Back in the day, Artificial intelligence was thought to be extremely futuristic or an integral part of science fiction. Now, we have successfully incorporated AI into our daily lives.
It’s time to now understand how AI has transformed marketing and sales work together to identify, nurture and convert leads.
Today, we are in the early stages of AI development, but there are already AI-driven lead generation tools that can facilitate the smooth functioning of your business.
AI in Sales leads to Lead Generation and Lead Qualification
There are multiple business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) organizations that are incorporating AI-based marketing solutions into their marketing strategy.
AI tools like intelligent chatbots and lead generation tools enable these businesses to:
- Quickly connect with potential and interested prospects and customers
- Get the most up-to-date business information
- Personalize their interactions to the fullest extent possible
In terms of sales, automated lead generation drastically increases sales productivity.
How AI works in Sales and Marketing?
- It facilitates the identification of potential leads and business opportunities
- Predict and foretell sales
- Recommends suggestions for email responses and what should be the next big action
- Helps in determining the probability of an opening of an email
- Answer and manage basic consumer inquiries
AI Improves Business Experience to Generate Lead
Inarguably the age of AI is here, but that does not mean that it will completely replace people. Many forward-thinking marketers will accept that the function of AI is to make people more successful at what they do through intelligent automation and data-driven behavior, rather than to replace them as a whole.
There are multiple ways in which marketers can leverage AI to boost their growth and have an exceptional customer experience.
Chatbots to the Rescue!
Chatbots in sales and marketing relieve the pressure on customer-facing teams by automatically resolving queries at all hours of the day.
It is rather a no-brainer that chatbots essentially reduce customer support costs as they independently handle customer queries. Conversational chatbots continuously enhance their efficiency by learning from each new interaction.
Here are the arrays of functions that a typical chatbot performs:
- Chatbots seamlessly handle multiple user requests simultaneously.
- Many businesses use chatbots to generate leads. A chatbot decides whether a prospect is interested in your product or not by asking a series of pre-programmed questions before forwarding them to a sales representative.
- Personalize the customer experience and promote customer loyalty.
- Analyzes consumer data and generate actionable insights
Increase the Degree of Personalization
By monitoring your user’s paths as they visit your website and gaining useful insights into their behavior, you can greatly enhance your customer experience with AI. You can also refer content, services, or items and products to them based on their browsing and order history.
Take Advantage of Lead Segmentation which is Accurate
You can segment the customers using artificial intelligence based on repeated behavior or trends to create highly targeted and successful marketing campaigns.
Segmenting is the process of separating the audience into groups based on their behavior, interactions, demographics, and other factors to send messages and notify people who have similar needs or interests.
Find the best Fit Leads
AI-powered lead generation uses Machine learning algorithms to generate market intelligence by extracting data from hundreds of organizations to find the best-fit leads for your business based on predefined parameters.
Automation of Email Campaigns
Automated email campaigns based on consumer data and activity can be set up using AI-powered systems.
Order history, user interest, and browsing habits are all used to build and send automatic emails when pre-determined trigger events occur, such as a user signing up for a membership, cart abandonment, or unsubscribing from your newsletter.
Role of AI in Marketing Automation to Generate Lead
To identify potential customers and nurture them to sales readiness, businesses need to automate their marketing actions. Marketing automation curates your prospects to the point where your sales team can directly close a deal.
This automation also fosters an ongoing relationship with your customers. In 2021, various automation technologies are driving the digital transformation of marketing activities for businesses around the world.
Among these technologies, chatbots developed on Artificial Intelligence (AI) are creating the most buzz.
AI chatbots are the latest trend in marketing automation. They are redefining the results of marketing tactics by massively improving your sales funnel efficiency and quickly convert a large set of leads into happy customers using smart responses and conversational marketing.
AI Chatbots: A New Wave in Marketing Automation
An AI Chatbot is software that runs a text-based or voice-based interface for online marketing actions. It establishes a connection between human users and the services by simulating person-to-person conversations.
· Text-based AI chatbots are used online on social media platforms and websites, where they reach out to customers and provide support
· Voice-based AI chatbots are automated on telephonic channels for call deflection and over-the-phone customer services
Customers can access these AI chatbots through their smartphones. Most mobile devices are equipped with in-built chatbot functionality.
How Do AI Chatbots Work?
According to a recent study, around 45 percent of large businesses used AI chatbots and intelligent assistants for voice-to-text dictation in 2020. Such dictation activities play a significant role in boosting the marketing efficiency of businesses. Here’s how it works:
· Usually an AI chatbot interacts with customers via the business website.
· They pop up on the screen and provides assistants.
