AI lead generation can be more than helpful if used the right way. This can allow you to handle the entire lead generation process on your own. Besides, it also ensures more conversions and responses as compared to any other conventional lead generation method.
Your sales and marketing teams consume money and time while finding and nurturing the right leads. However, you can achieve this goal by taking advantage of AI lead generation.
In this comprehensive guide, we have discussed the most effective ways to generate leads using AI. So, let’s start!
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the process of finding potential customers and nurturing these leads to convert them into sales. It is the most essential process for a company, and it can help generate more leads and boost sales. Failure to perform this the right way could cause substantial damage to your company.
Besides, this is a crucial process for B2B businesses. In a B2B setup, your customers would be other businesses. This suggests that you must identify the market and make the right decision at the right time.
You need to attract companies or businesses interested in buying your product or benefiting from your services. This usually requires extensive research to create a tailored cold outreach. When engaging the prospects, you must offer them solutions to their problems.
We can divide a typical lead generation process into three main stages. This includes:
- Find leads
- Research Leads
- Reach out to Leads
How to Use AI for B2B Lead Generation?
AI can help you perform every step of your B2B lead generation much faster and hassle-free way. Once you have clearly identified your ideal customer profile, you can easily create lead lists using an AI lead generation tools.
Using this type of tool can allow you to identify similar contacts and companies depending on relevant attributes. This process also allows you to enrich leads by unfolding the aspects like technologies they are using, job changes, or recent funding events. AI can also serve you with features like tailored email copywriting and lead scoring.
With AI, you can automate time-consuming manual work. Furthermore, you can take care of the tailored tasks associated with sales and marketing teams. AI tools can free up your marketing staff to focus on other crucial and more strategic initiatives.
How to Structure an AI Lead Generation Team
The right AI tool and lead generation team ensure you can efficiently scale your B2B lead generation campaign. AI tools are handy for getting the most out of your marketing strategies.
Below is a viable and most appropriate structure for an AI lead generation team.
Rely on an AI Lead Generation Expert
An AI expert can efficiently manage lead generation workflows using automated tools. The person you have hired for AI lead generation must also have additional skills in knowing the critical aspects like customer behavior and sales triggers.
Besides, your AI expert must also be capable of handling data scrapers and enrichment tools. Here are the key responsibilities of an AI lead generation specialist:
- Identify the target leads using both the data sources and AI tools
- Write tailored and engaging outreach messages using AI copywriting
- Analyze the results of your recent marketing campaign
- Create workflows for trigger-based and deep targeting
- Research your prospects using AI enrichment tools
Hire Some Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)
Sales Development Representatives perform specific tasks. These are the jobs that require human touch such as making calls, finding prospects on LinkedIn, or posting brand-specific content on social feeds assigned to SDRs.
Hire A Copywriter
A creative copywriter can assist you by writing email sequences addressed to sales personas. In addition, a copywriter also writes landing pages, social posts, and similar other content. In other words, a copywriter tends to be a crucial part of a sales team.
With the aforementioned structure, it would be much easier for you to streamline the entire outbound process. For instance, you can efficiently handle tasks from researching prospects to messaging prospective customers. An AI specialist can handle most of the steps.
With the right team and appropriate technology, you can generate 10x more qualified leads. The perfect blend of valuable insights from humans and AI automation can get the most out of your lead generation efforts.
How to Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
The first step associated with most B2B lead generation strategies is to identify your ideal customer. This helps businesses create a targeted list of ideal prospects. By defining the key features of your best customer, you can design a more focused and targeted campaign.
Therefore, a well-defined ideal customer profile can help create a hyper-targeted list. You can also build effective messaging and spend less time finding your promising prospects.
Here are the ways to define your ICP:
Analyze Closed Deals
Even if you have few customers, it’s possible for you to identify the commonalities between them. By analyzing the closed deals, you can unfold the common attributes associated with your best customers. You can consider factors like company size, titles, industry, pain points, or specific use cases.
Below are some of the most prominent questions that can help you identify your ideal customer:
- What are the common attributes that make your customers alike?
- What types of customers are more likely to close the deal?
- Who are the highly-paid customers?
