5 Reasons to Introduce AI into Your Lead Generation Strategy
Lead Gen is hard enough – don’t make it any harder! Start adding AI into your lead generation strategy today.
AI was invented back in 1956, but people typically think of some Will Smith Sci-Fi scenario, but AI is here. It’s real and it can be used in your marketing efforts right now.
It is a very controversial technology. Some claim that AI is disrupting the workforce and that it will leave millions of people without jobs. There are even people who are afraid that AI will take over the world. On the other hand, there are estimations that AI will create 97 million jobs by 2025.
In this article, we are delving into one particular aspect of AI, namely, its potential to automatize and improve your lead generation strategy. We will discuss how marketers use AI to generate leads, and in turn, improve sales.
How Is Artificial Intelligence Being Used In Marketing?
Digital marketing is a very important business process, that needs knowledge about the online users in order to achieve goals, generate leads, and boost sales. As a technology capable of collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data, it is obvious that AI can provide marketing with the knowledge it requires to thrive.
Apart from data analytics, AI helps marketers design their lead generation strategies and execute tasks.
The benefit of AI is that it doesn’t need coffee to stay awake, doesn’t ever lose concentration, and doesn’t go on sick leave. It can multitask and accomplish complex tasks very quickly, on a scale that is incomparable to the average human capacity. All these characteristics are extremely valuable when it comes to creating marketing content and managing advertising campaigns.
However, the downside of AI is that it makes generic content and repetitive actions, and needs constant human supervision in order to perform in a way that’s valuable for humans.
Therefore, AI is not a solution to all marketing problems. But, it certainly is of great help, and can improve your lead generation strategy in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The majority of businesses and marketers understand that using AI-powered tools is a great way to streamline marketing strategies and stay ahead of the competition.
Here are some of the reasons behind this opinion.
AI Improves Lead Quality
Lead quality determines the accuracy of targeting your audience. A good quality lead is a prospect that is very likely to become your customer if exposed to your campaign.
AI is very good at finding and recognizing good-quality leads. Additionally, it does that very quickly. How does it do it? The algorithm will monitor thousands, perhaps even millions of users, tracking their digital behavior.
Based on collected data, it will automatically segment the audience, make buyer personas, and determine where exactly users are in the funnel.
Some specific AI-powered platforms are particularly focused on lead generation. Their purpose is to help you build brand loyalty and even make new business partnerships.
AI Will Give You Beneficial Customer Insights
If you want to sell a product or service, you need to understand your customer’s journey. What are your customers’ pain spots, problems, desires, and values? AI can help you answer these questions.
Actually, AI can even help you understand the way people speak about these problems. In such a way, it enables you to address your prospects in a “language” that is familiar to them.
For example, an AI email writer software can help you create content for your emails. But also, the software will let you know what is your open rate, how many people actually read the email, how many replied, what they replied, etc. The software can even send follow-up emails and help you with A/B testing.
There are, however, a few issues about collecting user data. It is extremely important to remember that there have been cases of unethical data collection in the past. In turn, users have become aware of this, and will have a very low opinion of brands that steal their sensitive data.
Therefore, make sure to benefit only from ethically sourced data, i.e. openly ask your users for consent or be transparent on how their data is being used.
AI Helps With Personalization
We live in times when there is too much information and too little time. An average person processes around 74 GB of information every day. To make things even worse, almost forty percent of online users use some kind of ad block software.
For marketers, that means generic content is not an option anymore. Whatever we display to the customers, it needs to be valuable, to the point, and vibe with their personality.
According to research, 80% of users are likely to make a purchase only if a brand offers a personalized experience. If not personalized, your campaigns could easily annoy and frustrate your audience, resulting in unfollows, unsubscriptions, and even lost leads.
And this is where AI comes in. The data it collects and processes will help you tailor the buying experience to various buyer personas. In turn, it will shorten the selling cycle and, of course, boost sales.
In other words, AI allows for what we now call hyper-targeting. By monitoring
- Buying history
- Past communications
- Geo-specific events
- On-site interactions
- Referral sources
AI is detecting people’s real problems. Thus, it enables you to speak to people in a thoughtful, curated manner.
Besides, when an algorithm segments your audience, it will also help you understand which segments you should use for your next campaign and how.
AI Nurtures Relationships
AI is very helpful when it comes to customer relationship management. In general, the problem with customer experience is that it is very hard to maintain, but at the same time, it is extremely important.
Therefore, businesses usually put AI on the frontlines of communication. In the form of a chatbot, AI tools answer the generic questions and are the first to communicate with website visitors.
However, it is important to emphasize that AI can never replace human interaction. A user knows very well when they’re speaking to a machine. AI is better than humans in many things, but not yet in empathy, respect, and mutual understanding.
Much more important employment of AI is email and SMS communication. For example, AI tools can send personalized follow-up emails, warming up the leads and showing them how much your brand cares about its customers. At the same time, your marketing and sales team can save time, and focus on leads that are closer to conversion.
Finally, AI is a language master, and it is able to make content that speaks to your audience in a natural and friendly manner. In turn, people will feel more comfortable engaging and communicating with your brand.
Designing and Creating Content
Except for managing, you can use AI-powered tools to improve your content marketing. You can use them to improve and make your blog posts, social media posts, reports, newsletters, etc.
Compared to human writers, AI tools can write much more quickly and with much more impact. However, these tools can’t work alone.
Let’s take the Jarvis AI content writing bot for example. It is a very useful tool for creating content of all types and lengths. Additionally, it uses Surfer, an SEO optimization tool, to automatically include the necessary keywords and adjust the text structure.
Still, the app requires a human to lead the writing process, constantly telling the algorithm which tone, information, and structure are required. Also, the texts need to be proofread, in order to double-check for misinformation and other inaccuracies.
Let AI Get More Leads For You
AI is extremely useful in lead generation strategy. It is of great help for both inbound and outbound marketing. Also, it helps with the statistics and designing strategies, as well as with executing tasks and generating content. That is why AI-powered marketing tools are extremely valuable for businesses and are a great way to innovate your business process and stay ahead of the competition.
