3 ways to use live chat messaging as your best marketing tool

You’re sitting in front of your computer screen shopping for essential online business tools for your site. 

Your eyes start to get weary as you scroll through pages and pages of pricing plans, reviews, features, and benefits. 

Not to mention, you’ve reached a new level of confusion.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just talk to someone who could answer your questions on the spot?

Well, good news -- you can.

Enter… live chat messenger. It’s a quick and easy way to connect with someone who can help in real-time.

Let’s reflect and turn the tables back onto your own business. How easy or difficult is your audience’s shopping experience?

If you want to avoid turning your site into a tedious customer experience, live chat marketing is here to save the day -- and your business.

Today, we share with you the benefits of using live chat marketing and how to leverage it to sell more of your online business ideas .

But first, let’s quickly run through setting up your live chat messenger. 

How to set up your live chat tool

To set up your live chat tool using an all-in-one platform like Podia, simply head over to the “messaging” tab in the top menu bar. 

Next, click on the purple “start a conversation” button to start a conversation. Another option is to hit the pencil icon on the left-hand side of your conversation list and search for the customer you want to contact, which you can do by entering their name or email.

From there, click on the customer name and -- voila -- start chatting.

Once you have your messenger tool open for your selected customer, you simply type into the chat box next to the send button -- an “up” arrow symbol. Once you’ve typed what you want to say, click on the “send” button to submit your message, which will get delivered immediately.

If you already have an active conversation opened, you can continue the chat by clicking on the name in your conversation list.

You can also update your status notification to “online,” “automatic,” “away,” or “disabled,” so visitors can immediately see your availability in their chatbox.  

Basically, setting up your live chat is easy, especially if you use an all-in-one platform. Once you log in, the logistics are done-for-you.

If you’re interested in seeing for yourself how seamless the setup can be, give it a test drive using this 2-week free trial . With a full support team, you won’t be disappointed.

Now that you have the logistics in place, let’s chat about why you should use messenger marketing.

Why should I use live chat as a marketing tool?

You should use live chat messaging because it’s a powerful marketing tool in today’s online business environment. It’s also the leading preferred channel over any other contact channel. 

An impressive 46% of online customers prefer live chat over email (29%) and social media (16%).

When it comes to marketing your business, live chat helps to nurture your visitors through the stages of their buyer’s journey. 

(If you’re unfamiliar, a buyer’s journey is the process your customers go through, from awareness to consideration to decision, while making a purchase). 

In fact, a Nielsen study of Facebook messenger revealed that 35% of customers use messaging to ask a business a question -- in the consideration phase -- and 33% use it to make a purchase.

This means there’s a great opportunity to use messaging as a marketing tool to sell your profitable digital products .

Take OutSystems , a global enterprise software company, for example.

By using a live chat messenger to deliver the right resources to their visitors at the right time, OutSystems was able to boost their engagement by 50% in three weeks . What’s more, is that they also moved 16% more visitors through their buyer journey within that same time span.

Not bad for activating a simple tool on your site, right?

Even if your visitors don’t convert the first time they visit your site, if they use your live chat tool, they’ll likely come back. Most of them, anyway. 63% of consumers who use your site’s live chat are likely to return to your site.

In sum:

These days, live chat messaging is becoming the preferred way to communicate with businesses. It’s an ideal time to leverage the booming popularity of the channel and incorporate it into your marketing efforts. 

Wondering how to best leverage and incorporate messenger into your marketing? Then wonder no more.

3 effective ways to use live chat marketing

#1. Use live chat to answer visitor questions

Perhaps the most obvious, the first way we recommend using live chat to market your products is to answer any questions from your visitors as they consider products and solutions to their problem (a.k.a. the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey).

Take, for example, the bookkeeping software company, Intuit QuickBooks , which uses live chat to connect with visitors perusing their site. They prompt the conversation by asking “got questions?” in their chatbox tool. 

You can take it a step further and personalize your end, just like Mavenlink does, by providing their active team member names in their live chat tool. 

In both cases, anyone who’s hunting for a solution can easily reach out to a team member for clarification on any of their products. 

What this does is reduce friction as prospective clients work through their buying decision. For instance, by being readily available to help, you can keep your visitors from getting lost, confused, or frustrated as they navigate your site’s content. 

Which also helps provide a positive user experience -- something that’s hugely important. So much so that 88% of online shoppers won’t revisit your site after a poor user experience.  

So, if your product is right for them, the answers you provide in your live chatbox nudge your visitors from the “consideration” to the “decision” stage.

Even just one reply can boost your sales -- by a lot. If you reply once, your visitors are 50% more likely to convert. Two responses increase that likelihood by 100%.

When answering prospective client inquiries, we recommend getting back to them in a timely manner -- as in, as soon as possible. 

Why? Your sales depend on it. 

A whopping 78% of customers purchase from the brand that responds to their inquiry first.

