You know it, every marketer knows it, but let’s say it anyway: marketing is one of the most multifaceted, fast-evolving tools for growing your business. And it’s one of the most tech-infused ones, too.
Innovative software of all sorts, from old-school project management to super snazzy CRM platforms that integrate everything from email marketing to SEO – tech is every marketer’s best ally.
To take it up another notch (or ten), marketers can now use AI, as well. Particularly in the process of lead generation, AI can help you refine your strategies and get more impactful results. Here are 7 ways AI can improve lead generation for your business.
7 Ways AI Can Boost Your Lead Gen
1. Customer Insights
Understanding what your customers want (but also when and where) can make all the difference in your success to turn an ordinary site visit into a qualified lead. Chances are that you’re already relying on a number of different tools to track metrics relevant for your customers.
This is where AI comes into play:
- To compile customer data more quickly from a wide array of channels (thus eliminating the need for you to do it manually, which is a far more error-prone process).
- To analyze immense amounts of customer data, from their online behavior to their language patterns, channel preferences, and so much more.
- To deliver accurate, unbiased reports on customers that help you create more refined ideal customer profiles.
Even the best marketers out there cannot compete with the speed, accuracy, and lack of bias that any AI-driven tool can ensure in all of these processes. Gathering and analyzing customer insights is an essential component of successful lead qualification and generation.
2. Chatbots Powered by AI
Although chatbots aren’t the newest AI tools in town, they certainly are getting more refined by the day and marketers are beginning to leverage them in new ways. In fact, chatbots are considered one of the best tools to generate leads with the help of AI.
With chatbots, you can provide unparalleled customer service without delay, collect invaluable data from those interactions thanks to natural language processing (NLP), and qualify each customer much better.
When your chatbot determines the customer is interested, it can ask pre-programmed questions that have been shown to improve conversions in the past for that particular customer profile. The chatbot can also use the chance to cross and upsell, and to help the customer navigate the site.
All in all, chatbots improve the entire customer experience with your brand, so they not only empower better lead generation and qualification, but also the whole lead nurturing process. Plus, these nifty little helpers on your site are now capable of much more fine-tuned personalization, further enhancing user experience (UX).
3. SERP Tracking
If your marketing team also has a dedicated SEO specialist, you know how grateful they’ll be to have an AI-driven tool at hand for their pursuits. When you combine AI with the best SERP tracking tools, you get a powerful combo that can enable you to boost your ranking significantly and find yourself in front of more relevant prospects.
As you keep track of your campaigns and analyze your target keyword ranking, you can leverage AI to get even deeper into the matter. AI algorithms can help you analyze user intent better, and prompt you and your team if there are any issues you need to address.
Creating detailed, data-based reports with the help of AI is another helpful way to use SEO more efficiently to foster new customer interactions and generate better-qualified leads.
4. Save Time in Assessing Leads
Accurate and reliable lead segmentation and then further lead analytics help every marketer speed up the lead gen process. With the right information at your fingertips, shared with you by your trusty AI sidekick of course, you can provide curated content, personalized customer offers, and other highly customized strategies to assess and attract leads.
With AI, this whole process is significantly quicker and not to mention less error-riddled. If your best prospects belong to the category of, let’s say, women in their 30s in the US, you can then shift and improve your messaging to be better suited to that target audience.
As new leads come in, your AI solution can then qualify and assess them much more quickly for you, so that you know which leads to focus on. This can help you improve your entire sales funnel and simplify all marketing tactics to make sure you’re relying on your most effective channels and strategies.
5. Refine Your Marketing Messaging
Using AI in your lead generation also helps fuel your overarching marketing strategy, including your content output. The data and analytics that land in your hands thanks to AI are no longer raw and unfiltered, as your AI lets you focus on what has had an impact throughout your marketing campaigns.
You can use this information to polish your content creation, core brand messaging, spot trends important to your ideal customers, and provide value that will bring in more qualified leads.
Instead of raw metrics (which are an awesome tool for marketers, of course), you get an amplified source of information to guide every segment of your marketing strategy.
6. Smart Predictive Models
As good as AI can be with real-time reporting and analytics, it also has another advantage over us, mere mortals: it can sift through so much data across your entire industry that it can make much more accurate predictions in terms of trends, customer expectations, and market shifts.
That alone gives you a major advantage in your lead gen pursuits. It allows you to anticipate your customers’ changing needs and prepare your brand for the market shifts that inevitably happen.
AI lets you in on the best market practices that are relevant today, sure. But it also takes it a step further and helps you make better forecasts so that your future lead generation efforts can evolve with the times.
Read more: Small Business Marketing Guide: From Scratch to Success
Maximize Your Marketing Spend
Lead generation will always be a challenge for marketers, that’s a given. But if you’re prepared to embrace tech advancements such as AI, you have a far better chance to improve your marketing processes and help your target customers find you more easily.
Start using AI in your lead generation strategy, and you’ll certainly build the kind of competitive advantage you need to succeed.
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