Why Conversational Marketing and New Book with Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift.com

Traditional sales and marketing methods have failed to keep pace
with how modern B2B buyers purchase goods and services.


Meetings, phone calls, and email are still important B2B channels
but how can you have immediate conversations?


Conversational Marketing is about having direct one-to-one
conversations to connect with customers and offer help.


By using targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage
with leads in real-time (while they’re on your website), you can
connect with people in real-time and convert leads faster.


That’s why I interviewed Dave Gerhardt (@davegerhardt), VP of
Marketing at Drift.com and co-author of the new book
Conversational Marketing. Dave is also known as DG.
Share a bit of your background and what does Drift do?

DG: So, my background. I don’t even know where to start. I love
marketing. I do marketing at Drift. VP of Marketing; been
here for three-ish years right since the beginning of the
company.


The way that I talk about Drift is that Drift connects you now
with the people who are ready to buy now.


Which is a significant change from how traditional marketing
typically works, where most of the traditional marketing and
sales systems were kinda built for later? Go to my website,
fill out this form, and somebody on the team is going
to follow up with you later.


But you know, there’s just been a huge shift in the way that
we all behave and communicate online, and the now is
more important than ever.


I think about walking outside this building: if I
called Lyft on my phone, the driver would be there in about
one to two minutes, and that’s what we expect from
everything. Except in the B2B world, where the rules, for
some reason don’t apply to how we actually all do things in
real life.


Brian: Right.


DG: So, our mission at Drift is really to transform the way
businesses buy from businesses, and the way that we do that
is through conversational marketing.


Brian: Well, that’s awesome! And so, that sets us up actually.
Tell us about Conversational Marketing?

And what motivated you to write the book? Why now?


The reason we wrote the book is that we’ve just heard so much
about the power of conversational marketing, we felt it
firsthand.


We use conversational marketing and Drift to run our whole
business, and we have become one of the fastest-growing companies
of all time in this industry. And it’s not because we have some
secret, but our secret has been we’ve used our own product and
really made conversations the center of our business.


And so, as we created this category of conversational
marketing and started to educate more people about it late
last year, we were like, “You know what? It’s time to write
the book.”


We’ve wanted to write a book. We had enough stuff to say, case
studies, examples, methodologies, playbooks, blueprints, and all
that stuff.


And so, you know we said, “Let’s make 2019 the year that we
write the book, and really do the best job we can trying
to help educate the future of marketing and sales on this
next wave.”


Brian: Well, it’s really well done.
Why do marketers need to rethink their content/lead generation?

DG: Because content’s a commodity, right?


Everybody has a podcast. Everybody has a blog. Everybody’s
into videos. Everybody’s on social media.


Content five, ten years ago you could be like, “You know what
makes us unique? We are a B2B company, and we have a blog.”
And people are like, “Blogging? No way!”


Today, all that stuff is a commodity, and nobody’s going to
be on their commute home tonight being like, “You know what
I wish I had more of?


I wish I had more content from a B2B brand. Like, I need
another B2B podcast. That’s what I need.” Right? And so,
there’s got to be some other way to compete.


You can’t just write a four-page PDF and slap a form in
front of it and say, “Here you go sales team. Here are some
leads.” Because we’re all kind of starting to ignore that, right?


I try to avoid filling out forms if I can.


I hate talking on the phone. I never answer numbers that
don’t usually call me. I never reply to cold emails. And
so, something had to give. And that’s really the shift that
we’ve seen in the market.


And something that David (who I wrote this book with; he’s the
founder and CEO of Drift) the thing he talks about is, he
calls it the shift from supply to demand. Right?


Customers have all the power today. Ten years ago, they
didn’t have any of the power, and so if you sold iced coffee, you
could be the only person that sold iced coffee.


And you could say, “You know what, Brian? You’re going to
have to go through my process, and you want one of my iced
coffees? Great! Come back at 5 o’clock tonight. Call me
on this number, and I’ll talk to you.”


Where now, customers have all the power, right?


By the time I’m ready to buy an iced coffee, I’ve already
evaluated four or five other companies, and I’m there in your
store for a reason.


Really, the concept that information is free now, it’s not
something that can be a differentiator for you anymore.


Brian: I was just thinking you sell to marketers, right? And so,
naturally, we’re kind of a snarky bunch. We know how things
are played, and so it’s about building trust with people as
well. I just wanted to hear the story; I was reading the
book, but also, I first heard about it, I think it was a year
ago. This whole idea of the #noforms movement.
How did the #noforms movement get started and what do you mean?

DG: What do I mean by “no forms”?


