Build Your Best Drift Playbook

Foreword

When I was little, I had a really big goal in life: to become a regular at a café.

There was something about the idea of being greeted by name as I walked into a store, being in sync with the staff about what I would order, and ending each visit with the sound of an expectant “See you tomorrow!” that appealed to me.

And I’m not the only one who feels this way. Do a cursory Google search, and you’ll find countless articles on why becoming a regular is beneficial to the consumer, the community, and the business. There’s even science to back it up: When a person receives an individualized experience from a brand, they experience the dopamine effect, i.e. the chemical phenomenon that makes you “feel good.” Because humans seek to replicate those positive feelings, brands that offer a feel-good, individualized experience see their customers coming back again and again.

In today’s digital world, it has become all the easier to deliver these individualized experiences that customers crave, and some brands have taken advantage of that fact — B2C brands, that is. Just like how cafés treat their regulars, many of today’s consumer brands are greeting their customers by name, sending emails when they notice periods of inactivity, and recommending products based on the products they know the customer already likes.

But, while B2C brands have figured out how to treat their digital customers like the humans they are, B2B brands have a ways to go.

According to Salesforce, 85% of B2B buyers expect a better customer experience given all of the data they know companies collect on them. Not to mention that 74% of all customers expect to be able to do everything they can do in person online.

Despite these expectations, many B2B brands continue to serve up the same generic website experience to their site visitors, and this lack of personalization is directly correlated with why B2B buyers don’t buy. In a survey of 150 B2B buyers, 35% reported that, when researching a solution, they found it challenging to understand how products would fit into their business. In addition, 79% of buyers even said they would be willing to pay a higher price for a service if the brand provided excellent digital UX.

Clearly, B2B brands whose websites fail to cater to buyers as humans are losing out. And while B2B companies often cite a lack of budget and bandwidth as the reason for their generic digital experiences, the reality is that the individualized experience is not so far out of reach.

Because, if you make your website conversational through the power of Drift playbooks, you can easily treat your buyers like the humans they are and even establish your own “regulars.”

This book is designed to help you do just that. We researched the B2B companies that are treating their customers as humans and explored what about their strategy made them so successful. What we found were tactical tips of the digital-selling trade, strategies you can implement into your processes shortly after reading the book, and benchmark data to help you understand how your conversational website strategy measures up.

So, keep reading to learn how you can become the B2B company that keeps your customers coming back for more.

-Elizabeth, Senior Content Marketing Manager