Gone are the days of deploying simple website chatbots to acquire and nurture agency leads. Automation has swept across the digital marketing landscape, leaving dozens of innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and large language models (LLM) in its wake.
Today, sage marketing agency owners are trusting advanced automation for everything from content marketing to lead generation. Discover what items your agency can automate.
1. Automated Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is an integral part of the nurturing process used to determine the perceived value of each prospect and prioritize which should be engaged first. It’s no secret that manually analyzing and categorizing leads can deplete an agency’s time and bandwidth, making automation enticing.
Automated lead scoring leverages data points from throughout the sales funnel to assess each lead against predefined criteria based on ideal customer behaviors and buyer personas. For instance, a marketing agency can establish specific demographic and engagement-related criteria, such as:
- Industry, job title, company size
- Web pages visited and web form sign-ups
- Downloads and chatbot interaction
- Email opens, clicks, and event registrations
From here, agencies assign a score between 1 and 100 for each criterion, and ML algorithms or automated scoring tools take care of the rest. Automated lead scoring uses predefined criteria and action values to rank prospects in order of which are most likely to engage with your services.
2. AI Salespeople
While the concept of AI-powered “salespeople” might sound futuristic, it’s very much current—and likely leading to the downfall of traditional smart chatbots. Unlike chatbots, which offer only text-based responses, AI salespeople are capable of holding 10 to 40-minute-long phone calls.
Take the company Air AI, for example. Touted as the “world’s most advanced conversational AI,” Air powers the equivalent of 100,000 sales and customer service agents with the tap of a button. The tool uses hyper-realistic “voices” that offer infinite memory and perfect recall for lead nurturing.
Even more, AI salespeople like Air AI can autonomously take action across 5,000+ applications. Just think about how much time and effort your marketing agency could save if AI salespeople were handling sales calls, entering leads in your company CRM, and initiating the lead scoring process.
3. Automated PPC Bidding Strategies
Automated PPC bidding takes the guesswork out of setting bids and eliminates manual updates for specific ad groups or keywords. Most marketing agencies are no strangers to automated bidding strategies for their clients, but have you considered harnessing them to nurture your agency leads?
Automated bidding can maximize results based on your campaign goals, whether it’s sending more prospects to your website or securing as much conversion value as possible with your budget. With automated PPC bidding, bids are based on each ad’s likelihood to result in a click or conversion.
Various types of automated PPC bidding strategies can help nurture marketing agency leads:
- Maximize clicks automatically sets your bids to help increase site visits or clicks to a sales landing page as much as possible within your budget.
- Target impression share automatically sets bids with the goal of placing your ad as high on the Search Network as possible to enhance visibility.
- Target cost-per-action (CPA) automatically sets bids to maximize conversion value for agency campaigns at the target return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Smart bidding automatically sets bids to unlock the highest conversion value possible at the target return on ad spend (ROAS) that your agency sets.
4. Automated Cross-Platform Messaging
It’s likely that your marketing agency has already tracked the path that your potential customers take to conversion. Chances are, their customer journey transcends one or two simple touchpoints. Automated cross-platform messaging dramatically streamlines communication to nurture leads.
Take the Meta-owned Messenger for lead generation, for instance. Agencies can launch Meta ads with lead forms directly embedded, or ads that click to Messenger. Leads sourced through these channels can be integrated into your agency solutions, such as your CRM or lead scoring program.
Even better, message threads powered by Messenger are cross-platform and cross-device, meaning your agency doesn’t need to switch channels to continue lead nurturing. Once a lead initiates the conversation, you can establish predefined responses that even allow for sales call scheduling.
Social-savvy marketing agency owners have already begun leveraging the cross-platform messaging features of Meta to drive leads for their businesses. Many also harness the company’s custom and lookalike audiences to automatically find new leads by targeting users similar to ideal customers.
To understand cross-platform messaging in action, one agency used Meta to:
- Leverage Facebook targeting tools, such as lookalike audiences, to automate lead collection
- Deploy ads that powered a quoting tool for leads to get rate estimates through Messenger
- Achieve a 23% lower cost per lead and 12% more quotes versus the company’s website
5. Dynamic Content Delivery
The phrase ‘dynamic content’ can mean a few things in marketing, but in automated lead nurturing, it refers to delivering relevant content based on each lead’s preferences and behaviors. Automation curates and distributes hyper-personalized content that resonates with leads with minimal effort.
When creating dynamic content for your marketing agency, the page design and content must be separate. When your web server loads the page, server-side languages like JavaScript or Python will work in tandem with your agency database to insert lead-relevant content into the page template.
This tactic is especially beneficial for agencies targeting a wide range of client industries. For instance, ecommerce leads may want to learn more about your agency’s paid ad services, while brick-and-mortar retail leads may prefer to learn more about SEO. Dynamic content serves both.
6. Blockchain Smart Contracts
Blockchain is a term that’s been floating around industry circles on LinkedIn for quite some time, due in part to the technology’s ability to securely store lead information in a decentralized database. Prospect data cannot be altered once it is recorded, reducing the likelihood of inaccurate leads.
While ensuring the accuracy of data can accelerate the lead qualification process, that’s not all blockchain can do to nurture leads. Blockchain technology is now being used to develop smart contracts that operate on predefined conditions and automatically trigger when criteria are met.
Imagine a lead expressing interest in your design services by completing a form. Traditionally, this would trigger manual interventions like sales calls and demos. With blockchain smart contracts, a form fill can automatically trigger personalized follow-up emails and even process transactions.
7. AI-Generated Content Audits
Several marketing agencies offer complimentary website inspections or content strategy audits as lead magnets for potential clients. The only problem with this strategy? Audits take a significant amount of time and effort, some of which could be taking working hours away from paying clients.
Enter generative AI to automate audits, inspections, and content trials. Various software can power AI-driven website audits, including Semrush, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and Moz. These tools can also automatically reveal areas of improvement that your agency can use to advertise your services.
Other generative AI software, like ChatGPT, can create lists of possible content topics for blogs, articles, whitepapers, and more. Rather than sift through keyword lists and competitor data, AI software can generate dozens of valuable content ideas for you to nurture your agency’s leads.
8. Automated GMB Chat Responses
Every marketing agency is well-versed in Google My Business (GMB) for their clients, but did you know you could automate certain responses to nurture leads for your business, too?
Each GMB listing features a frequently asked question (FAQ) section that businesses can pre-fill with answers and hyperlinks to service pages. Agencies can create up to 10 FAQs with answers up to 500 characters. You can also suggest questions for leads to ask your business to initiate a chat.
Once your answers have been pre-filled, Google essentially conducts the customer chat for you. Automated responses lead to faster response times overall, helping to nurture leads faster. Plus, FAQ questions can be front-loaded with website links to further engage and educate potential clients.
9. Automated Sales Funnel Optimization
While the above tactics are wonderful if your agency attracts leads, they might not carry as much weight if your sales funnel isn’t gaining traction among your target audience. No matter if your sales funnel is spread across a tech stack or on one platform like HighLevel, automate its optimization.
For instance, automate funnel A/B testing. Tools like Monetate and Optimizely allow for hands-free A/B testing to gauge which version of a web page or an element in your sales funnel performs better.
Other areas you can automate optimization for include website visitor activity. Tools like HotJar and SmartLook enable automated lead behavior analysis using activity heatmaps, screen recordings, and more to reveal how leads are engaging with your content and revise sales funnel techniques.
***
In sum, there are no shortage of ways that agencies can tap into both AI and automation to generate and nurture new leads.
Ready to level up your agency with HighLevel and AI?
