Whether you’re driving traffic to your website through online channels such as directories and paid search, or your simply putting your URL on signage and marketing materials, then you know that the fruit of your efforts comes in the form of an online lead. As more and more online leads start to trickle into your inbox, hiring someone to manage all these prospects can be a crucial component of converting them into a sale. The Pulse survey determined that a good number of builders currently have or plan to add an Online Sales Counselor (OSC). Once a builder has invested in the OSC, they’re committed to making leads from the web convert.
That’s why we were pretty shocked to learn that 54% of the builders with an Online Sales Counselor DO NOT leverage Live Chat on their website. As the patience of human kind diminishes, so does the likelihood that a visitor to your website is going to fill out that form on your Contact Us page. Heck, thay may not even make it that far! People want answers to simple questions and they want those answers quickly. Most of us don’t want to wait for what could be days to get a response, when really all we want to do is know your model hours or ask a question about the square footage of that plan with the sideload garage.
With live chat options as little as $30/mo, it just makes smart sense to offer this additional instant gratification method of conversion on your website. If the option is available on all pages of your site, users can ask a question no matter what page they’re on and that question can turn into an appointment and, ultimately, a sale. Believe us, we’ve seen it happen.
You don’t have to be available 24/7 to make live chat work for you. Most builders we know that have enabled live chat, limit their “on-time” to normal business hours. You’d be surprised by how many people are browsing on their lunch break or taking a “mental timeout” from their daily grind. Want to see how live chat done right can quickly escalate from casual browser to hot email lead? Check out this awesome example of live chat done right .
Get some other online marketing tips in this morning’s session 2014’s Best Digital Marketing Tools & Tactics from 8-9a & 3-4p in South 227. See you there.
