How live chat can enhance your marketing campaigns?

Live chat is often touted as a useful lead qualification tool. And it’s true that adding a live chat widget can help you capture more leads. After 5 minutes, the odds of qualifying a lead drop by 80%. Live chat offers the most instantaneous channel for capturing and qualifying leads.

But that’s not all.

Not only does it enable you to capture lead details at the source, but live chat also enables you to qualify visitor requirements in real time. And by visiting your website or social media, they’ve already made the first move. That makes live chat less invasive than a phone call, email or text.

Marketing is all about pushing people to interact with your brand – be it for their first introduction or as a loyal return customer.

Marketing is designed to drive leads. But there’s one neglected channel you may be missing. Discover the power of live chat to optimize your marketing campaign.

What is live chat?

People usually associate live chat with reactive marketing. That is, live chat is often assumed to only be useful in supporting existing customers and responding to leads when they reach out. 

But live chat can be used for so much more – including enhancing your marketing campaigns.

What do we mean by marketing campaigns?

In this article, we’ll explore how to use your live chat to support your marketing campaigns, how live chat helps take leads through your sales funnel, and ultimately, how to use live chat to push leads to take the final step.

1. Target visitors with custom messages

In marketing, data is one of the most powerful resources at your disposal. 

Using the ChatSupport Dashboard, you can identify a lot about your live chat visitors, including

• Where they’re based (geographically)
• If they’ve visited your site before
• Which pages they’re browsing on your website

With this information, you can create custom messages to personalize your marketing and directly engage with visitors. 

So how exactly do you do this?

Let’s use an example.

Say you’re an online shoe store. You’re looking to launch a marketing campaign to promote a new running shoe. You want to let your website visitors know the latest model has dropped, but you know some visitors simply won’t be interested.

For instance, someone browsing smart dress shoes probably isn’t also looking for a new pair of trainers. By targeting visitors on specific landing pages, you can build a cohesive UX and increase the chance of conversion dramatically.

Of course, this means you need to ensure you have a clear site architecture. That means creating product/service-specific landing pages. With that, you can assume anyone on the “Running shoes” page is actively looking for running shoes. 

In the ChatSupport dashboard, use the Filter current page URL function to trigger a custom chat campaign message when somebody lands on your intended page.

2. Guide leads through your sales funnel

It’s no secret that you need marketing for every touchpoint in the customer journey. But what are the key stages in the user journey, and what content do you need for each stage?

• Awareness – This is the first stage of the customer journey, and usually starts with a user realizing they have a problem or need. During this stage, they usually search online to see if anyone has a solution to this problem. These searches can include Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and social media. 
• Consideration – This is where a lead understands they have an issue and is actively looking for different solutions. They may be looking at a range of options, including your own product or brand. At this stage, most leads will peruse your website, social media, and review websites.
• Engagement – At this stage, your lead reaches out to you (or vice-versa) and expresses their intent to purchase your product. You’re not finished yet though. You still need to nurture this lead and show them why they should choose you over anyone else. They might use email, social media direct channels, or your website for this stage.
• Conversion – This is where you push your lead to take the final action, usually making the purchase. For this, they will use your website, call, or email.

From bringing people to your website to helping them find the service or product they need, each stage of your marketing should bring people further down your sales funnel.

But not every lead will convert on the spot. Some leads, particularly those considering high-value purchases, require repeated engagements.

Thankfully, you’re not just limited to one channel. Using live chat, you can combine your live chat messaging with an email drip campaign to maximize visibility and create a more coherent customer journey. 

3. Engage new visitors before they leave

The biggest benefit of live chat to customers is the immediacy it provides. Imagine a visitor is browsing your website looking for a product, but they’re not sure how the service works, or if it’s even what they need. Most people in that situation will jump off to conduct some additional research. That means they might come back to your website, or they might not.

When you run a marketing campaign, you expect an influx of new visitors. Many of these will come to your website with only a vague idea of what you do. If those visitors don’t see how your product or service will benefit them, they won’t stick around.

But with a knowledgeable assistant on hand to explain the product and its applications, visitors are much more likely to continue with the purchase. And for those leads reticent about committing, your chat agents can provide special offers at key touchpoints.

You need to be there for new visitors. After all, you’ve invested in a marketing campaign designed to bring people to your website. With real-time support, you can increase your CTR (Click Through Rate), CTOR (Click Through Optimisation Rate), and conversion rate. 

4. Reward return customers

New customers are essential to your business. But bringing in new customers is only part of your marketing strategy. You also want to continue to engage return customers. After all, returning customers spend 67% more than new customers.

They also know and trust your brand. But more importantly, they come with additional data to help you retarget and personalize your messaging. That enables you to offer recommendations based on their purchase history.

With live chat, you can run advocacy programs and reward them for their loyalty. That helps keep your customer acquisition costs (CAC) low, extend the customer lifetime value (CLV) and reduce churn.

How and when you choose to retarget customers will depend on your business model. Some big purchase items (like furniture, cars, or property) will see customers return infrequently. You’ll need to utilize a range of channels to engage these customers based on the expected lifecycle of the product. By directing them to your website, you can then engage them in real-time, utilizing the knowledge gained from their previous purchases to offer a personalized service. These interactions are largely unscalable but as Belinda Weaver at Copywriter Matters says, “In our modern world of streamlining, outsourcing and automation, taking the time to have an unscalable conversation like a personal message, a handwritten note or a detailed response in a DM creates a meaningful moment.”

For high-frequency low-value purchases, loyalty cards help gamify the purchase process and encourage repeat purchases. Using your live chat, you can remind return customers how close they are to the reward and even offer additional deals to incentivize them to purchase again.

5. Review, adjust, analyze

Every marketing campaign is a lesson for the next campaign. Whether you’re pushing for more website visitors, more leads, or increased conversions, your marketing is a process of continual refinement.

To refine your campaigns, follow the “Three A” model:

1. Analyse – Study the data behind your campaign. What were your goals? Did you achieve them? Don’t wait until the end of your campaign – set check-in points through to assess how 
2. Adjust – Now you have the insights, you can implement the changes for the next campaign. Set new goals based on the data from this campaign and set timeframes in which to achieve these goals.
3. Act – Now you can roll out your new campaign using the learnings from your previous campaigns.

Start maximizing your marketing spend

Your marketing investment should drive leads to your company. But to maximize those leads, you need to be there to capture and qualify them.

Live chat gives you greater control over your marketing campaigns, enabling you to identify, engage and nurture the leads created by your campaign. Why not try it for yourself and find out what it could do for your marketing?

Try ChatSupport with your next marketing campaign