You’re scrolling through a website, and bam — there it is. That little chat pop-up in the corner that’s calling your name (literally).
This piece of AI technology is revolutionizing the buyer journey today. 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. Whether it’s to access fast customer support, resolve a technical issue, or simply connect to a sales representative, more and more companies are adopting chatbots and conversational marketing platforms to their websites. For some, chatbots are the next big thing, others may find them intrusive. 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.
Be the Change You Want to See
Chatbots are a lead generation machine capable of driving forward conversations, which are the start to a great customer relationship. It’s the very thing you need between your sales team and future prospects.
Many people are skeptical of chatbots because they aren’t familiar with their capabilities, which stretch beyond simply delivering automated conversations and collecting information. Visitors on your website aren’t often ready to give up their information—to real people let alone chatbots. That’s why conversations are essential to establish that sense of connection. Chatbots can connect visitors 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, the final piece to all your efforts, where you see 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 hundreds of thousands of visitors to your website, then you should figure out how to make your website work better. That level of attention and traffic needs to convert higher than the typical 1% to 2% averages we often see in B2B marketing.
Chatbots are the perfect tool to improve your website conversion rates while seamlessly fitting into your demand 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 might not be 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 into the pipeline and connect them with 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 you don’t want to exhaust these valuable channels. With chat, you can get your content in front of the right prospects when they’re the most receptive— just as they’re browsing your site for more information.
You can deliver targeted content related to every stage of their buyer journey. 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. A good chat experience will give your sales team enough time to step in and take over.
Can Your Team Handle Yet Another Tool?
Chatbots are a powerful tool, but if you don’t have the right processes in place and a strategy to accelerate their performance then it’s just another pop-up.
Marketing teams are inundated with so many channels, tactics, and campaigns. The fear that another tool may add to the workload is completely normal. It’s why choosing the platform that enables easier 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. Such as live chat messages that connect 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. 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 the use case for adding chat. What are the results you need? How would it fit into your business strategies and goals? These are 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 capable of delivering a personalized experience to your website visitors—while simultaneously alerting your sales team that a prospect is present.
A swift hand-off will allow you to save time while converting leads. The chatbot can also qualify leads for you so your team doesn’t have to spend time with every website visitor.
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.
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By: ZoomInfo
Title: Is it Time to Add Chatbots to Your Demand Generation Engine?
Sourced From: blog.zoominfo.com/chatbots-demand-gen-engine/
Published Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2021 13:50:00 +0000
