keep spending, potentially for a lifetime, and become advocates for your brand, this is a regrettable mistake and missed opportunity to increase revenue.
LLMs can play a valuable role here too. A perfect example is their ability to sift through vast amounts of data, which can be used to spot patterns in customer feedback and reviews.
These patterns may reveal recurring feedback about the functionality of one of your products, allowing you to fix issues quickly and minimize customer frustration. They could also involve spotting trends in customer queries that help you create (and continually modify) up-to-the-minute FAQ sheets.
By feeding an LLM with enough data, you could also ask for upsell strategies that target different user personas — tapping into preferences, buying behaviors, and relevant feedback or interactions with your product.
A final thought…
As seen above, LLMs can play a crucial role in B2B marketing. The best way to know how they can help your brand is to experiment. In fact, the only mistake you can really make is to ignore them and their potential benefits. When used judiciously and intentionally, these tools make our lives easier and our marketing better.