That’s a loaded question. So “no forms” is pretty, what’s
the word I’m looking for? Not a rhetorical question, but
you know what I’m trying to say, right?


Brian: Right. Right.


DG: You need no forms because of the whole process that I think
marketers got into this world of just abusing forms, right?
And I’m not preaching to anybody;


I did this too, right?


I remember one of the first things I did at Drift.


I wanted to write an article about the Growth
Marketing influencers you should follow on Twitter. And so,
I made a Twitter list, I put it in a Google sheet, and I put
a form behind it.


And I said, “Hey! You want to get my list of 50 people to
follow on Twitter? Put your email in here.” Like, that
person’s not a lead. Right?


There’s no intent there. I’m just gating this thing that is
a commodity, and so we kind of started this whole “no forms”
movement to challenge marketers to rethink how they do
demand gen and how they capture leads.


It started because about three years ago David Cancel called me
one morning on my way into work and he’s like, “Hey! You got
a second?” And I knew something was wrong because he never
talks on the phone. He only texts. He only sends IMs, Slack,
WhatsApp, and text messages.


So, when he called me, I was like, “I’m getting fired. Here
we go.” It was actually worse than getting fired.


He was like, “Hey! I think we need to get rid of all
the lead forms on our website and our content.” And I was
like, “Okay. And do what?” Like, I’m your first marketing
person here. You pay me to generate leads, and you’re taking
that away?


So, what are you going to measure me on? And he’s like, “No,
idiot.” He didn’t say that.


But he’s like, “You’re missing the point. If we’re going to
build a business around conversations, we need to lead the
way, and we need to remove all of our forms and
show businesses how to generate demand and drive sales
without having to gate content and use lead forms.”


And so, it was really like a pivotal moment for us, because
it’s like, “Alright. If we’re going to build this thing, we’ve
got to live it firsthand.”


And it was amazing because it wasn’t just a marketing lesson,
right?


I remember sitting next to two of our engineers, we shared a
little table together and they’re like, “Okay. You’ve got no
forms, so what would you do here?” And they’re like, “We’re
building this thing as we go on the spot.” It was super
transformational for our business because we were able
to see how it worked firsthand.


But then we got to go and educate the world, right? Because
you say “no forms” to marketers, people are going to
jump off the side of the boat.


But for us, we were like, “Hold on. Let me show you how you
would do a webinar registration without a form. Let me
show you how you would do this on your pricing page without
a form.”


And so, it gave us an opportunity to really go out there and
educate the market. And the results since then have been
amazing.


Brian: You know it still stings and feels a bit like heresy, this
idea of “no forms.” because every marketing automation
provider has been built in forms. We have tons of popups. I
have popups on my blog and on my website, and the question
is if I get rid of forms, then how do I engage people
Engage and capture leads with no forms

DG: So, the short answer to that is to have a conversation,
right? And that’s really why Drift exists because the way
you’re going to capture leads now is by having an actual
conversation with somebody.


I’ll give you an example. Forms work. And in reality, the best
advice I could give you is, don’t replace your forms.


That’s what you’re going to do eventually after you’re
very successful with conversational marketing. But I want
you to use conversational marketing in addition to your
forms to start, right?


And you’re going to create a second net that’s going to
create this fast lane for the best people because if
somebody has very high intent and they land on your website,
they don’t want to fill out a form.


They want to get an answer now. And so, Drift is going to
create a fast lane for those best people.


So, part one is, use Drift or conversation marketing in addition
to what you’re already doing with forms. The other part of
that is something we see all the time, right?


How do you ask a question to a form? You can’t.


You either fill it out or you don’t, right? We see this
happen all the time.
Engage in real-time conversations on your website

Somebody will come in on our website and our sales reps, when a
named account comes to the website, they get a notification
on their phone that says, “Hey! The VP of Marketing at
DropBox is on the website right now.”


We had a real example like this, and I’ll just make up the
companies.


The CMO at Starbucks, she comes to the website, and she
says, “Oh, I was interested-” and the bot says, “Hey! What
brought you to Drift?” And she says, “Well, I was interested
in doing this, but it looks like you don’t integrate with
Slack and so we’re actually not a good fit.”


At that moment, the sales rep pops in and says, “Whoa! Hold
on a second. We do integrate with Slack. Can I show you?
Here’s a help doc.” And she’s like, “Oh, interesting.”


Long story short, they have a 40-minute conversation.
That turns into a demo. That deal closes a month later.


How does that happen in the world of a form? It doesn’t. Because
the only opportunity is you either fill out the form or you
don’t, right? There is no conversation, and that’s the heart
of conversational marketing.
Replace digital paperwork with bots and AI

Now, the next question people ask is, “Okay. So, does that
mean that I have to have my team sit there on chat waiting
for new messages 24/7?” No. That’s where we use bots and AI.


