7 Ways AI Took My Job [To The Next Level] via @sejournal, @CallRail

With AI-powered call attribution, you can gain valuable insights into which channels are driving the most conversions.

How Call Attribution Works

  • Step 1: Assign – Select unique call tracking numbers to assign to each campaign or listing.
  • Step 2: Track – Potential customers see your ad or listing and call the associated phone number.
  • Step 3: Forward –The calls ring directly into your main business phone, regardless of which number they use.
  • Step 4: Analyze – Because they used one of your tracking numbers, you instantly know which ad or campaign inspired them to call.

With AI-powered call tracking, gone are the days of wondering how your digital marketing efforts are tied to high-value inbound calls.

For agencies, this helps prove the real value of your services and extend the life of your client relationships.

2. AI Can Help You Save Time On Manually Reviewing Calls

Listening to and analyzing phone calls manually can be time-consuming and inefficient for agencies.

However, it’s an important part of understanding the customer experience and sales team performance.

With AI-powered call analysis tools, you get quality, keyword-tagged transcriptions with near-human-level accuracy.

Not only can this technology help you save over 50% of the time spent listening to phone calls, but it can also help you deliver actionable recommendations to clients and drive better results.

Conversation Intelligence, for instance, is trained on over 1.1M hours of voice data and enables real-time analysis for instantaneous results.

This advanced tool provides opportunities for you to improve your strategy through the following granular insights:

  • Spotting disparities in the industry-specific lingo your sales team uses, compared to the lingo your prospects are using to describe their business challenges and goals.
  • Identifying trends or gaps in your service offerings based on what your prospects are asking for.
  • Identifying frequently asked questions and other important topics to address through content marketing.
  • Setting goals for lead qualification — not just the quantity of leads generated for your business.

Conversational AI is perfectly suited to summarize the content of long conversations – however, the call summaries still require a human to read them and determine the main takeaways.

But if you work in a bustling small business, it’s unlikely you’d have the bandwidth for tasks such as call transcription, summaries, keyword spotting, or trend analysis.

Rather than displacing human labor, conversational AI is assisting businesses in taking on tasks that may have been overlooked and leveraging data that would otherwise remain untapped.

3. AI Can Help You Lower Cost Per Lead / Save Money On Tools & Ad Spend

Ever wonder why certain campaigns take off while others fall flat? It’s all in the data!

Even failed campaigns can offer invaluable insights into your client’s audience and messaging.

But if you can’t spot the underperformers quickly enough, you risk wasting your ad budget on ineffective tactics.

The quicker you can identify what’s working and what’s not, the quicker you can pivot and adjust your marketing strategy.

With AI-powered tools, agencies can access instant insights that enable them to reduce wasteful spending and improve overall campaign efficiency.

How To Deliver More Value With AI

  • Make a bigger impact in less time: AI-powered technology creates a force multiplier within your agency, allowing you to make more of an impact with the same level of inputs you’re already using.
  • Unlock actionable insights from call data: AI is revolutionizing the way companies leverage call data by enabling them to gain insights at scale. As a result, businesses can increase their ROI and deliver greater value to their clients by analyzing hundreds of calls efficiently.
  • Foster alignment with data-driven strategies: By analyzing customer conversations with AI, businesses can align their marketing strategy with data-driven recommendations, enhancing overall coherence. Additionally, the ability to create triggers based on specific phrases enables automated analysis and reporting, further streamlining the alignment process.
  • Drive effectiveness with rapid insights: Leveraging Conversation Intelligence enables agencies to deliver better insights faster, increase conversion rates, refine keyword strategies, and develop robust reporting capabilities.

With the right AI-powered tools, you can access the insights you need to ensure maximum ROI for your clients.

4. AI Can Help You Improve Overall Agency Efficiency

Are you spending too much valuable time on tasks that produce minimal results?

Many agencies find themselves bogged down by routine, administrative tasks that don’t contribute much to their bottom line.

But with AI automation, agencies can streamline their operations and redirect their energy towards more strategic endeavors.

From email scheduling and social media posting to data entry and report generation, AI can handle a wide array of tasks with precision and efficiency – giving you time to focus on high-impact activities that drive growth and deliver tangible results.

Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Automation

  1. Automatically transcribe your calls to boost close rates: See how your team is handling difficult objections and ensure that they’re delivering your businessʼ value proposition in an effective manner.
  2. Score calls based on quality and opportunity: Take the time-consuming work out of scoring your calls and determine which campaigns drive the best calls to your business.
  3. Classify calls by your set criteria: Qualify, score, tag, or assign a value to the leads that meet your criteria, automatically.
  4. Automatically redact sensitive information: Protect your customers by removing billing or personal information. Keep your data safe and secure through complete HIPAA compliance.
  5. Monitor your teamsʼ performance: Use Conversation Intelligence as a valuable sales training tool to ensure your team doesn’t miss any key messaging marks.
  6. Know your customersʼ needs: Identify conversation trends in your phone calls and stay privy to evolving customer needs.
  7. Improve your digital marketing strategy: Use AI-powered insights to inform your digital marketing strategy and boost your online presence.

