What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversation marketing is a customer-centric dialogue-driven approach to marketing.
It focuses on having real-time conversations with customers to improve customer experience and attract better leads.
It is the latest marketing technique widely used by B2B marketers.
It is one of the fastest ways to move buyers through the funnel from MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead).
Conversational marketing is successful in building stronger relationships with B2B buyers through a personalized and fast approach.
It feeds on having real-time conversations with buyers and customers to provide them with quick solutions to their problems instead of making them wait to get a response.
Conversational marketing runs 24/7 using chatbots and targeted messaging providing tips, suggestions, and updates to active users on your website.
It makes it easier for people to engage in case they have any specific queries related to your product.
Because it solves queries faster, users move through your marketing/sales funnel faster, helping you close more leads.
With digitalization, many conversations happen over Social Media Platforms such as Messengers and iMessages.
It has made people more inclined towards having quick conversations through chat and messages.
However, businesses are still using the traditional approach of taking customers through a funnel of scheduling calls and resolving queries on a specific date at a specific time.
These funnels did work earlier but with the advancing technologies, the engagement ratio has decreased significantly.
A survey by Twilio found that over 90% of consumers want to communicate with businesses through fast conversations and the majority prefer it over emails.
According to Marketer Charlie Cook, he estimates that cold calling “is successful 2 percent of the time; qualified leads convert 20 percent of the time, while referrals convert half the time” HubSpot reports that only 28 percent of cold calls even result in a conversation, Serenity Gobbins mentions in her blog post on Forbes.
So...
How to use Conversational Marketing in your B2B marketing and sales cycle?
The key to successful conversational marketing campaigns is personalized and quick responses.
You can engage customers through this method by interacting through dialogue-driven activities.
Start by installing an AI-powered chatbot on your website and set a helpful and engaging tone in the chatbox pop-up when a user skims your website.
Conversational Marketing is classified into three stages:
1. Engage
Conversational marketing focuses on interacting with users and does not follow a one-way mode of communication.
In this stage it is important to offer support and help to users on your website, however, you need to make sure you have sales representatives available when a prospect is engaging with your site.
You can also deploy chatbots on your website to handle user queries in real-time by setting up automated answers be it in the day or night.
The consistent and intelligent responses from chatbots can help your brand build trust and relationships.
Engaging instantly can lead to higher conversion rates and a better personalization experience for the customers.
2. Understand
According to Harvard business review research, companies need to respond within 5 minutes of contact to have a better chance of qualifying a lead.
A traditional marketing approach to understanding what the user needs include days maybe even months of nurturing prospects.
In this stage of conversational marketing, you can understand the requirements of the users on your website with the help of chatbots in real-time without asking them to complete a lead form and waiting for a sales representative to get back to them.
You can set automatic questions in your chatbots and let the bots ask questions for you, which can give you a better understanding of their requirements.
Once the bot qualifies the lead, it can automatically transfer the conversation to your sales representative who can then help the user, taking them to the next stage of the funnel.
3. Recommend
Bots can be great conversation starters and engage the lead faster but nothing can beat human communication whilst closing.
Bots can understand the issues of the users and guide them with relevant content but human interaction can help you close better leads for your business.
AI is revolutionizing and adding a human touch to its processes to improve customer relationships for businesses.
Its seamless communication is fast, reliable, and real-time, which helps marketers communicate with audiences and offer them information based on personalized factors.
Artificial Intelligence has been a game-changer for marketers; it allows them to be online in every time zone, resolving all the queries in real-time.
These are not new marketing stages but rather an improved version of the B2B marketing funnel; Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase.
Conversational Marketing uses a customer-centric approach that can help engage and close more leads.
