AI Lead Generation: How to Use AI to Get More Leads in 2024

AI has revolutionized virtually every vertical, and sales and marketing are no exception.

So, it’s no surprise that AI lead generation has become one of the industry’s hottest topics in 2024.

However, since this is still uncharted territory, many sales and marketing people are still figuring out how to make the most of AI lead generation.

In this guide, we’ll help you master the art of AI-powered lead generation by breaking down the essentials, from common use cases and best practices to the best AI lead generation software.

Let’s begin!

TL;DR

AI lead generation is the process of attracting, capturing, nurturing, and converting leads enhanced by AI.
AI can improve lead generation across levels, allowing marketers to run better-targeted and highly personalized lead generation campaigns on scale.
AI has a wide range of use cases thanks to its ability to analyze large volumes of data and identify complex patterns.
These include everything from building more precise ICPs to automating lead scoring and qualification, streamlining outreach and more.
Businesses looking to implement AI in their lead generation can use one of three top AI lead generation tools:
Warmly - For revealing and converting website visitors.
Keyplay - For qualifying and scoring leads.
Outreach - For automating email sequences.

What Is AI Lead Generation

We’ll start by answering the quintessential question:

What is AI lead generation?

Simply put, AI lead generation is the process of attracting and nurturing leads into conversion by harnessing the power of AI, i.e., using AI engines or AI-powered tools.

Lead generation as such consists of several segments:

Attracting quality leads, i.e., leads that match your ICP.
Capturing them in various lead generation channels (e.g., your website, social media platforms, targeted ads, etc.).
Scoring and qualifying them to determine which leads are the hottest right now.
Nurturing them, i.e., building trust and rapport to increase their interest in your offering.

Anyone who’s ever dealt with lead generation knows how complex and painstaking it is, especially in today’s competitive landscape that requires speed, efficiency, and hyper-personalization for success.

AI helps B2B businesses tackle these modern challenges in several ways:

It saves valuable time - 33% of US marketing professionals surveyed in 2022 reported that one of the biggest benefits of AI is saving time. The same survey showed that most professionals use AI to quickly uncover trend insights and optimize content.
It can generate personalized content on scale - Certain AI models provide options for creating all kinds of content, from images to blogs, social media captions, etc. In 2023, one in five marketers was already using AI to generate content, and this number will continue to increase as AI becomes more sophisticated.
It streamlines various processes - Although sales and marketing automation is not new, AI can make it smarter, more precise, and overall better at what it does. In 2022, 77% of marketers reported using AI for automation.
It lets you understand your audience better - AI engines are excellent at uncovering patterns, which makes them an amazing asset in understanding and predicting buyers’ journeys, behaviors, and needs. This, in turn, lets you personalize their experiences.
It can leverage ad targeting - AI and ML models can be easily trained to analyze large volumes of data and match them against certain criteria. This makes them perfect for advertising and retargeting, as they can quickly detect leads that match your ICP or show high intent. This is why almost 50% of marketers use them for ad targeting, while 32% use them for perpetual optimization of paid ads.

So, it’s clear that implementing AI in lead generation gives you a significant competitive advantage by allowing you to run highly targeted, personalized, and efficient lead generation campaigns on a large scale.

However, approximately 45% of marketers are still hesitant to fully adopt AI because they feel they lack the necessary knowledge and capabilities.

To make sure you’ll join the other half, let’s look into common AI lead generation use cases, benefits, and best practices.

How to Use AI for Lead Generation

As we’ve seen above, AI can improve lead generation and overall sales and marketing efforts in various ways.

Here, we’ll explore the top 10 use cases of AI lead generation that every B2B marketer should include in their strategy.

1. Creating detailed ICPs

To create high-performing campaigns, you first must know who your ICP is. However, traditional market research can only get you so far, as there will always be insights and details you might miss.

Since AI excels at identifying patterns and uncovering bits of information that humans can’t detect as easily, you can have AI models analyze relevant data sources, such as:

Your best-performing accounts and deals.
High-intent leads detected in one of your lead generation channels (e.g., website, social media, etc.).

They will recognize the common traits and attributes that appear most frequently, providing a more detailed and accurate picture of your ICP and allowing you to create even better-targeted lead-generation campaigns.

2. Engaging leads

Even if you’ve been living under a rock these past few years, you must have heard about one AI engine - Generative AI.

It’s the AI model that powers popular engines such as ChatGPT, which are well-liked by broad audiences because of their conversational interface and ability to process natural language.

As such, this kind of AI is often used to create smart chatbots that you can set up on your landing page or any other relevant page (e.g., pricing, customer support, FAQ, etc.) to replace sales or customer support specialists.

