Conversational Marketing opens the door for sales teams to engage and convert their most important website visitors. It gives sales reps more at-bats and more chances to hit (and exceed) their numbers. It’s a new way of selling, which is exciting, but it’s also hard to know where to begin. How do you effectively use this channel to engage prospective buyers, and how do you ramp up your website conversions quickly? 

We sat down with Haley Romstad, Sales Development Rep at ThoughtSpot and Qualified power-user to hear her best practices for effectively using Conversational Marketing to connect with buyers and move them through the sales cycle.

Top 10 Conversational Marketing best practices

1. Give your visitor a moment to settle in before pouncing.

Give the visitor a moment to get oriented with your website before introducing yourself. Qualified's LiveView feature shows you exactly how the visitor is browsing your site, from where they are on the page to the words they’re highlighting. Observe how they’re consuming your content and introduce yourself at exactly the right moment. Don’t aggressively pounce and scare them away.

2. Start with a friendly greeting.

Once the visitor is oriented with your site, kindly introduce yourself. Let the visitor know you’re here to help and answer any questions they may have.

3. Show them you're real.

Make it known that you’re a real person since some visitors may dismiss automated bots. For instance, you may say:
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"Hello there! My name is Haley (real person, not a chat bot). Let me know if you need any help, if there’s anything in particular you are curious about, or would like to see a product demo!"

4. Prioritize serious buyers.

If there's a large volume of qualified visitors on your site, look for additional signals of strong buying intent. For instance, send your account-based marketing “diamond accounts” to the front of the line. You may also want to prioritize visitors who are on your pricing page, demo page, or someone who directly searched for your company name in Google.

5. Personalize your talk track.

Qualified gives you a 360-degree view of your website visitors. Pay attention to all of the data that you have at your fingertips, including Pardot prospect data, Salesforce data, Clearbit data, referral campaign, browsing history, and time spent on your site, and tailor your conversation accordingly. Remember: personalization is more than just using their first name, it’s speaking their language and delivering valuable content.

6. Suggest relevant content.

As the visitor explores your website, suggest relevant articles or webpages that they may find valuable. This will pique their interest and give them a friendly reminder that you’re here to help, positioning you as a trusted advisor.

7. Use shortcuts.

Make custom shortcuts for every landing page as well as shortcuts for sharing your popular piece of content. This will help you avoid re-typing the same message and it will save you a ton of time. Qualified lets you create team-level shortcuts as well as individual user shortcuts.

8. Work in shifts.

Set a regular schedule for when you and your fellow sales development reps are online. If you’re expected to be online everyday from 8 a.m. - 12 p.m., you will be more accountable and get into a nice rhythm for using the platform.‍‍

9. Leverage bots.

It’s smart to connect your most qualified visitors with real sales representatives, but you can also use Bots to help you qualify visitors, capture leads, book meetings, and scale your program. 

10. Put in the work.

Actively work Conversational Marketing as a lead channel. If you proactively engage visitors using the techniques outlined above, you will see a healthy conversion rate. Don’t be afraid to test your timing, tone, and strategy to see what generates the best engagement.

Want to hear more? Here are some highlights from our conversation with Haley. ‍‍

As a Sales Development Rep, your goal is to create sales qualified leads and book meetings for your Account Executives. How is Conversational Marketing helping you achieve this goal? 

HR: I want to get a meeting as fast as I can. And I want it in the easiest way that I can. And the way that you do that is by talking with the warmest leads. What's been awesome about Qualified is not only do we have these MQLs coming in, but it's an opportunity generate more warm leads that you can immediately flip website into a demo in real time.

You recommend doing a brief introduction when a qualified visitor is on your site, and then checking in on them throughout their journey. Why do you take this approach? 

HR: It's a lot like going shopping. When you walk in a store, you’re always greeted with “Welcome! Is there anything in particular you're looking for?” 

You’re going to say “no”, but in my mind I'm thinking “I want a black dress then I'm gonna wear here.” But I'm going to immediately shut down the sales reps because I want to try and find it on my own. Now after I’ve looked and I can't find it, and they come to me again, I'm way more inclined to go “Yes, can you help me find X, Y, Z.” And only if I'm really desperate will I seek them out. Otherwise I’ll just move on to the next store. 

I think it's really similar with coming to your website and a prospect is looking at for something and reminding them that you can actually take you them where they need to go pretty easily.

You like to test out different approaches to boost engagement. Can you tell us more about that? 

HR: I test out things all the time because I'm constantly thinking “How can I get more people to respond to me?” Because if I can get these people to respond it's a lot more likely that I am going to book a meeting. 

I've done it a couple of ways where I've pinged them twice saying “Hey, welcome to our website, my names Haley. I'm a real person (not a chat bot)." Just because people are so accustomed to it being automated on the other end and saying “If you have a questions, if you want any information on something particular let me know I’ll help you out.” Sometimes I’ll go straight into “If you want to see a demo, I'm happy to help you out!” 

And then I've also tried to take a more casual approach like just saying “Hey my name's Haley. I like to say the real person thing. Because I think that's important. And then just like let me know if you have any questions.” 

Then if somebody is poking around, they didn't get back to me, and they're just still maneuvering through the website, I'll send them another message saying “Is there anything in particular you're looking for?” And if somebody returns I'll say “I noticed you've been here before. Was there something that was prompting you to come back? Can I help you with anything?”

To learn more about ThoughtSpot’s Conversational Marketing strategy, read their case study.