We don’t use bots to replace a human, and we don’t want to
put anybody out of a job, right? But we use bots to do
that stuff, so people can go on with their day, right?


We want bots to handle the digital paperwork; the stuff that
was normally used for a form, right?


A bot can ask the same questions that a form can ask in two
seconds versus having to add the friction of somebody
filling out a form.


That way, as a marketer, I can do what I’m good at, which is
getting people to talk about Drift and coming to our
website. And a salesperson, all they have to do is take
calls all day, right?


That’s the kind of relationship that
conversational marketing can help.


Brian: What I think as I’m listening to you, I think of two ways
of building a relationship.


And one, which you’ve touched on, is if you get rid of
forms, you’re making things available to people, and you’re
helping them. And so, it’s like reciprocal altruism. You’re
giving something of value.


And two, it’s through conversation. That’s how we build
relationships.
Brands using conversational marketing

DG: I mean, there’s so many. I don’t have one specific brand
example, because there are so many different ones. I’ve seen
some creative ways people have used conversational
marketing.


We have a customer who uses it not to book sales meetings,
but to sell tickets to their event. So they have this high-end
event, and it’s in March.


Every person that lands on that website get a, “Hey, Brian.
Nice to see you here. Did you know that right now
we’re running two for one ticket? Do you want to get one?
Click yes.” Okay. Have a conversation to do event tickets.


We have customers who use conversational marketing instead of
forms to do webinar registration, and it makes webinar
registration one click. So, basically, it can double the
number of conversions by simplifying the webinar
registration.


A lot of people actually use conversational marketing with
content, which is, “Hey! You just finished reading this
article about thing X. I bet you’d also like part two, which
is about thing Y. Do you want to go check that out?” And the
bot basically leads them to another piece of content
Think about customer experience and be patient

It would be annoying if every time you visited our blog, a bot
said, “Hey! Do you want a demo of Drift?” You think, “No. I
just want to read this article.”


But what if on the fifth time you come to our blog, we then ask
you for the demo? And the message is like, “Hey! Alright,
let’s be honest. You kind of come here a lot, right? Can I
show you what the Drift product is all about?” Right?


That’s such a different ask, and it’s just about being a little
bit more patient and doing it when the time is right.


We think about this a lot. If you had a brick and mortar
store and to every person that walked in you say, “Hey! Do
you wanna buy something? Do you wanna buy something? Do you
wanna buy something now? Can I show you where to buy something?”


You would scare them away. But that’s how most B2B
companies operate, and that’s how they do business on their
website.


Brian:


Yeah. And we know how that feels in the retail setting. We don’t
want to be there. We don’t want to have that experience.


As I was listening to you share the experience of what it’s like
to be in a store, for example, and how that would feel, it
leads me to think about empathy and how we think about
the experience of the customer.
How empathy empowers conversational marketing

DG: Totally. So, I think of it as, not to simplify this, most B2B
marketers, we treat the people on our website like they’re
dumb, right?


Like they did no research, they just happened to stumble
upon your website in the middle of the desert and go,
“Huh…what does this cybersecurity company do?” Right? It
doesn’t happen that way.


Nobody is just browsing a B2B website for fun. You’re not
lying in bed on a Saturday morning going through
B2B company’s websites. So, step one is, understand that the
people who are there are there for a reason.


They probably listen to your podcasts, they watch your
videos, they read your blog, they got on your email list, a
friend told them.


And so, even if they kinda stumble upon your website, like I
said earlier, information is free now, right?


If somebody comes to the Drift website and they don’t find
what they want, guess what they’re going to do?


They’re going to go over to Google, and they’re going to type
“Drift alternative,” and they’re going to find one of our
competitors and they’re going to use their product. And so,
I think it is all about empathy.


It’s understanding who somebody is, why they are on your
website. There’s a good chance they don’t have all the
answers, and they’re here for a reason.


My wife and I bought a new car about a month ago, and it
was amazing. We walked into the dealership, and we already
had basically everything narrowed down. We just wanted to go
for a test drive.


And you’re nodding, and everybody that you say this to is
nodding because that’s how we all behave like people. As
humans. That’s how we all buy.


But then something happens in our brains when we go to our
jobs in sales and marketing.


We’re like, “Alright. I’ve got to make sure we don’t tell
them anything about this unless they talk to us.” Where the
old sales rep tactic of, “Oh, you want to know the price?
Yeah, let’s get on a call.”


No! Just tell me the freakin’ price over email.


