How chatbots can enhance your ABM strategy
It’s no secret that ABM works. When done right, it can generate 200% more revenue for marketing efforts. Chatbots are revolutionizing ABM, taking your target account from browser to buyer through personalised experiences.
Check out how conversational marketing can increase your pipeline – and your bottom line.
B2B organisations, recognizing the need to better engage their market, are adopting conversational marketing strategies and incorporating chatbots as the front line of their ABM strategy. It serves as a critical touchpoint for personalizing the buying experience. An account-based approach that mimics and simulates human conversations via chatbots empowers marketers to convert leads, accelerate revenue, and engage target audiences throughout the funnel.
The rise of chatbots in B2B marketing
It takes an average of eight touches — a phone call, face-to-face meeting (not an email), social media message or voicemail — to engage a potential buyer. Marketing teams often rely on lead capture forms, generic web and landing pages, and follow-up outreach to connect with and convert prospects into sales. That approach requires a tremendous level of effort and time. A faster approach and powerful solution for connecting with and energizing your customer base? Chatbots.
They’re affordable and fully customizable, and because they automate and speed up processes with more consistent outreach putting buyers in control, they also help build trust in your business. Companies can use chatbots to engage target accounts at every step of the funnel, providing personalised experiences and relevant content and engagement along the way.
Why choose this approach? Because it replaces the cumbersome (yet traditional) strategy of forms and friction with real-time engagement as soon as the buyer expresses interest or intent. Marketing teams can more easily track and manage conversations with each target account to deliver consistent experiences to every prospect and customer.
Data shows that businesses that have incorporated account-based chatbot solutions benefit from:
- A 700% increase in target account engagement.
- 250% more leads than traditional website forms and up to a 300% faster response time.
- An 82% increase in conversions compared to websites lacking chatbots.
- A 42% increased Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) to close rate.
- A 3x increase in lead volume and 51% faster lead response time.
Chatbots get you to ‘closed-won’ faster
The typical sales process presents many opportunities for chatbots to step in, assist and make a positive impact. Perhaps while researching a product, you visit a website’s landing page and connect with a chatbot. It asks a few questions about your requirements or your company and then provides information on specific, relevant products and services.
Companies can even program bots to ask questions specifically designed for lead qualification. When answered, this data gives valuable insight into website visitors who are ready to talk to an expert. Other bots can sync to sales teams’ calendars so prospects can book meetings themselves — without talking to a single person.
Chatbot software comes in a variety of “styles” with a range of specific uses for ABM. In addition to offering personalised assistance like scheduling demos or sending predefined messages to prospects, sophisticated account-based chatbots can harness existing audiences, intent signals, personalisation and segmentation. That data helps your team run the best plays from their ABM playbook, keeping them targeted on outcomes and providing a truly personalised selling approach.
Gathering data to create better buying experiences
Account-based chat removes friction from the buying process and provides insight into another level of unique new metrics. B2B organisations can use chatbots to connect emails and ads, social media and other marketing touchpoints to intelligently routed conversations. This approach empowers marketers to build intuitive, intelligent playbooks able to:
- Accurately and efficiently route customers correctly when their needs require a human touch.
- Build account lists.
- Capture and qualify inbound traffic and leads in real-time — and add them to the ABM mix.
- Collect visitor data.
- Conduct orchestrated campaigns from a single source of truth.
- Trigger sales automation with customers and prospects.
Another benefit from incorporating chatbots into ABM? The data they can collect, like account, chat and lead volume metrics, conversation insights, engagement, response rates, website visitor insights, and more. Chat analytics offer KPIs marketers can use to inform decision-making throughout the funnel. They can see which channels and touchpoints generate substantial impact. B2B marketers can use chatbot forms designed to gather specific information via data inputs to develop more effective ABM campaigns. They can refine chatbots’ tones and personalities, making tweaks to provide the best possible customer assistance — and experience.
Chatbots have the power to impact B2B marketing, and companies have taken note. Chatbots don’t replace marketing teams but enhance them. They’re helping accelerate lead qualification, sales processes, expanding and improving continuity in the demand gen process, and increasing the efficiency of customer support.
By revolutionizing how B2B marketers engage customers, chatbots are helping companies gain an edge over their competition — this “secret weapon” is the easiest and most impactful strategy for pleasing customers and generating more revenue.
