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June 18, 2020 |
Your traffic, ads and other tactics used to capture potential prospects aren’t ENOUGH.
Yes, they will give you the results you are looking for but when it comes to your business growth and beating the tough competition, there is more that you need to do to stay on top always.
These methods are secondary, what you need to focus on is something that can convert your prospect count twice the number that you are receiving at the moment.
The method to conduct it isn’t hard, it is a method that has faded away with the rise of a digital world, ‘Human engagement’.
Surprised?
We are so busy focusing on capturing prospects that we give our engagements or rather the communications with prospects one step down. We believe that one script is enough to tap the multiple prospects who have different types of leads.
But this is wrong, believe us when we say that the minute you start conversing the right way with your leads, you will see a difference in your conversion rates, lead count, and business growth.
It isn’t a difficult process, all you need to do is start applying the method of ‘Conversational marketing’, an easy practice, that ensures all your prospects receive the human communication which will strive them to look forward to investing in your business.
We’ve got you covered:
Let’s get started.
Conversational marketing is a refined way of communicating with your prospects online. It uses the medium of live chats especially chatbots to engage with your prospects.
The process works as an automated one where when a prospect starts to engage with the communication will take place according to the prospect’s answers.
Let’s understand this better with an example:
Source: WP Forms
Has it struck your memory?
This is a process that you would have encountered either on Facebook messenger or even on Instagram.
Isn’t this easy?
Just look at the image, the message isn’t selling anything, all it showcases is that it wants to help the prospects and this is the key reason why your business will grow better.
Let’s understand this with another example:
So say you are right now on Facebook and you see an ad of a brand selling great clothes and jewellery. What you do is you get in touch with that brand with the communication medium listed which is mostly messaging.
When you start to chat, you have the options listed above such as:
This communication will continue to go further depending on your actions. So basically if you have requested to see a dress you will find questions related to it.
How easy is this?
Imagine the advantages you are receiving:
This process is important and why it should matter to you is what you will learn in our next category.
Do you know how these top companies are staying on top always?
Take an example of the top companies who are well established, any of them, and start to observe them.
They grew so big even before the digitization was even present.
How did that happen? Even social media wasn’t much of a craze then right?
The answer is through the medium of real communications.
The process was so easy, just talking to prospects and understanding their needs and solving them. But as time grew the world of online and digital started to boom quicker. Slowly these real conversations moved to a more digitized platform.
From catering to one unique prospect, it went to capturing tons of them and throwing the same scripts to all the people.
This is what led to the fall of multiple brands and you need to understand that this can happen to you as well. Today your prospects are not worried about what your solution is, they want you to convey the benefits of your solution in a manner that doesn’t look like you’re being sales focused.
How many times have you contacted your prospects, only to hear the usual statements of not interested or disconnected calls and more?
You need to understand that you can achieve to remain on top always, all you need to do is get real and get human.
Conversational marketing matters which is why you need to understand how it can shape your business for the best.
The business world has grown to become more digitized in its engagement with its prospects but there is one thing that multiple of your prospects expects from you, human communication. Human communication has gone lost in the crowd which is why via the method of conversational marketing this communication channel needs to be brought back.\
With every automated process of communication, you can engage with your prospect just like how you would if you were to speak to them face to face which adds a bonus of success in your business growth.
When you know what your prospects are looking for and what they do when they engage with a chatbot, you tend to grasp a lot of information such as their behaviour patterns, what are they looking for, what are they expecting, and much more. This can help you capture such vital information and align your selling strategies accordingly.
For instance, when you realize that your prospects first would like immediate assistance to view your brand, you would walk in that direction.
Conversational marketing is a great process because it lets you capture the right leads always. For instance, say if your leads are hot leads, your immediate assistance at that moment can convert their decisions into a confirmed purchase hence improving your lead count and conversion rates.
Instead of you having to conduct the longer sales process which is capturing leads and then contacting them and then nurturing them, the conversational marketing process cuts short this process for you. With the help of communication, the process can help convert your potential prospects into sales leads.
You are aware that if you want to excel better than your competitors, you need to sell smarter and faster, and conversational marketing gives you just that. Imagine, when your prospects are looking at your website, and suddenly you start to cater to them, when your prospects find what they are looking for with your help, they would obviously want to continue investing in what you have to offer them, wouldn’t they?
Your sales pipeline helps you determine exactly where your prospects are in the sales funnel. This is important because it helps you to take the necessary actions. Now when you practice the same process with conversational marketing, the chances of your sales pipeline tend to grow.