The main takeaway is:

Use live chat to support your prospective clients through their buying process by being readily available to answer their inquiries.

While this first tactic is more passive, our next tip is a proactive way to nudge your prospective clients through their buyer’s journey.

#2. Use live chat to show off your expertise proactively

Another effective way to use messenger marketing is to actively send your visitors chatbox messages with helpful resources that show off your talent and expertise.  

If you offer helpful resources, be sure it’s educational. Consumers are 131% more likely to buy from you immediately after consuming educational content.  

We also recommend offering your resources for free. The reason is giving away free content allows your visitors to familiarize themselves with your brand easily, entices them to come back, and increases both sales and order values. 

If you need more convincing, take a cue from the food industry. Giving away free samples in a restaurant increases an order purchase by $10 and increases the likelihood of repurchasing in the future by 92%.

A great way to show off your wealth of knowledge is to link to relevant blog articles in your live chats, which increases the likelihood of making the sale. In fact, 61% of online consumers make a purchase after reading recommendations on a blog.

You can also match live chat prompts with specific page content, like patient advocacy firm, WEGO Health , does. When a visitor lands on their “case studies” page, a chatbox prompt asks if they’d like to receive a case study that demonstrates their expertise in action.

Take it a step further and use personalization in these chats, too. 

For example, follow in the footsteps of the digital ad agency, KlientBoost , which proactively offers in their live chat tool an overview of how they can boost their visitor’s PPC and paid social performance. 

Visitors who agree to take KlientBoost up on their offer receive a free audit that showcases the ad agency’s ability to lift their customer’s digital ad performance. The report is personalized and tailored to the visitor’s business. 

On the topic of personalization, our final messenger marketing tip today is to do just that.

#3. Use live chat to personalize your user experience

Our final tip today is to use your messenger tool to personalize each user experience.

To do this, use your live chat tool to collect customer insights, feedback, and requests. Engage in conversations that help you learn more about your audience’s challenges and what they’re seeking. 

Then, use that gathered data to personalize your user experience. 

Why personalize? Because personalization goes a long way. 

In fact, 44% of consumers claim they’ll purchase again from a brand after a personalized shopping experience. So, the pursuit is worthwhile if you want to keep your customers coming back for repeat purchases.

On the other hand, if you don’t personalize your visitors’ chat experience, they’ll probably get annoyed. 29% of consumers get frustrated by scripted and impersonal responses.

The moral here is to not use canned messages that come off like an automated robot. 

Instead, try to tailor your chat to your visitor’s individual situation. 

You can do so by using the data you’ve collected on your customers to customize your conversations with them. 

This can be as straightforward as addressing your contact’s first name in your chat or as in-depth as looking into their chat history and acknowledging their previous points of interest.

You can also use your collected data to make personalized product recommendations in your messenger, just like Zappos does.  

As soon as you land on Zappos’s homepage, a chatbox prompts you to sign in to receive personalized product recommendations. 

This tactic, of course, carries over to digital products, too. 

For example, let’s say you have a visitor who’s returning to your site after purchasing one of your best selling digital products . You can take that information and recommend another relevant product that complements the topic they consumed. 

By personalizing your product recommendation, your visitor is more likely to purchase. In fact, a staggering 75% of consumers are more likely to purchase when they’re offered tailored product recommendations.

So, if you’re a creator like entrepreneur Justin Lee , who has multiple digital products for sale, like his Finding Purpose Journal and Finding Purpose Course, you can use your live chat tool to reference previously purchased items and recommend relevant ones to the same customer.

Someone who’s interested in uncovering their business purpose and putting it into words can certainly benefit from both of Justin’s products, but will likely only start with one. 

Once they’ve had time to dig into the first, recommending the second, related product over live chat may just be the nudge they need to go from a one-time customer to a repeat purchaser.

In a nutshell, use your live chat tool to collect data from your visitors, which you can use to create a personalized user experience and, ultimately, increase sales.

Liven up your marketing and lead generation with live chats

The last thing you want is for your user experience to be a drag that causes friction in your visitors’ buying journey as they shop on your site. 

Live chat and messenger marketing can go a long way toward reducing, if not outright eliminating, that friction.

Let’s recap for you:

• Setting up your live chat tool is a cinch with an all-in-one platform, where the heavy lifting is done-for-you. All you need to do is open your chatboxes and engage with your visitors. 

• You should use live chat as a marketing tool because it’s today’s preferred contact channel among consumers, and it boosts both your site’s engagement and sales.

• An effective way to use live chat in your marketing is to simply use it as a support tool to answer any questions your prospective clients may have as they explore your site and consider their solutions.

• You can also use messenger marketing to send helpful resources to your visitors that showcase your expertise. 

• Finally, using live chat to personalize your user experience is a powerful way to convert your visitors and turn them into loyal customers who repeat purchases.

So, bottom line? The gift of gab isn’t one to overlook, and with Podia, it’s one at your fingertips -- both figuratively and literally.