Elevating with AI Part 2 – Creating Marketing & Sales Efficiencies

In Part 1 of our Elevating with AI Series, we discussed how businesses looking to tap into Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities can get started:

• Deciding where adoption makes sense
• Identifying challenges like data privacy
• Implementing training and policy to ensure cross-team success
• Setting up project to scale

The takeaway: AI is a tool, and its results depend on the user. With planning and policy guardrails set, you’re ready to increase business efficiency.

Here, we cover how AI can create marketing, sales, and data analysis efficiencies to help any size team create more bandwidth and bring in more revenue opportunities. We go beyond insights to provide tips you can put into action.

Let’s get started. First up, marketing.

Enhance Your Content Strategy Without Starting from Scratch

The use cases for AI in marketing are numerous and impactful. Image creation, generating foundations for content like blogs, summarizing existing content, and brainstorming are just a few ways marketing teams use the tool in their content strategy.

It’s catching on quickly. 68% of companies report improved content marketing ROI through AI-driven solutions, and 85% of marketers believe generative AI will transform content creation (Synthesia, 2024).

Here’s a robust list of content creation capabilities:

• Generating blog ideas and starts
• Creating email subject lines and starts
• Conducting content audits for SEO and identifying gaps or trends
• Enhancing strategic image creation
• Generating new images
• Creating ideas and starts for social media posts
• Providing content variations for social media posts and content syndications

There’s a lot more, but this should get your wheels turning. However, nothing is ever simple. Remember, AI is your tool, and you’ll need to prompt your platform of choice properly to yield impactful results. This may include follow-up questions.

AI Prompt Tips:

58% of executives lack a formal AI policy (Weaver, 2023). So first, define clear AI policies addressing data safety, ethical considerations, human oversight, and transparency. Get it in writing, distribute it across all teams, and update it as your needs and use evolve. You’ll really want to define data safety and what you use these platforms for. 

• • “Act as” personas, i.e., job roles or audience targets
    • “Generate a subject line that speaks to a marketing professional about..”
  • Use action statements
    • “Generate 5 ideas for…”
    • “Write 6 email subject lines for…”
  • Get a start on branding by giving AI clues
    • “Create a LinkedIn post using a rugged tone on…”

Example of a robust prompt structure for plug and play.

You’ll also need human insight to create finished products, ensure accuracy, and amplify that brand voice. You are still marketing to humans, after all. Additionally, on the SEO front, AI-generated content can impact rankings if not adjusted.

Pro Tip: The B-SMART Methodology is an excellent source for prompts. It taps into user intent for your content to make it more effective in SEO, paid media, and other digital marketing strategies. The chart below gives some prompt examples of how to generate user-intent content using AI.

Make Smarter Decisions with AI-Powered Data Analysis

At OuterBox, we LOVE data, and with tools like LOOP Analytics, we have tons of information on effective digital marketing strategies. Overwhelmed? Enter AI. AI can help you consolidate, summarize, find patterns, and more to help you get that data organized for action.

You can upload form data to find potential keywords and patterns and inform operational efficiencies like inventory. For example, you can ask AI to quantify requests for specific products or services after uploading a group of lead forms. Scaling for qualitative analysis can include measuring lead quality, customer voice (i.e., identifying satisfaction or jargon in roles), and customer service quality.

Using these data collection tactics, you can apply findings to personalization and automation strategies. AI can pinpoint personalized customer journeys and help refine the messaging and targeting. For example, if a particular product or service is trending within a specific industry, consider an email or social campaign targeting that industry with content addressing their challenges and the solutions you can provide.

Using AI to Boost Sales

Sales teams have a lot to do. They are on the road, on the phone, emailing, and creating long-term relationships that bring potential revenue to the pipeline. Therefore, any efficiency is welcome!

That’s likely why sales saw a surge in AI adoption, specifically B2B teams. 84% of AI-using sales teams saw increased sales; 61% believe AI helps serve customers better (Salesforce, 2023).

AI enhances sales operations by:

• Automating prospect research
• Drafting personalized outreach emails
• Providing real-time competitor insights
• Predicting deal success and flagging at-risk opportunities

Again, remember the power of prompts when using AI tools by providing phrasing inspiration, key messaging points like partnership or collaboration, or asking to make messages more direct. AI can help power your communication and insights to improve relationship-building and sales success.

Using AI to Transform Data into Revenue

Narrowing in on leads and data on the sales front, AI accelerates decision-making by reducing team analysis time, allowing businesses to react swiftly to prioritize opportunities. It also handles routine tasks, especially in cumbersome spreadsheets. For example, AI can take lead data and prioritize based on the prompt criteria. Then, you have a spreadsheet of priorities ready for your day. It also suggests personalized outreach strategies and automates follow-up emails.

Sales can seamlessly integrate AI into automation workflows, managing end-to-end data processes for greater efficiency. With lead data, these teams can focus on what they do best: building relationships.

Key Takeaways for Marketing and Sales Teams

Integrating AI-driven tools across sales, marketing, and data analysis can enhance efficiency and performance, but businesses must first lay the groundwork. Establishing an AI policy, appointing AI champions, identifying time-saving opportunities, and organizing your data are critical first steps for adoption. Once there, you can scale AI’s role in marketing and sales to improve content creation, strategy development, and qualitative analysis. 

AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement for expertise, so keep your team involved, ensure human oversight, and keep customers in mind. At its core, business is still about influencing, connecting, and building trust, so unlike routine tasks and other efficiencies, authenticity has no shortcuts.