By automating mundane tasks, agencies can optimize workflows, increase productivity, and improve efficiency across the board.

Looking for 5 – 7? Download The Full Guide

Rather than fearing AI, the future belongs to those who embrace it.

By strategically combining human creativity with artificial intelligence, you can unlock capabilities that transcend what either could achieve alone.

Want to discover even more ways to level up your agency with AI?

Get the full guide here.

Local Strategies: How Better Online Reputation Drives Revenue via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

Join us as we look at how your online reputation and local marketing strategies can drive revenue for your business, while avoiding pitfalls along the way.

With guest Raj Nijjer of Edge, we’ll dive into the revenue impacts that your online reputation can have, and why this reputation building should be crucial in your planning.

Join your host Loren Baker, as he and Raj discuss how to avoid wasteful strategies of local marketing and multi-location businesses, plus a couple tips on how a good reputation can help attract and retain top talent.

[01:14] – Raj’s Background and Journey to Edge.
[02:44] – Edge’s Concept of Employee-Driven Growth and Its Connection to Google Reviews.
[10:34] – How Reviews Contribute to Local SEO.
[11:27] – Customer-Facing End: In-Depth Reviews and Personalization.
[13:24] – Standing Out in Cutthroat Competition: Franchises and Service Businesses.
[14:37] – Motivating Employees and Transparent Recognition Through Reviews.
[20:49] – Reputation Management and Injecting Employee Recognition.
[45:06] – Employee Retention During Challenges Like The COVID-19 Pandemic.

We encourage businesses to amplify positive reviews and learn from the negative reviews. – Raj Nijjer, 5:34

Now not only does the brand win and the business win, but employees can feel great or a person can feel great about the job that they’ve done. – Raj Nijjer, 9:21

Positive reviews are so important. There’s one stat I read on your site…53% of customers won’t go to a business rated under four stars. – Loren Baker, 15:21

I think the injection of motivating and recognizing your employees while they’re doing this service is something that we’re very proud of, because we can see which employees are doing really well. And then you can duplicate that. – Raj Nijjer, 21:44

Our goal is to marry the marketing with operational excellence. You want to hold people accountable, especially if you’re rewarding them. – Raj Nijjer, 30:53

I think one thing COVID taught every business owner is employee retention and how hard it’s been to find people and when a displacement happens, it really jeopardizes your business if you don’t plan it well. So you want to keep your superstars, don’t ever lose your superstars. – Raj Nijjer – 41:10

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With Raj Nijjer:

Raj is Head of Marketing for Edge, an employee-driven growth platform for service brands. Previously, he was the CMO of Refersion (acquired), and held executive marketing roles at Yotpo and Yext (IPO in 2017). Raj also spent over nine years at Godaddy (IPO in 2015) in leadership roles launching innovative product lines with over ten patents issued and leading to a PE buyout and an IPO.

Raj is also fractional CMO to early and mid-stage technology startups. Raj received his Bachelors of Science degree in International Management and his MBA from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajnijjer/
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RajNijjer

Connect with Loren Baker:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker
Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker 

Why RevOps Is Essential For Your B2B Marketing Strategy via @sejournal, @alexanderkesler

Revenue operations (RevOps) is an organizational approach that aligns teams, workflows, and strategies through a unified revenue lens with goals and metrics focused on revenue growth.

In past years of economic uncertainty, the need to prove return on investment (ROI) has led many businesses to adopt RevOps as a cross-organizational strategy.

However, its definition and execution vary across companies, influenced by factors such as infrastructure and the strategies that are in place to drive long-term demand.

In this guide, I present the RevOps strategy we implemented at INFUSE and recommend for 2024, which is aligned with go-to-market (GTM) motions and demand generation best practices to fuel predictable and lasting organizational growth.

GTM And Demand: Frameworks To Enable RevOps

The robust and granular nature of go-to-market (GTM) and demand generation frameworks makes both particularly well-suited for steering RevOps initiatives.

Combining both allows revenue teams to craft iterative strategies that prioritize brand awareness and buyer engagement.

Adopting a blended approach with both frameworks for your RevOps strategy is an effective way to guide product/service activation initiatives, as well as sustain demand for these offerings to meet performance goals.

GTM Frameworks For RevOps

Numerous GTM frameworks exist, with the majority emphasizing specific approaches to facilitate growth.

