Action Item

Find Your Gap and the Right AI Solution For It

The topic of “Lead Generation” is quite broad when you really look at it. And that makes how AI applies to it a bit confusing.

Adding to the confusion is the sheer volume of AI tools you can use, from SaaS offerings to Chrome extensions to plugins and copilots!

The first thing to help you navigate this is: know your lead gen focus and processes. Are you focusing on attracting cold leads or reselling to existing customers? Are ads your thing or do you prefer organic? Knowing your focus for lead gen is the #1 first most important key step. #1. Most important. Key. Get the idea? 😁 

In all cases, what you’ve got isn’t perfect. There is no one size fits all, and no one size fits your company. Even if one size works best and you isolate it, you will find you don’t execute it perfectly.

So in all cases you have GAPS. In a quest for lead gen perfection, you have to find your gaps and fill them. It is most likely in people or processes, but it can also be your approach to lead gen that is your biggest gap.

The trick?

Read “Determine Which Lead Gen Gap You Need To Fill” here »

Finding the right AI solution depends on your processes, and your budget.

You will always hear me say that for every problem AI can solve, it can solve it with SaaS, Chrome extensions, plugins and copilots. Those 4 mediums will have a solution for you.

Knowing which medium makes sense depends on your process. If you want a total solution that you and your team go into to generate leads, monitor flow and get AI insights, then a SaaS offering is your best bet. Look at SaaS offerings that have the same focus as you do, or that fill in your gaps.

If you are looking to do just one thing with AI, like generate cold lead lists, then Chrome extensions are where I would look. Taplio, GroupTrack CRM, lemlist and others can scrape LinkedIn. See the Tools section below for more information on these.

For more customized action and interaction with leads, look at plugins and copilots. Plugins can be bought, but at this time they are mostly custom-built for your needs. They plug into ChatGPT, or into a widget on a website, or into a Chatbot and provide customized service to help convert the best leads for you.

Copilots are new, and have not yet taken off. I mention them here because they are coming. They are a mix of Chrome extension and plugin, not needing Chrome to exist. They work in all browsers, and are usually part of existing software like Office 365, Windows 11, and other Microsoft products, but will be available across any product by any company.

A copilot is just that…a copilot for you. It can help you look at your existing customers, look at lead traffic and demographics, and help you make data-driven decisions in your business.

In summary, know your processes, find your gaps, then find the AI tools that help you fill the gaps and expand your processes.

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Learning Cube

Demand Generation, Cold Lead Lists, Chatbot Integration

Demand Generation: Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in a company's products or services through marketing activities designed to stimulate interest and demand. Demand generation can help fill a sales funnel with quality leads that are more likely to convert, as they've shown interest in your offerings.
Example: A company might use AI tools to assist in content marketing, such as offering a free eBook or a webinar, to generate demand. Individuals who sign up for the eBook or webinar become leads, showing interest in the company's products or services, and AI can assist in crafting the right eBook title, SEO, and content for your market.

Cold Lead Lists: A cold lead list refers to a list of potential customers who have not had previous contact with your business or shown interest in your products or services. These leads are called 'cold' because they have not yet been warmed up to your brand.
Example: A company may use an AI-powered software to cull through LinkedIn users based on your existing customer base. This list might include individuals who fit the company's target demographic but have not yet engaged with the company in any way.

Chatbot Integration: One of the most powerful AI pieces these days revolves around chatbot integration. Chatbots have been around for a number of years, but today’s bots work with AI-powered data behind the scenes to provide an integrated, natural experience for leads. They converse well, use real data for answers, and remove the need for most A,B,C choice questions. Then they can take action that is appropriate for what the lead needs done.
Example: Expanding on the Demand Generation example above, a Chatbot could ask the lead if they would like your free eBook PDF. If the lead says yes, they can ask for their name and email address and drop them into Zapier or Make to get them into the CRM, tag them as interested in the PDF, and then trigger an email automation that sends them the PDF right then. The bot could then say something like “Ok, I’ve sent you an email with the eBook attached. Have you received it?” This can lead to further discussion, or closing the loop.

Tool Spotlight

If you take the Action section above, and determine where your gaps are in your Lead Gen efforts, you will see the need for tools to help you fill those gaps.

AI tools for lead gen are found in:

• apps and websites

• Chrome extensions

• plugins

• copilots

What follows are a few of the most popular tools. There are literally thousands more out there. Do your own research for what your specific needs are. The following are some of my favorites that show a wide variety of what is out there.

Factors.ai

• SaaS

• Focus is on getting real data from website visits to help you make data-driven decisions

• Turning anonymous website visitors into a pipeline - can get information on these “anonymous” visitors

• Looks at your customer journey through your site

• Gives you AI-based recommendations based on all the data it gets on what works, what isn’t working, where visitors go, etc

• Can provide you with information for reaching back out to visitors who show specific interest or behaviors

• Integrates with Slack so your team is notified of people to reach out to soon

• See features here

lemlist

• SaaS and Chrome extension

• Finds cold and warm outreach for you then builds an outreach campaign

• Email, LinkedIn, call, API, and more (is fantastic with LinkedIn)

• Integrates with a few of the most popular CRMs directly, to have new leads sent to it, or to have campaign information sent back to the lead profiles in the CRM

• Creates cold contact lists for you based on your criteria using AI to help you build the right list, the right message, and the right campaign

• Has great training and tool pieces to help with follow-up, which is where 70% of all sales occur

• Connects to Zapier and other tools to provide automation into the rest of your business

• Cool Chrome extension allows you to be on LinkedIn and tie people on the page back into their software

• Courses, playbooks and templates help you learn and use the best techniques

• see features here

Dante AI

** Disclosure: This Dante AI section contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

• SaaS with Chatbot export available

• Creates a chatbot-enabled knowledge base of your own information, based on documents, videos and web pages you import into the software

• Uses the GPT engine to create embeddings of your information that can then be used by its chatbot to provide more useful information to the chatbot user

• Provides stellar results, suggests next question for the user, and lets you update the knowledge base as you go so you can improve each user’s experience

• Allows you to save multiple knowledge bases so you can have chatbots handling specific types of interactions with incredible accuracy

• Gives you an easy way of adding your own business information to a GPT chatbot like ChatGPT, so the chat has as much information at its fingertips as you can give it

• Allows you to share your chatbot with your websites, with your clients, etc. Easy instructions on installing it wherever you need it to be

• Facilitates “grounding” of standard GPT data with real data to give your leads the most relevant results in a friendly conversational way.

• see features here

News

Google’s New AI-powered Ad Campaign Types

According to a recent Google blog post, Google is unveiling two new ad campaigns later this year that you can use to boost lead gen efforts. With the new focus in lead gen being around “demand generation”, Google is rolling out Demand Gen and Video View as new campaign types.

Their focus is on mid-funnel to purchase, amplifying the product demand. Google determined that most people act immediately when seeing a new product or brand in a Google feed.

Read full text here »

Cool Factor

Dante AI Demo

I was really impressed with the ease and simplicity of creating a powerful chatbot for my website by using Dante AI. So I thought this week I’d show you how it works! You will understand why I recommend this product, to the point I chose to become an affiliate for it.

It allows you to create a chatbot over the top of your own items! It can use websites, PDF and other document files, video and more to fill in a knowledge base that the chatbot runs against.

I show you how I used the free version to upload and index some invoices for data retrieval! Imagine what a natural language chatbot can do for attracting leads to YOUR business!

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