Thanks to being powered by AI, these chatbots can be trained to perform a wide range of actions, including:

Engaging leads in conversation by sending personalized messages or offering help.
Providing simple product tours or case studies, whitepapers, etc.
Booking meetings.
Answering basic product questions that don’t require human attention, etc.

This way, you’ll reduce the time to lead and ensure that no high-intent lead goes under the radar just because no sales rep is available to engage them.

3. Scoring and qualifying leads

AI is perfect for scoring and qualifying leads because it can analyze large volumes of data and easily uncover valuable insights.

You can have it analyze your CRM records, website visitors’ behaviors, all correspondence leads have had with your reps or any other lead data source, and it will surface the hottest leads, followed by surging accounts and those still far from conversion.

As a result, you’ll be able to prioritize leads at the brink of conversion and use the insights pulled by AI to create high-converting strategies.

4. Automating prospecting and outreach

AI also helps you run lead generation campaigns on scale by putting various sales processes on autopilot.

AI models have made automation tools and capabilities smarter and more powerful than ever before, allowing them to efficiently handle a wide range of operations, such as:

Recognizing businesses and key stakeholders that match your ICP and automatically adding them to outreach sequences.
Finding leads’ contact information (e.g., email addresses, LinkedIn profiles, etc.) with higher accuracy and matching rates.
Segmenting leads according to the criteria you specify and ensuring they’re included in the right sequence based on their segment.
Drafting hyper-personalized emails and messages.

5. Predictive analytics

As mentioned above, many marketers use AI algorithms for predictive analytics and forecasting, and for a good reason.

AI’s pattern-recognition capabilities enable it to accurately predict a number of relevant factors by analyzing historical data and performance, including:

How leads might behave in a certain situation or react to a certain product.
How market trends will shift in the future.
Total customer lifetime value based on their purchase history and behavior.
Churn rate, allowing you to detect and improve high-churn areas.

6. Delivering personalized content at the right time

AI allows for real-time personalization of various content, ranging from web pages and chatbot conversations to providing customized offers and relevant blogs and case studies.

Real-time personalization was possible even before AI (think of providers like OptinMonster). However, AI further innovated the space, enabling smarter and optimized personalization.

Thanks to its ability to identify behaviors and analyze large quantities of data in seconds, AI can quickly discern who your leads are and what they’re most interested in.

This opens the door to a range of personalization possibilities. For example, you can:

Ensure that each website visitor is shown a specific set of images, web copy, CTAs, and case studies that resonate the most with them based on relevant criteria (industry, job role, buyer intent, etc.).
Make personalized sales offers that increase the likelihood of conversion (e.g., give them a special discount, offer a product package tailored to their industry or position, etc.).
Have chatbots shoot highly personalized, contextual messages that look like they’ve been sent by actual humans, improving the chance of getting a reply.

7. Optimizing email campaigns

We mentioned email personalization and outreach automation before, but AI has improved cold email campaigns in so many ways that it deserves to be covered separately:

AI has revolutionized name matching, reducing false positives to a minimum. This makes it a valuable asset in scraping for email addresses, increasing the possibility of finding the right match every time and helping you clean up email lists.
It can personalize email copy to a greater extent than traditional automation tools. While it still cannot match human creativity, AI-generated content is much more original and personalized compared with what was possible before AI adoption.
It’s enabled smarter automation. AI lets you apply more complex conditional logic in workflows, makes smart recommendations on creating better-performing campaigns, and more.

8. Ad targeting and audience segmentation

AI can help you make highly targeted ad campaigns optimized for conversions.

By analyzing user data, including browsing behavior, purchase history, and social media activity, AI algorithms can identify patterns and predict which audiences are most likely to respond positively to specific ads.

This lets marketers deliver ads tailored to individual users' interests and needs. For instance, an e-commerce company can use AI to target users who have shown interest in similar products but have yet to make a purchase, presenting them with personalized ads at the optimal time to encourage a sale.

Additionally, AI can continuously optimize ad performance by adjusting targeting parameters in real-time based on user interactions, ensuring that advertising budgets are spent efficiently.

9. Lead enrichment

AI-driven lead enrichment enhances the quality and depth of lead information by automatically gathering and integrating additional data from various sources, such as public databases, social networks, and other online resources.

This data goes beyond basic B2B contact data and goes into more detail, including actionable insights such as job changes, interactions with social media posts, and other details of their digital journey.

As a result, you’ll get a more nuanced understanding of your leads, allowing sales reps to:

Score, qualify, and segment them more efficiently.
Tailor their approach, addressing each individual lead's specific needs and interests.

