Optimize Your Customer Acquisition Funnel with AI Apps

GTM teams are leaning into AI tech capabilities to speed up repetitive tasks and hopefully move the needle on driving pipeline and higher conversions. The challenge is often a lack of knowledge and in-house skills and not knowing where to start.

Teams use tools and platforms that can assist with a wider range of tasks, from market research to blog content. But these tools are often built for extremely niche purposes, and you’ll find yourself copy-pasting data across multiple apps throughout the day, eventually slowing you down further.

As challenges pile on, we need better ways to streamline our customer acquisition funnels, and simpler platforms to do so.

Funnel Optimization - with AI

Conquering the customer acquisition funnel has always been a challenge. Conversion numbers are typically abysmal, at least until you hit the repeatable cycle and that takes time to get right. You may start with 1000+ prospects, and end up converting less than 10.

In fact, the average sales conversion rate across industries is ~3.6%. Not only does that feel like a lot of waste but the question really comes down to “how much are you educating and at some point converting” vs lost to your competitors or worse reaching the wrong audience.

To improve funnel conversions and drive efficient growth, you need to stay highly targeted and streamline any manual or repetitive steps that will speed up campaign execution and understand performance metrics faster.

Before making any strategic decisions on where to invest marketing dollars, begin by understanding what's working today and rely on the most up-to-date information to make those calls as a full GTM team. You’d be surprised to see how AI can be used at every stage of the customer acquisition funnel.

Amazon uses AI to analyze user behavior and preferences to tailor customer experiences.

With AI, Uber adjusts their pricing in real time based on market conditions.

AI helps Netflix suggest personalized recommendations for shows and movies.

How are YOU using AI?

Revolutionizing the Customer Acquisition Process, globally According to a Hubspot survey, 64% of marketers use AI tools to understand their customers better.

Teams can use AI to analyze historical data to forecast customer behaviors. For example, marketers can optimize their campaigns based on real-time insights, thus maximizing ROI.

The survey also highlights that 34% of marketing directors have tailored customer experiences using AI.

Marketplaces often use AI to analyze spending or engagement patterns and provide personalized product recommendations.

Also, 68% of those surveyed said that they've seen an uptick in ROI since investing in AI tools.

With hyper-personalized marketing and smarter, more targeted sales campaigns, companies are now optimizing the different stages of the customer journey in ways that were unheard of just a few years ago.

Here's how AI can help your customer acquisition strategy:

Leveraging AI at Each Stage of the Customer Acquisition Process

Depending on your product type, industry, and model, the length of time it takes for a buyer to move from top-of-funnel to mid-funnel will vary. However the journey phases of “ knowing who you are to trusting you and then buying”, generally apply.

Of course, the hard part for GTM teams is:

• Define your ideal customers clearly
• Learn where they hang out - digitally and otherwise
• How they like to consume information and the type of information (e.g. videos, long-form content, testimonials, etc.)
• How frequently they want to hear from you, and most importantly, 
• Who has the buying power and what price threshold are they willing to invest?
  

Stage 1: Awareness

‍"Wait, who are you again?"

‍We start by getting on the prospect’s radar. What are they looking for? Where are they most engaged?

With promotional videos on YouTube, ads on LinkedIn, or even engaging posts on social media, you need to let them know that you exist. Don't start selling yet!AI can aid you in several ways at this stage - from identifying market trends to what your competitors are up to and how to get started by creating landing pages and relevant content for SEO.

For example, if you know what your prospects are looking for, MarkovML's AI Blog Topic Generator app can quickly generate the best SEO blog topics that map to your desired keywords.

Perhaps you’ve done some early research using SEMrush or AHrefs and now you need to really hone in on which keywords you will prioritize and how you will roll out high-quality content that matches in order to attract the right audience and with the keyword difficulty you believe is achievable.

Try MarkovML

Stage 2: Interest

‍"Hmm, tell me more..."

‍Now that the audience is paying attention to you, it's time to convince them that this is relevant and will improve their lives, or at least solve their pain. What value are you offering? Why should they keep an eye on you, and how can they do so?

Again, it's still not time to start selling. Continue to educate, entertain, or both! Meanwhile, use this phase to gather their contact details like email address for further communication. Also, personalize your landing pages with tools like Unbounce to maximize conversions.

While educational and informative content like webinars, whitepapers, and other freebies are great ways to collect contact info, these days, you can also start building a following on social media channels and ask them to subscribe to your newsletters there. Of course, it’s up to you as to when you want to gate an asset and perhaps it’s when you’re offering something unique and highly valuable. Perhaps a workshop or training course and subscription to your Substack channel.

Tip: On the MarkovML platform, we have an app created specifically to enrich lead information just from a contact’s email address. You can use the enriched data to improve your understanding of engaged prospects, the companies they work at, company size and revenue, and so much more. This will help to tailor all future communications.

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Stage 3: Consideration

‍"Why invest in your product or service?"

‍Now your contacts likely know something about who you are, what you do, your offerings, etc. And they'll start comparing you to other companies.

It's time to start leaning in and engaging in more frequent dialog and conversations - whether digital or otherwise! Convince them about your value with case studies, testimonials, and demos, that hopefully highlight why you’re better or different than others. Show that you can deliver your claims. Use platforms like Demostack to generate tailored product demos.

At this point, a relied-upon way to reach out is via email. Even better if all communications are personalized. MarkovML's AI Cold Email Personalizer app can use enriched data (that you got in the previous stage!) to customize outreach emails for each lead.

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Stage 4: Conversion

‍"Great, I'm ready to buy!"

‍You now have the opportunity to bring the deal to a close. During the actual buying cycle, you can tailor your pricing such as offering discounts and simplifying the process with clear CTAs and justified pricing. At this stage, you could even try different versions of your pages to know what’s converting better. Use tools like Typeform and Outgrow to collect real-time feedback.

For newer products or younger companies, pricing can be a powerful competitive weapon and there is an opportunity for the full GTM to learn how competitive the pricing is.  By analyzing your past communications with prospects and customers, you know how they feel about your pricing.

This is where you gather all the different info and data from emails, even social media comments, and sales calls to understand how they view you in the market, and price accordingly.

Try our AI Sales Call Analyzer app to gather insights from sales calls.

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Gain the Competitive Edge with AI

The customer acquisition funnel is complex and there are ample opportunities to optimize at every stage. Leverage AI to not only boost but learn at each stage. But remember, AI isn't here to replace your GTM team. Rather, AI needs human intellect to guide it. With the right training and data, you can predict, personalize, and automate to ease the burden and time.

If this is too overwhelming, start small. Pick one stage of your acquisition funnel that is more leaky, and start optimizing. As you start improving stage efficiency, you'll see how AI is reducing hours of work in the process.

At MarkovML, we are constantly adding new apps created specifically for GTM teams. If you're looking to optimize your customer acquisition process, sign up today and explore our library of AI apps!