Finding Leads with AI

In order to find leads, I use AI to scrape information from public databases. For example, I will check my City’s building permitting website.  Typically, there you will find a list of permits that have been applied for.  I’ll upload that document to the AI and ask it to sort by project types.  Then, I will sort for “New”, “Addition”, and "ADU". In the same prompt, I will ask it to collect the Contractor’s name and contact information for each project and put everything in a .csv file. 

I now have the company names and email addresses of all the Contractors currently working on projects in my City.  Most of these are small, independently run businesses like myself.  They would love to showcase their work for marketing purposes.  

I then upload the .csv into email marketing software, such as MailChimp or ConstantContact.  I will use AI to create a short yet compelling email about how drone photography can showcase their work for future clients.  I’ll include a picture from one of my past projects for an example.  I’ll then send this email out to everyone at once.  I’ll usually say that I have a monthly special going on now, with a low price. This creates a call to action. Usually, the return rate is 1 to 2 out of 100 so don’t expect to get a lot of responses back. Email marketing is still very important however, as it doesn’t take long to get 1 or 2 customers per campaign.  

The use of AI made this process super quick and efficient, so you are not wasting much time on it.  If I had to manually scrub for this information the effort may not have been worth it, but with AI doing most of the work, it becomes cost-effective.  You can use this exact same process for Real Estate Agents, Event Coordinators, Restaurants, and so on.  Really anything that has a directory can be scraped and used quickly.