10. Monitoring lead generation channels

Some AI-powered tools can continuously scan the web—especially social media and similar networking platforms, where most leads can be found—for mentions of specific keywords, brand names, and industry-related topics.

By analyzing this vast amount of data, AI can identify potential leads discussing relevant products, services, or pain points, even if they haven't directly interacted with the brand.

For instance, if someone tweets about needing a new project management tool, an AI-driven monitoring system can flag this company or individual as a potential lead for a software company.

Beyond identifying leads, AI can also categorize and prioritize them based on influence, engagement levels, and sentiment, enabling businesses to focus their efforts on the most promising prospects.

At the same time, you can leverage AI-powered tools to monitor your owned channels, such as your website, to detect high-intent behavior there as well, ensuring that no quality leads will fall through the cracks.

Examples of Companies That Use AI to Generate Leads

An increasing number of businesses from all industries have become aware of all the benefits of implementing AI in sales and marketing, leading to an expansion of AI adoption across verticals.

Unsurprisingly, major players are at the forefront of AI innovation, as they have the most resources to invest in AI implementation.

Here, we’ll look into well-known companies that have successfully incorporated AI in their lead-generation processes.

Sephora

Sephora was one of the first brands to recognize the power of AI, launching their first AI-powered chatbot back in 2016.

Fast forward to today, and the chatbot is much more sophisticated, helping Sephora’s buyers sift through its massive product base to find the exact items they need more easily.

The chatbot can answer questions, offer tailored suggestions or recommendations based on specific queries, etc., providing a smoother and more satisfying customer experience across levels.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola also dabbled with AI last year, taking it one step further and creating its own platform powered by ChatGPT 4 and DALL.E.

The platform enabled users to generate customized AI content featuring Coca-Cola’s assets, such as its bottle, logo, etc., with the best artwork appearing on digital billboards in New York’s Times Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus.

This innovative marketing approach helped increase brand presence and popularity and engaged leads in a highly creative process, creating stronger and lasting relationships.

Netflix

Did you know that Netflix also uses AI to improve customer experiences?

All those highly personalized watching recommendations you got based on your previous searches and the content you enjoyed the most are actually powered by AI that processes your preferences to provide a tailored experience.

Although this isn’t a lead generation technique in the narrowest of senses, it’s still a useful tool for:

Nurturing existing customers by providing great experiences and increasing retention rates.
Pushing users to upgrade to higher-tier plans.
Getting free brand advocates, as satisfied users are sure to spread the word among their peers.

StraightIn

It’s important to note that you don’t necessarily have to be an industry giant to leverage AI in lead generation.

With so many powerful AI-driven tools on the market, you don’t have to make your own AI model from scratch.

For example, StraightIn, a LinkedIn marketing agency, opted to buy a ready-made customizable AI-powered solution instead of investing in its own platform—and the results were just as good.

StraightIn used Warmly, which enabled it to:

Identify high-intent website visitors.
Add specific visitor segments to a particular outreach sequence.
Personalize each part of their LinkedIn and email outreach strategy while running it on autopilot.

The result?

$10K revenue in just 2 weeks, which speaks volumes about AI's value in sales and marketing.

What Are the Best AI Lead Generation Software Solutions?

If you want to harness the power of AI in your lead generation processes, then you’ll need AI lead generation software optimized for your specific use case.

Here, we’ll offer three AI-powered B2B lead generation platforms for various user types and needs:

1. Warmly

Best for: Identifying and converting website visitors.

Who is it for: B2B companies of all sizes looking to unlock their website’s full conversion potential.

Full disclosure: While Warmly is our own product, we aim to provide an unbiased perspective on why Warmly is truly one of the best AI lead generation platforms.

Warmly is a signal-based revenue orchestration platform that leverages AI and intent data to help users:

Identify website visitors.
Recognize the ones that are most likely to convert right now.
Streamline prospecting, outreach, and engagement.

Let’s get a closer look at its key features.

Feature #1: Website intent

Adding a snippet of Warmly’s code to your website lets you identify the companies and individuals visiting your website.

The platform will provide all the essential B2B information on every identified visitor, such as:

Contact details (company names, phone numbers, email addresses, job titles, LinkedIn profiles, etc.).
Firmographic data (industry, size, employee count, location, and other company details).
Technographic data (a company’s full tech stack).
SEP data (engagement with other sales and marketing campaigns, chatbot interactions, etc.).
CRM data (ongoing and closed deals, account owners, previous interactions with your sales professionals, etc.).

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In addition to that, each lead will be enriched with detailed intent data, enabling you to easily recognize the hottest leads in real-time.

This data includes:

First-party intent data, i.e., insights into leads’ web sessions, such as:

Pages they visited.
High-intent questions they asked the chatbot.
Time spent on each page.
The content they downloaded (such as playbooks, whitepapers, etc.) or forms they filled out.