Talk to Customers
Customer research tools like interviews, feedback, and surveys are referred to as the first line of information. For instance, you need to understand what your best customers say about your product or why they find it more valuable. According to some experts, businesses must identify a customer segment that gets more excited about your product.
This will help you understand what your customers like the most about your product. This step is essential, as most sales tools don't offer this type of data. Hence, your sales teams must have the skills to connect with the customers.
Try to be Specific
Do not take a broad approach to finding your ICP. Instead, try to seek out a specific niche. Identifying niche customer segments can help you create a precise list of prospective customers.
How to Use AI for List Building and Enrichment
After defining the ICP, the next step is to automate the process of list building and enrichment. With AI, you can help map signals from the ideal customers and use them to generate more high-quality leads. Knowing what types of problems your product can solve can help you target the best customers.
By using targeted profiles, you can make the right decision. For this purpose, you can rely on AI lead generation tools. This allows you to create highly customized lead lists. By combining Firmographic, Demographic, and Technographic filters, you can build a powerful list of prospects.
Consider Some Broad Filters
Broad filters allow you to create segments and divide your prospects using filters like role, industry, company size, geographic region, preferred social media platforms, etc. This process will help you target those customers who fit within your ideal customer criteria.
Apply Deep Lead Targeting Strategy
It’s a specific criterion that requires you to analyze your prospect deeply. Normally, sales filters won’t offer such deep information about a prospect. With this strategy, you can identify the key areas where your prospects tend to differ from those who aren’t using your products or services.
Use Trigger-Based Lead Targeting
This type of strategy revolves around knowing about prospects who experience key events. Trigger-based targeting revolves around identifying prospects experiencing news, key events, or changes. The “triggers” are normally pieces of information that only existed for a short period of time, such as six months or less.
Examples of triggers include raising funding, hiring new roles, launching a product, or opening a new store.
How to Qualify Leads on Sales Calls
Once you have successfully booked meetings from cold outreach, the next step is to connect with the leads at an advanced level. This involves targeting the B2B leads through live sales calls.
It’s the most critical part of any B2B lead generation strategy. If you have decided that your leads fit within your ideal customer profile, you can proceed with the live calls.
With adequate qualifications and listening closely to the leads, you can know the core pain of a prospect. In fact, your goal shouldn’t be persuading the prospects but to deeply understand their needs and try to meet them via your products or services.
Top AI Lead Generation Tools
Here is the list of our top AI lead generation tools, which can help you find the right leads and interact with them to improve conversion rates.
1. Lyne AI
Lyne AI is an innovative and efficient AI lead generation tool. It also serves as a robust email marketing tool. Lyne can seamlessly integrate with the power of AI to boost your outreach efforts.
Key Features
Craft Tailored Messages: This AI tool makes it possible for you to generate personalized messages, which improves the chances of engagement and conversion.
Identifies and Generates Leads: Lyne saves your precious time and resources by assisting you in identifying and generating leads.
Connects you with the Prospects: With this tool, you can easily connect with the prospects. It allows for conducting rapid searches and offers insightful information about the prospects.
Extracting Leads from LinkedIn: It serves as a perfect way to retrieve target leads from LinkedIn. Lyne allows you to leverage the vast professional network and identify prospective customers.
Price
Offers a free plan.
A custom plan is available for $120/month
2. Smartwriter AI
Smartwriter AI is another innovative AI-powered outreach tool. It’s designed to enhance email outreach and enhance the chances to generate more leads. Its advanced features can help you create tailored emails, ensuring a cost-effective lead outreach.
Key Features
Collects Relevant Data: Smartwrite.AI lets you gather the most relevant and accurate data about prospective customers.
Chrome Extension: The Chrome extension allows you to find verified emails by just browsing the LinkedIn profiles.
Price
Basic plan costs $49/month.
Popular Plan costs $124/month.
Pro Plan costs $299/month.
3. Instantly AI
This particular AI lead generation tool is highly advanced and is specifically designed to help you with your email campaigns. You can take advantage of a variety of powerful features offered by Instantly AI. Whether looking for lead generation or cold outreach, this tool offers the features to optimize your campaign.
