B2B Technology Marketing in the AI Era. What we’re pumped about here at TechTent.

Customers keep asking us “are you worried about AI?”. Let’s be quick on that one - absolutely not. In fact, I’m pumped. 

You mean, we can do WAY more with the limited resources and time we have, and in turn create WAY more sales pipeline?

Minimum effort for maximum gain? You had me at hello. 

So, in order to be succinct and avoid arduous long-form content, I’ve drafted a quick cheat sheet on where we’re developing AI powered marketing solutions for our MSP, cybersecurity, reseller, vendor and distribution customers.

Hello hot stuff, show me the money. 

1. The art of mastering the Hook. 

   
   

The number one skill in our world isn't about fancy campaigns or big budgets. It's about capturing attention in one or two lines, or a quick scroll. 

Every platform—from LinkedIn to X to YouTube—is being swamped by AI-generated content. The ability to make someone stop their mindless scroll in the first second is the new superpower. We at TechTent are studying the art of Don Draper (plus or minus the whiskey and cigarettes at 9am in the morning) and obsessing over the first 60 seconds of a short-form asset.

Short-form content is your window to mastering the marketing money. Whether you're doing text, audio, or video, a great hook is everything. Every vendor or IT company has their buzzword bingo “digital transformation” or “building resiliency” boilerplate - but what about the ‘punch-in-your-face’ messaging that makes IT buyers stop and listen to you?

Action Powered Lead Magnets

Look, we’re a fan of a whitepaper or a downloadable. However, with the rise of cybersecurity concerns, B2B buyers are not handing over their information via a lead form so easily these days. So how do we get those form submissions in earnest?

The new currency is action.

The best lead magnets today are lightweight, free, code-driven applications. Think of a budget estimator for security tool or an interactive demo that runs without the constraints of a sales call, POC or SE support? A recent study found that 70% of B2B tech buyers prefer self-serve tools and interactive content versus sitting for 3 hours being sold to in a sales meeting or conference. 

Content, whitepapers and case studies are still SUPER relevant, but now we can open the door to action powered experiences without having to engage a Dev team on a 3 month build project. 

So instead of giving away information, we’re working on giving away mini-experiences that help our customers to solve their own problems. 

Did someone say Buyer Intent Data?

This is the most advanced concept, so pay buckle up. In an AI world, context is everything. The better you understand your audience, the better your AI-powered marketing can be.

We work with major platforms and buyer data to develop intuitive campaigns based on intent data.  This supports organisations to understand who their buyers are and what they want. Some examples of these include:

• External Intent Signals: These are things happening outside your company. A change in a prospect's job, a recent promotion, a new product launch at their company, or a recent funding round. These are clear signs of a potential budget shift or a need for new tools. You can find this data from third-party sites such as LinkedIn or TechCrunch. We’re working on ways to capture that data and feed it to SDR teams for personalised outreach.

  
  

• Internal Signals: These are actions a prospect takes on the MSP/technology company site. Did they visit a particular product or solution page? Have they hit the ‘Pen Test’ landing page 8 times in the last 2 days? Give me that information and let me turn it into a sales prospect. 

  
  

The more context you can then feed into your organisation, or outbound AI prospecting tools (hit me up for some recommendations) then the more personalised and effective the outreach becomes.  This isn't just about sending a generic email; it’s about crafting a message that references their specific needs, at the exact right time.

Pro-Tip: If you’re just starting and have no idea where to get this data, here’s a simple action item:

1. Connect your sales and marketing data to an LLM like Claude or ChatGPT.

2. Prompt it with, "Based on my existing data, what other types of data signals would help me improve my results and enrich my personas?"

3. Have it do a deep-research project on the best tools and sources to get that data.

Rolling Out of Micro-Audience Campaigns

For quite a few years we have focused on highly targeted micro-audience campaigns. However, it has been the same time and effort to develop the assets for a small group versus a larger ‘spray and pray’ group. But AI is changing that because we’re now able to build out assets and campaign workflows at scale for micro-audiences. 

Now remember - half of this game is speed to market and personalisation. If we can ramp that with fast and targeted campaigns, we’re halfway there - no? 

This is the big payoff. The cost to write, create a video, or get data is plummeting. That doesn’t mean we cut marketing budgets. It means we do more with them. Instead of one big brand campaign, you can run 30 micro-campaigns tailored to specific niches.

This only works because AI agents can handle the heavy lifting: crafting the emails, writing the ads, and setting up the campaigns. The human's job is to orchestrate the AI, providing the strategy and context needed to make it all sing.

Tools we’re playing with:

• AI Search: Perplexity, Xfunnel, or Use Bear.

• Content Creation: V3, Captions Mirage for short-form video, HeyGen, and fine-tuning an LLM like Claude or ChatGPT to act as a great writing partner.

• Code-Powered Experiences (full disclaimer, in early learning stages - “training-wheels” mode): Claude Code, Lovable, Replit, or Agent.ai to build lightweight agents and apps.

• Intent Data: Terminus, 6Sense and some Hubspot stuff

• Sales Prospecting: Overloop, Apollo or Salesloft. 

• Micro-Audience Campaigns: Perplexity Labs, Grok, Claude, and Linkedin Audiences for targeting.

  
  

Building AI-Powered Sales Pipeline

Our customers are benefitting from our technology marketing expertise, at an economical cost but with the power of a full marketing team. Our goal is to drive the sales pipeline by taking our customers on a marketing maturity journey that incorporates the best of AI tooling.

Want to know more? Do something wild and old school and call me on the telephone. Or, hell, send a fax. See what happens.

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