Adobe recently announced the general availability of its Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition. With this launch, Adobe aims to use generative AI to give businesses a deeper understanding of the different types of customers they attract. By enabling more personalized experiences, this has the potential to improve B2B sales processes and conversion rates.

AJO B2B Edition provides a unified view of each customer across various channels. It was built on the Adobe Experience Platform, part of Adobe’s fast-growing Digital Experience segment, which is on track to become a billion-dollar business in its own right alongside Adobe’s much bigger business in creative apps (Photoshop, Illustrator and so on).

Navigating The Complexities Of B2B Sales

B2B sales, particularly in the enterprise sector, involve navigating intricate sales cycles and a complex web of decision makers. While IT departments once held sway over technology purchases, today’s buying landscape is far more nuanced. Decision making has become decentralized, with various departments including marketing, HR and line-of-business units influencing purchases. For instance, in a software sale, the finance team might scrutinize the ROI of the application while HR evaluates its potential impact on employees and IT assesses its technical integration with existing systems.

This distribution of responsibilities makes identifying key stakeholders challenging, and often extends the time required to close deals. GenAI can help by analyzing data to pinpoint decision makers, key roles and company priorities, enabling a sales team to customize its approach and navigate sales cycles more efficiently.

A New Approach To B2B Marketing

AJO B2B Edition should help marketers connect with their potential customers by providing key insights that facilitate a smarter, more tailored approach to each account. This is primarily done by consolidating individuals involved in a company’s purchase decisions into cohesive units. This shift from tracking individual leads to visualizing the whole group responsible for making purchase decisions and their connected relationships provides a more comprehensive perspective on the target company. Essentially, it promises to help enterprise sales and marketing teams move away from lead-based marketing to a smarter, more tailored version of the account-based marketing that has become more prevalent in recent years. GenAI helps by supplementing any gaps in the buying group information. It intelligently suggests potentially missing roles within the group, such as technical influencers or budget approvers, and can recommend specific individuals who might fit these roles.

Once buying groups are thoroughly defined, the AI can generate tailored marketing plans for each group member. GenAI then automates personalized content creation across channels, ensuring that relevant messages reach the right individuals at the right time. Integrating other Adobe Experience Cloud applications such as Marketo Engage and Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform aims to give marketers a deeper view of specific customer signals based on their actions. This enables marketers to adjust and optimize journeys based on evolving prospect behavior. Sales teams can receive real-time alerts about engaged buying groups, complete with AI-generated insights and recommended next actions. Brands can also leverage AI-generated assets from Adobe Firefly or Adobe Experience Manager to create customized content.

Amit Ahuja, senior vice president for Experience Cloud platform and products at Adobe, stressed that B2B marketers must leverage generative AI to meet rising customer expectations and drive efficiency. However, he noted, “In the B2B world, relationships and insights are key. We are supercharging this. It’s about enabling deeper connections and smarter strategies at a scale that was not feasible before.”

The Rise Of AI In Custom Content Creation

Adobe’s strategic focus on AI-powered solutions highlights the growing importance of AI in enterprise business applications. The company introduced its Firefly family of GenAI models in March 2023 and has since made a significant push into AI across its product suite. This includes the integration of the Firefly AI engine directly into its Creative Cloud applications and the launch of an AI assistant on the Adobe Experience Platform. Additionally, Adobe has launched Firefly and Adobe Express Premium as standalone apps, further broadening the reach of its AI-powered tools.

Adobe’s ambitious AI development and product rollout, particularly in the enterprise and B2B space, sets it apart from competitors such as Canva, which has also made aggressive moves in AI recently. While Canva may pose a threat to Adobe for light users and smaller businesses, Adobe’s wide range of products across marketing, content creation and data management gives it a significant advantage in the enterprise market. Furthermore, it signals the company’s confidence in its ability to mitigate potential legal risks associated with GenAI, such as copyright infringement, for its enterprise customers.

What Adobe’s B2B Approach Says About Enterprise AI

Adobe is a good example of a diverse tech company embedding AI in very different ways across its range of products. The distinct AI use cases show the diversity of GenAI when it’s applied intelligently to solve challenges, whether the problem is “Finish this illustration faster and better” or “We need to do a better job of marketing to our biggest B2B prospects.”

With this new offering, it is clear that Adobe also recognizes the importance of collaboration between sales and marketing teams for its customers. The platform should facilitate better alignment and communication across revenue-driving teams by providing shared insights and streamlined workflows.

If it works as well as Adobe says, AJO B2B Edition has the potential to reshape B2B marketing and deliver significant value for businesses. Of course, Adobe will need to continue innovating to meet the evolving needs of B2B marketers and keep pace with the nonstop advancements in AI technology. For now, however, AJO B2B Edition looks like a compelling way to address the complexities of B2B marketing.