The 6 best AI tools to improve your LinkedIn outreach
From ChatGPT to Bing, AI is everywhere. But with the number of new tools coming out, it can be hard to keep up with what’s available, let alone the advanced tips and tricks that can improve your outreach efficiency and results.
To help, we’ve rounded up 6 of the best AI tools to streamline your content creation and distribution, transform your social selling abilities, and convert more prospects.
1. ChatGPT
What it is and how it works
ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot built on GPT-3 – a natural language model that uses deep learning to produce text that sounds like it was written by a human.
Its advanced AI capabilities mean it can create content that flows logically and is written in full sentences. As a result, it’s blown up as a tool for creating outlines, writing logical arguments, and answering the how and why of people’s concerns.
How to use ChatGPT for B2B outreach
ChatGPT can be a great tool for creating outbound messaging templates or draft messaging copy.
Here are 6 ways to use the product to enhance your B2B outreach:
- Market research. Ask ChatGPT to act as your buyer persona, then ask it questions to discover the pain points of your target audience. ChatGPT will save the output, and you can ask it to create messaging to address these challenges that you can copy straight into your LinkedIn templates.
- Objection handling. Have ChatGPT give you common objections or hesitations your buyer persona has when choosing a B2B provider. Then, you can use ChatGPT or your own knowledge to create prepared responses that strengthen your negotiations.
- Social selling. Let ChatGPT generate ideas and rough copy for your LinkedIn social posts and updates. The more specific you get, the better the results will be. Include details like your job, industry, and target audience for results closest to your tone of voice.
- Copy generation. Ask ChatGPT to give you templates for email or LinkedIn messages that you can edit for messaging that scales.
- A/B testing. Get ChatGPT to generate content in different styles, such as formal, informal, concise, or funny. Once you have multiple options for the same content, you can decide which feels most resonant to your audience or run A/B tests to improve performance.
- Use it as your product expert. If ChatGPT has been trained on your offering or data sets, you can quickly and succinctly pull out your product features and benefits. (Be careful with this tip — its results will depend on your organization’s training data. However, when used properly, it can show prospects you’re a real industry expert).
For the best results, remember to tell ChatGPT what you DON’T want it to generate, as well as what you do. For example, ask it to exclude points about price, steer clear of competitors, or avoid being too pushy or vague.
The drawbacks of ChatGPT
ChatGPT can save you tons of time and effort when creating outreach messages and copy, but it’s not all smooth sailing. When using the tool, it’s always necessary to fact- and sense-check the output. This is partly because it’s only trained on data sets up to 2021.
As with most AI, originality is also a concern – if you ask broad questions, you’ll get generic answers. You need to get specific and add prompts about the tone of voice and intended audience to get valuable responses.
Remember, too, that ChatGPT has many potential applications, from content writing to code reviews. Because it’s free to use and has been so popular worldwide, there are long waiting lists, and the servers often reach capacity. It’s common for users to have to wait several hours for the server load to drop, so it’s not the best tool for producing content on demand. OpenAI is introducing a ChatGPT Plus plan that will allow users to access the tool even when demand is high – but this, naturally, comes at a cost.
Integrating ChatGPT with Linkedin for sales outreach
The ChatGPT interface is pretty basic. It can be a great way to generate content ideas or draft copy, but when it comes to actually sending your LinkedIn messages, you’re best off keeping the tools separate and simply copying and pasting your LinkedIn messages directly into the platform or the template section of your LinkedIn automation software.
2. Taplio
What it is
Taplio is a software tool designed specifically to help your social selling. It uses AI to generate LinkedIn posts, content ideas, and replies, so users can build their personal brand and relationships.
The most interesting part of this tool is its ability to use AI to generate reply options to other users’ LinkedIn posts. This is an easy way to get more out of your social selling and improve your SSI index.
The company claims its tool can grow your personal brand on LinkedIn in just 10 minutes a day. Because it uses AI to help with the time-consuming process of social selling, it can save sales reps significant time on their B2B relationship building.
How to use Taplio for B2B outreach
Here are the 3 main ways Taplio helps users establish their personal brand:
- Taplio’s AI analyzes each individual’s account to see what they like and post about, then generates draft LinkedIn posts.
- Its “content inspiration layer” uses AI to reveal the top topics in your niche, which you can post about to increase engagement.
- The “engagement tab” lets users see posts by other Taplio users and auto-generate responses using AI. These can then be sense-checked and posted, reducing the time spent social selling on LinkedIn.
The pros and cons of Taplio
As it’s really only a posting tool, Taplio is best for warming up leads, rather than cold LinkedIn outreach at scale. Once you have leads within your network, it’s a great way to improve your social selling.
The AI-powered writing features are only available in their ‘standard’ and ‘pro’ tiers, and the standard tier limits the amount of AI usage allowed. So it’s not the best if you’re considering using AI at any scale, or generating lots of content ideas or copy iterations.
