Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing replaces the form-and-wait step on a B2B website with a conversation. A visitor who has a question, or wants to buy, talks to someone (or something) right away: a rep in live chat, a rules-based chatbot, or an AI agent that answers from your content, qualifies the visitor and books a meeting.
Conversational marketing: engaging website visitors in real-time, two-way conversation to answer, qualify and route them while they are on the site.
Where the term comes from
The term is closely tied to Drift, whose co-founder and CEO David Cancel and VP of Marketing Dave Gerhardt wrote Conversational Marketing (Wiley, 2019). In March 2026 Clari + Salesloft announced the gradual sunset of Drift itself and refers its customers to 1mind; Drift alternatives covers what happened and the replacements.
How it has changed
- Live chat puts a rep in a chat window. It is only as fast as whoever is watching the inbox.
- Rules-based chatbots follow scripted paths to qualify and route visitors, around the clock.
- AI chat agents answer open questions from your content, qualify in conversation and book meetings. Qualified (Piper) alternatives compares several.
- AI demo agents go one step further and show the product in the same conversation, so a visitor who asks "how does it work?" sees it instead of reading about it.
FAQ
What is conversational marketing? Engaging website visitors in real-time conversation, through live chat, chatbots or AI agents, to answer their questions, qualify them and book meetings, instead of sending them to a form and following up later.
Is conversational marketing the same as a chatbot? No. A chatbot is one tool for it. Conversational marketing also covers live chat with your team and AI agents that hold open-ended conversations.
What replaced Drift? Clari + Salesloft refers Drift customers to 1mind. Other options range from AI chat tools such as Qualified and Warmly to AI demo agents that show your product; see Drift alternatives.