Although messaging software has played a role in the digital landscape since the 1990s, it is only recently that the integration of messaging apps with online chat has transformed this landscape to become an emerging force in digital marketing. While it may be premature to pronounce lead form marketing as a thing of the past, businesses today are questioning a reliance on content-based, algorithmic-driven form generation in favor of storytelling and branding principles tracing back to the roots of marketing. These principles are now being recast through messaging and chat. Businesses need to explore these principles in terms of adopting a new marketing strategy to attract and nurture leads. Here are four reasons why you should consider more forms of communication as legitimate lead channels:
Personal Interaction via Social Media
The influence of social media on the reception and reaction of consumers can be gaged by scrutiny of the leading platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Social media has proved itself as a premium mode of personal interaction which is easy to navigate, and free from some of the more formal structures inherent in lead form marketing, has much appeal.
Real-Time Relationships
Rather than asking a website visitor to tell you all about themselves through a barrage of forms, why not just welcome them through the use of an immediate offer to chat with a real person in real time. And if a real person in your business plan is not practicable, a ‘chatbot’ programmed with a script to elicit consumer data in a friendly, personal and relaxed manner is a viable alternative.
Easy Buying Process
If your site has turned a digital sales lead into a potential sale through a well thought-out and attractive product presentation, why inhibit the sale through a lengthy and hard to navigate sales process? With a messaging app that connects the potential buyer to a sales rep, the sale has been transformed from the impersonal to the personal. Getting rid of multiple steps of interaction (by typed input), consider a real person in real time as a much better alternative.
Repeat Customers
If you have taken a visitor to your site and turned them into a customer in real time, through the utilisation of messaging apps and online chat, you have not only made a sale that impacts your bottom line, you have, potentially, established a long-term relationship with a repeat customer. Enabling a simple and easy buying experience in the spirit of modern social media, is likely to result in more of your customers sharing their positive buying experience with their family and friends. Word of mouth is still a very powerful tool in today’s social media space.