That’s not what the decision-maker is going to be, and so it all
starts with empathy and understanding that the goal should
be to have a conversation with somebody who is in your
store.


If you change your mindset to that, then your “store” as a
B2B company is your website. If I’m a B2B company, I want to
have conversations with the people who are in my store,
which is my website.


If I had a store, I’d have somebody in front and somebody on
the aisles being like, “Hey! I’m here if you need anything.
Let me know if you have any questions.” Right? That’s how we
think about conversational marketing as a layer for all
this.
Put your customer first

Brian: And as you bring it up, I mean we’re all customers, and
yet at the same time when you’re a marketer you’re not your
customer.


So, you need to think about that experience, as you just
talked about, and from that place, how can you help them?


Otherwise, we just have this bias. We love our product. We
love our website so much, and we really need to put
the customer first is what I hear you say.


DG: Totally. The customer has to be first, and I think here’s the
easiest way to be empathetic about it. Think about what type
of marketing you react to, right?


We don’t ever think like this. We think of, “Oh, I’m just going
to send this email for the fourth time in three days.”


Hold on. We’re all the same, right? There’s no more like I’m
not “B2B Dave” and then I go home and I’m like “Dave the
dad,” and “B2C Dave.” No. I am just the same person in all
walks of life now.


That’s because of our experience as consumers, we live in a
world where I can order a Starbucks on my phone. I can
order a car on my phone. I can order four boxes of
diapers and have them sent to my house tomorrow and spend
$300 in two minutes on my phone.


And then when you go to a B2B website, we want things to
work the same, but they don’t.


To really break into empathy, you actually don’t have
to think about what somebody else feels.
Reverse engineer what you like when you buy

DG: Think about how you buy and think about the last thing
you bought and start thinking about how you can reverse
engineer your buying process to match what you would like.


Brian: Yeah. I would probably also add, if I think of that and
then also at the same time realize if I now start believing
I understand what a customer’s thinking, then I have a bias.
You know?


So, I’ve really got to understand them too and what they
want. You need to spend time with the customer to understand what
it’s like, what their experience is too.
Why plain text emails are better

DG: Yes! So, plain text emails. This is something that we first
started doing about three years ago, and we did plain text
emails because I think people just started to get “banner
blindness” in the email.


When I saw a highly designed HTML big banner type of email,
I was like, “Oh, this is a promotion from a company.” We
wanted all of our emails to look and feel like they were
being sent from a friend.


So, our whole email marketing strategy was like, “Alright.
I’m going to a wedding with my family in New York. How would
I email? I’m meeting my mom and dad at the train tomorrow.
How would I email my mom to make sure we’re going to
be there on time?”


Subject line would be like, “Tomorrow?” “Hey, mom! I’m just
making sure we’re still on for tomorrow. We’ll be there at 1
o’clock. Do you need anything from me?” Why do our marketing
emails have to be different than that? That’s how we talk.


That’s how we would communicate. And so, we started thinking
about what if we just ditched the banners, ditched the
design and we started sending plain text emails that were
always written like they were from a friend?


Brian: Yeah. It was written as if it came from a real person
because it did, is what I’m hearing.
Does your email feel like it came from a real person?

DG: Yeah! The thing that was so frustrating for me was that I got
a bunch of responses from people like, “Ugh. You’re trying
to be too sneaky. I don’t like this. It felt like a real
person.”


And I’m thinking, wait a second, doesn’t that just reveal
the state of the industry that we’re in?


So, B2B marketing is not supposed to sound like a real
person. And I was like, “No, that’s exactly why we’re doing
it.” I want it to sound like a real person.


And we even had an email that when you would subscribe to our
blog, you would get an email from me and it would say,
“Hey!” You know like the welcome email you get after you
sign up for something, right?


And it would say,


“Hey! I just want to get this out of the way. My name is DG, and
I’m VP of marketing at Drift. Even though this is an
automated email, I just wanted to let you know that I’m a
real person and I’m really here, and I actually really did
write this. And if you ever get spammed or if you ever feel
like your inbox is being disrespected, just email me directly.”
Source: Drift.com

And that one email just disarms so many people, because it’s
like look, I’m a real person. I had a video of me saying
that. Nobody’s trying to get you upset. Nobody’s trying
to spam you. We’re real. We’re human.


This is what we’re doing. That little piece of humanity in
that email was such a disarming thing, and it helped us really
build a relationship with those early subscribers that we
had.
Just be real and show who you really are as a person

Brian: Well, it seems like as you read in the book the way I
would describe it is, you’re treating people as people, not
as leads. Not as objects to convert.


You’re just relating to them as other people, and you’re a
person.