For example, product-led growth (PLG) is a GTM model centered on driving revenue with a specific (often freemium) product motion.

Meanwhile, an inbound growth model is led by driving traffic and lead generation through an inbound channel mix.

Today, full-funnel approaches to GTM are especially effective, given their focus on supporting buyers at every stage of their journey.

Therefore, rather than focusing on a product or channel mix, the priority is to build seamless experiences for buyers that offer a level of precision that is necessary to establish trust.

Demand Frameworks For RevOps

Demand generation serves as a supportive approach to achieving the objectives of a GTM strategy.

Essentially, it acts as a conduit to sustain brand awareness and cultivate a pipeline of sales opportunities for the organization.

In periods of sluggish economic growth, demand generation is crucial for preventing pipeline deceleration and retaining lead interest.

Lead nurturing is a key element of demand strategies as it develops and maintains brand interest among prospects until they are ready to buy.

Therefore, it helps develop growth and conversion forecasts, as well as drive brand referrals through content marketing and thought leadership.

How To Launch A RevOps Strategy In 5 Easy Steps

Below is a five-step process for driving a RevOps strategy that is fit for the market challenges of 2024:

1. Establish RevOps At Your Organization Across Teams

A core element of RevOps is establishing structures to align your team members and anchor the focus of your organization on the activities necessary for revenue growth.

To achieve this, you will first require a well-defined north star (or unified goal), which can be set by following these steps:

  • Clarify your Unique Value Proposition (UVP): Revisit the unique value you offer to clients as a brand in terms of what drives revenue. This will allow you to focus your offerings on what drives organizational growth while also addressing the unique challenges of your target market.
  • Identify organizational obstacles: Evaluate what issues in your organizational culture, tech stack, and staff are currently hindering the full alignment of processes required for RevOps. The goal here is to identify the most common bottlenecks that impede your teams’ agility.
  • Define your purpose and goal: Define your key revenue goal to help plan the steps required to achieve it. This shared vision will sustain all teams’ activities and future strategies. If, for example, the goal is to increase market share by 30%, all business activities should be guided by that end goal.

Functional Vs. Departmental RevOps:

Molding RevOps teams and processes can either be guided by a functional (staff roles) or departmental perspective. Each approach comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, underscoring the importance of a careful evaluation to determine which one aligns best with the unique needs of your business:

  • Functional: This approach establishes tasks for team members to fulfill based on their skill set. For example, a person well-versed in project management would be responsible for developing RevOps systems.
  • Departmental: This approach assigns RevOps duties for each department of the organization based on their expertise and availability. It is simpler to implement compared to the functional approach, yet presents more risk of creating data silos (therefore, establishing data flows across departments is a must).

2. Adopt The Recurring Revenue Bowtie Model

Developed by Winning By Design, the Recurring Revenue Bowtie Model envisions the buyer’s journey as a closed loop to focus efforts in equal measure on interactions before and after a sale.

This full-funnel approach helps emphasize the importance of onboarding and expanding business with existing clients through upsells, cross-sells, and renewals.

ull-funnel approachScreenshot from Winning By Design, December 2023

The Bowtie Model is well suited for RevOps since it focuses on both sides of the buyer’s journey: the path toward conversions, as well as the nurturing that is necessary to expand client relationships and encourage post-sale growth.

Given the forecast of slow growth for 2024 (Reuters, 2023), this model is particularly well suited to the challenges ahead—namely, the emphasis on increasing client lifetime value (CLTV) and reducing churn to boost ROI.

3. Align Data And AI For RevOps

At the essence of RevOps lies the concept of actionability, underscoring the critical need to prioritize buyer data that can be leveraged to shape strategies that boost conversions.

Enhancing your buyer data with actionable, real-time data points empowers you to adapt campaigns as needed and acquire insights about your audience, guiding future iterations.

Buyer intent data is perhaps the most useful data for RevOps, as it demonstrates when and how buyers interact with your brand.

It can also shape future touchpoints (via lead nurturing or sales teams) to encourage further engagement.

By aggregating buyer intent data and utilizing AI-enriched platforms such as a client relationship management (CRM) system, it becomes feasible to glean insights from RevOps strategies as a whole.

This empowers your revenue teams to make informed decisions for optimizing ROI, which prioritizes prospects demonstrating buyer intent at the right time.

Since this data is timely, it also allows teams to craft content that garners the highest audience interest due to its relevance.

4. Enable And Engage Defensive Buyers

2024 is anticipated as a year of slow growth, a trend stemming from the past few years of economic uncertainty.

This unusual climate is prompting decision-makers to adopt a defensive stance, as well as exercise heightened scrutiny over the risks associated with their purchasing decisions.

Marketers embracing a RevOps strategy in 2024 must formulate comprehensive buyer journeys that address common objections and build trust right from the outset.

