Conversational Marketing 

Accelerating Revenue with Conversational Marketing to Deliver Exceptional Customer Experiences

Introduction

The customer experience is continuously shifting. Amidst the waves of digital transformation and workforce innovation, both amplified by the coronavirus pandemic, B2B companies are faced with a future-defining decision: sink or swim. To sink is to continue like nothing in even the last 5 years has changed. Whereas to swim is to adapt, embrace digitization, and transform the way you approach the customer experience. Buyer enablement, customer success, revenue acceleration – in the digital age, this all relies on so much more than random acts of marketing and unsolicited sales calls. And today’s frictionless digital experiences have completely redefined what your customers expect to experience as they progress throughout the increasingly complex stages of the customer journey.

“The B2B environment will be more complex with knowledgeable customers dictating the experience.”

Source: Walker

To lead the customer-first revolution, B2B organizations require a solution that enables a customer-first approach. Enter: Conversational Marketing.

In this post, you’ll discover how today’s customer experience has evolved, how your customer expectations have grown, and how businesses like yours are accelerating revenue and achieving a customer-first approach with Conversational Marketing.

Table of Contents: -

1. Conversational Marketing for the Customer
a) What is Conversational Marketing?
b) The Conversational Marketing Experience
c) The Essentials of a Positive Experience
2) Conversational Marketing for Your Business
a) The Business Case for Conversational Marketing
3) Best Practices & Moving Forward
a) The Do’s and Don’ts of a Conversational Marketing-enabled Customer Experience
b) Enhancing Your Customer Experience with Conversational Marketing
c) Moving Forward

Conversational Marketing

What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational Marketing enables revenue acceleration through exceptional customer experiences. It is the fastest way to move your buyers through their customer journey. And with the power of real-time conversations and customer-centric data, you’re able to create meaningful interactions and authentic experiences for your buyers at every stage and when they need it. In turn, creating long-term, loyal customers for the business. Instead of forcing people to navigate through clunky web pages, fill out repetitive lead capture forms, and wait days for a response, Conversational Marketing utilizes targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage with people 24/7/365 whether you’re personally available or not. This means that you’re able to deliver content and experiences to your buyers at the moment they need it – even before they know they need it – making it easier for them to engage with your business, and easier for you to convert more of the right leads faster.

The Conversational Marketing Experience

The customer-centric revolution has been accelerated. Brands like Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon are continuously raising expectations – redefining how customers interact with their brands online. And today, people want an experience that isn’t just frictionless, but enjoyable and personable. The experiences created by B2C are now the same experiences expected from B2B. So, when a customer visits your website, they expect the same frictionless, personal, and enjoyable experience they’d get from a brand like Nordstrom. Unfortunately, these experiences are where B2B lags far behind. To keep up with skyrocketing expectations, you need to remove friction and give customers what they want at the exact moment they want it. Yet B2B businesses continue to serve up generic ads leading to impersonalized landing pages. Buyers get lost in confusing websites and have to fill out lengthy forms just to get answers. They wait days, if not weeks, for replies, which often come back as stock emails. It’s a frustrating experience that does little to make the buyer feel valued or empowered to make a decision.

The Essentials of a Positive Experience

We’ve talked a lot about the typical experiences and expectations that come with Conversational Marketing solutions, messaging tools, and communication practices. But what about what makes these experiences worthwhile? What do buyers and customers value most in a Conversational Marketing solution? What do they prioritize? What do they deem to be most important? Expertise, Resolution, and Ease of Use Are Top Priorities for Users In 2019, respondents were asked about the benefits they expected to enjoy from using Conversational Marketing solutions like chatbots, and 24-hour service and instant responses were the top benefits expected. However, in 2020, we positioned the question slightly differently. Instead of asking about what benefits users expected, we asked about what factors are most important to users to have a positive experience using a Conversational Marketing solution.
• For 49% of respondents, the most important factor in having a positive experience with a        Conversational Marketing solution is getting quick, detailed, and expert answers to their questions.
• 36% of respondents say it is also important that their complaints and issues get resolved quickly.
• 29% say it’s important the solution is friendly, approachable, and easy to communicate with.
• And 27% of respondents feel it is important to have either 24-hour service or to be able to get an instant response.

