Why Sales and Marketing Teams Should Care About Generative AI

If you were to browse any sales and marketing media, chances are you’d encounter information about generative AI in the first five minutes. This isn’t surprising at all — The release of ChatGPT brought a lot of attention to using AI tools for nurturing leads, lead generation, and other sales and marketing tasks.

All this attention is warranted. Using generative AI in sales and marketing optimizes many routine work processes and lets specialists spend their time on more strategic tasks. In a survey by Salesforce of 6,000 top-performing sales professionals, 57% said they already used some AI sales tools to improve their productivity.

However, many professionals are still hesitant to introduce AI in sales and marketing due to misconceptions about AI tools or a lack of knowledge about how to make AI work for them.

This article discusses the top uses of AI in marketing and sales and provides strategies for how to get the most out of them. 

Growth of generative AI

Before we dive into the best uses of AI in digital marketing and sales, let’s take a moment to explore how teams use it to get results. 

Generative AI has advanced enormously in the past year and transformed from a new unexplored technology to a full-fledged tool used daily by many specialists.

Take a look:

• HubSpot reports that 85% of sales professionals surveyed said AI made their prospecting efforts more effective.
• In a recent Gartner survey, 53% out of 119 IT leaders whose teams are using GenAI tools beyond ChatGPT said they are using those for marketing and sales efforts.
• A survey of organizations using generative AI revealed that 46% mostly used generative AI for marketing and communication.

All this data suggests that generative artificial intelligence is more than just asking ChatGPT for marketing material. Teams implement AI in their workflow for sales automation, content personalization, audience research, and more.

Let’s now dig deeper into some of the main use cases of generative AI for sales and marketing.

Use 1: Transforming content creation 

People have several misconceptions when it comes to AI-driven marketing. The biggest one is about content generation. Some say that ChatGPT produces low-quality text while others don’t believe AI can stand in for a skilled marketing professional.

That last point is valid: AI cannot fully replace your in-house marketer. And it doesn’t have to. What it can do is streamline content creation.

You can rely on AI-powered marketing to organize your social media posts. Dedicated AI tools can create an optimized schedule for posts, choose the most fitting hashtags, and repurpose content for multiple platforms.

Maybe your social media manager lacks the design skills to make images for the posts. Why not get some help from AI visual generation tools?

Regular posting is key to social media success, and AI marketing tools can fill in the gaps when your team is busy coming up with large-scale social media campaigns. 

Another common use of AI in marketing is email management. For example, you can rely on tools like AiSDR to set up email marketing campaigns, generate automated responses, and speed up the drafting of emails.

AiSDR and similar AI tools for nurturing leads base their output on a prospect’s role, industry, and pain points to compose a message with the right tone of voice to grab their attention.

For this to happen, the marketing team’s role is to create a detailed prompt outlining exactly what result they need, including style, tone of voice, the prospect’s background information, and the goal for each piece of content. With a robust prompt, AI will fulfill your requirements and avoid generic content.

Use 2: Improving customer experiences

Another common objection to letting AI cross paths with the marketing process is that people don’t like talking to robots — For a good customer experience, the approach needs to be personalized.

The truth is that high-quality AI tools like AiSDR can generate tailored content based on information they gather about each customer.

For instance, you can offer personalized AI prospecting content in emails. 

Messages that speak a prospect’s language and address the exact problem the prospect needs to solve increase the chance of booking a demo.

Think about what works better: Getting a generic email starting “Dear Sir/Madam” and listing all the possible services a company provides, or getting a message addressed with your name, offering a discount on a product that not only solves your pains, but was something you were inquiring about?

And AI tools for nurturing leads can create each email in just a few minutes instead of crafting them manually, which can take hours.

Use 3: Increasing efficiency

Saving time is another good reason to turn to marketing and sales automation tools. AI automation helps marketers save up to 25 hours per week.

You might have heard people complain, “Well, AI can’t just take care of all the sales and marketing activities; it can’t even build a good strategy.” But we’re not asking AI to become your head of sales. If AI can free up some time for a specialist to focus on high-value work, that’s more than enough. 

Dedicated AI sales tools automate repetitive tasks that don’t require human input. For example, AI tools like AiSDR can score, qualify, and segment leads for you.

