In business, success can be tied to several factors. But the efficiency of generating and qualifying leads can make or break your company. Therefore, companies tend to be aggressive with lead generation efforts to power the sales pipeline.
In the era of the internet and AI, businesses can now use integrated marketing tools that simplify lead generation and enhance customer engagement.
If you want to improve your lead qualification efforts, these three tips can help you get ahead.
1. Identification and Assessment of New Leads
For many businesses in this connected age, digitization has greatly improved the process of qualifying leads. But this has also raised the bar. Generating new leads is a labor-intensive task that most companies eschew unless there's a diminished flow in their pipelines.
AI has changed that by offering seamless means of generating new leads without using lots of marketing resources. Artificial intelligence marketing software now provides solutions that gather existing customer data to enhance methods of qualifying leads. It also provides pre-qualified leads that marketing teams can use for lead nurturing.
Most companies rely on multiple channels to gather prospective leads, but manual validation and qualifying leads can be daunting. When you leverage AI capabilities, it's easier to validate the information against several credible channels and create a much more accurate prospects list. This means you'll be focusing on leads with a high conversion potential rather than spending time on cold leads that have a lesser chance of converting.
However, this approach of qualifying leads is best deployed when used with other AI customer engagement solutions. The ultimate objective is to have a fully-automated process of qualifying leads that result in more closed sales.
2. Embrace Adaptive Cadence and Treat Contacts Like Individuals
At least 53% of businesses still struggle with customer engagement despite developing great content and identifying appropriate timing for communication. Most messages are often left unattended, while others get lost amidst conversations. Almost all traditional customer engagement tools can schedule conversations, but this may not be enough in a rapidly evolving market.
AI-driven lead generation solutions can drive conversations based on engagement history and timing. Each lead is considered individually, and messages are personalized according to portrayed behaviors or responses. As a result, adaptive cadence in customer engagement can lead to increased response rates and lead conversions.
Several years ago, automated emails sent in bulk used to work well. But today, customers consider automated messaging spam. Marketing teams must consider every buyer individually, hence the need to personalize and contextualize each interaction.
3. Leverage Predictive Metrics and Analytics
Using available data to improve your customer engagement strategy can lead to more sales. But this requires rigorous testing and metrics analysis.
While most marketers use AI to drive and enhance customized interactions, the technology can accomplish so much more. Besides gathering and compiling marketing metrics for qualifying leads, AI-driven tools help marketing teams gain insightful analytics with practical applications.
Practical CRM tools will monitor, collect, and adjust the metrics for accurate analytics. Most importantly, they can flag any data point that would be vital to your marketing strategy. Armed with appropriate metrics, sales and marketing teams can draft creative and more effective plans for better customer engagement.
Additionally, with access to customer data and insights, you can build accurate customer profiles or personas based on different habits and behaviors. Consequently, great profiles can help you in qualifying leads by predicting the needs of prospects. This feature can be vital to sales teams as it assists in the process of qualifying leads before initiating a conversation. Unlike the case with blind prospecting, your team can then customize pitches and gain a better chance at converting more leads.
Final Words
Artificial intelligence has created lucrative opportunities for savvy marketers and businesses as AI-powered solutions can be leveraged to simplify the process of qualifying leads and personalizing customer engagement. And while there is still more to be expected in the future, companies have multiple options to choose from now.
After 25 years in engineering, Johannes Beekman founded IoT Marketing with the goal of helping companies bring wide-scale awareness to their inventions. He received a Master of Science in Physics degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology, and a Master in Business Administration degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and started his career in the semiconductor field. Johannes pioneered two successful wafer fab startups for Philips Electronics; one in Europe and the second one in Asia. And served as Senior Program Manager for Sematech, where he provided solutions for semiconductor industry-wide product improvement and cost reduction challenges. Johannes has also published articles on several trade-focused websites.
