Conversational marketing is here to stay. We’re rapidly shifting towards an environment where, almost regardless of industry, customers value one on one conversations far more than mass messages. It’s why Facebook reports that interactions through its Messenger platform have 30% higher ROI than retargeting ads.
The success of the strategy is well-established at this point. Chatbots have unlocked a scalability that was previously impossible to reach. But how can you get there now? That question tends to be more difficult to answer. You need a plan, the resources to make it happen – but above all, you need the right team.
Conversational marketing cannot be an isolated effort. Instead, it requires integrations with multiple departments and functional areas. Consider this your guide to building the dream team you need to leverage this strategy to its fullest power.
Marketing Operations
Conversational marketing depends in large part on data. You have to make sure that every touch point you have with your audience is plausibly personal, which can only be possible if you have the right data about each customer and prospect to feed into your messaging.
Having marketing operations in your room allows you to build and leverage that data. It ties in your marketing automation platform to ensure that anything from chatbots to personalized email messages can be enhanced by previously gathered interactive and demographic information you have about each prospect. That focus on logistics is necessary to build a realistic and sustainable campaign.
Sales Operations
The counterpart to marketing operations is just as important as a part of the conversation. Your sales operations team likely has access to data further down the funnel, which is a crucial component. But it doesn’t end there. Your sales operations staff can also help your efforts in other ways.
For instance, it involves your sales force directly. Plausibly personal communication is only effective when followed up by personal conversations and sales pitches that are consistent with the same message. That connection can be made through the sales operations team.
In addition, this function can also bring in reporting capabilities from the backend. It allows you to learn about customer conversion and yield rates for prospects approached through conversational marketing. Through these reports, you can evaluate and significantly improve your efforts over time.
Copywriting
Succeeding in conversational marketing is perhaps impossible without a great copywriter on board. The personalized communication actually has to sound as such, and each word matters in convincing the customer that you are building a long-term relationship with them.
Ideally, a conversion-focused copywriter should own the bot creation process. They should be able to bring consistency in building a brand voice that your prospects begin to expect and appreciate. Their ultimate goal is to connect people (your sales staff) with people (your prospects). That takes significant skill in writing, which is why your copywriter should be in the process from the very beginning.
Demand Generation
Your demand generation team naturally plays a major role in this type of campaign. It’s responsible for generating leads and sales-qualified prospects; any conversational marketing campaign has to be directly tied to that effort, in more ways than one.
By getting at least one member of the demand generation team in the room, you can connect individual marketing campaigns already running or planned for the future to the program. That might mean driving ads towards the bots, or using bots to nurture and convert leads. This is the voice you need for the practical applications of the technology.
Sales Enablement
Sales enablement is all about helping your sales team become more effective. That has a natural space in the generation of conversational marketing campaigns; after all, these campaigns tend to be designed specifically to support and leverage the sales staff.
A sales enablement expert in the room will ensure that your individual sales agents have a voice in the process. They will focus in one any initiatives that help your sales team become more successful, in more ways than one. That voice will play a major role in integrating your demand and customer generation efforts.
The VP of Sales
Especially businesses in industries with long sales cycles know the importance of a close relationship between business development representatives (BDRs) and account executives (AE). The transition here has to be seamless, ensuring that a new customer feels like the active account management is a natural transition from the sales process.
That can only be possible with the VP of sales in the room. As the person with strategic oversight abilities, they can help the BDR to AE adoption process become as seamless as possible. This is a major bridge opportunity for conversational marketing; with a senior leader in the room, you can ensure that this bridge becomes a reality.
What Happens When These Factions Get Into a Room?
Ultimately, conversational marketing has to be a comprehensive culture change. It is more than just a marketing or promotional tactic; it’s a culture change that will require a fundamental transition in natural business processes for a variety of departments. Everyone needs to be on the same page and buy into the process to give it any chance of success.
That’s what makes the six above people and expertise areas so crucial to be in on the process from the beginning. Together, they can begin to discuss the strategy, all the way to the execution. They constitute your dream team in implementing conversational marketing throughout your organization.
Ultimately, more people throughout your firm will be working on this process. They will become involved in various stages throughout the strategy and implementation. The above six, though, are the main stakeholders that can not only provide valuable insight but also become champions of the concept throughout their department and the entire organization.
Conversational marketing has the potential to revolutionize the sales process. Its abilities to engage your audience on a personal level can be invaluable, especially as it supplements and optimizes the efforts of your sales team. This is your dream team to get it right. Are you ready to get started in making it happen?