At this point, we’ve heard just about every objection to Drift and conversational marketing under the sun.
But rather than just ignore the noise or deal with the criticism in private, we figured we’d just get it all out in the open.
After all, we love feedback around here and always welcome the opportunity to learn from customers, potential buyers, and especially our naysayers.
So, we decided to own it and put two of Drift’s most knowledgeable conversational marketers to the test on a live webinar.
☝ That’s our VP of Marketing, Dave Gerhardt, and our VP of Content and Community, Mark Kilens, during the webinar.
They spent an hour breaking down the 6 most common arguments against implementing Drift, offering their counters, and taking on any and all conversational marketing critiques that the audience had to give. Let’s go.
Objection 1: Isn’t Drift just a live chat tool?
We hear this one a LOT so it’s as good a place as any to start. Any Drift detractor would have you believe that there’s nothing special about Drift, that it’s just another live chat tool. But as Dave points out, the exact opposite is true. Drift exists because live chat doesn’t work. It allows you to target as narrowly or as broadly as you want based on the criteria that’s important to your business. What’s more, Drift can be used offline through bots when your team isn’t ready or available (aka you can literally book meetings in your sleep). And lastly, traditional live chat was not built to be integrated fully into your marketing stack. Drift on the other hand is specifically built to work with all the tools that you’re already using on the sales and marketing side of things, like all of these:
Objection 2: Why would I buy Drift over Intercom or HubSpot?
Today’s buyers are smart. They’re not just going to throw their very limited marketing budget around willy nilly. Once they commit to using conversational marketing, they’re going to do their research, evaluate alternatives, and inevitably end up on the pricing pages of our competitors, namely Intercom and HubSpot. Now we’re not knocking either company. In fact, Dave and Mark make a point to compliment both platforms. But in Dave’s estimation, Drift stands alone as the company that paved the original path in conversational marketing. As a result, these competing companies are now changing their strategy to see how they can play in the conversational marketing space, while we continue to be the thought leaders on the subject.
Objection 3: Drift is pretty expensive and I’m not sure about the ROI
We get it. Implementing any new software or process is pricey, especially when you aren’t 100% certain about the return you’ll get on your investment. But, Dave and Mark argue that cost is all relative. At the very least, Drift is a new channel for you to understand and put in to your demand gen program budget as an experiment. Any concerns you may have over price arise because we at Drift haven’t done a good enough job on our end uncovering the pain and helping your team or you understand how our platform is going to help your business.
But, hey. Don’t take our word for it ?
Objection 4: I can’t get everyone to agree we should buy Drift
Maybe you love Drift and can see the long-term benefits of conversational marketing. Trouble is, it’s pretty rare that one individual has autonomy over the marketing budget. You have a person, maybe even a whole team, at your company who gets to contribute their 2 cents to all buying decisions. And chances are, someone is going to be the dissenting voice. Mark argues that you’re never going to get everybody to agree on something, especially a purchasing decision.
So his advice here is simple: don’t boil the ocean. All it takes is a couple of individuals at your company to give conversational marketing a try. Once they’ve found success with it, they can educate the rest of their team, demonstrate proven results, and get everyone else on board.
Objection 5: The timing for us just doesn’t work right now
Dave was having NONE of this argument. One of the most frustrating fallacies about Drift is that the platform is too time consuming to be worth the ROI. And while DG and Mark understand that it can be intimidating to try and implement a new software with so much going on in your marketing department, they contend that all great marketing takes time and effort. Like every game-changing marketing channel, if you invest in it, you will get results from it. In fact, Dave and Mark estimate that in as little as a couple of hours a week, you can familiarize yourself with the platform and begin seeing significant results.
We even launched The Conversational Framework to get you up and running with Drift ASAP.
Objection 6: I’m doing a website redesign right now.
Last but not least is the belief that you can’t afford to redesign your entire website to accommodate the addition of Drift. But as Dave explains, any good website experience is constantly evolving based on what is and isn’t working. Our website is always “under construction” to better serve the needs of our buyers and customers. Plus, using a website redesign as an excuse not to implement Drift is essentially missing an opportunity to gain valuable feedback from your customers that will ultimately only improve their experience on your site.
At Drift, “we eat in our restaurant,” as Dave is often heard saying. That is to say we use our own product on our website and are constantly learning as a result. One of the underrated benefits of using Drift is the unimpeded connection you have to your site visitors. Drift gives you a direct line to your customers and prospects! We’ve seen the impact that this has had on our own business and want to show everyone else how to do it for their business.
But at the same time we understand that there will always be naysayers and critics, who won’t hesitate to point out what we could and often should be doing better. And we welcome these people with open arms.
So with that, I put it to you. Do you have your own argument against buying Drift? Great, let us know.
Shoot us an email, tweet at us, send a carrier pigeon to our office, anything. If you see a part of our experience that isn’t right, get in touch and help us grow.
And if you’re looking for even more ways to get your team all in on conversational marketing, you can catch the full webinar with Dave and Mark here.