· User navigates through the chatbot by typing in questions about the business and its products and services
· Provide valuable information to what they need by recognizing user behavior
The bots’ abilities to recognize language, syntax, and requirements are quite amazing. In the backend, the chatbot software runs advanced language recognition algorithms and machine learning models to break down your customer queries and deliver accurate responses to them, instantly.
A forecast by CCW Digital predicts that AI chatbots will enhance marketing automation for nearly 88% of CX professionals in the next five years. These chatbots will play a pivotal role in the AI-driven digital transformation of businesses.
· AI Chatbots are pegged to save billions of dollars on marketing budgets and customer retention measures by 2022.
· The popularity of these intelligent assistants is increasingly growing among modern-day consumers, 69% of whom have closed deals through AI chatbots in 2020.
· Millennials, in particular, are growing fond of AI-driven chatbots, conducting conversations with them regularly.
· Live chat apps are the most successful marketing applications, registering a 73% ROI for top business brands.
· In 2021, consumers are likely to prefer conversational communication over one-way marketing messages.
Marketing Automation with Conversational AI Chatbots
AI chatbots have started the trend of conversational marketing automation. According to Deloitte, conversational AI technologies developed by IBM and Microsoft are delivering cost-efficient marketing solutions.
Advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) are breaking the conventional barriers in marketing automation.
Smart Chatbots
Smart chatbots are the best use cases for AI-driven conversational marketing. They are automatically engaging site visitors in real-time by answering their questions with sentiment analysis and intent recognition.
Website chatbots are sharing only relevant information, progressing their customer interactions toward a suitable handoff point.
AI Email Assistants
AI conversational chatbots in email marketing campaigns generate human-like sales emails while focusing on personalization. The sophisticated AI “understands” the recipients and their needs through responses.
These intelligent email assistants transform cold leads into qualified leads by executing smooth and consistent follow-ups with prospects.
AI Messengers
Messaging is a sought-after marketing tactic, even today. Conversational AI chatbots have revolutionized messaging with personalized conversations and scalable communications.
By deploying an AI messenger, your business can engage one-on-one with every prospect and consumer. It can share recommendations on what to buy or do next. It can help you learn how your customer engagements are changing in terms of what they want and what they need.
The Value of AI Chatbots in Marketing
Within a few years down the line, AI chatbots will dominate marketing strategies for every business. They will not only propel the digital transformation of traditional businesses but also add value to their brands.
More than 60% of consumers are interacting with AI chatbots when they visit a business site. The adoption of marketing automation with AI chatbots was the major automation trend in 2020 and will continue to grow even more in 2021.
Role of AI in Creating an Intelligent Lead-Qualification Process
Lead qualification refers to the process of identifying and evaluating which potential customers are more ready to make an actual purchase.
However, Identifying and qualifying leads is by no means an easy task, which is why it is hard on your ROI. But with the introduction of AI in marketing and sales has doubled the lead generation and eases the lead-qualification process by creating a more intelligent and efficient method for identifying customers who might purchase products.
Sales development representatives are used by many organizations to create the first partnership and trust with a prospect. They are essentially in charge of moving eligible leads into the sales funnel so that sales reps can concentrate on closing more deals.
This work is time-consuming, manual, and vulnerable to errors. It can take several months and several touchpoints to transform a lead into an opportunity, depending on the industry
How does AI help?
Sales development representatives often waste time investigating each lead and following up with them, handling their objections, and asking pertinent questions to qualify them as potential and relevant prospects.
Here AI assistance comes to play, all these tasks can be handled by an automated and intelligent assistant. Sales representatives can concentrate on more critical tasks as AI-driven bots will handle the repetitive work.
For example, A prospective customer orders a sample or a demonstration. More detail is required, according to the company’s sales playbook, to decide whether a demo is worth the time. The bot will ask for the missing information needed to qualify the lead based on what it already knows about him.
The sales development representative bot will assess the answer and determine if the discussion with the lead should be continued, ended, or returned. This process will continue until the lead is passed to a live person who will schedule a demo and continue the process.
The lead qualification method can be improved over time using machine learning, based on feedback from reps and the success or failure of previous interactions. This frees up salespeople to concentrate on the most skilled leads.
Integrate AI to reap multiple benefits!
AI is not a new concept anymore and the time has come to implement AI-based marketing solutions to optimize lead generation and qualification.
Through the automated lead generation and qualification with AI-based tools and technology, businesses can save time, money, and resources, while customers can enjoy a convenient and faster shopping experience.
By collecting and analyzing user data, marketing strategies, and using past records of sales and demand, AI algorithms provide businesses with valuable insights, improving customer relationship management, identifying profitable investments, and increasing ROI.
Why miss the opportunity of becoming an early adopter of AI-driven lead generation and qualification in 2021? Kilowott’s exceptional AI marketing services can help you deploy these smart chatbots right away!