You can tell AI to segment customers and adapt your sales strategy for different clusters based on particular characteristics, brand interactions, and other criteria you select. Instead of gathering this information bit by bit for hours on end, automation tools can provide a marketing or lead generation specialist with data-based segmentation insights in just a few minutes. 

The same goes for many other marketing and sales chores specialists spend time on daily, like processing initial requests, scheduling meetings, generating proposals, and sending follow-up emails. Plus, AI will maintain a high standard of performance and won’t be affected by burnout, writer’s block, and other common blockers.

Use 4: Leveling the playing field

Some believe that AI sales enablement is a high-tech and expensive ecosystem available only to big corporations, and the best that small companies can hope for is ChatGPT marketing.

In reality, an AI selling tool like AiSDR, with a monthly subscription fee of $750, is a cost-effective option for small teams and startups who don’t have the budget available for hiring a full-time SDR.

While bigger companies invest in extended sales and marketing teams, those with fewer resources can set up an automated sales funnel with subscription-based or even free AI tools.

You can have elaborate sales and marketing for under $1,000, even with a founder-led sales strategy. For example, AiSDR helps create email campaigns with follow-ups and generates content in just a few hours per week, relieving your marketing team personnel of these burdens.

While AI takes care of your online presence and lead nurturing, your sales and marketing teams can focus on tasks that grow your business. The lack of a specialized team is no longer an excuse for lacking a marketing and sales effort. 

Additionally, there’s a risk to ignoring AI and innovation. There’s always the chance that doing so causes you to lag behind your competitors.

Risks of ignoring AI

Deciding not to implement AI is dicey because others already use it. Once customers get used to regular follow-ups and personalized content, they won’t settle for anything less.

Apart from losing a competitive advantage, other consequences of ignoring artificial intelligence advances include:

• Inefficient resource allocation: AI speeds up most routine tasks that don’t require a high level of focus. It saves time by helping develop a strategy, communicate with clients, and create valuable content.
• Missed opportunities for lead generation: Certain AI sales prospecting tools can research potential leads through numerous channels, validate the leads, segment them into categories for more targeted offers, and automate lead outreach efforts. Instead of manually contacting ten leads per week, you use a dedicated AI product to find and contact 100 higher-quality leads.
• Inconsistent or lack of follow-up: It might not be easy to keep up with high volumes of emails while also staying on top of numerous other sales tasks. Missing follow-ups can lead to losing prospects. Just one follow-up increases the response rate by 40% compared to the first contact, so why not improve your chance of making a sale with a powerful AI and sales combination?

AI brings innumerable benefits to sales and marketing teams. Adopting AI tools makes your teams more productive, allows them to conserve resources by reducing work on routine tasks, and helps them provide the best customer service possible. Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Start using AI to reduce your teams’ workload today

With today’s tech, you have easier ways to get work done. Companies can’t simply ignore the advances. Whichever business provides the best service quickest will beat the competition. Introducing artificial intelligence is a great way to achieve this result.

From creating unique social media content to speeding up email marketing campaign planning with AI tools for nurturing leads, GenAI marketing helps businesses of all sizes stay ahead.

If you’re unsure where to start your AI journey, try AiSDR — this easy-to-use AI tool is a great entry point for teams looking to scale up their sales and marketing efforts without inflating their budget.

Book a demo today to learn more about how AiSDR can benefit your team.

FAQ

Is generative AI relevant for small businesses?

Yes, generative AI is a great tool for small businesses operating on a restricted budget to improve their sales and marketing efforts. Small sales and marketing teams looking to automate all kinds of marketing tasks and generate high-quality content can use GenAI for a lower cost than hiring more team members.

How does AI improve the customer journey?

A dedicated sales AI tool can support your prospects and customers at any point in their journey while reducing the demand on your sales and marketing teams. AI for sales enablement can analyze customer data to automate the customer journey using more targeted content and offers. It can make interactions more personalized, send immediate emails and chat replies, automate demo booking, and provide real-time support 24/7 via chatbots.

Is AI practical for diverse marketing channels?

Artificial intelligence and marketing pair well for various channels, including email marketing, social media, website blogs, and more. 

How does AI aid in customer retention?

Conversational AI for sales can significantly improve the quality of customer service through enhanced personalization and timely follow-ups. It helps you increase customer satisfaction, which motivates customers to stay with your company.