Surf’s up dude! Ready to ride the wave of AI to lead generating success? Here’s how I use AI to help me paddle out and catch the big one.
I used to love surfing. It was great getting out on the open sea and just letting the waves bounce me in and out. It wasn’t until I realized the dangers that lurk below that I decided to end my surfing days. But that doesn’t mean that I don't like to ride a good wave anymore, however these days they are more on the business tech side than the beach.
The latest technology wave is certainly AI. There is no larger current rolling in right now than artificial intelligence. It’s a game changer across the board for every industry and aspect including sales lead generation. AI has become a formidable trend that’s hard to ignore. Even though it’s ubiquitous, a lot of people don’t know how to get in, where to go, or what to do to get the most from it.
If that sounds like you, don’t worry, I’m here to help you with that. I’ve been using AI for the past couple of years and have a pretty good handle on what’s working and not. And, it doesn’t hurt that I also work for an AI sales company that specializes in business intelligence for lead generation all with the use of AI.
Let’s unpack some of the details, myths, and use cases to see where you can get the most value from AI lead generation.
AI Lead Generation Basics
It’s easier to start at the beginning so that everyone is on the same page. So to cover basics, B2B lead generation is a fundamental aspect of the sales funnel, especially in the SaaS sector. It involves identifying and attracting potential customers—commonly referred to as leads—that have shown interest in a company's product or service.
The goal is to cultivate these leads, nurturing them through the buyer's journey until they convert into paying customers. AI can’t replace the value of establishing real relationships, but it can help craft compelling messaging, identify ideal customers, and even optimize campaigns.
In SaaS, lead generation often begins with inbound tactics like content marketing, SEO, and social media engagement to draw in prospects. Some of these lead-gen tactics can be optimized with AI. These are complemented by outbound strategies like targeted email campaigns and cold calling to broaden reach.
Advanced lead generation efforts leverage data analytics and AI sales tools to refine targeting, automate list building and help predict buyer behavior, ensuring that sales reps spend their time on high-quality, high-intent leads. Effective lead gen not only fills the top of the funnel but significantly enhances the efficiency and ROI of sales efforts.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these tactics to see where AI can help generate leads.
Top AI Lead Generation Tools
The first step in getting on board to ride the big AI wave is looking at AI tools that can generate actual leads. There are several key players in this space, including Seamless.AI. I’m happy to share my thoughts to give you some idea on where to start.
To generate leads with AI, a company or tool will need a database of information on companies and their employees. The key to understanding the value of this market isn’t just the tool itself, but the B2B data that supports it. The information directory that is needed to generate leads will be vital for the AI to help determine which leads are right for you.
Here are the two most popular AI lead generation tools:
- Seamless.AI - Huge potential for lead generation with AI automated list-building, AI-generated scripts for cold outreach, and of course AI-generated confidence scores on contact data so you can easily validate info and prospect with confidence. Seamless.AI is the home of the World’s Best Sales Leads, with 1 billion contacts and 120 million companies researched, and counting. With tools like Data Enrichment, Buyer Intent, and more, it’s hard to see why sales reps would use any other platform. I personally use Seamless.AI for all of my contact data and list building. They are great at finding the right contact I need.
- Apollo.Io - Good investment with solid database and support. They don’t have nearly as broad of contact coverage as Seamless.AI, but they do cover 210 million contacts and 35 million companies (mainly in the US). Their tools include similar features like data enrichment and buyer intent. They also have AI-powered scoring as well as AI prompting for database searches. You can see how Apollo compares with Seamless.AI as well as alternatives, but don’t just take my word for it. They offer a free plan to check it out.
Outside of traditional sales platforms that use databases to search companies for contacts, there are many sales reps that use other AI tools for generating leads.
Inbound AI Lead Generation Tools
When salespeople think about inbound leads, they would consider them warm and therefore more valuable than cold leads because they’re easier and faster to close. These are folks that either saw a marketing message on social networks, text, email, content or other method to reach out to the company to get more information.
There are great marketing AI tools that help companies generate leads. AI tools for SEO can help increase organic traffic, which would, in turn, improve overall conversions to lead forms.
Everyone is familiar with ChatGPT and other AI writing tools. These tools can enhance content to reach more audiences that would be interested in learning more about the company.
Social media has always been the go-to for viral marketing or generating huge inbound interest. Using AI can help improve these campaigns and get your content in front of more people.
In my personal experience, the following AI tools are good for generating leads.
Top AI SEO Tools for Lead Generation
- Jasper.AI - Supercharge SEO with the power of AI. Boost traffic and conversions with AI-powered content creation, optimization, and SEO-friendly integrations. This powerful tool makes it easy to optimize your website to drive more traffic and increase leads.
- Surfer SEO - “The Best-performing Content is Made with Surfer. This SEO tool offers a content optimization workflow that boosts organic traffic, improves search rank, and helps grow your business. Optimizing content to attract an ideal target audience is key to driving more leads.
- Alli.AI - Optimize, Automate, Deploy and Scale SEO. Attention Agencies and SEO teams: No Coding Required. Works with any CMS. Manage all your SEO from one dashboard. Install, automate, and scale with AI. Creating content is key to driving higher rankings that earn high-quality traffic.
