Introduction
We all know that without customers, no business can exist. Customer interactions are always at the foundation of a successful marketing strategy.
And if your business can do a good job of keeping buyers interested on the website or in the app, it will be easy to meet any sales goal.
This is why chatbots have become a popular way for customers and organizations to communicate.
Having an AI bot is a smart move because 53% of customers prefer to shop with a company they can chat with.
AI-enabled bots can help you automate monotonous work and sell your company more effectively.
With the ability to have dynamic conversations, chatbots for marketing are becoming a very useful way for businesses to increase customer engagement and qualify leads.
It’s no wonder that bots are everywhere, especially in the sphere of marketing, with so much of the globe trending toward automation. Even though it is still important to be hands-on with any marketing strategy, bots and automation can help with managing processes and getting leads and customers.
Chatbot marketing is an excellent automation method. This method of digital marketing helps automate customer communication up to a certain point, after which the customer or user is sent to a real person for help.
But there’s a lot more to it.
What is Chatbot Marketing?
Chatbot marketing is a marketing approach that uses a chatbot to promote a company.
When Facebook made it possible to integrate bots with its Messenger feature, this method gained tremendous popularity. Previously, a large number of Facebook Page Messengers went unused.
Customers would occasionally express queries or complaints, and even fewer would receive a response.
With a chatbot marketing plan, customer service questions will always be answered, and many of them can also help generate leads and make sales.
Businesses who are developing a chatbot strategy for digital marketing should be aware of the three main components:
To be effective, you must first understand the context of each conversation.
Make each conversation unique to make clients feel more connected to your company.
Use chatbot marketing to interact with customers in real time, whether it’s with a person or a bot.
Conversational marketing with chatbots
As previously said, the term “conversational marketing” comes to mind when thinking of chatbots.
They have every right to be, because they are crucial in the implementation of conversational marketing as a channel of communication. Because chatbots use a conversational technique to mimic face-to-face encounters, this is the case.
Chatbots today come in a variety of shapes and sizes, with different capabilities and levels of progress, ranging from AI-enabled bots to less advanced bots like button-based bots. We recently published a list of the top 19 chatbot builders for 2021.
Chatbots are frequently used in conversational marketing to automate the process of obtaining data, providing product or service information, and further qualifying prospects.
As chatbots become more common on websites and social media, customers will expect more from them. Bots will need to show that they are good communicators and give customers what they want.
When done correctly, conversational marketing offers a number of advantages that can help you get a competitive advantage in your market.
To begin with, establishing discussions with your website visitors allows you to learn more about their wants and pain issues, as well as gather the information you need to better qualify them.
You’ll be able to change your communication, offer them relevant, targeted messages, and communicate with them in a meaningful way based on what they’re interested in and where they are in their buyer’s journey.
You can have these important conversations at any time during the buying process to build trust in your business and strengthen customer relationships.
By providing an interactive platform for customers and prospects to interact with your organization, you can improve customer experiences and turn more visitors into paying customers.
When you ask the correct questions at the right time, conversations not only help you convert leads, but they also qualify them for your sales.
You can be sure you’re moving your buyers through your marketing and sales funnels effectively when your marketing operations are linked to your sales team.
Bots can send quality leads to your sales agents via live chat and schedule meetings with them in real time.
With a few resources and effort, you can easily scale your marketing conversations. Bots demand a one-time investment and are available to engage customers with real-time responses 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Prompt responses assist users in quickly resolving queries and provide a better user experience. It eventually aids in the enhancement of your brand’s credibility.
Chatbots can be a great way to acquire data from clients that will provide you with valuable insights into their requirements and preferences. The information also aids in the adaptation of your chatbot marketing approach to improve communication outcomes.
Chatbots can help automate marketing communications and give customers quick answers. By using conversational AI chatbots in marketing, your company can also move customers smoothly through the sales funnel and increase the number of people who buy from you.
There are numerous ways to include marketing bots into your customer outreach strategy and achieve economic benefit.
Conversations are at the foundation of marketing.
When it comes to digital marketing tactics, brands that handle consumer communication well always exceed the competition.
You’ll have faster speeds to handle a greater number of conversations and close more sales calls because chatbots can automate a large part of the marketing process.
Conversational bots will help you reach out to more customers, start more conversations, and get people more involved.
So, your company should use chatbot features to add to its marketing plan and give customers something of value.
Chatbots can help you sell your products in new places, giving you and your customers more chances to talk.
To reach out to new users and reach your engagement goals, you can customize how you talk to your customers and use a data-driven strategy.
Most companies no longer depend on sales staff to qualify leads.
They now use chatbots to automate lead qualification processes and increase lead volume.
Because they can ask relevant prequalifying questions to visitors, AI bots are proven to be a great tool for auto-qualifying leads.
