The sales and marketing process starts even before the lead is in the funnel. I mean, lead generation is an active component of the GTM cycle. And, some businesses already started to use AI to increase the effectiveness of their lead gen strategies and pull more high-quality leads.
TL;DR
- It’s hard to miss the hype around AI, which is so understandable of the advantages it brings. 56% of employees already using AI in their work should say a lot.
- AI lead generation is the process of pulling potential customers into your product or service with the help of AI.
- During this process, AI automates tasks and provides sales and marketing teams with valuable data and insights to increase efficiency.
- Using AI in lead generation comes with many benefits that improve overall productivity and decrease the time spent on scoring a high-quality lead.
What is AI Lead Generation?
💡 What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation refers to the phase in which a business attracts potential customers to their product or service and generates interest to convert them into paying customers. Lead generation is an effective strategy for companies since it brings about scoring high-quality leads who might be ready for sales.
Now that we know what lead generation is about, let us move forward to what AI lead generation is. As its name shows, AI lead generation is the process that benefits from AI when generating high-quality leads.
During this process, artificial intelligence is used to automate some tasks and steps that require manual work and optimize some processes that help companies engage high-intent leads. And, it is highly connected to predictive lead scoring, as they complete each other in a successful sales and marketing (or GTM) strategy.
In other words, teams make use of AI when employing lead-generation strategies to guide potential customers into the scoring phase and to further the buying process.
This integration is possible by using a third-party tool that enables you to manage several aspects of the sales and marketing processes.
For example, AI lead generation helps you analyze data to be able to point out patterns and trends and categorize leads automatically for better marketing strategies.
There is a lot more talk about when it comes to the benefits of AI lead generation, so, let’s move on to the next section.
Why Does AI Lead Generation Matter?
With the great importance AI gained in the SaaS business, there is no doubt that it paved the way for increasing employee productivity and reducing the time spent on a task by taking over manual labor.
The very same scenario happened to lead generation with the help of AI.
By using artificial intelligence in lead generation, you can gain a few advantages over your competitors. Let’s shed some light on them one by one:
- Automation of Repetitive Tasks. As AI is capable of taking over some time-consuming yet routine processes, you can add more complex tasks to your workflow.
- Efficient Data Analysis. AI can process data quickly from various sources at the same time to provide you with valuable insight.
- Improved Lead Quality. Thanks to no. 1, identifying higher-quality leads becomes possible—enabling you to shift your focus on a group of soon-to-be customers.
- Enhanced Lead Scoring. Assigning scores to leads based on multiple attributes, AI can help your sales team prioritize leads to optimize both time and resources.
- Increased Personalization. AI can deliver more personalized content based on user behavior and preferences, elevating the customer experience.
- Optimized Marketing Campaigns. AI helps you create more effective and targeted marketing campaigns by providing you with valuable insights.
- Quick Response Times. With the use of chatbots and automatic systems, AI can respond quickly to customer inquiries, improving customer engagement and satisfaction.
- Predictive Analytics for Sales Forecasting. For sales teams, AI inspects historical data to foresee coming trends and sales opportunities.
Overall, AI provides you with a transformative approach to traditional lead generation so that you can experience a new level of efficiency in identifying leads.
Who Can Use AI in Lead Generation?
The correct answer to this question is any type of business that wishes to make more data-driven decisions and take the whole lead generation process to another level.
Whether a start-up or an enterprise, there is no doubt that any business with a sales team can optimize the process of identifying, nurturing, and converting leads using AI.
Companies that put product-led growth strategies to use gain momentum when they involve AI in the lead-generation process for several reasons.
For example, AI can enhance the efforts of marketing and sales teams by:
📊 analyzing user base and user actions in real-time to pinpoint patterns
🤝 identifying the interactions with the product to determine correlations
💸 forecasting the conversion likelihood and future trends
🌍 offering 24/7 monitoring to make sure that no potential lead is missed
With the preceding advantages that AI brings, companies that employ product-led growth methodology win an edge in lead generation when it comes to speed and scalability.
What are the 6 Ways to Get High-Quality Leads Using AI?
Now that we know what AI lead generation is and the benefits it brings, we can take one more step and learn the ways we can use AI in the lead generation process.
1. Use an AI tool to experience an increase in revenue and productivity
To experience an increase in revenue, you need to support your sales team in more than one way.
This one involves artificial intelligence since it’s the backbone of this strategy.
An AI-driven tool provides valuable AI-driven insights for teams to create a more targeted and successful lead conversion process.
For instance, AI can monitor social media platforms to see from customers’ points of view instead of marketing teams.
