Artificial intelligence has seen a meteoric rise over the last decade, and especially in the last few years, with the exponential development and rollout of generative AI.
While the concept is decades old, in recent years, we’ve seen a boom in AI-based systems, solutions, and revolutionary technologies that are changing entire industries and our society as a whole. In the modern business world, there doesn’t seem to be an industry or sector that hasn’t been impacted by AI-based systems.
In fact, artificial intelligence is permeating every industry nowadays, helping businesses achieve better results while cutting costs and time investments. In marketing and sales, there’s ample opportunity to use AI-based tools and methodologies to enhance everything from prospecting and data analysis to content ideation, strategizing, and even some conversion processes.
Let’s take a closer look at all of this and talk about how you can use artificial intelligence to empower your marketing and sales teams, generate better leads, and achieve better results.
Here’s what you need to know.
Analyze patterns and behaviors
Artificial intelligence—and machine learning systems, by extension—can automate and make many manual tasks and processes more efficient. When we talk about AI in marketing and sales, we always start with the most powerful feature: data analysis and reporting.
This is the foundational element of good AI implementation, as it allows companies to analyze vast amounts of data (from vastly different data sources), pool data together, and generate in-depth insights and reports. That’s why AI and machine learning systems are so important for predictive analytics and forecasting, as they have the ability not only to collect but also collate data pools to generate meaningful insights.
And they do it more efficiently than any human team ever could. So, what does this mean for lead generation? Like any good AI implementation strategy, this is about empowering your human teams to achieve better results.
For example, you can make use of AI-generated attention heatmaps and other data-heavy charts and diagrams so that your team can quickly leverage the findings instead of wasting time on manual analysis. The advantage here is that predictive AI can save you time and money on research, while having a 95% accuracy in its results. Also, it will still work, even if your website has low traffic.
The biggest benefit, however, is the AI’s ability to not only collate this data into reports but also extrapolate ideas, conclusions, and suggestions based on different data points – all the while doing it in an unbiased, objective way.
This is one of the best ways for marketers and sales experts to approach their work based on facts and hard data.
Social media has become one of the most potent lead-generation channels in the modern online world. It’s important for all growth-oriented businesses to include social media in their lead gen strategies, while business leaders need to focus heavily on leveraging their personal and professional networks.
This is because authoritative accounts in the social media world can help build brand credibility and social proof while making it easier to connect and engage with prospects. While this is a time-consuming process, nowadays, there are comprehensive solutions that allow you to automate many aspects of lead generation on social networks.
Take LinkedIn as an example of good automation in recent years, as well as an example of a platform where lead generation is easy to track and measure.
Because LinkedIn is a professional social network, the basis of lead generation lies in connecting with individuals and sending personalized messages in the hopes of generating interesting replies. This is where AI can step in, helping you analyze your prospects and generate copy so that you can send automated messages on LinkedIn at scale without sounding generic or repetitive.
In fact, AI is great for personalization, as it can generate personalized messaging based on prospect data and audience analytics.
Use smart scrapers for data extraction
While we are on the subject of lead generation on social media, it’s important to emphasize that AI allows marketing and sales teams to keep the forward momentum going.
What does that mean?
Forward momentum simply means that sales experts and marketers are able to constantly improve their messaging, campaigns, and content drops to generate qualified leads. This not only means improving or diversifying content—it means adapting and innovating based on new insights, reports, and data sets.
And this is another area where artificial intelligence and machine learning systems can enhance productivity and generate better outcomes. If we follow the example of LinkedIn, advanced data collection tools like LinkedIn scrapers are a great way to gather as much information about your prospects as possible.
These scrapers allow you to collect contact information, business details, job titles, and the more granular data that will help determine which prospects are the most valuable. (For example, ‘ProspectDaddy‘ that lets you scrape lead information directly from LinkedIn). This is the kind of data that enables you to keep the forward momentum going while constantly refreshing your data pools to empower your future outreach and lead-gen campaigns.
Leverage AI to create lead magnets
A lead magnet is a type of high-value content that you give prospects and potential customers for free in exchange for their contact information. Creating lead magnets is a foundational part of a robust lead gen strategy, as they allow you to gather lead information efficiently and effectively, and follow up with personalized messaging and offers.
This is where artificial intelligence, and generative AI in particular, can come in as a good solution for lead magnet ideation and even creation. Suppose you already have a creative team that generates lead magnets. In that case, you can use generative AI for ideation in order to get fresh ideas as well as recommendations on how to personalize the content to your target demographic.
Here are some lead generation magnets you can consider creating for your business:
- eBooks
- Templates
- White papers
- Guides
- Bonus packs
- Resource libraries
- Checklists
- Workbooks
- Case Studies
- Webinars
- Free courses
You can use generative AI to create written and visual content for each of these, or you can use the same tools to collate information into concise and valuable case studies and white papers. The possibilities here are endless, and no matter if you use generative AI for ideation or creation, you will be able to produce lead magnets faster than before.
Use conversational chatbots to reduce customer effort
Conversational AI is another form of AI that can bring value to your company, especially when it comes to lead generation.
Conversational AI used to be a highly-debated topic in the 2010s until the technology advanced enough to produce AI chatbots that were actually able to converse with humans. This is done through advanced natural language processing (NLP) as well as deep learning methodologies that allow the AI to learn patterns and behaviors and communicate with prospects more efficiently.
The result is an AI chat model that can help you handle large volumes of interested customers who are getting in contact with you to inquire about your products and services. The real benefit of advanced chatbots here, however, is their ability to analyze these interactions and help you score prospects more accurately for better lead generation and conversion.
This all feeds into prospect readiness, or how ready prospects are to take the next step in your sales cycle, and which prospects you should focus on. With the data generated by the AI and the communication they’ve already established with the prospects, your sales experts can take over to close the deal.
Leverage AI for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
Finally, it’s important to remember that lead generation and nurturing is not just about the ultimate sale – it’s also about retention, as well as cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
Cross-selling involves inspiring the lead to add items to their orders or another service to the service they’ve already subscribed to. Up-selling, on the other hand, means inspiring prospects to move up from one product to a higher-value product or service.
Both cross-selling and up-selling are essential elements of a strong acquisition and retention strategy. Artificial intelligence, having the ability to analyze and derive valuable insights on every potential customer, can instantly give recommendations on how to best add value to every potential purchase.
AI can generate up-sell and cross-sell opportunities that are personalized to the prospect based on their online behavior and purchase history, as well as by analyzing their interactions with your sales team. Not only does this take the guesswork out of the process, but it empowers your sales experts to offer truly personalized experiences to potential customers.
Most importantly for your long-term success, however, this kind of automation allows you to boost customer retention and inspire past customers to come back.
Bottomline
The exponential and rapid rise of AI systems in the modern business world has opened new opportunities for growth, higher efficiency, and productivity for human teams. Integrating some AI-driven systems and tools in your operation is an excellent way to empower your teams and help them minimize stress while enhancing efficiency and accuracy in their work.
Don’t forget that AI tools are great not just for data analytics or forecasting but also for ideation and some content creation, which you can leverage to generate leads that much faster. With all of these tips in mind, go ahead and start integrating AI into your lead gen process in order to reach new heights of success in 2024 and beyond.