For instance, say you have a warm lead that still requires nurturing and when you cater to them at the right time, you are opening the opportunity for them to move from a prospect to a lead quicker.
It’s easy to get started with conversational marketing. The strategy is simple and straightforward for you to conduct.
You don’t start conversing with your prospects the minute they land up on your website. You need to hit them at the right time. When you notice that your prospects are looking at your website and are scrolling through each page, that is when you need to strike so that for any of their doubts, they can engage with you and get it clarified.
For instance, say that a prospect is on your feature page and is clicking through each of them to understand it better, when you pop up to help them, they will engage with you to learn more about your features that is when your engagement with your potential prospects becomes more fruitful.
As stated earlier, when you understand what your prospects are looking for, engaging with them becomes easier. Remember your assistance should help your prospects to find what they are looking for. This is important because on the basis of that catering your prospects would become easier.
For instance, when you understand that your prospects are on your pricing page and are checking the packages you offer, your engagement would be related to that and you will be guiding them on the same.
Now that you understand what your prospects are looking for, you will be able to assist them better as stated in the second point. Always remember when you’re able to solve the issue of your prospects, that is when they start to trust you because they realize that you want to genuinely help them. When this happens, they are bound to invest in your solution with minimal efforts of selling from your side. The key here is to understand what your prospects are looking for and focusing on helping them find it.
For instance, if your prospects are looking at an article of yours where you have written about how conversational marketing can help them, you can start to show them suggestions related to the same topic so that they can enhance their information on the same.
Now that you understand what needs to be done, you need to work the exact same way on repeat. Continue to let your prospects engage with your solution, understand what they are looking for, and assist them with your suggestions.
In 2020, the selling medium needs to be smart and efficient, if you are going to sell anything and everything to your prospects, they won’t stay even a minute longer.
Conversational marketing is helping you sell better to your prospects without the extra struggle.
Conversational marketing can be placed anywhere, such as your live chat handle or even on your website which you use to engage with your prospects and more. With such an effective solution watch your brand grow twice more than what it is now by applying its best practices in your online actions.
Now that you are aware that your prospects can be engaged via this method, you need to get one thing clear. You can’t just place your chat mediums anywhere and everywhere, you need to strike only when it’s hot.
For instance, say that your prospects are scrolling through your website and they are reading your products, that would be a good time to start engaging there because your prospects are warm leads and with your immediate assistance they could learn more and you could successfully convert their decision to invest in your brand there itself.
You don’t want to start with giving them options in the first, they would either be confused or ignore it. You can first start by introducing yourself and informing them that you can help them find what they are looking for, this would let them understand your purpose and engage with you better. It would be great if you introduce yourself with a name as it would add the personal touch as well.
Now the purpose of this action is to tell your prospects that you are a human who is interacting with them. If a prospect realizes that you are a bot, then they might just quote away because bots can’t really empathize with humans and at times even a small empathizing can build the trust of your prospects that you genuinely want to help them.
You can do various things to prove that you’re human such as creating a communication script in a manner where all the statements convey how a human would actually speak or you hire a few staff to engage with them.
Qualified gives us an example of it:
‘’Hello there! My name is Haley (real person, not a chatbot). Let me know if you need any help if there’s anything, in particular, you are curious about, or would like to see a product demo!’’
Not all the leads that will come on your website will be genuine buyers, only a few are going to be serious which is why engaging with them via such a medium would be more fruitful. A hot lead will be engrossed in what you have to offer them and will continue to learn more about your solution when you pop up to help them further, they will be compelled to engage with you.
On the other hand, a cold lead might just scroll through and walk away and these leads require minimum efforts of engagement.
This activity will work but do you know what else can this action help you in, collecting relevant data. You will have the data in the hand of how your prospects are, what they expect, how they answer, and what makes them hit the purchase button. All of this can help your brand to grow better as you are aware of the behaviours and actions of your prospects.
Use it to learn more about your prospects so that your personalization can be enhanced even more.
Your prospects wouldn’t like to consider any of your actions because they feel that everything is being done for the purpose of making a sale. If you eliminate this assumption, your brand can stand a chance to capture multiple sales opportunities. All you need to do is, create pop-ups so when your prospects scroll through your website you can tell them that if they view this page they can understand better.
This will let your prospects understand that you are helping them and continue to follow your words on the same.
It is important that there is always someone working behind to ensure that the engagements are taking place well. Ensure that if you are not using a chatbot there is always staff present and active constantly. Working in shifts can help you cater to prospects better.