Below are three tactics to enable and engage defensive buyers in 2024:

Create Self-Paced Buyer Journeys

According to Forrester 2024 Predictions, the demand for self-service will be greater than ever, especially as Millennials and Gen Z buyers now make up two-thirds of B2B buyers.

Companies should consider developing buyer journeys that allow prospects to discover pricing, watch a demo, or even download a free trial at their own pace – without the need for a salesperson.

Already commonplace in SaaS, this trend is likely to expand to other B2B industries, placing a significant emphasis on the importance of providing digital buying experiences that enable buyers to investigate and finalize purchases.

After all, 75% of B2B buyers prefer a sales experience without sales representatives.

Leverage ABX And Engage All Buying Group Members

Account based experience (ABX) is an approach that adopts client and user experience (CX and UX) best practices to inform account targeting strategies.

At INFUSE, it is the approach we adopt for account based marketing (ABM) due to its ability to enrich buyer experiences with personalized touchpoints.

ABX also helps inform a holistic view of target accounts, developing an outreach strategy that considers all buying group members and the needs of different departments and professionals for approving a purchase.

Thus, ABX proves to be an ideal approach for crafting a buyer’s journey that seamlessly aligns with the preferences of cautious buyers.

This stems from its emphasis on meticulously tailored lead nurturing touchpoints, ensuring a precise level of personalization that directly addresses individual buyer challenges.

Revisit Your Lead Data And Tech Stack

As noted earlier, building efficient data flows is a critical first step in RevOps. Therefore, it becomes imperative to carry out a thorough audit of your tech stack and lead database to ensure a solid foundation for success.

This audit should focus on detecting inconsistencies and incorrect information on buyers, as well as eliminating any redundant tools and bottlenecks.

Since alignment is key for RevOps to truly function, ensure all data and tools are seamlessly integrated and available for all team members to glean insights and inform their strategies.

5. Nurture With A RevOps And GTM Focus

Enable your lead nurturing for revenue growth by benchmarking it against RevOps key performance indicators (KPIs), such as client lifetime value (CLTV) and client acquisition cost (CAC).

These metrics help inform lead nurturing efforts toward revenue generation, which helps teams plan campaigns that will result in continued buyer engagement and a predictable pipeline of sales opportunities.

Five tips for nurturing with a revenue focus:

  • Design touchpoints with revenue KPIs in mind: Guiding lead nurturing efforts through a revenue lens facilitates the development of content and outreach that has been created to maximize returns.
  • Develop nurturing tracks for different pain points and buyer personas: By establishing a lead nurturing cadence for each buyer persona (which addresses a unique set of pain points with solutions best suited for that buying group), you will be more successful in encouraging conversions.
  • Benchmark quarterly growth against nurturing efforts: Measuring organizational growth (such as net new growth) enables the routine tracking of your lead nurturing performance. Keep in mind, however, that lead nurturing is highly dependent on the average length of your sales cycle. So, for organizations with long sales cycles, performance will be difficult to glean quickly. Even so, consistent and early measurement indicators help glean insights to update future lead nurturing campaigns and ensure continued buyer interest.
  • Survey clients of key target audiences: Collect direct feedback from clients within different audiences that you are targeting for a timely overview of their brand perception, as well as market challenges and expectations for 2024. This will help personalize your messaging to better address the concerns of your target buying groups.
  • Analyze conversations with prospects: Record and assess conversations with prospects to determine the success of different approaches, as well as the objections and reactions of buyers toward certain topics. This will help determine which topics and messaging points are most successful in driving conversions.

Key Takeaways

Keep these takeaways in mind when planning your RevOps strategy to ensure the best outcomes:

Develop A Rich Buyer Experience

By leveraging the best practices of ABX, the post-sales enablement of the Bowtie Model, and a personalized touch to your lead nurturing, you can build a rich buyer experience that supports revenue growth.

In other words, to drive revenue, you must align team efforts in a manner that capitalizes on developing a relevant buyer’s journey, which will maintain your brand top of mind throughout the buying group’s potentially lengthy and scrutinous decision-making process.

Align Your Datasets, AI, And Tech Stack For RevOps

Make sure to audit your existing data and technology through a revenue-first lens by eliminating redundancies and unnecessary data that will impede the insights required for driving growth.

Consider your revenue metrics when analyzing this wealth of data and how your tools should function to make sure you are tracking revenue attribution from marketing and sales efforts.

Nurture Leads For Long-Term Revenue Growth

Develop comprehensive and relevant lead nurturing cadences that are custom-tailored to each buyer persona to engage buying groups as a whole.

This will enable future sales opportunities for when buyers are in-market for your solutions.

More resources: 


Featured Image: Viktoria Kurpas/Shutterstock