The Complete Guide to B2B Marketing with Chatbots.
B2B businesses must adjust to the new customer and market demands as the business environment changes. The development of technology has influenced some of these needs. Others are a result of changes in consumer behaviour. Both led to the introduction of chatbots for B2B communication.
B2B sales were once largely closed by sales representatives, but today's buyers are more independent than ever. 68% of B2B buyers prefer to independently gather information online over speaking with a sales representative, according to Forrester research. For instance, independent review websites like G2 Crowd or Capterra should be your first point of reference when looking for software products.
This behavioral change creates a new challenge for B2B businesses in terms of engaging huge numbers of website visitors in a personalized way. Your website is frequently the next point of contact for B2B buyers looking into their options after any review site. Since there aren't any other parties involved on your end, a lot depends on that initial impression, which must be personal.
You can keep up with the demands without taxing your team by allowing the best chatbot software for b2b to respond to inquiries and distribute tailored content based on real-time preferences. To help you, we've put together our own chatbot best practices.
In this article, we examine chatbots' role in addressing the changing needs of B2B buyers and the most effective ways to use them.
The Modern B2B Buyer
According to the Forrester study previously mentioned, a new type of B2B buyer emerged as a result of numerous demographic, technological, and behavioral changes. Today's typical B2B buyers' preferences are influenced by their everyday preferences. In other words, based on their typical B2C requirements and encounters.
The new B2B buyer has different expectations than the more established B2B customer in four key areas:
1. Brand experience: Modern B2B consumers anticipate that the B2B brand interactions they have in their professional lives will be just as sophisticated and consistent as those in their personal ones.
2. Sales interactions: B2B customers don't interact with sales representatives early in the buying process. They prefer to do this later after they've done some independent research. However, when they do contact the reps, they anticipate that they will be aware of their objectives and concerns. They anticipate that their knowledge and advice will effectively address their issues.
3. Purchase influence: Because consumers frequently consult independent review websites when making decisions, purchase influence has become a widespread B2C practise. Before making a purchase or starting a long-term subscription, more and more B2B buyers now ask their peers and other users/customers for advice and feedback.
4. Engagement after the sale. mentioning subscriptions, B2B buyers are beginning to have higher expectations and demands for long-term benefits like individualized engagement and post-purchase support as the economy shifts more and more toward a subscription-based model. To stop customer churn, B2B marketers need to adopt tried-and-true B2C loyalty marketing strategies.
How Can a B2B Chatbot Help Identify the New Buyer Type?
You must alter how you interact with B2B customers at every stage of the journey because they are more in control of their journey than ever.
You can achieve that by using chatbots.
Here are five instances of how B2B chatbots can steer you in the right direction.
1. Connect your brand to customer satisfaction
Whether you work in B2C or B2B, your brand is defined by the customer experience. In the end, your brand won't be as closely associated with its choice of copy or the cost of the product in the eyes of the consumer. The sum of their experiences along the way will influence how they perceive it and how valuable they believe it to be.
Betting on experience has advantages and disadvantages.
Relying on personal experiences to create the perception of your brand removes some control from your hands. In other words, the shaping and planning of your messaging and communication only get you so far; the receiver's subjective experience continuously creates the other half.
However, it also makes it more difficult for your rivals to refute the compelling experiences of your customers. Customers won't be as easily persuaded if their perception of your brand is based on their own experiences rather than a marketing claim about the image you're trying to project.
So how do you go about creating compelling experiences?
One of the most fundamental human experiences, both in the workplace and in private life, is conversation. However, it is very challenging to rely solely on live chat for all interactions in today's fast-paced global business environments.
You can actively shape experiences with chatbots through in-context conversations. They give you a platform to show off your brand's personality and make it possible for you to remain flexible in the face of changing customer demands. Chatbot automation's instantaneous nature enables prompt responses in one-on-one interactions.
2. Promote Emotional Resonance for Your Brand
When it comes to B2C customers, emotion is widely acknowledged and used as a significant decision-influencing factor. B2B buyers have a reputation for being more logical, analytical, and data-driven.
They are not as emotionless, though. They were never.
More research is being done on and emphasis is being placed on emotion in B2B branding.
Why?