- SEO.AI - The Easiest Way for Online Stores to Generate Ranking SEO Copy. Use AI to create everything from collection pages and product descriptions to blog posts. Powered by a next-gen SEO engine to ensure top rankings.
📕Related: 3 Lessons I’ve Learned About Search Marketing and AI in 2024
Top AI Social Media Tools for Lead Generation
- Luppa.AI - Your All-in-One AI Marketing Platform. Accelerate your brand's growth with effortless content creation and automation—from text, images, and video to analytics, scheduling, and research. This AI tool makes it easy to create great campaigns that generate more leads.
- TikTok - This is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. Gen Z is one of the biggest users of TikTok, which helped make it the powerhouse platform it is today. If you are looking to reach a younger audience then this a great platform to invest in to generate leads. Their AI algorithms are designed to optimize viewing and reach.
- MarketMuse - AI-powered software tells you what content to write (and how much) to leverage your experience and rank higher where competitors are weak.
- Pictory.AI - The easiest way to create professional videos for EVERYONE! Create engaging videos in minutes using Pictory.AI. This is one of my favorite tools because I can take an existing article, word doc, or video, and generate a completely new AI-optimized video and customize it for my audience.
Tips to Generate Leads Using AI
Having the right tools is essential for catching the AI wave. You certainly don’t want to go out on the ocean with a skateboard or ice skates because they won’t get you where you want to go. The same is true for AI tools. Having the right tools is key, but knowing what to do with them is where you’ll be able to stand-up and ride that wave even further. Here are my tips for using AI to generate leads.
AI Lead Gen Tip 1
Use AI to create contact lists - Getting a list of potential clients is a great way to start generating leads. You can use a tool like Autopilot from Seamless.AI to make a list of 100s of prospects instantly with AI.
Then, use AI to create a compelling cold email outreach campaign to warm the leads up. Using AI to help with some of the personalization can go a long way to making sure the emails are opened and seen. Doing list building with AI is as easy as one click.
You can also give it parameters to isolate the best contacts for your list. I’ve used this method and got great results.
AI Lead Gen Tip 2
Use AI to create buyer personas - It used to take weeks to put together accurate and helpful buyer personas. Now with the use of AI, you can build one in minutes with just a simple prompt.
I like to get as many details that I can to make the conversation unique. You can easily create multiple personas and have conversations individually to get a good understanding of the pain points and angles that might be good to write about.
Here’s an example of a persona prompt that you can use to create audience bots. Remember you can always fine tune and adjust your persona as needed. From there, either tell the bot to assume this role or feed it into another bot to start a conversation.
Detailed Persona Prompt: You are a persona generating master. You construct detailed information about an ideal person and role within [Add-Your-Industry-Here] industry that would need a [Your-Product] product. When prompted, create a persona for a [Ideal-Role] that would be ideal for the industry provided. Include their role or title, as well as why the product is right for them. Create a new persona based around this information.
Basic Persona Prompt: Design a buyer persona for a young professional with a passion for sustainable and eco-friendly products.
AI Lead Gen Tip 3
Use AI to create social posts - Generating leads with social media is a tried and tested method for bringing in high-quality prospects. AI is great at crafting helpful messaging and posts that will enhance and demonstrate your product’s value.
I like to feed the AI a lot of existing content that I wrote or find valuable to give it context that I can use for generating social posts.
One thing that I do is make LinkedIn posts and a weekly schedule using AI. I give it all the necessary information about optimizing for that network, then feed it a time frame that I want to engage with potential customers. I then let the AI create the post and time intervals that are optimal for posting.
This takes a lot of the guesswork out and tedium out of the process. Putting this information into a social media tool that can automate the posting makes this a simple and turnkey method for generating leads with AI.
What AI Can’t Do to Generate Leads
Like every good ride, there are bumps in the road, or waves in this case. With riptides out there to watch out for, it can be hard to always stay up and not get knocked off.
While AI is great for a lot of things, it can’t build real-world relationships with people. This will always take a human touch.
Currently, there is no legal way to own the rights of an AI-generated image, and there are many limitations on what AI-generated text can be used for.
Companies are very wary about giving their data to AI tools as well as letting their employees use AI for sensitive situations and matters that require exact details with no hallucinations.
You certainly don’t want AI just openly contacting your prospects with the hopes of generating leads, but done right, there are some really good cases for AI lead generation.
Hang Ten
Surf’s up for AI lead generation, and it’s a massive wave carrying us to new horizons! While it can't replace the human touch of building real-world relationships, AI is the ultimate board to help you paddle out and catch those big opportunities.
Harnessing tools like Seamless.AI for contact lists, Jasper.AI for SEO, and creative platforms like Pictory.AI for social content, you're equipped to ride the crest of innovation. Just remember, every great ride has its bumps. AI can't own content rights or make genuine connections for you. But with the right tools in hand and an eye on the ever-changing tide, you can navigate around the riptides and surf your way to lead-generating success!
Don't forget to claim your free credits to use Seamless.AI today.