Furthermore, lead generation chatbots help clients to make quick decisions by just selecting the option that is most relevant to them.
They increase the customer base for customers to enter their contact information rather than fill out forms in the traditional way.
It reduces the sales cycle dramatically and enhances the overall process.
This allows agents to focus on important teams while filtering out trash leads, saving them time.
Customers do not have to wait days for leads because they are provided in real time.
Since there are so many different things to do to get the message across to customers, marketing requires time and effort.
Most of the time, it’s hard for businesses to get all the work and resources they need to make their marketing work.
Conversational bots can be very helpful in this way because they make marketing easier and more efficient by automating some of the steps, especially in the beginning.
Chatbots can conduct the initial communication and collect any relevant information from customers.
Chatbots aid in the automation of a portion of the conversational marketing process.
You can use marketing bots to connect with clients 24/7 on your website or in your app and collect contact information for sales calls.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) can be used to teach AI bots how to answer common customer service questions and help users solve sales problems.
Booking customer meetings is an important part of the marketing process, and businesses that succeed at it often generate more leads than their competitors.
However, maintaining appointments is a time-consuming operation, and doing it manually may cause your personnel to become burdened, giving them no time to deal with more complex issues.
To avoid this problem, you should use automation, like chatbots, which are a great way to cut down on meeting time.
Chatbot marketing makes it simple to arrange, change, and cancel meetings without the need for human assistance, which can help with sales.
More importantly, a bot that has access to your calendar schedule and meeting preferences can help you receive the invitation.
What are the benefits of scheduling meetings with a marketing bot?
You can save time by looking up everyone’s schedules on your own.
Meeting schedules will be easy to get at any time.
Participants can vote on the optimal time for a meeting using bots.
Conversational bots not only qualify high-intent leads but also help in nurturing them, giving you more opportunities to generate new sales.
Your lead generation bots can utilize the information they collect about your customers’ requirements, behaviors, and preferences to get to know them better and help them convert.
Once the sales prospects have been filtered out, the marketing bot can set up a meeting or send high-intent leads to the sales team in real-time for quick closure.
This shows how a conversational customer experience powered by bots not only makes leads, but also keeps them.
The advantages of using a marketing bot to nurture leads
Increase sales conversions and revenue by a large amount.
Increase client happiness by providing assistance in real time.
Improve your brand’s image and credibility by quickly responding to client inquiries.
Artificial intelligence is an excellent way to expand your company’s reach without having to spend a lot of money on infrastructure.
Using chatbots on social media messaging platforms that are powered by AI could help your business reach more people quickly and easily.
You can use those bots to reach out to a new customer base and tap into new demographics without spending a lot of money.
Also, chatbot marketing can help generate leads in new areas, which is important for the success of your business.
Best practices for expanding your brand’s reach with bots
Bots can be linked into a variety of chat apps, allowing you to be more available to your consumers. It provides you with additional opportunities to grow sales.
You can grab your audience’s attention and learn from the engagement with chatbots, allowing them to send relevant information about your products and services.
Chatbots can help your business upsell and cross-sell products in a way that is personal, conversational, and fun.
Personalized ads are preferred by 71% of customers.
Personalization guarantees that users have unique experiences when they interact with your company.
Bot marketing makes it easy to customize customers’ experiences and make sure they get relevant discounts and offers.
The good news is that all you have to do is use user data and then use it to personalise the experience.
You can make the experience more personal by using the customer’s name, gender, location, browsing history, and purchases from the past.
As a result, you should never be concerned about the cost of a chatbot; otherwise, you may not be able to customise the experience.
How can chatbots be used in marketing to personalise the customer experience?
Program your bot to strike up dialogues with website visitors so you can learn more about them and tailor their experience with your company.
Use chatbot surveys to learn what your customers want from your company, and then work to close the gap between what you are now providing and what you should be doing right now.
They provide order tracking and delivery information.
Customers do not want to be kept waiting after placing an order.
When customers are unable to receive any updates, notifications, or status regarding their order, their frustration level becomes even higher.
You can easily avoid this kind of problem if you are willing to automate the whole process of keeping track of product orders.
In reality, organizations in the logistics industry are implementing AI-powered bots to boost productivity throughout the logistic value chain.
Conversational chatbots can also be used to significantly boost customer engagement.
What role do marketing chatbots play in order tracking?
Customers may use the messenger to avoid the long offline wait and track their order in real time by simply asking the chatbot, “Can you share the delivery status now?”
Customers can use chatbots for marketing to book a shipping location, time, and tracking map online by telling the chatbot everything they need to know about the things being sent.
