Marketing and Sales – successful together online with the Chatbot

Marketing and sales are increasingly merging, because in marketing it has long since ceased to be sufficient to invest in classic advertising formats, and sales also faces challenges when cold calling no longer works. New, digital ways of marketing are needed that reach potential customers where they gather information about products or services.

Marketing and sales are increasingly merging, because in marketing it has long since ceased to be sufficient to invest in classic advertising formats

Sales and Marketing today

Sales are continually shifting away from local points of sale and towards online shopping. Now that sales are being handled online, the tasks and roles of sales are naturally changing as well.

But how do customers make their purchasing decisions today? And above all, at what point in their customer journey do they do so? What are the arguments that convince them? Customers must be contacted, influenced, and convinced at the point where they make their purchases - just like in the past, but online and digitally. This is clearly a new challenge for sales and, above all, for marketing.

Potential customers must be «caught» where they prefer to be today when searching for suitable products and services: online. It's a known fact that prospective customers do their research online today and often prefer to complete their purchase online conveniently from home. So this is where we need to start.

On the one hand, marketing can influence potential buyers through proven online measures and draw attention to products and services (e.g. through ads, email marketing, etc.) and on the other hand also offline through advertisements, mailings, handouts, etc.. All these measures together are intended to act as «customer openers», so to speak, so that potential interested parties become aware of a product, a service or even a download offer and «bite».

Potential customers must be «caught» where they prefer to be today when searching for suitable products and services: online.

But how is it possible to competently welcome and look after customers who are on the Internet around the clock, searching for information and making their purchases, so that they don't leave your site again without having done anything? This is where a digital salesperson on duty 24/7h is an ideal option. 

Optimal online support for marketing and sales: the Digital Salesperson

We use the term Digital Salesperson to refer to a chatbot, i.e., an automated, virtual form of a traditional salesperson who actively engages in dialog with customers. Chatbots greet website visitors as avatars directly on the page relevant to the sale of the product or service and provide advice and answer questions in the chat window. Chatbots are particularly suitable for answering frequently occurring standard questions and for providing advice on specific topics. They have the advantage that they can welcome prospects to the website around the clock and convince them of products or services offered and the like. In the long term, Digital Salespersons are by no means intended to replace sales or marketing staff, but rather to make their work easier.

Successful marketing today consists of positively influencing customers on their customer journey in close cooperation with sales and also generating leads online. In the case of these leads, the customer should ideally already have been processed to such an extent that he or she is already convinced of the product or service when the salesperson takes over the lead. In this way, marketing actively contributes to the sales success of the company. This is not just about sales in the classic sense, but can also involve, for example, promoting downloads of a company's own app, promoting newsletter sign-ups, or even ticket purchases for an event.

Der Chatbot ist ideal dazu geeignet, Marketing und Vertrieb bei ihrem gemeinsamen Ziel optimal zu ergänzen und im 1:1 Dialog mit den Kunden rund um die Uhr aktives Marketing auf Websites oder Facebook Seiten zu betreiben und Leads zu generieren.