Outbound and inbound marketing are two very different beasts. WordStream defines outbound marketing as “any kind of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience”. E.g. cold calling and email spamming.

Whereas, with inbound marketing, you attract your customers towards you. Examples include SEO and content marketing. Inbound marketing is thought to be more cost effective than outbound. Moreover, the efficiency of outbound is decreasing because, by its nature, it is an interruption into people’s lives, and people are getting fed up of being interrupted. Indeed, people install ad blockers on their computers and are very wary of spam because they have been overloaded with it.

The nature of inbound is a lot more passive, which can be a good fit with a less proactive live support software strategy. Customers may reach your site through a Google search, a blog, social media channels, etc. Once they are there, you want to capture their contact details, turning visitors into leads. A more proactive, traditional approach to getting lead information may be jarring at this point. Let’s have a look at how the two complement each other in more detail:

In Their Own Time

If customers have questions about your product, a clearly visible chatbox allows them to talk to you on their own terms. But also, when they do want to, they can connect instantly with an agent, 24 hours a day, if you wish to provide that level of service. Constantly available, yet unobtrusive, what a combination!

Better Than a Pop Up

Using pop-ups to get lead information can be intrusive and may be off putting for visitors. If it’s the case, you may lose the chance to get the all-important deets that turn visitors into leads. A conversation with a human being, on the other hand, could be much more effective to collect this information.

Conversation is Casual

One tactic of traditional marketing has been to place the benefits of your product or the ethos of your company on an advert and place that in front of people. A live conversation allows you to talk to visitors about these things in a more casual manner, making them more receptive.

Building Trust

An important part of the customer onboarding process is building trust. It can be a slower process to do this with outbound marketing. One of the reasons for this could be because, in a way, you have already broken a potential lead’s trust by coming into their space and trying to tell them about you company. Live support however allows you to build this trust through a human conversation initiated by the customer.

One Size Fits All

Live support can be a great addition to an inbound marketing strategy, helping to build a relationship with potential leads in an unobtrusive way. A quality live support software such as Xeno allows you to offer support over a multitude of channels, including Facebook, Twitter, email and your website to ensure you have the best chance possible to attract leads.