Marketing has always been a numbers game, especially in the lead generation industry. The more emails you send out, the more chances you develop a lead, right?

Not quite.

With machine learning and artificial intelligence, it is now possible to develop better quality leads even if your contact list is small. The days of mass marketing are numbered, and the dawn of targeted marketing is upon us.

How, exactly, does this work? First, your organization should be data-driven rather than people driven. Stop running your company like a sweatshop. What this means is that by gathering insights about every single piece of data – your contacts, your content, and your market – you’ll be able to deelop campaigns that require minimal raw contact capital but yield high deliverability and response rates. This means fewer hours spent doing quality assurance, contact discovery and other repetitive tasks.

Second, you need to lean into what will be instead of what is right now. Tap into the emerging technology market. Identify the top strategic trends for technology. Identify up-and-coming companies looking to challenge established and ubiquitous products. By determining multiple niche markets, there is an opportunity to tap into a new base of contacts that otherwise would not have been targeted with current and traditional B2B marketing practices.

Third, market to an organization, not just to an individual. Acquisition of technology is an enterprise decision, not an individual one. Aside from marketing to decision makers, market to influencers and users. Instead of focusing your campaigns on technical resources, market as well to business resources. And when you have identified your target job roles and functions within an organization, use content that is curated and speaks to each role and/or function.

Lastly, leverage new technologies to automate your operations. With machine learning, you’ll be able to generate more information within your data. With artificial intelligence, you can remove menial and repetitive tasks from your workforce and replace it with an automated process. And while it takes a sizeable investment on the outset, the future benefits of cost-savings are inarguable. So, are you still fine running a sweatshop or will you be running a smart shop?