Conversational Marketing is a new way of selling. It transforms your website into a platform for real-time, personalized sales conversations with your most qualified buyers. B2B companies around the world are going beyond the traditional website form and using this new technique to engage more buyers in a sales cycle and grow pipeline. 

Like anything new, there’s a learning curve. There are new terms and phrases to familiarize yourself with. Here’s a breakdown of all the Conversational Marketing terms you need to know. 

Conversational Marketing dictionary

Account-based Marketing (ABM) - Account-Based Marketing, often known as ABM, allows companies to target marketing efforts to certain, target accounts. A target account is a defined set of accounts that reflect your ideal customer profile (annual revenue band, industry, vertical size, employee count, purchasing power, etc.) Account-Based Marketing is a divergence from creating and launching generic marketing campaigns that serve the masses.

Business Development Rep (BDR) - A business development representative (BDR, for short) is responsible for generating new business opportunities. BDRs are responsible for qualifying leads and prospecting through existing business accounts to engage with prospective buyers.

Chatbot - A chatbot automatically greets and engages visitors on your behalf. This allows you to connect with visitors 24/7, automatically qualify inbound leads, effortlessly book meetings for sales, and route important conversations to the right people.

Conversational Marketing -  Conversational Marketing is designed to help you generate more pipeline from your website. It helps sales teams instantly get in touch with high-intent website visitors. Instead of asking buyers to fill out forms, you can use live chat or chatbots to meet with qualified buyers instantly.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software - Broadly, CRM is any practice, technology, or strategy designed to help businesses improve their customer relationships. In today’s marketplace, CRM most often refers to the specific tools, usually a web application or software, that allow organizations to focus their attention on individual customers and associates—be they buyers, suppliers, service users, or anyone else the organization does business with. Salesforce has been the undisputed leader in the CRM space for decades.

Experiences - An experience is what your visitors see on your site when Qualified.com appears and as they continue to interact with your Qualified.com application. An experience can be made up of multiple actions, led by a live sales rep or a chatbot (or both). Actions include greetings, qualification questions, email capture, meeting booking, or pushing data to Salesforce.

Firmographic Data - Firmographic Data is a set of characteristics that allows you to group companies  into different segments. Firmographic data includes information such as company industry and sub-industry, company size, location, age of the organization, size of the department, and revenue numbers. You can connect with ABM and Data Enrichment tools to reveal firmographic data when a visitor arrives on your site.

Live Chat - Live chat allows you to have real-time conversations via a messaging app. In the case of Conversational Marketing, live chat happens directly on your website between a sales rep and a site visitor.

Marketing Funnel - A marketing funnel is a model of your customer’s journey with you. Along the way, Website Visitors will become Leads, which can become Opportunities and then Customers. At each stage of the marketing funnel, you’ll offer different types of communication and information.

Qualified Website Visitor - A Qualified Website Visitor is someone who you’ve deemed to be a good potential prospect based on custom criteria that you set for your business. For example, a Qualified Website Visitor may be from a company of a certain size, from a company of a certain industry, has a high lead score, or, is part of an ABM target account. Typically you will fast-track qualified website visitors to custom experiences designed for conversion.

Sales Development Rep (SDR) - Sales Development Reps (SDRs) are responsible for prioritizing leads, managing the CRM, and moving prospects down the pipeline.

Salesforce CRM - Salesforce CRM is the world’s #1 CRM, offering a variety of systems to help businesses succeed. Their products include Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Analytics Cloud, Data Cloud, Community Cloud, App Cloud, and IoT. The Salesforce CRM serves more than 150,000 customers.

Salesforce Pardot - Pardot is Salesforce’s answer to B2B marketing automation. It helps marketers and sales teams engage buyers, close deals, and grow relationships.

Salesforce Prospect - A Salesforce Prospect is an anonymous visitor that has taken an action (such as visiting a landing page, clicking a link, or submitted a form), provided their email address, and is now identified in your marketing automation system. 

Salesforce Lead - A lead is someone who is interested in your products and services. They fit the criteria of someone who is likely to become a customer and your sales rep can work on converting these leads into a real sales opportunity.

Salesforce Contact - A Salesforce Contact is anyone you do business with saved in Salesforce. You can keep a database of your Contacts and include information about their accounts, behavior, and company.

Salesforce Account - A Salesforce Account is a business or organization within your CRM. A Salesforce Account will show you key stakeholders, past contacts, and other information that will help you personalize your sales strategy. There are two types of accounts. Business accounts store information about companies. Person accounts store information about individual people.

Salesforce Opportunity - A Salesforce Opportunity is a deal that’s in progress. Opportunity records track details about deals, including which accounts they’re for, who the players are, and the amount of potential sales. If your organization uses leads, an opportunity is created when a lead is converted. Opportunities can also be created directly for accounts you’re working. 

Target Accounts - Target Accounts are those that you’ve clearly defined as important in your ABM campaigns. Once you’ve defined your Target Accounts, you can create personalized campaigns that are more likely to convert.

Website Conversion - A website conversion happens when a website visitor takes an action and provides a unique identifier, such as an email address. Once this visitor converts via this action, they become a lead to market and sell to.

Wrap up

In the new world of Conversational Marketing, you want to be able to speak the language like a pro! This list of terms you need to know should help when you’re building a new program or looking to improve the one you have. 

If you’re a B2B company that wants to improve your sales strategy, it’s time to try Conversational Marketing. Watch our 90 second demo video see how you can do this with Qualified ⬇️