Decisions can make or break careers and shape the future of businesses acquiring the given product or service, such as the choice of software or supplier.
It isn't even an especially recent "discovery." A 2013 study by Google, Gartner, and Motista polled 3000 B2B buyers from various industries. The most significant discovery? In contrast to B2C customers, B2B buyers were found to have stronger emotional ties to the brands. Most B2B brands had emotional connections with over 50% of their customers, as opposed to the average B2C brand's 10%–40% emotional connection rate.
The significance of emotions in B2B purchasing was further supported by a more recent study (2018) from Gyro and The Financial Times. They even identified the three most potent emotional capital assets that B2B brands should focus on: self-assurance, optimism, and the potential for trust.
In your customer communications, you should not undervalue emotion.
Chatbots greatly ease the process of producing emotional experiences by being able to:
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3. Customize the Customer Experience
The most effective tactic is personalization, and for good reason.
The statistics are fairly simple. For instance:
Solutions for website personalization can assist you in identifying anonymous users as representatives of particular businesses, making it simpler to cater the experience to their requirements.
But that only goes so far in terms of personalization.
Chatbots can significantly increase your ability to personalise while you're on the go. First off, their ability to engage in conversation while gathering data is legendary. Data sharing is much more pleasant with automated conversations than with online forms. Additionally, they let you use the gathered data right away. As a result, if done correctly, you can influence your lead in the right direction based on both who they are and where they are in the customer journey.
Second, using bots gives you a distinctive perspective on customer behaviour. Conversations give you the opportunity to observe how they make decisions, what information they seek, which decisions result in conversion, etc. You have more data to improve your customer journey and service the more interactions your leads and customers have with your bot.
4. Ensure that pertinent content is simple to find
A customer will leave if they are unable to find the content they are looking for. They'll keep looking until they locate it somewhere else.
Giving customers the content they need early in their purchasing process easy and unrestricted access increases the likelihood that they will consider your goods or services. Gating your resources is not necessary because good content that is delivered at the right time can serve as a lead magnet by naturally motivating users to take action.
B2B companies need to start thinking like customer support self-service when it comes to content.
Virtual assistants and chatbots are just the means to make that possible because they make the ideal partners for in-the-moment content discovery. Bots can instantly deliver answers, calculate costs, point users to landing pages, share articles, videos, ebooks, and more without making them spend time doing research.
Even better, the selection of content aids in your bot's ability to determine the type of customer or their place in the customer journey, allowing for even more individualised service.
5. Provide High-Quality Leads
Lowering acquisition costs and increasing conversion and profit require an effective lead qualification process. If not set up properly or carried out quickly enough, it leads to missed opportunities and the loss of your agents' valuable time.
Conversational marketing has developed quite a name for itself in the lead generation industry over the last few years. Yes, having a conversation is much more enjoyable than filling out an online lead form. But that's not the main factor in how well bots function.
Instant lead qualification leads to instant personalization, which leads to instant action, which is where their true power lies.
You have more freedom when using bots to ask questions than when using a standard online form.
Why?
Well, there are many ways to interpret that. Perhaps having interactive and reciprocal conversations makes it simpler to convey the idea that you are actually attempting to assist the user rather than giving them the impression that you are attempting to steal their data.
In any case, chatbots are able to modify the conversation based on user responses or even grade the responses as they come in. The bot can offer various forms of content and support based on the responses. The overall score could also be used to:
Send leads that are not qualified or who are not yet prepared to make a purchase down a specific nurture path (e.g. by exporting them to a specific mailing list)
For instance, Landbot's builder offers a variety of features to support lead qualification in formats ranging from the most basic to the most complex. Unique lead variables can be set, conditions can be set using a conditional logic block, data formats can be changed, formulas can be used to perform complex calculations, and more.
How to Implement a B2B Chatbot Strategy
What are some realistic ways to incorporate chatbots into your plan?
Your chatbot for B2B can be used in customer-facing scenarios at all points in the conversion funnel.
As you can see, a chatbot for B2B is a broad concept with a variety of uses that can help your company grow and project a positive image.
Whether you decide to use your bot internally, for marketing, or to offer support, you will probably benefit from it.
Why not attempt creating your first bot right now?