By Alanna Goodman

Marketing is about reaching people. But far too often, marketers spend their time performing repetitive, robotic tasks that could be better handled by software.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to substantially change this. According to research from McKinsey, the marketing and sales sectors have the largest possible benefit from implementing AI-based solutions in the coming years, with up to $2.6 trillion in increased value.

Here are three ways modern marketers are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to create more effective lead generation strategies and get them back to what they do best: Connecting with people.

How to Leverage AI for Lead Generation

Artificial intelligence makes marketers more efficient by shortening the time it takes to move from research to outreach. AI tools can be trained to spot patterns and draw conclusions that might otherwise need a human expert to spotlight.

1. Create Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) that match your biggest wins.

When your sales team wins a deal, the next logical move is to go after similar accounts. But replicating that ideal customer and tracking down best-fit, lookalike prospects can be a slog. AI software can dramatically speed up this process by analyzing closed-won (and closed-lost) opportunities and generating a profile that can be matched against your contact database for strong lookalikes.

For example, say your sales team just closed on a medium-sized business in the SaaS industry that has 50+ salespeople, uses Salesforce, and is located on the East Coast. AI can take these attributes (and others) to create a target list of lookalike accounts.

This process works for buying committee members, too. If most of your customer buying committees consist of marketing directors at enterprise-sized companies who use Marketo, AI can identify that trend and provide you with a dynamic list of prospects who fit the criteria of an ideal buyer.

To accomplish this, you need the right tech at your disposal. Tools like ZoomInfo’s RevOS platform, with its database of over 100 million company records, can automatically analyze your past deals, identify similarities between them, build your buyer persona, provide a list of lookalikes, and create a targeted account universe.

If you’re already a ZoomInfo customer, click here to get 20% off HubSpot products.

Automated demographic, firmographic, and technographic data all play a part in drawing your absolute best-fit accounts — which means you can spend time crafting a compelling message instead of conducting research.

2. Personalize your campaigns with up-to-date data.

Professionals who run account-based marketing campaigns know that one size definitely does not fit all. How can they cover all the angles of a large buying committee without spending too much time trying to qualify their prospective leads?

The answer is buying signals. With a modern, AI-driven marketing platform, marketers can be alerted when a target account has significant changes that might inform, alter, or elevate their ABM approach:

• A prospect gets a new round of investment: They’re likely to be greenlighting budgets for new or upgraded …read more

  Source:: HubSpot Blog

        

  

  Author: Aaron