You’re scrolling through a website, and bam — there it is. That little chat pop-up in the corner that’s just calling your name (literally).
That piece of AI technology is revolutionizing the buyer journey today, and it may make you wonder: Is it time to add chatbots (or live chat) to your demand engine?
Chances are you’ve probably encountered your fair share of chatbots as a buyer yourself. Whether it’s to access fast customer support, resolve that technical issue, or simply connect to a sales representative, more and more companies are adopting chatbots and conversational marketing platforms to their website. For some, chatbots are the next big thing for their website. Others may find them intrusive. But the reality is it largely depends on your website’s performance, content activation strategy, the use cases for your revenue team, and the capacity to manage another system in your toolkit.
The last thing you need is for prospects to reach your site and bounce right off because they can’t find what they’re looking for, they get confused by your messaging, or even worse, their search is riddled with multiple form fields and gates to navigate.
Be the Change You Want to See
Use chat beyond just automated pop-ups
Chatbots are a lead generation machine capable of driving forward conversations, which are the start to a great relationship. It’s the very thing you need between your sales team and future prospects.
For some people, chatbots pose a level of skepticism because many aren’t familiar with its capabilities, which stretch beyond simply delivering automated conversations and collecting your information for who knows what. Visitors on your website aren’t always ready to give up their information to real people, let alone chatbots. That’s why conversations sit at the forefront of chat — to establish that sense of connection and let visitors connect to a sales rep faster than they can fill out a form field.
So ask yourself this question: Is it time for you to add chatbots into the mix?
Measure How Well Your Website is Performing
Think of your website as the bottom line in your marketing funnel — that final piece to all your paid and organic efforts, where you see your hard-earned visitors finally arrive. It’s also the point of contact where a visitor takes a leap between staying a visitor or converting into a qualified prospect.
If you’re driving tens of thousands, or even better, hundreds of thousands of visitors to your website, then figure out how hard you’re putting your website to work. That level of quality attention and traffic needs to convert higher than the pitiful 1% to 2% averages we see in B2B marketing today.
Why else are you directing leads and prospects to your website if not to convert them at a much higher rate? If your answer is that you need to do better, then yes, you can skip right on and consider this the time to bring a chatbot into the game.
Chatbots are the perfect tool to amp up your website while seamlessly fitting into your demand generation engine. They not only create personalized experiences for your online visitors, but also allow your company to generate some level of engagement from prospects who aren’t ready to move past the curiosity stage.
And web forms can be integrated with your chat platform. The moment a prospect initiates some level of interest, the chatbot can push them down the pipeline and get them in front of your sales rep in no time.
Are You Exhausting Email and Social to Distribute Content?
Email and social media campaigns are proven ways to generate demand through content. But what happens when you’re constantly exhausting both channels? You need to target your prospects when they’re the most receptive, and that comes just as they’re browsing your site for more information. Enter chat, a great channel to leverage in order to get your content in front of the right prospects at the right time.
You can deliver content pieces related to every stage of their buyer journey. Push your inbound marketing through chat and watch the lead nurture take place immediately. Not only will prospects get what they’re looking for, it will also keep them interested and on your site longer to browse and learn more. Do that just long enough to have your sales team swoop in and take over.
Can Your Team Handle Yet Another Tool?
Chat are a powerful tool, but if you don’t have the right processes in place and a strategy to accelerate its performance then it’s practically another pop-up.
Marketing teams are inundated with so many channels, tactics, and campaigns, and the fear that another tool may add to the workload is completely normal. It’s why choosing the platform that enables you versus gives you more work is critical.
The best way to ensure easy workflows and real-time marketing-to-sales handoffs is by choosing a chat platform that integrates with the tools you already use. Send live chat messages directly into your team’s internal messengers like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Ask your platform vendor for out-of-the-box chat templates that will get you started quicker instead of stalling for a well-strategized plan. You can then use the performance data to optimize and deliver better results.
What are You Looking for Out of This?
The final consideration is your use case for adding chat. What are the results you need? How does it fit into your business strategies and goals? These are all key factors to consider because each chatbot plays a different role for each use case.
Our use cases page breaks this down for you just the way you need it. Whether it’s to convert unknown visitors into leads, book meetings for your sales team, connect open opportunities and buying committees with sales, or provide live customer support — there’s a chat solution for each. The best ones come fully integrated and balance human-first and automated chats.
No More Waiting Around
Chatbots, also known as conversational marketing platforms, are more than capable of delivering a personalized experience to your website visitors while simultaneously alerting your sales team that a prospect is on.
A swift hand-off will allow you to save time while converting leads. How? The chatbot can qualify leads for you so your team doesn’t have to spend time with every website visitor.
That’s why your demand engine should be a well-oiled machine that continuously pulls in new prospects and retains existing ones. Churning out the right content, campaigns, and collateral are great, but making sure that they reach the right audience is the key to the game.
The biggest challenges buyers face are hard-to-navigate websites (34%) and being unable to get answers to simple questions (31%). These problems can easily be solved by enabling your chatbot with the right resources and watching it work alongside your sales and marketing reps. Bridge the gap between your core revenue teams today with chat technology that’s changing the game.