How your conversational marketing tools can reflect your brand voice

Over the past few years, marketers have become obsessed with collecting all kinds of lead data. It's all been about gathering as much information about your customers or potential customers as possible, without always taking into account the fact that there's a living breathing human being at the other end. However, it seems as if conversational marketing tools are set to transform the status quo.

What is conversational marketing?

Put yourself in the position of the lead within the marketing process, typing your details into a form for the thousandth time (potentially a slight exaggeration...) This is where conversational marketing can come in to save you time, effort and patience. The idea is to replace these static forms and interruptive follow up calls with real time conversations in an on-site messaging app, which allows you to engage with you brands at a time and in a way which is most convenient for you. 

As the first and only Drift partner in the UK, we know a few things about the process. Drift is the leading conversational marketing platform that sits on your website and turns traffic into qualified leads around the clock. We use Drift as an agency and have also introduced it across several clients, some of whom have seen some pretty amazing results.

How we use Drift as a conversational marketing platform

In short, Drift allows our team to speak with visitors to the Six & Flow website through an integrated messaging app, conversing with them in a way which suits them. Even better, Drift keeps on working even when no team member is available, running an automated and interactive script which can answer common queries, direct people to helpful web content and gather their contact details for a follow-up call.

I may be biased as a designer, but in my opinion the most important part of creating a conversational marketing stack is adding character and personality to the voice or script of the bot itself. You also want to create a visual identity that fits with your brand and feels familiar to your customer. 

Ideally, your conversational marketing tools should match the UI elements, colours, text and any animations across the rest of the site. This keeps the whole process feeling cohesive to the user. You want it to feel like a natural extension of your brand, not an incongruous add on.

Here's one easy way of personalising your conversation marketing tool - use photographs of your team as profile pictures. Drift allows your sales team to converse directly with people (as well as filling in for you when you're offline) so let your website visitors know what they look like. Try out a few different shots and see which photos people generally want to engage with. This can cause a surprising rise in the number of interactions you have with potential leads, and is also a great way to select headshots for your fledgling acting career.

Scripting for conversational marketing tools

We also want our conversational marketing script to sound natural, not like you're talking to fax machine. Sometimes you come across a ChatBot and it just doesn't match the rest of the brand's overall feel. 

At the same time, focus on reducing the need for typing in order to offer a faster and more convenient experience. To do this, you'll want to use buttons and carousels which offer a choice between certain predefined options. For example, a range of dates can be offered when setting meetings with new leads.

Take out the need to type, and you're more likely to keep the user interacting with you. Pre-defined options also reduce the risk of things getting lost in translation between a website visitor and your ChatBot. 

Of course, your ChatBot isn't going to be the only conversational marketing tool you'll use in your marketing process. With apps like Facebook messenger though, you won't really be able to change many of the UI elements. Profile picture, name and status are all you have to work with. Instead, focus on how you can add personality to your speech through the integrations on offer, such as Giphy and one click location confirmations. You can even use gifs as a sort of visual reward when key actions are completed.

Images, videos, gifs and even emojis can all be used to establish your brand voice. Here at Six and Flow, we're big fans of using all of these because let's be honest, they just make interactions more fun. Be careful though - you probably don't want to be sending cat gifs to someone trying to make a complaint.

Need some help with your conversational marketing strategy?

As with any tool you add to your business, make sure to test, analyse and adjust your conversational marketing tools as much as you can. This technology is continuously improving, so make sure that whatever platform you use, it doesn't feel outdated, slow or clunky for the user.

If you're looking to work with a UK Drift partner, look no further. No really, it's just us at the moment. We love being at the forefront of the conversational marketing trend, and we'd love for you to join us. Get in touch!