Artificial Intelligence Is Coming After Your Customers

Artificial intelligence is not coming for your job. Trust me, it is coming for your customers.

When I say artificial intelligence. I mean specifically the ability to combine identity resolution with behavioral data to predict when someone is “in the market”. We are in the forefront of building and using this technology so I can guarantee you that if you are not using it, we will be using it against you.

How will AI take your clients

Forrester Research reports that sellers have no visibility to 68% of prospects buyer’s journey. That means that you have no visibility to the majority of your clients and prospects buyer’s journey. But we do. We can see what they are doing. The websites they visit and the searches they conduct. 

AI can deliver better leads to your sales teams. What are better leads? Leads who are actively searching for a solution to a problem you solve. Who are in the market right now for what you do. 

The old saying is that only 20% of advertising is effective, you just don’t know what 20%. But what if you did? What if you know exactly who you should be targeting and what you should be saying? You could cut out the ineffective 80% and put that money into the profitable 20%. What if you could pay 5X more to acquire a client than your competition? How would they compete with you.

AI can deliver better retention. Are you losing clients you don’t want to lose? They don;t renew? They leave for work with a competitor? What if you knew they were unhappy? What if you knew they were shopping your competition? What would you do? Pick up the phone and call them, send them a special offer, have a sales rep stop by their office? What would be the impacts on your profits if you increase your retention rate by 50%?

AI can deliver higher lifetime client value (LCV). How do you get a larger share of wallet? What if you knew a client of yours was looking for a second or third solution that you can also solve? How much easier is it to sell a second or third product than to get a new client?

AI allows you to see that 68% of the buyer’s journey you can’t otherwise see and proactively deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.

You can’t compete

If your competitors are using these tools and can generate a lifetime client value that is 5X bigger than you can generate, then they can afford to pay more to acquire the lead than you. 

How many new clients will you win if your competition can pay 2X to 5X what you pay to acquire a new customer? It won’t take long for your pipeline to dry up and your current clients to start leaving.

Learn how to fight back. 

You can use artificial intelligence to give your firm a significant competitive advantage, to take your competitors clients, to keep your clients longer and to grow your “share of wallet. Here are the eight steps to using AI for your business:

1. Focus on solving a problem. People respond to any advertising message for only two reasons. It addresses a problem they have and want to solve, or it offers the promise of a solution they want but do not have. Of the two, poking at a top of mind problem will get the attention of the people you want to speak with best.
2. Identify search and URL patterns that indicate an interest in the problem. Since we know that over 90% of all purchases, both B2B and B2C are researched online before a purchase is made, the key to using AI in marketing is to be able to identify the observable online behaviors of your target market and know when any of them are actively looking for a solution to a problem you solve
3. Know who to target Identify who is doing those searches and views. By bringing together the behaviors and identities, you can identify the specific individuals you should target. In every population, between 1 and 3% are actively searching for a solution right now. When you can target just that small percent, the relevancy of your advertising goes way up and the cost to advertise goes way down
4. Advertise to poke at the problem. This is what we refer to as putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time. Referrals are great, but if you want to grow, you must be able to attract people who don’t know you. Advertising the right message, one that hits on a top of mind problem, at the exact time they are looking for your solution
5. Make every click a lead. By knowing specifically who is in your target market, you will know when they specifically click on your ad. Without identity resolution, you really only know who “opts-in” to your sales process. I know everyone who clicks on your ad. Rather than a 2% opt-in, I have a 90% lead generation rate. 
6. Convert your fair share. A full pipeline is a salesperson’s best friend. A full pipeline lets you decide who you want to work with, to select clients who you have the best opportunity to delight. You don;t have to chase bad deals, take on grumpy clients. Better leads equals higher closing ratios. A full pipeline doesn’t guarantee success, but it sure helps. From there, the idea is to work on improving your sales process. 
7. Understand the specific patterns of the people who convert. When you have clients converting, then you can determine what is working for them. The specific behaviors leading up to conversions. Not just any conversions, but the behaviors of clients who actually buy from you.
8. Update algorithm that tells you who to target. The algorithms will learn. As the data set of conversions grows, the ability to better predict future conversion increases. What Edward Deming talked about 50 years ago with continuous quality improvement, is just as true today. It is just that we are using computers, not quality circles, to do it faster and with better accuracy.

Big Data and Identity Resolution coupled with machine learning is what makes AI work

The biggest issue with using AI today in marketing and sales is the ability to accurately predict behaviors. The computing power is there and programmers know how to write code. But garbage in equals garbage out.

Identity resolution. You must be able to deterministically identify users across all devices, browsers and emails. Otherwise you won’t be able to tie all the behavior data back to the same individual, and so the input into the machine learning algorithm is incomplete.

IP based identity resolution won’t work for artificial intelligence. It is not deterministically identified identity resolution. Consumers do not have fixed IP addresses and the big companies that do have thousands of people sharing that IP address. So there is no way to track an individual’s behavior across all devices, computers, browsers and email. Just can’t do it so the information delivered by the algorithm is just fundamentally inaccurate. For example, just because someone used a mortgage calculator does not mean they are in the market right now for a mortgage.

Big data means knowing behaviors. Not just one or two behaviors, like visiting a mortgage calculator, but all relevant behaviors, all relevant searches, all relevant URL visits. When you can see all the activities a person is taking online, then the algorithm can weed out the people who are not real prospects and even all the false positives. 

It’s not hard

Or more specifically, we’ve done the hard work for you.

I’d like to invite you to learn more about how this would work for your organization. Schedule a 1 on 1 discovery call with me and we will discuss your specific business to determine how our technology might apply to you.