Informative
How can you use AI to drive customers through the sales funnel? In this blog post, we look at how marketers can use AI to achieve greater conversion rates and boost those profit margins.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to an exciting new host of tools that marketers can use to improve efficiency and conversion rates. AI automatically performs a vast number of tasks and processes that used to be done manually.
Aside from its ability to take menial tasks out of the hands of humans, AI learns while it works. Depending on the quality of the AI, it can self-optimize and predict trends that even highly skilled humans miss.
Here are seven ways AI can help your business convert leads into sales online:
Chatbots are AI interfaces that usually appear on your site’s landing page. Different businesses take varying approaches to these bots. Some like to give the bot a human name and picture so that the customer feels like they’re talking to a person. Others design an entirely new character based on their brand identity.
Chatbots automatically generate leads by collecting pertinent information from customers, such as email addresses and needs. This data is then handed over to sales staff to pursue. Instead of browsing for 30 seconds and then moving on, potential customers will give their information to the chatbot, which generates thousands of leads.
Converting leads to sales can be approached in many ways. Sales staff can negotiate, charm, or simply persist their way into a sale. However, knowing which leads hold the most potential for conversion will save you countless hours.
Conversational AI (like a chatbot) can ascertain the quality of a lead by asking pointed questions and performing analysis based on a customer’s responses. Then, it can provide you with a ranked list of leads, saving you the time of following up on bad ones.
Oftentimes, a lead will fall by the wayside because they don’t show much interest or are simply unresponsive. Your sales staff will let these ones go in favor of more promising or engaging leads, as they should.
However, even the most unresponsive leads bear fruit when the time is right. A potential client may not need your services when they first hear about you, but that can change at any given time.
Instead of wasting your sales staff’s time insisting they follow up on unresponsive leads, let AI take care of it. AI can regularly reach out to the lead, ensuring that they don’t forget who you are, what you do, or that you want their business.
You might think this sounds like spam or harassment, but AI doesn’t simply send identical emails at regular intervals. It’s capable of generating unique, human-like language and altering its schedule. This way, recipients don’t feel like they’re being spammed, you don’t waste time chasing leads that may never pay off, and you maintain that all-important contact.
A big part of any sales job is having good instincts. Knowing when to pursue a lead, which demographics to target, and who you should be focusing on next. While the gut instinct of an experienced salesperson is a valuable asset to any business, they can’t get it right all the time.
AI can bolster your sales team’s instincts by providing mathematically-sound sales forecasts based on previous sales. Through rigorous data analysis, marketing AI constantly learns how to identify deals that are likely to succeed and people who will likely need your services.
Thus, your sales team can take the forecasts made by AI and direct their efforts toward deals that are most likely to pay off.
Although you should always be seeking out new customers, it’s also imperative to retain the business of returning ones. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to avoid losing a customer, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do everything in your power to keep them coming back for more.
AI uses predictive analytics to analyze how your customers are using your product. This can expose potential problem areas before they lead to the loss of a customer. For example, AI can see where customers aren’t using your product to its full potential, where they’re encountering issues, and where they’re seeking more functionality.
Armed with this information, you can pre-emptively reach out to these customers to offer support and guidance. This also tells you which elements of research and development to focus on to keep your clients satisfied in the future.
Knowing your ideal customer is a huge step toward improving your conversion rates. You don’t want to waste time, money, or any other resources on marketing to people who aren’t interested.
AI can quickly and accurately analyze and consolidate your customer data into a usable customer profile, drawing on information from separate sources.
In doing so, AI may reveal insights about your ideal buyer that aren’t immediately obvious. AI doesn’t have the same bias as humans do; therefore, it doesn’t overlook trends and details that marketing might.
Human error is inevitable when it comes to data collection and entry. Company databases are always riddled with incomplete and duplicated data strings, which can be a massive hindrance for sales teams.
The more data we generate, the more difficult it becomes to maintain data integrity. This becomes a problem when sales teams can’t access complete or reliable data about leads. Fortunately, AI can use past entries to fill in gaps, update data points, and remove duplicates with incredible efficiency.
All told, AI is an invaluable tool for boosting conversion rates and supporting your sales team. By providing statistically-sound predictions and automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, AI frees up your sales team to do what they do best—close deals.
While AI certainly can’t replace the human element of marketing and sales, it can arm your teams with information that will greatly improve their productivity.