With an AI-generated report, marketing teams can find a more fitting way to approach customers with upcoming content.
For sales teams, the same case persists because they also get AI-powered analytics that displays the most favorable times for lead engagement.
In short, AI-powered solutions can help you increase lead engagement by aiding you in multiple processes that are connected to your sales, marketing, and product.
2. Assess leads swiftly with AI = Close deals faster
Easier said than done, right? Not at all. By now, we understood that machine learning had a lot to bring to the table.
One of these items is ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), which explains the firmographic, behavioral, and environmental qualities of an account that you’d consider the most valuable to your business among other accounts.
When creating an ICP, AI can match the prototype account with the users and accounts you have in your system to present the most fitting sales opportunities.
If sales teams focus on this list, then, the business is bound to have new qualified leads that are considered PQLs.
In short, AI makes sure that there are no missed sales opportunities by creating ICPs, tracking user bases, and identifying matching profiles.
3. Add AI-powered chatbots to your website
Having a user-friendly UI is great but never enough.
With the help of an AI-powered chatbot, your website could be a top-notch platform on which users get to obtain the piece of information they’re looking for without wasting a second.
The speed isn’t the only advantage—users can get more personalized answers from AI-powered chatbots instead of predefined texts that bring no value.
Answering queries, qualifying leads, and guiding users through the product, AI chatbots can improve the quality of the interactions customers have with your product.
Ending without summoning a representative, these interactions play a big role in keeping your current customers satisfied enough to upsell and attract possible customers for future sales.
Keep in mind that providing real-time support and information are quite crucial elements for the user experience, especially for the first impression.
4. Take personalization to another level
To help you step up your personalization game, AI can modify user experiences based on individual behaviors, preferences, and interactions with your product.
By inspecting user behavior, AI obtains an understanding of what customers need and what motivates them the most.
Also, this step applies to many other elements that are crucial to your platform, including your content, messaging, and product recommendations.
Once you put the AI-driven insights into work for personalization, you’ll experience a boost in user engagement.
Another outcome of this scenario is that both marketing campaigns and sales interactions become more personalized, leading to a higher appreciation from potential customers.
Moreover, this level of personalized engagement is rather difficult for sales teams to achieve alone without the help of any third-party tool.
5. Improve sales effectiveness with AI-driven analytics reports
Thanks to AI, you can now leave the traditional methods behind and take a step forward to the future in which you get to obtain more valuable insights from each AI-generated lead. How do we do that?
Firstly, remember that artificial intelligence is here to provide you with actionable insights that include the points that will be a big help when pinpointing where a lead is in their journey. From now on, sales teams will be able to locate where exactly a user is.
Use predictive AI lead scoring to improve your lead generation with UserMotion
Secondly, AI will also help you figure out how each connection will react to each specific campaign.
From product usage to account status, you’ll have access to detailed reports that enable teams to align user needs with product messaging.
Just like hitting two targets with one arrow, right?
In short, you’ll be able to establish more effective engagements with your potential customers thanks to this information flow of AI.
6. Optimize lead scoring
Another way to use AI in lead generation is by optimizing the whole lead scoring process. As lead scoring plays a critical role in SaaS businesses, it goes without saying that artificial intelligence can enhance it, too.
For example, AI algorithms can analyze historical data to label patterns that indicate conversions most of the time. This action alone can help sales teams prioritize leads with a higher likelihood of conversion, which adds up to the efforts of sales teams.
While enhancing predictive lead scoring, it can also boost the general process.
Considering several factors, including user engagement, historical data, and feature usage, AI doesn’t stop at the basic criteria and models.
As AI makes it possible for sales teams to go after the bigger fish, customer acquisition and customer retention no longer are the nightmare of your business.
Conclusion
AI lead generation will soon become an important element for companies that want to improve their sales cycle and lead qualification.
The sole reason is that artificial intelligence doesn’t only help teams but also provides them with valuable assets that come in handy when it’s time to go down the sales funnel.
From lead scoring to predictive analytics, it supports several aspects of processes and workflows to improve the quality of leads.
Ultimately, you should adopt this solution and see how it works like a miracle for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions 🙋
Can I use AI to generate leads?
You can use AI to generate leads since employing AI to lead generation strategies helps businesses with automating tasks, streamlining processes, and analyzing large datasets. In the end, it leads to teams making more informed decisions and more targeted efforts.
How do you qualify leads with AI?
Qualifying leads with AI involves making use of machine learning algorithms to analyze data and determine prospects that have a higher possibility of becoming customers.
How do you automate lead generation in AI?
Automating lead generation in AI requires teams to use artificial intelligence tools for the AI system to work correctly and provide them with better results.