While human interactions are better, you can also make use of chatbots in case you are receiving multiple traffic or your representatives are less in number. This will ensure that no limitations or stoppage are present. Bots can also provide a personalized experience.
This is important for you to understand that when using conversational marketing, the main focus should be to help serve your prospects and help them solve their issues. When you conduct this process in an easy manner, don’t you think that your prospects would like to engage with you more?
Keep your focus right and everything will fall into place accordingly.
When your prospects land up on your website and they find out that your website is tough to even access or view through or is not able to capture their attention, they are going to walk off. This could be a huge loss for your business. Hence it is important that you must keep a closer eye whenever your prospects are on your website so that you can cater to them at the right time as stated earlier in this article.
Conversational marketing would be great here because it would provide an easy platform for your prospects to understand what you are and what solution you are providing to them with the engagements.
As stated earlier, the whole agenda of conversational marketing is to ensure that the lost human touch is restored. While the automated chatbots will cater and engage with your prospects, however, there is no harm in conducting a few engagements manually as well. This will help your prospects understand and believe that there is a human behind the chat and will continue to engage with you.
Now that you are aware of the best practices, let’s see how you can get started with it.
When your prospects scroll your website, ensure that you try converting their attention into getting into a meeting with you. This will help speed up the process of selling and help you to close deals quicker. When your prospects are viewing a page let’s say your pricing page, they will have a few doubts.
At that time when you enter in and ask them if they would like to get on a quick call with you to learn better, they would accept it. This will help you guide them towards what they are looking for and help you close more deals quicker and that too on the first day itself. ‘’If an SDR can schedule a meeting with a prospect the same day the lead comes in, the opportunity close rate is 3X higher than if they connected with that lead 48 hours later.’’
Being human in your conversation isn’t enough, there are other opportunities that can help you bring the human side from the other side of your business waiting to engage with your prospects. You could do this by adding a profile photo of your agent, with the full name and even their designation. You could frame statements in the live chat interactions where it sounds how a human speaks casually.
It is not necessary that you have to conduct all your interactions from a bot, you could let a bot handle a few chats in the beginning and the rest could be handled manually. This will ensure that the human touch is being retained.
When you are aware that a prospect is worth your time and effort, don’t wait much, get into a conversation with them. The more you engage with them the better you can resolve their issues and get them to invest in your solution. With the prospect’s actions and what activities it conducts, you have it all covered in your sales funnel details, this will help you strike your engagements with them more efficiently.
Continue to observe your prospects and frame your engagements accordingly.
As stated earlier, not all your prospects are going to be the ideal deal for your business but there is no harm in engaging with them all to find the right ones. When you are aware that a prospect has appeared on your page more often, or are looking at your solution and digging in deeper, it is important that you engage with them right away.
The more engagements you conduct the better are your chances of growing a room of sale sleds being captured. Also, for those leads that are cold or are not sure yet to invest in your solution, engaging with them can help to convert them from cold to warm leads and finally to a hot lead.
Another reason to invest in conversational marketing is that it helps to ease the communication with your and your prospects. With such a simpler solution, there is no need for your prospects to wait for any clarifications, with such a quick engagement medium, their queries will be resolved. This will continue to keep your prospects happy as who wouldn’t prefer immediate assistance?
You are aware of what conversational marketing is and every other information needed to help you trust it.
Why don’t you take a look at the companies you have incorporated and the results they achieved?
Source: Impact
RapidMiner eliminated its traditional forms and invested in a chatbot live chat communication. They were receiving multiple traffic and hence they were sure that they would like to invest only the leads who are valuable and can matter to their brand.
Upon using conversational marketing tactics, they grew for the best. They managed to capture 4,000 leads and added $1 million in their sales pipeline. The best part, they were also able to cater to cold leads as well.
Spring focuses on delivering a personalized shopping experience for its users. The way they conduct the communication is so simple and easy that it makes users experience online shopping a better one.
Source: Impact
Look at the questions, it’s so specific and to the point and wastes no time in assisting the prospects. This ensures that communication takes place smoothly.
Source: Impact
This brand created the first chatbots on Facebook messenger. It is simple and provides two options which are Talk to support and Order flowers. Due to this, this brand was able to extend its outreach further and capture more prospects. 1800 flowers received 70% of new prospects via this automated chat platform.
Source: WPForms
Plum is a brand that helps businesses find the right resource. As you can see in the image above their chatbot is pretty simple. They ask the relevant questions and guide the prospect towards their solution. The statements too are what a human would converse like adding the touch.
