Conversations should be at the heart of today’s B2B marketing strategies. Rather than resorting to the hard sell, taking a conversational approach means noticing where the online purchaser is in their quest to buy something, then tailoring the automated prompts to move towards the sale.

This may mean using AI-driven chatbots early on to offer assistance to customers or answers to their FAQs, but the goal is to qualify the lead before putting a real person in touch with them. Conversational marketing is personalization, but it takes data and dialogue to make it so. And it is better suited for B2B marketing, where there are fewer buyers, but they’re spending more to acquire big-ticket items for their firms.

For example, ABM platform Terminus takes a “crawl, walk, run” approach. Start by acting on data at the home page, which is high-volume/high-traffic. Choose two or three high-intent products, then craft suitable playbook experiences.

As for AI, Justin McDonald, SVP and GM for Conversational Marketing at Terminus is skeptical. “AI is a misused term regarding chatbots and conversational marketing,” he said. The technique is good at providing support but is overkill at the top of the funnel. A good logic tree accomplishes [everything] without having to train AI. “‘If-when’ conditions can drive the chat in accordance with the playbook.”

Read more here.

Video ads and vertical-based product ads are now being piloted on the Microsoft Audience Network, Microsoft announced yesterday. In the announcement, the company also revealed disclaimers in ads, new third-party integrations with Universal Event Tracking, flexible insertion orders and inline appeals for rejected offers in Microsoft Merchant Center.

Why we care. While unlikely to be game-changing, Microsoft Advertising’s September announcements offer a variety of quality-of-life improvements for marketers:

• Microsoft Audience Network’s new video format may help brands increase awareness as well as engagement with their ads;
• Disclaimers in ads may help advertisers in regulated industries stay compliant;
• Inline appeals may help decrease the amount of time your team spends reaching out to Microsoft Advertising’s support team. This can be especially useful for resolving rejections during the holiday shopping season, a crucial time of the year for many merchants;
• The new UET integrations may mean a simpler setup process for event tracking; and
• Flexible insertion orders may provide advertisers with a more versatile way to manage their budgets.

Read more here.

The B2B sales process is notorious for its length and the “hiccups” that can occur when it’s time for prospective customers to get internal buy-in. ABM solves this problem by putting the right messages in front of key decision-makers at target accounts. MarTech’s “Account-Based Marketing Tools: A Marketer’s Guide” examines the market for these tools and the considerations involved in implementation. This 46-page report looks at why B2B companies use ABM software and describes the key elements of successful ABM strategies and the capabilities ABM tools provide. It also compares 13 top vendors.

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In the latest Marketoonist, personal branding meets the digital age on LinkedIn.

Fishburne’s take: Tom Peters ushered in the age of personal branding with a 1997 cover story in Fast Company titled “The Brand Called You.” This was a liberating shift in thinking at the time.  I still have a copy of that Fast Company issue.  This was six years before LinkedIn launched in 2003.  

And yet thinking of ourselves too much as brands can take away from what’s human and real.  If everyone acts too much like a personal brand manager, all communication can start to feel like marketing. There’s a line between personal branding and self-promotion.  I think it’s less about what you say about yourself and more about what you do.

Why we care. LinkedIn is a top B2B marketing channel, in addition to a personal career booster. Communications that “feel like marketing” is something that marketers work to avoid all day, every day, regardless of channel. They do this by using data strategies that help make the messaging personal, when appropriate, and also relevant and of value to the recipient.

Read more here.

Grab your free MarTech pass now and get ready to discover 50+ marketing technology solutions — and the actionable tactics you need to leverage them to overcome critical data challenges. Available live — next Tuesday and Wednesday, September 14-15 — AND on-demand, so you can explore, learn, and train when it fits your schedule.

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“We don’t have to come back. That’s why there’s Slack!” Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce