Marketers are no longer assessed according to their website traffic and lead volume. Sales reps aren’t just expected to make calls and book meetings. Businesses expect customer service teams to achieve more than just customer satisfaction.
How so? Each is personally invested in and assessed by one common metric: Revenue.
Each team is aligned in driving growth through revenue acceleration. At Drift, we recently announced our new Revenue Acceleration Model, which we believe is now the fundamental approach of marketing and sales.
In this article, we dive into one aspect of the model—how AI chatbots can fuel your growth and accelerate the buying cycle.
What Is the Role of AI Chatbots in Revenue Acceleration?
It's all about using conversational marketing and conversational sales across the buying cycle. Instead of forcing people to go through lead capture forms and wait days for a response, conversational marketing uses targeted messaging and AI chatbots to engage with people in real-time while they’re on your website.
With AI chatbots, visitors receive a web experience that is more engaging, more personal, and much faster.
One study found that 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that offer personalized experiences.
Conversational marketing and AI chatbots make personalization at-scale achievable.
How to Use AI Chatbots to Accelerate Buying Cycles
With AI chatbots, you become available and helpful to visitors from the first time they visit your site. All along, you gain trust with the buyer and acquire insights that translate into better close rates for sales teams.
Engage Website Visitors
Top retailers have learned the art of customer experience. From the moment you walk into their store, you’re greeted by friendly staff and treated like a VIP.
Consumer brands have inflated consumer expectations and B2B brands need to answer the call. Historically, offering personalized experiences online hasn’t been possible. But today, B2B marketers are no longer off the hook.
AI chatbots make it possible to make each visitor feel like they’re receiving a personalized experience. Engage every single person who visits your website, start conversations, and build relationships.
With the power of AI, you can:
- Engage with visitors 24/7.
- Respond in real-time.
- Interact with visitors and gauge their interest.
Target Potential Buyers
Marketers spend tons of resources attracting buyers to their site. But once they’re there, many organizations lack visibility into who visitors are. Unknown organic traffic, high-quality target buyers, and customers all look exactly the same when you check analytics.
Revenue acceleration powered by conversational marketing and AI, shifts your approach from one-size-fits-all to highly targeted.
You can see where visitors came from and present them with the right channel, offer, and messaging. High-value accounts can immediately receive messages from a human, while less qualified or lower value accounts receive a more automated experience.
Tailor Sales Interactions
With high-value, high-intent contacts identified through AI and conversational marketing, sales teams are empowered and have the capacity to deliver those buyers exceptional, personalized experiences.
"While I’d love to have sales devs or inside sales reps ‘man’ live chat, it’s not feasible for us,” says TreeRing’s Director of Marketing, Leo Strupczewski. “Sales needs to focus on talking to prospects.”
By automating engagement with less-qualified buyers, sales can build interactions around qualified buyers’ individual needs, desires, expectations, and challenges.
Through conversational marketing and AI:
- Marketers know who visitors are and can better optimize campaigns.
- Sales spends its time more efficiently, only serving qualified, high-value buyers.
- Customer experience leaders stand to achieve revenue gains of 5-10%, while reducing customer experience program costs by 15-25% within two or three years.
To learn more, check out a new on-demand webinar from Drift and Marketing AI Institute on how to use AI-enabled chat for marketing.
Mark Kilens
Mark Kilens is VP of Content and Community at Drift where he leads the blogging, editorial, social, Drift Insider, and HYPERGROWTH teams. Prior to joining Drift, he served as VP and founder of HubSpot Academy.