AI And Lead Generation
Artificial intelligence, the algorithms of certain companies, machine learning, chatbots, self driving pizza cars. These are all the new buzzwords when it comes to AI (artificial intelligence) and how it is progressively moving into everyday life. What is AI though, how does it work? Almost everyone knows about it, and it is all over the news. From a basic level, machines are able to learn from trial and error, just like humans when we learn anything. For example, if someone drinks coffee before bed and then realizes they can not sleep, they may not ever drink coffee again when they know they want to get some rest. Or, how many of you learned not to touch something hot by getting burned as a kid? Machines learn in a similar way, just with getting burned more. Machines are not very smart when starting out.
Before a bot will actually talk to a live person, it should go through testing until it is accurate enough to talk or interact with a human. Machines will look a question, for example "What video should I show the user next? What subject line should I use for this user? What information materials would help this user?" Factors are then taken to better the conversation. For example, if there is a home improvement lead that starts communicating with your bot, some good information to tailor the conversation would be, where they live, what kind of work do they need, what company are they working for and what their budget is. If a machine knows these things, it can talk to the lead better than if it didn't know anything about them. After talking to 100 home improvement leads, the bot will have a better understanding about what works and what does not when talking to humans.
Increases Leads Generated
Using a bot that is equipped with machine learning can free up your sales and support teams to deal with the bigger users, while your bot handles the smaller ones. When the right questions are asked, it will allow the bot's conversation with the user to be more personal, and the lead will have a better experience. Bots are also able to handle a lot more people at once than a regular sales person. A bot can handle 20 different people, while a single sales person can only handle one at a time. If you are always getting leads, let the bot handle them all, and with machine learning, to the lead it will feel like they are talking to an actual person. Using a bot is more fun and feels like it actually means something when giving information as opposed to just a flat form, as well.
Lead Qualification
Having your bot generate lead insights will give you the ability to put each lead in the right bucket. Customizing the pipeline based on each bucket will push your process to the next level, even better if the process becomes entirely automatic. As your marketers and salespeople know, there can be many different ways to categorize leads: bottom of the funnel, top of the funnel, specific verticals, maybe even specific personas. Following this will optimize your pipeline and get the right information in the right way to the right lead every time, as well as improving their customer experience throughout the process. For example, if you are dealing with insurance leads, you can identify that the lead belongs in the bottom of funnel health insurance with diabetes bucket. The bot can also ask more tailored questions that get to the point sooner than a form can do, such as, finding out what the lead needs and asking more specific questions in the same conversation, as opposed just a flat form.
Lead Nurturing
Once the lead is in a bucket, you can nurture it so it does not expire as quickly. As mentioned above, for a health insurance lead you can send them personalized emails using artificial intelligence without even needing to do anything. Setting up email drips with magic strings filled in by the insights makes a personalized experience, which the lead will appreciate, and bring your metrics up.
Free Up Time For Support And Sales
Time management skills are among some of the most important for an employee to have, but companies can also save time using bots, as well. Why make your salesperson call top of the funnel leads if your insights are suggesting that they are not ready to buy or that their budget is lower than your minimum pricing? You can still nurture those leads because things do change, but do not spend valuable time with leads that just are not going to work. Instead, consider using your bot to take care of those leads and their questions, saving your business and your employees valuable company time.
With all the new leads you will be generating using AI, make sure they are distributed in the proper way. Using a lead generation system will take the pressure off your company when it comes to buying and selling leads. Automate your support, sales and distribution process so you can worry about more important things, like what to do with your time while you are waiting for the self driving pizza car.