The Killer Reason to Start Conversational Marketing

Lead bots are becoming increasingly popular over chatbots and here is why. Chatbots typically lean on NLP (Natural Language Programming), machine learning and artificial intelligence. All of which is not quite there as yet. This is the killer reason to start conversational marketing.

Leadbots not Chatbots

The very idea of a piece of software making someone redundant of a job frightens many, especially as one piece of software can do the job of thousands of people. However, in the case of a lead bot, it’s not trying to take a job, it’s there to support it.

Chatbots are typically used in the customer service role as this is typically a viable option. It’s not that humans aren’t effective in delivering the service, it’s that we need to sleep to perform well. Software, on the other hand, needs no rest, no holidays and no sick pay. Keep it updated and it will always perform to its maximum capacity - unlike humans.

Chatbots are also frequently used in Facebook messenger applications. Social media is about mass engagement and human beings are capable of one conversation at a time if they want to do it well.

The issue we see with AI and machine learning chatbots is that they don’t learn fast enough, often give gibberish answers and they do not get local terms in dialect. Therefore the customer experience goes from 10 to 1.

Leadbots, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish entirely. They are the killer reason to start conversational marketing.

Designed to support the marketing and sales role specifically, on hand to answer questions from your website visitors as and when needed.

Or are they?

Lead bots are designed to answer questions but in a way more consistent with the pied-piper (the pied-piper of Hamelin). I say this not to reflect the sinister way the story’s character empties the city of children, but because upon reflection, he led from the front, playing his own song which made people follow him.

This is exactly what you need to do with your lead bot.

Human beings haven’t changed much in recent decades, okay we are more tech-savvy and we apply ourselves in different ways than say 50 or 60 years ago. But, marketers and salespeople both know that to get someone to the destination, you often have to provide the roadmap.

Chatbots (AI/NLP) have been designed to try to be intuitive and responsive to us.

Leadbots have been designed to create the path to lead us to the destination, and therein lies the difference.

Reason to Start Conversational Marketing

The lead bot relies on you designing the conversation way in advance of the prospect, or website visitor engaging with you. You have to map the conversation with leading questions designed to get the prospect to convert.

This is called a conversational marketing playbook.

To keep this simple, let’s use a web design agency as an example. They potentially have a few solutions that they offer.

Web Design

Growth Driven Web Design

Mobile Applications

Hosting

So for this type of business you potentially need 6 conversational marketing playbooks:

1. Generic Welcome Playbook
2. Web Design Playbook
3. Growth Driven Design Playbook
4. Mobile Application Playbook
5. Hosting Playbook
6. Helpbot Playbook

Crazy right?

Not at all. To segment, your playbooks service by service makes more sense, as you can ask the telling questions you need to qualify your visitor based upon the service page they are on.

This allows you to map a series of questions designed to establish:

• The intent of the enquiry
• The problems they are facing
• The intended budget
• The intended timeframe to start the project
• Serve any thought leadership content you have
• Serve video content
• Transfer to a salesperson
• Book a consultation

By doing this, you not only rapidly accelerate the qualification process, but you can also find out as much as you need to about the prospect prior to a conversation. This allows your sales team to fully focus on a solution and therefore sales led conversations, over those establishing where the prospect currently is.

Your leadbot can also be a help bot. These can provide big wins for customers that are seeking answers to problems with their services. Maybe there are things like how to reset your password on WordPress or how to clear the cache in your browser to see your updated website changes.

Providing a help bot that can push website visitors to answers will vastly reduce admin time in your business and increase output time.

Leadbots, as you can see, are now far more suited to the sales and marketing support role as they are not free to answer as they interpret, but follow an intelligence-led process of lead qualification.

Speaking the right language

So as you can see, the implementation of lead bots is a useful tool. They are there to support intelligent strategic marketing and sales plan. Those that implement the right conversational marketing playbooks in verticals rather than the broad application will see the most benefit and highest return.

Speaking the right language of your customer, at the right moment captures intent, speeds up qualification and enables hot conversations to take place, reducing sales cycles.

To find out more about conversational marketing please reach out to us. We are ideally placed to help you understand how to implement a lead bot, conversational marketing strategy and if needed a supporting inbound marketing strategy.

We offer a 30 testing programme and a 90-day kick-off campaign designed to get your lead bot off to a flying start and that is the killer reason to start conversational marketing.

Work with the experts.