2. Third-party intent data, i.e., details of their entire digital buyer journey, including:

Other websites they visited (with a focus on your main competitors).
Social media activity.
Ads they interacted with.
Recently researched topics.
Job change intent.

Feature #2: AI Chat

Warmly’s AI Chat is an AI-powered chatbot with all the functionality you’d expect from an innovative chat solution.

Since it’s AI-driven, it can be trained to perfectly match your needs, business goals, brand messaging, and tone of voice.

The chatbot will leverage the intent and B2B data Warmly identified to provide each lead with a personalized experience. It can handle a range of actions, including:

Answering leads’ questions.
Booking qualified meetings.
Engaging high-intent leads.
Offering valuable resources to visitors, such as product tours, case studies, playbooks, etc.

You can configure it to appear on all web pages or only on high-intent ones, such as pricing pages, case studies, BOFU blogs, etc.

Most importantly, Warmly’s AI Chat ensures that a human stays in the loop in case a hot lead requires to speak with an actual human or makes a high-intent query.

When that occurs, sales reps will be notified via Slack, allowing them to react promptly.

Feature #3: Orchestrator

Warmly’s Orchestrator, formerly AI Prospector, is another AI-powered feature enabling you to automate prospecting and outreach on LinkedIn and email.

Its workflow is simple to set up:

Specify the workflow trigger (i.e., a lead heads to the pricing page, a visitor matching your ICP lands on your website, etc.).
Decide on the lead segments you want the Orchestrator to target (filter companies by size, industry, employee count, technographic, etc.).
Choose the actual stakeholders from these companies you want to be contacted (filter them by role, seniority, etc.).
Specify the action you want the Orchestrator to take (send a personalized email/contextual LinkedIn message/LinkedIn connection request, or all three combined).

The Orchestrator also uses intent data to segment leads and to personalize each email and LinkedIn message accordingly.

Pros & Cons

✅ Identifies companies and individuals visiting your website.

✅ Enriches visitors with intent and B2B data.

✅ AI-powered sales automation.

✅ AI-driven lead engagement.

✅ Live engagement options.

✅ Includes all features in all paid plans.

❌ Annual pricing options only.

2. Keyplay

Best for: Automated lead scoring and qualification.

Who is it for: Account-based marketing and sales teams that need a more efficient way of finding high-intent accounts.

Keyplay is an AI-powered lead generation platform that uses AI to find, score, and qualify leads.

It enables you to set up custom lead scoring and qualification rules, allowing you to tailor it to your specific target market and ICP.

Features

AI Lookalike helps find potential leads that match your best-performing customers and deals.
Leverages AI and ML to find accounts that match your ICP the best and qualify them accordingly.
Provides a wide range of advanced filters for highly specific searches, including recruiting velocity, industry categories, online presence, technographic, etc.
Lets you set up custom ICP scoring based on the signals and criteria relevant to your business and target market.

Pros & Cons

✅ Advanced filtering options.

✅ Tracks custom signals relevant to your ICP and business objectives.

✅ Puts lead qualification on autopilot.

❌ Offers only annual paid plans.

❌ Integrates with just two CRMs.

3. Outreach

Best for: AI-powered email outreach.

Who is it for: Larger B2B teams looking to run cold email campaigns on scale.

Outreach is an AI-powered sales execution platform that focuses on automating email outreach.

In addition to automation features, it also provides actionable insights into deals, customer-facing interactions, etc.

Features

Provides AI-generated actionable summaries of each deal and account, allowing you to identify hidden opportunities and potential risks, and decide on the next steps.
Adds quality prospects to outreach lists and sends personalized emails based on the context, prior interactions, CRM data, etc.
AI-powered sales assistant that records, transcribes, and analyzes live meetings, uncovering opportunities for growth, identifying buyer sentiment, providing live suggestions during meetings, etc.

Pros & Cons

✅ Intuitive interface.

✅ Solid range of integrations with CRM and other popular sales tools.

❌ Non-transparent pricing.

❌ If you want more than sales automation, you’ll have to buy several product packages.

Wrapping Up

As we’ve seen, AI has a wide range of use cases in marketing and sales and the potential to transform lead generation for the better.

So, if you haven’t already started using AI in lead generation and other sales and marketing processes, now’s the right time to change that if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

If your website is one of your critical lead generation channels, Warmly might be the best way to begin your AI lead generation journey.

Its intuitive interface, wide range of features, and good value-for-money ratio make Warmly an ideal choice for both beginners and experienced AI users.

Or, if you’d like to see it in action first, you can always book a live demo with our team.

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