Brian: When I first started 20 years ago, before it was
called business development reps, my VP of sales said to me,
“Just be people with people.”


And you know, I was 23. I was an intern, and I was trying to
sound important because I was calling executives.


And I think when I embraced the fact that I was 23
and didn’t have a lot of experience and just was who I was,
there’s that authenticity and it just is.


DG: I love that, because of look, and this is not to be
disrespectful. I don’t have the most experience in the
world, but I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing now for like
the last eight, ten years.


No 23-year-old BDR is going to know more about marketing
than me, right?


Brian: Yeah.


DG: And that’s not a knock. You had just graduated college and
are in an entry level sales job so if you tried to reach out
or call or LinkedIn or whatever, and tried to tell me that I
could triple my conversion…whatever, right?


I mean, there’s no way.


So, I think, how can you be human? How can you show who you
really are? “Hey! Look, I’m at this company. I’m not
a marketing person, but man, we have this product that has
seen crazy results for so many customers just like you. Can
I show you how it works?”


Right? That little change makes such a difference.
Business development, the problem is the process, not the
people 

Brian: I love the section you actually wrote about BDRs and
personally, I get questions about BDR reps.


For example, how do we help them do better? You talk about
the problem is the process, not the people. How do you mean?


DG: Yeah, it’s probably not a people problem.


I think the process is more like, most BDRs, most any sales,
marketing, whoever, the reason they do bad things is that
they’re not incentivized to do the right things.


Which is, “Hey! 23-year-old Brian, you’re a BDR. Look,
you’ve got to make 200 calls today. That’s all I care about.
Make 200 calls.” Of course! What are you going to do? You’re
going to make 200 calls.


Or, “You’ve got to send 300 emails today.” Then you’re going
to send a bunch of automated, terrible emails and you’re
going to be like, “Alright. It’s 2 o’clock. I’m going to
go home.” So, I think if you have people who are
incentivizing behavior like that, then, of course, that’s
going to be the result, right?


Whereas if you said, “Look, you need to get two meetings a day. I
don’t care about how many activities, inputs, outputs,
whatever. Two meetings a day.”


There are two ways to go about getting two meetings a day.


You could send 300 emails and hope you get two emails, and
how are you going to send 300 emails in eight hours? Well,
either you’ve got to blast people, or you could reach out to six
of the perfect, dream customers, right?


And you’re going to book two meetings from it. And so, that
means you’re going to spend half your day doing research. Is
it the George Washington or Abe Lincoln quote that talks
about chopping down a tree?


Brian: Yeah. If I had an hour to chop down a tree, I’d spend 50
minutes to sharpen my ax. Or something like that. (here’s
the quote)


DG: That’s exactly right. So, it’s the same process for sales and
marketing that I think we’ve got to help bring back to the
world.


Brian: That makes sense. We have time probably for one more
question, but I’d love to ask you a lot more. If we have a
coffee together and I said, “DG, how do I get into
conversational marketing? Where can I start?” What tips
would you recommend for me to get started today?
How to begin conversational marketing 

DG: Number one is to go and buy the book. Pre-order it.
Because we’ve taken everything we’ve learned over the last
two and a half, three years and put it into this book to
help you get started. And obviously, we have a ton of great
content at Drift designed to help you do that.


But let’s assume that you’ve signed up and you’re going to
use conversational marketing.


For me, it would be, pick one to two things, one to two
places that you can be successful right away. The biggest
mistake I think people make is, “Alright. I bought Drift.
It’s everywhere. Let’s see what happens.” We’re like,
“No. What is your plan?” They’re like, “Oh, well…”


So, here’s a better example. Most websites have a “contact
us” button, or “request a demo,” And that pops out a 13, 15
field, 20-field form, whatever. You fill it out. I’d be
like, “Oh, that’s easy. We could replace that easily.”


So, start with that one page. Have a contained experiment on that
one page. Prove out success and then start to expand. Then
put it on the pricing page. Then put it on the homepage.
Then put it on the blog. You’ve got to have a motion that
you’re going to try to improve.


Well, we think we could double the conversion rate on our
homepage by doing this, right? So, that’s where I would
start is pick one or two familiar patterns, whether
it’s your blog, whether it’s your “request a demo” button,
and start there. And really learn.


You’re going to learn a lot more than you thought you would.
I think a lot of people say, “I only want to book sales
demos.” And then they start using Drift, and they’re like,
“I haven’t booked a demo yet, but I’ve had five
conversations this morning that blew my mind and, oh my God, I
need to change my homepage.”


That’s the stuff that you can’t quantify until you actually
get out there and have real conversations with people.
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