Delivering Positive Customer Experiences

As the digital transformation race continues to accelerate, it’s critical that the way your business communicates and engages with your buyers – and the way your buyers are able to communicate and engage with you – leans on a digitally focused, customer-first approach. Because in the golden age of digital experiences heralded by the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify, buyers have come to expect a certain level of quality and sophistication in their online experiences. And for a business to truly excel in today’s chaotic, noisy, digital ecosystem, they must work to remove friction, foster authenticity, and promote personalization – all with the goal of delivering positive customer experiences that – yes, generates and accelerates revenue – but also delights surprises, and engages buyers and customers alike.

Conversational Marketing for Your Business

The Business Case for Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing enables revenue acceleration by creating exceptional customer experiences. In a study conducted by Walker, the B2B companies that will find success in 2020 and beyond are recognizing the shift in customer expectations and experiences, realigning their resources to apply a customer-first approach, and focusing their metrics to include a holistic measurement of customer engagement. Consider two different prospects. The first is scrolling through her social media feed when a retargeting ad for your company pops up. She clicks it and goes to a page about a relevant product feature. The second prospect, meanwhile, googles a question related to your product category and stumbles on one of your blog posts, a helpful explainer article on the issue she’s having. Clearly, these two people are different. They’re in completely different stages of the customer journey and therefore have different goals, behaviors, interests, and challenges. And yet, many sales and marketing funnels do little to separate them in order to personalize their experiences. In fact, both of these prospects typically receive the same calls to action: Join our email list. Schedule a call. Book a demo. Too often, as marketers and salespeople, we ignore what brings these visitors to our site in the first place. Since the dawn of digital marketing, we’ve given everyone who visits our websites the same message and the same experience – over and over and over again – no matter who they are, where they came from, or what they’re truly interested in. But with Conversational Marketing, we can do better.

Best Practices & Moving Forward

The Do’s and Don’ts of a Conversational Marketing enabled Customer Experience

To accelerate revenue by creating positive customer experiences, businesses will require an intuitive, intelligent Conversational Marketing solution to help their buyers easily find content, thoroughly and immediately address questions and needs, and confidently prioritize and affirm decisions. As you continue to craft and refine your customer experience.

DO 1. Be customer-centric. 2. Work to digitize your products, services, and customer experiences. 3. Enable immediate responses to your buyers. 4. Make it easy for buyers to engage with you on their terms no matter when, how, or where. 5. Ensure your customer service and help centers are knowledgeable, detailed, and approachable. 6. Make it easy, convenient, and frictionless for buyers to discover content and engage with your business. 7. Ensure that your channels, people, tech, and the internal processes connecting them are fully integrated and consistent.

DON’T 1. Be company-centric. 2. Deprioritize your company’s digital transformation. 3. Force your buyers to wait for hours or days without a response. 4. Only give your buyers one or two ways to contact you. 5. Respond to your buyers with inaccurate or inadequate information that doesn’t solve their problem. 6. Force your buyers to fill out repetitive, clunky web forms every time they want to engage with you. 7. Force your buyers to explain the same information to multiple representatives

Enhancing Your Customer Experience with Conversational Marketing

We’ve talked a lot about how Conversational Marketing is used to delight buyers, enhance experiences, and accelerate revenue across the customer lifecycle. We’ve discussed the challenges as well as the key considerations when implementing a Conversational Marketing solution into your funnel. Now, we want to share some of our best practices to help you bring your customer experience to life with Conversational Marketing.

Solution:-

1) Website Experiences

2) Content Marketing

3) Digital Ad Campaigns

4) Email Campaigns

Moving Forward

By meeting buyers where and when they are; by giving them unlimited, frictionless access to content and resources; by helping easily and empathetically address concerns and affirm decisions; Conversational Marketing solutions are poised to further enhance the customer experience across the entire customer lifecycle.

Sources:

www.drift.com 

www.heinzmarketing.com

www.alexa.com