In a perfect world, a company has a problem, they come to you, and you sell them the solution. On paper, it’s so simple. So why does this happen so rarely? 

There are countless reasons but many of them boil down to the fact that there seems to be a big disconnect when it comes to what potential customers need and what sales and marketing teams give them. 

Not to get too whimsical here, but companies are like snowflakes. Many may serve similar markets, sell similar products, have similar revenue, etc., but good luck finding two that are exactly identical. They each have unique circumstances, goals, and problems and thus all need and deserve individualized attention. Now I don’t mean creating new products for every customer, I mean giving every potential customer a unique journey in the buying process to give them the sense that they are your team’s only focus. 

"The goal of conversational marketing is to create unique interactions and experiences for every potential customer in real-time." 

Conversational marketing puts this concept to work. The goal of conversational marketing is to create unique interactions and experiences for every potential customer in real-time to provide the most relevant information and move them more quickly through the sales funnel. The term “conversational marketing” is just that, it’s a conversation with your potential buyer – where they tell you why they’re there and what they need, and in turn, you listen and provide that information. 

When it comes to evaluating potential products or services especially in the B2B space, the most common source of information people turn to is your website. In fact, on average, a potential buyer visits a website 4-6 times before ever reaching out to a sales rep. However, it’s estimated that less than 3% of your website visitors will convert. Why so low? As we talked about in our article on Form Abandonment, when a visitor takes this step, the assumption is that from now until the end of time, they will be inundated by sales and marketing messages even if they aren’t quite ready to buy just yet. 

So, what’s the solution?

Enter: Website Chat 

Instead of going through the process of filling out a form and waiting for a response (something few people would be excited to do), you bring the conversation to them in a low-pressure environment allowing them to get the information they need to help them along the sales journey. 

Chatbots: Chatbots are some of the most effective ways to engage with your website visitors in a low-pressure environment. Not everyone seeking more information about your products is ready to hop on the phone with a sales rep, in fact, most aren’t. It doesn’t mean they never will be, they just might need some questions answered before they are ready for a sales touch. This is where chatbots really shine. A chatbot can quickly act as a basic filtering system to qualify potential leads and funnel people towards the right kind of solution based on their responses to predefined questions. 

Human Chat: Sometimes there’s just no replacement for good old fashioned human interaction. Aside from the more personal touch in person-to-person interaction, more complex or ambiguous situations can require a level of abstraction or problem-solving skills that chatbots currently lack. 

Human-Robot Combo: I’m not talking about some terrifying Terminator-style human/robot hybrid here – simply that the best utilization of both methods is for humans and chatbots to work together to deliver the best possible experience at the lowest cost. Using chatbots for lower-level or repetitive conversations and the humans for the higher complexity issues or specific questions will give you the best bang for your buck when it comes to providing chat services to your website visitors.

Creating personalized interactions with potential customers is crucial for improving conversation rates and reducing the time it takes to close deals. But how do we make our conversations with potential buyers relevant without blasting them with a laundry list of questions to get the information we need? This is where IP address intelligence comes in. 

IP address intelligence works by translating a website visitor’s IP address into account-level data such as company name, industry, employee count, revenue, and more. This data can be used to enhance a wide variety of account-based marketing efforts, including your website chat.

Here’s how it works:

When someone from an anonymous company visits your website, IP address intelligence determines what company the visitor is coming from and feeds their company attributes directly into the conversational marketing platform.

The chatbot function immediately breaks the ice with a relevant, customized message using the company data that would normally take multiple messages or prospecting by a salesperson to gather.

The chatbot proceeds through a few routine qualifying messages to determine their potential use case, needs, budget, etc. and after a few messages, if it’s clear the company is ready to speak to a salesperson, the chatbot can conclude the conversation by recommending some relevant resources to the potential buyer before passing the conversation onto your sales team.

Now when the salesperson reaches out to the account they can hit the ground running with a vast amount of business intelligence that not only saves hours of their time but also allows them to create a unique buying experience. 

Here’s what a sample conversation might look like with someone from Acme Construction Co.

Chatbot: “Hi there, how can we help you today?”

Acme Construction: “I’m looking for marketing automation.”

Chatbot: “Well you came to the right place, I see you’re in the Construction industry. We have a lot of experience helping construction companies.”

Chatbot: “How soon would you be looking to implement a solution like this?”

Acme Construction: “ASAP”

Chatbot: “Perfect, would you like me to put you in touch with one of our solutions consultants?” 

Acme Construction: “Sure.” 

Chatbot: “Ok, they will be in touch shortly, in the meantime, here are a couple of case studies from some construction companies we’ve worked with in the past”.

While this is example might not represent all interactions, it shows the end goal of conversational marketing – delivering 1-to-1 messaging at a scalable level. By combining a chat platform with IP address intelligence, you not only give your website the means to reach out to prospective buyers when at an earlier stage of the buying process, but you also gain the ability to create personalized conversations in real-time that enhance the user experience and increase the chances that visitors will ultimately reach out for more. 

By combining your chat platform with the firmographic data available through IP address intelligence, you can greatly reduce the number of steps a potential buyer has to take in order to get the information they need. You can also use this data to create more personalized messages that will greatly enhance the user experience overall. 

To find out how IP address intelligence can enhance your conversational marketing and drive growth at every stage of the buying cycle, check out our Integrations with Drift and Intercom.