The technological advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the way marketers interact with their customers. With conversational AI tools, Marketers have started to combine the powers of AI and Machine Learning (ML), utilizing data to construct personas and predict their customers’ behaviors. Quickly delivering the right information at the right time can be the difference in a customer deciding to pay or abandoning the conversation.
The Customer Is King
As consumers get used to better and faster service, their patience for lower quality diminishes. LinkedIn is a popular medium for online business today. Read the Expandi review here and you will know that it is not a recommended service for LinkedIn. Google’s research shows that 53% of visitors will leave if a mobile web page takes more than three seconds to load. Another study shows that leads are 10 times less likely to respond after five minutes. With numerous options and little to no patience for delay, customers will not stick around if their demands are not met with lightning speed.
Since marketers cannot be at multiple places at once, many inquiries will fall through the cracks. Potential leads who may have become customers now leave with bad tastes in their mouths and will surely remember the encounter as an intentional cold shoulder. Marketers want to make sure that all potential opportunities are captured, yet they don’t have the time and effort to do it all. This is where marketers have found AI to be invaluable – making sure they’re able to meet all inquiries with lightning speed and appropriate responses.
Conversational AI assistants are able to be the first point of contact. All initial inquiries go through them, and they will be able to answer general questions and schedule appointments. Sales reps no longer have to spend time answering the same questions over and over again,and spend time manually scheduling appointments with qualified leads. When faced with more complex and thorough inquiries, AI assistants help move the conversation along to a human rep, who can help the lead directly and form a direct relationship with them.
After the relationship has been made, the AI assistants can also handle follow-ups, further nurturing your leads to guide them through the funnel.
How AI Can Help Achieve Your Marketing Goals
Chatbots and emailbots are quickly becoming marketers’ favorite tools to capture potential opportunities. By utilizing chatbots and emailbots together, marketers are able to personalize each potential lead’s marketing journey. They’re able to send the right message at the right time, and even optimize the messages to match the correct scenario.
Marketers no longer have to spend their valuable time completing repetitive tasks like answering frequently asked questions, scheduling meetings, or following up with leads. AI can help marketers take over these mundane and time consuming tasks so that they can concentrate on more meaningful work.
AI can also answer requests and inquiries at any time of the day or week. They can always be relied on to handle the simple tasks you’ve given them with consistency and quality.
Where Does AI Come In At Each Stage Of The B2B Buyer Journey?
With AI, marketers will be able to effectively move their customers down the marketing funnel, which consists of five stages:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Consideration
- Evaluation
- Conversion
Let’s take a look at how AI can support marketers to help move leads from awareness to conversion.
Awareness
With the help of AI tools, you will no longer have to manually gauge the initial interest of inquirers. AI can help you identify prospects that may potentially be interested in your products and services based on similar customer personas you’ve input into their database. AI can deliver information to these leads, making them aware of who you are and the benefits you offer.
Leads are collected and compiled into your automation, where AI will then begin the process of nurturing with customized messages.
Interest
Going lower into the funnel, prospects are now looking to learn more information about your company, products, and services. Your automation can help them move further down the funnel by answering general questions, delivering helpful information, and introducing your positioning. Your AI assistants can also encourage prospects to sign up for newsletters and webinars, nurturing the leads until they are ready to move forward.
Consideration
In the consideration phase, leads who are seriously contemplating purchase will actively engage with you. This means they will want accurate information in a timely manner, which will always be satisfied by your AI assistants. To positively influence their journey, you’ll want to deliver information that reminds them of the benefits of your products and services and overcome any objections they may bring up. Relieving them of any doubts and uncertainty about your products will convert them from mere prospects to qualified leads.
Evaluation
Buyers in this phase of the journey are close to making the final purchase, but they’re still doing research to compare your products from competitors. It is crucial that your company keeps your products and services top of mind with reminders (not too many) for why they should consider choosing you over a competitor.
Conversion
Once qualified leads make the jump and become paying customers, it’s time for you to put your money where your mouth is. In order to help the client make best use of your products and services, you can market onboarding material and help answer any questions they may have while they explore and utilize your products. For B2B businesses, this can also be a great time to market complementary services and upsell opportunities.
AI Helps Your Exceed Customer Expectations
According to this study, 79% of marketing leads never convert to sales. For marketers, this number presents a massive opportunity. While it is true that many of the leads will never convert to sales, utilizing AI to weed out low-quality leads and identify high quality leads will allow you to spend your precious time in opportunities that present the highest return on investment.
AI can also help engage your potential leads at every step of their consumer journey, helping you keep potential sales from falling through the cracks.