Today’s technology savvy consumers want what they want when the want it… now! Need a ride? Uber. Want to find a weekend getaway? Airbnb. Binge-watch The Office? Netflix. How about a Moleskine 2019 planner? Amazon, actually… Alexa!
We live in an on-demand world (special thanks to Google who continues to index and catalog everything in our world). We are comfortable tapping, swiping, or barking out a few commands to learn something or buy something. Mobile devices are only supercharging information-gathering and purchasing experiences. Marketing as we know it is radically changing, too, especially via the web.
While a majority of organizations rely on traditional forms and sign-ups to promote their offers, webinars, white papers, and events, the next wave is all about conversational marketing – deploying intelligent chatbots to engage with prospects and customers at the point of interest… now.
Back in July, I wrote how conversational marketing represents the next big thing. As we approach 2019, I am even more bullish on the technology, especially Drift. Not surprising, they too are bullish on conversational marketing having a breakout year, as outlined in their most recent blog post, 7 Reasons Why Top Sales Leaders Are Doubling Down On Conversational Marketing & Sales for 2019.
Gartner recognized conversational marketing as its own category and named Drift a “Cool Vendor.” Forrester also acknowledged the category but also sees it broadening to include natural language queries.
Conversational marketing is all the rage and is empowering the real-time buying experience. It allows you to transform your website from a static brochure into a dynamic, interactive sales-enabler. It can help vet qualifying questions and accelerate sales conversions. It can automate scheduling meetings and demos. Instead of relying on a form submission, which requires someone to reach out via email or phone to confirm a date and time, a chatbot can quickly facilitate this experience. Suddenly days and weeks collapse to minutes, significantly improving business opportunities.
Beyond marketing and sales, Drift can be used for customer service and support – conversational support. Convert your help center and FAQs into interactive content that helps resolve customer questions without a live agent.
While human-to-human communication is considered the holy grail, “conversational” platforms such as Drift are ushering in new ways to conduct business. Combining chatbots with real agents – to support marketing, sales, or support inquiries – allows you to engage with people in real-time and deliver the best possible experience.