In many B2B marketing teams, AI has become something you “have to do something with.” Boards and executives are asking about the AI roadmap. Vendors promise dramatic productivity gains. And LinkedIn is full of examples of teams that supposedly transform their funnels with a single prompt.
It creates uneasiness. No one wants to feel like they’re missing the boat. So pilots are launched, tools are bought, dashboards are rolled out. Often with the best intentions. But beneath all that movement, there is rarely a sharp underlying question. And that is exactly where it starts to rub.
Not because AI doesn’t work, but because it’s being layered on top of a shaky foundation. In B2B marketing, AI then doesn’t increase effectiveness, it amplifies confusion.
In many teams, AI starts with tools. Which copy tool? Which sequencing solution? Which automation fits our stack?
That sequence feels logical, but it misses the essence.
The stronger starting point is not: What can we automate?
It’s: What do we need to understand better, decide better, or execute more consistently?
As long as that question is missing, AI is mainly used to produce more. More content, more campaigns, more touchpoints. Marketing sees activity go up. Sales sees more noise in the lead flow. Management sees dashboards that are busier than the pipeline. In that situation, AI doesn’t increase the impact of B2B marketing; it increases the noise.
The real issue is that AI is then used as a band-aid rather than as an accelerator.
Without clear choices, AI becomes an expensive mirror: it mostly reflects what was already out of focus.
This is the turning point. The real risk today is not that marketing teams use too little AI. It’s that powerful technology is stacked onto a fragile commercial system and the result gets labelled “strategy”.
Only when the foundation is right does AI shift from multiplying noise to accelerating progress.
And that foundation is surprisingly classic. It starts with knowing exactly who you are for, and who you are not for. With clarity about what you promise and why that promise matters to your customer. And with real alignment between marketing and sales on what a good conversation looks like, and when something adds more noise than value.
As long as those choices are missing, AI mainly creates busyness.
Once you move from FOMO to focus, a different picture emerges. AI stops being just an efficiency lever and becomes a way to unlock new possibilities.
That’s also where the scale becomes visible. McKinsey estimates that generative AI could add between $2.6 and $4.4 trillion in value per year globally, with around 75% of that potential sitting in functions like marketing and sales.
In other words, this is not about squeezing out a few extra percentage points of effectiveness. It’s about a fundamentally different playing field.
Think about:
In that context, AI does not replace human work. It creates space for the work only humans can do well: interpreting, choosing, building trust and having meaningful conversations.
AI is at its best when it’s almost invisible. Not the hero of the story, but the infrastructure under a better-aligned commercial engine.
An engine where marketing and sales are no longer measured on volume alone, but on the quality of conversations.
That doesn’t require twenty pilots. It requires one sharp choice.
One question that marketing and sales take shared ownership of. For example: How do we use AI to create fewer, but better, conversations with the right decision-makers?
The tools will follow. The capabilities need to be built.
AI does not replace the hard work of making choices, positioning your brand, and showing up consistently as a human presence in your market. But if you take that work seriously, AI can help you spot patterns earlier, respond faster, and free up time for what really matters.
The key question is not: How do we keep up?
It’s: How do we use AI in B2B marketing in a way that makes us sharper, more human, and more relevant?
That’s not a hype.
That’s a deliberate choice.