Key Features
Cleans and Verifies: With this tool, you can easily clean and verify your leads list. This ensures your message reaches only the right recipients.
Create Customized Emails: Instantly.AI, allows you to write tailored emails and optimize deliverability depending on the recipient’s information.
Centralized Management: By relying on instantly.AI, you can save a lot of time. This is so, as it helps you centralize your campaigns and streamline email outreach.
Price
Growth plan costs $30/month.
Hypergrowth plan costs $77.6/month.
Light Speed plan costs $286.3/month.
For the Enterprise plan, you need to ask for a custom price.
4. Leadzen
Leadzen is a popular AI lead generation tool, which is capable of assisting you with generating leads and connecting with prospects. This tool provides the most up-to-date and in-depth information about a prospect.
Key Features
Bulk Search: This feature allows you to perform bulk searches and retrieve comprehensive data within the less anticipated time.
Lead Qualification: It offers features like lead qualification, which helps you analyze the relevance and quality of the leads.
Smart Search: It allows searching for prospects from a broad perspective. On the other hand, this feature also helps you to narrow down the search to identify the leads that meet specific criteria.
Price
Standard plan costs $140/month
Starter plan costs $400/month
Growth plan costs $800/month
5. Seamless AI
Seamless AI is another AI lead generation tool. It also serves as a prospecting and sales software tool. It comes with a variety of tools, which can help find and connect with the most promising leads.
Key Features
Sales Pipeline Building: This feature allows the users to create a sales pipeline without much of a hassle. It further helps with discovering the target accounts by using business insights and Firmographic filters.
List Building: With Seamless Ai, building a prospect list is just a breeze. It also helps with the sales pipeline generation and improves the conversion rate.
Verified Emails and Phones: With access to verified phone numbers and email addresses, this tool gives you the confidence that you are connecting with the right prospect.
Price
Offers a free plan.
You need to contact the sales team for a custom quote.
6. Copilot AI
Copilot AI is another AI lead generation tool on our list. This platform helps you create more leads through LinkedIn. It further allows you to generate customized, compelling, and engaging email campaigns.
Key Features
List Creations: You can create a comprehensive list of targeted customers.
Offers Valuable Data: With valuable data in your hands, it’s a lot easier to fill the pipeline with strong prospects, willing to be converted into sales.
Price
Need to request a quote.
7. Drift
This is a powerful AI lead generation platform with a multitude of features. It allows for finding new leads and nurturing the existing ones. You can find leads and interact with them with complete knowledge about them. This enhances the conversion rate and multiplies your sales.
Key Features
Customized Experiences: Offer a tailored experience to your prospects by delivering them personalized messages.
Lead Generation Strategies: This tool comes with a range of lead generation strategies. It also offers valuable insights for better lead generation.
Price
Need to contact the sales team for a quote.
8. Exceed AI
Exceed AI is a sales and conversational marketing platform. It also serves as a powerful AI lead generation tool. It helps with automating the lead generation process for higher conversion rates.
Key Features
Lead Capturing: With Exceed, you can easily capture leads and qualify them in real-time. This AI tool works alongside your team to gather sales-ready leads.
Seamless Integration: It ensures hassle-free integration with popular CRM systems and allows marketing automation at a reasonably low cost.
Price
Ask for a custom quote.
9. SmartReach.io
SmartReach.io is a strong LeadFinder tool, making it easy to find high-quality leads. You can get the best possible outcome by just following a few simple steps. It gives access to a huge database of more than 400 million records.
Key Features
Advanced Filters: This feature ensures a refined search depending on your ideal customer criteria.
Massive Contact List: Gives you access to more than 200 million contacts.
Seamless Integration: With a simple integration process, you can easily import leads to your existing lists.
Price
Starter plan costs $29/month.
Professional plan costs $59/month.
Expert plan costs $99/month.
Final Thoughts
No doubt, AI is revolutionizing the way we used to generate leads. By taking help from AI, we can automate repetitive tasks and analyze huge amounts of data within less anticipated time. It also allows us to personalize interactions.
In addition, AI can also improve lead quality and enhance conversion rates. With advancements in technology, we can expect AI lead generation software to handle more sophisticated tasks.