How to integrate Taplio with LinkedIn
Taplio has a native LinkedIn integration, so you can post straight to your LinkedIn from the Taplio tool. However, this is limited to LinkedIn posts or post replies, rather than connection requests or outbound campaigns.
2. Jasper.ai
What it is
Jasper is an AI copywriter and content generator for teams. It’s different from ChatGPT in that it’s built specifically for use within businesses (primarily sales and marketing departments).
Jasper’s “boss mode” writes long-form content for you, from blog posts to emails. However, salespeople will benefit most from “Jasper chat”. Similar to ChatGPT, this is a tool where you can plug in questions and commands and get ideas, pain points, headings, and value-adds back.
How to use Jasper for LinkedIn outreach
Jasper is great if you want to generate lots of different options for a certain template or type of content, especially if this content is short-form, such as subject lines, headings, and opening sentences.
Using Jasper, you can experiment with the tone of voice and tweak your copy when an existing message isn’t quite working.
The tool’s 50+ templates make it a great option for outreach across several social platforms, such as LinkedIn, email, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
The pros and cons of Jasper
Jasper has some cool features, such as the ability to create content in 25 different languages and add AI-generated images to your posts. However, this expansiveness is also a drawback, as the tool isn’t designed for LinkedIn outreach specifically.
Compared to ChatGPT, the Jasper platform is much more user-friendly. It has some great business features, such as 0% plagiarism detection, that can help protect your brand in a way ChatGPT can’t. It’s particularly good for titles, headers, captions and taglines, and will give you lots of options for these content forms.
Like all AI tools, you’ll still need to fact-check your content, and will likely want to edit it before posting.
Integrating Jasper with Linkedin
Like ChatGPT, you’ll need to create your prompts separately in Jasper, then load them up into Linkedin templates in your Linkedin automation software. Alternatively, you could use the Jasper Chrome extension to post manually straight to your Linkedin account – although this doesn’t enable you to take advantage of the time-saving possibilities of LinkedIn automation software.
4. LinkedIn itself
What it is
You might not have realized it, but LinkedIn has been working on AI and machine learning developments for years. AI technology is behind its ‘People You May Know’ feature, job, candidate and prospect recommendations, and feed organization.
More recently, LinkedIn has introduced a focused inbox that splits messages into different tabs depending on relevance. This, too, is powered by AI and machine learning. Learn how to always land in the focused tab with our 8-step guide.
How to use LinkedIn for outreach
You’re almost definitely already using LinkedIn for outreach and social selling. (If you’re not, let us help you right now). You can’t use LinkedIn’s AI tools in the same way you can the rest of these features, but you do need to be aware that AI is how your content gets recommended to audiences and how you get recommended as a connection.
Underpinning LinkedIn’s AI algorithms is a focus on content that adds real value to the viewer. To learn how to create high-quality content that performs well with LinkedIn’s algorithms, see our Copywriting Framework and collection of 100+ LinkedIn Messaging Templates.
5. Salesflow’s AI copy generator
What it is
Salesflow’s copywriting tool is an AI messaging generator that’s accessible from within our LinkedIn Automation software. It lets you generate automatic, effective copy for your outreach messages while keeping all your prospecting activities in one place.
You can use it to quickly generate options for messages that will resonate with your buyer persona and then load these templates into automated cadences.
There are options to create templates for connection requests, check-ins, and follow-up messages.
How to use the AI generator for lead generation
The AI copy generator automatically integrates with Linkedin via your Salesflow account, so you can easily copy your results into a message template and create sequences that scale.
You can get as specific as you like to generate the most persuasive messages, with a context field and the ability to choose the sender and receiver.
A range of available tones and the ability to generate multiple output options can help you hone your outreach strategy and provide messaging inspiration. Try it for yourself today.
5. Salesflow’s AI inbox
What it is
An easy way to manage your LinkedIn inbox and respond to the best leads first.
Salesflow’s lead management inbox uses AI to automatically determine whether a message is positive or negative. Using our inbox filters, you can select only messages with positive responses to action first and set up calls faster.
Up to 50% of B2B sales go to the vendor that replies first. The Salesflow AI inbox speeds up your workflow and gives you the tools to boost pipeline results.
Pros
The AI inbox makes it easy to sort your conversations, so valuable leads aren’t lost. You can instantly see the likelihood of making a sale and reach warm prospects faster to increase conversion rates.
You can also filter for negative responses to learn where your objection handling needs work (try sending these objections to another of the AI tools on this list to generate objection scripts in no time!).
Integrating with Linkedin
The AI inbox filter automatically integrates with your LinkedIn data via Salesflow’s LinkedIn automation software, so you don’t have to lift a finger.
Improve your B2B outreach with AI and automation
If all this talk of AI has got you wondering about ways to optimize your current outreach processes, try Salesflow’s LinkedIn automation software today. With a free 7-day trial you can create outreach campaigns, test out AI generated messaging, and generate more leads, faster.