Source: WPForms
When it comes to health not everyone is comfortable with asking certain questions. They would prefer more privacy which is why HealthTap helps to conduct that process. Healthtap lets you engage with doctors 24/7. It uses the help of Facebook messenger as seen in the image above to cater to its new and existing leads. For any query to be resolved they share answers from doctors who have answered similar questions in the past. This helps the patients to have better clarity and understanding.
Source: WPForms
Sephora is a cosmetic brand that helps its clients to book a service with them. It uses the help of chatbots to get it done. The process is super simple. As the image above illustrates, all you need to do is choose the book a service option and enter your pin code. The chatbot will show you the stores near you so that you can go ahead and decide which you would like to book a service for.
Source: WPForms
This brand is a real estate based company where it helps its clients to either help buy a property or mortgage for a better deal. The process is simple as you can see in the image above, you just need to choose the option when you are on the website and it will ask relevant questions according to your choice then forth.
It’s time you too get started as well.
Source: WPForms
WPForms offers conversational Forms add on. It helps you to create conversational contact forms in an easy and cost-effective manner. This application is best suited for beginners. You can get started here.
Source: WPForms
You are aware of Facebook Messenger Bots. Multiple brands use it and it is easy to get started on it as well. You can get started for free on it if you would require the need of a developer to set it up or you could use the assistance of a paid software. This application would be ideal for advanced users.
Source: WPForms
Botfuel does a great job of letting its users build as well as managing a conversational chatbot with the help of your database details. It also helps to provide analytics so that you are aware of the performance of your chatbot. The application is well suited for mid-level users. You can get started on this application for free and you will also receive a limit of 5000 messages a month.
You have everything you need to know about this topic, why don’t we give you a quick guide on what you need to do and what you need to avoid in conversational marketing. This cheat sheet can help you get started quickly.
Do’s:
When you meet another person, you would greet them in a warm manner, this is exactly what you need to do when any of your prospects engage with you or vice versa. You need to be friendly and greet them well such as saying, hello, how can I help you? or Hey, what are you looking for?
The more comfortable you make your prospect feels the better they will be able to open up to you.
As you are aware that not all the prospects are going to add value to your business, there is no point in spending all your time to engage with them. Hence it would be better to cater to all those prospects, you could use a chatbot as it will save all the time and energy and lets you focus better on the valuable prospects only.
Conversational marketing gives you the opportunity to close deals quickly through instant engagement and this is vital when you use it for leads which matter for your business. With leads who are hot, it becomes easier to engage with them and convert them into sales leads. Focus on such leads with this method.
Instead of having to type out the entire statement, try using shortcuts where for instance, say that your agents are going to ask your prospects how they can help them, so the minute the agent’s type ‘ho’, the statement of the word should appear. This will help to communicate easier and speed up the interactions.
Don’ts:
Ensure that your buyers need not wait for you to engage with them. It should take place at the right time. This is important because if prospects don’t find assistance when they need it, they will simply walk away. With immediate assistance, you can cater to the hot buyers and convert them quickly into a sales lead.
You can’t just start conversational marketing without having a plan, yes the process will help you close more deals and grow your business, but that can only happen when you do it right. Ensure that before you start this marketing tactic, you have a plan in hand which means why your conducting process, what is your aim to achieve with this process, how can you get started, what are the requirements you need, and more. This will help you engage better with this process.
Each of your buyers is different and it is important that you understand that by not offering them the same sales script. You need to cater to your audience according to their needs which is exactly how your sales scripts will be as well. With good research about your target audience and frequent engagements, you will be able to cater to your audience better. Also with behaviour patterns, it becomes easier to understand what your prospects are looking for.
This will help give you the data to understand how your scripts should be formatted. Always remember that your sales scripts should sound like a human conversation where helping the prospects is highlighted the most. To understand your prospects better, conduct research, and use the data from this marketing process so that you can enhance the engagements better.
Conversational marketing helps but that doesn’t mean you start that the minute your prospects enter your website. You need to understand that this process will work only when you hit it at the right time. For instance, when you know your prospects are on the verge of purchasing from you, engaging with them at that time can help you push them further on the sales funnel resulting in higher conversion rates and quicker deals being closed.
Start your conversational marketing tactics to grow better in your business.
Let’s take a quick summarization of what we’ve covered:
While conversational marketing is helping brands to grow, we would also like you to try out live chats that offer instant click to call engagement with their prospects. It is easy and convenient too. You can try it out here.
Do let us know your opinions on this topic and how you plan to get started.
A writer by choice. Leena has served her passion for writing mainly into the B2B marketplaces.