“Be where your customers are” is more than a basic digital marketing principle. It is for this reason that firms are compelled to make an effort to fulfil their customers. Brands across industries are finding AI bots to be a simple way to fulfil marketing goals and increase sales income.
There are many ways for businesses to use chatbots as part of a successful digital marketing strategy.
To manage vast candidate pools, FirstJob, an online-based recruiting agency, developed Mya, a chatbot. This freed up recruiters’ time to focus on interviews and closing offers.
Mya asks candidates pre-screening questions, answers frequently asked questions, sends updates on the status of their applications, gives candidates advice and direction, tells candidates when a position is filled, and runs tests and challenges.
Up to 75% of the qualifying and engagement process is managed using Mya. It increases candidate engagement by more than 150 percent and recruiter efficiency by 38 percent.
The most important takeaways
Use chatbots to put marketing plans into action and give your agents more time to work on more important tasks.
AI bots can help in managing clients by keeping them informed about the entire process and ensuring that they receive a quicker response.
In the hospitality industry, personalised services are important. You can deliver personalised attention to your consumers with chatbots.
The Marriott Hotel developed ChatBots, a text-messaging service for guests. The bot acts as an in-phone concierge, assisting customers with basic hotel service requests. So, there is no need for a middleman because requests can be met quickly and effectively.
Aside from that, Marriott Rewards members can research and book trips at over 4,700 hotels via Facebook Messenger chatbots.
The most important takeaways
Increase the reach of your hotel business by including chatbots in your marketing plan, as well as the front desk and personal services.
Make a marketing chatbot that can figure out jobs that keep coming up in your hotel, like housekeeping or front desk, and give each user a personalised experience.
By implementing chatbots, leading restaurants, grocery companies, and others in the food and beverage industry are improving brand awareness and engaging with more customers by providing engaging services with fun.
Whole Foods’ Facebook Messenger Bot is absolutely fascinating, connecting with consumers by sharing recipes, products, and cooking ideas. With each message, it provides filters and alternatives for various types of food, including international cuisines. Users can easily narrow down the type of recipe they’re looking for at Whole Foods.
The chatbot for Whole Foods increases visitors to their website from a platform where customers spend 50 minutes per day (on average). Also, because 60 million emojis are used every day on Facebook, Whole Foods’ bot mimics a typical (human-to-human) messenger conversation by letting users use emoticons to get to specific recipes.
Apart from these instances, chatbots are used in a variety of industries for lead generation and sales. You can readily find examples of how leading carmakers utilize bots to generate leads or how health-care companies use bots to diagnose patients.
Important points to remember
Use conversational chatbots for marketing and high-quality customer service.
Make sure your chatbot marketing plan is focused on providing a pleasant user experience that will boost brand credibility.
Chatbots are being used by an increasing number of e-commerce organizations to provide a better customer experience and to take their marketing to new heights.
H & M, a well-known global fashion brand, has created an interactive bot to lead consumers through the online store regions in a way that is similar to their purchasing preferences. Conversational bots help mobile customers navigate outfit options and get personalised outcomes rapidly.
The company’s steady increase in sales income, as well as its announcement to build an eCommerce presence in Canada and South Korea.
As well as 11 additional H&M online markets, show that its chatbot implementation is working.
The most important takeaways
To increase consumer interaction, you can use chatbots for marketing purposes.
Build a strategic chatbot marketing plan to raise brand awareness.
Airlines are focused on increasing customer loyalty and influencing their choices. According to a Twitter study, the faster an airline responded to a passenger.
The more inclined the passenger was to pay for their next journey.
KLM: Every week, Royal Dutch Airlines handles around 16,000 cases. As a result, the BB chatbot was created to offer a personal, quick, and correct response. KLM is taking the next step in its social media strategy with BB, providing personalised service through technology, backed up by human agents as necessary.
In a conversational fashion, the BlueBot (BB) assists clients in booking guests. It is backed up by 250 human service employees who are ready to help if BB is unable to resolve a customer’s issue. The bot answered around 60,000 queries per week, received over 100,000 mentions per week, and had 15,000 interactions per week.
The most important takeaways
Even more than an app, bots ensure that clients are more engaged with the company. Also, chatbots save time for customer service workers by answering common questions. This lets them work on more complicated problems and tasks.
It serves as an effective profiling tool, allowing them to customize the traveler’s experience by collecting data such as purchasing history. This will provide the personal touch that travelers have been looking for a long time.
Chatbots for digital marketing can help you improve customer interactions.
Chatbots have a significant impact across the business spectrum, including sales, service, and marketing. AI bots, in particular, are making marketing more effective by helping firms personalize their messages and gain loyal customers.
Even if a company’s marketing goals are different, such as lead generation or customer engagement, bots can assist in all situations by redefining how customers communicate.
So all you have to do now is set a clear goal, which will aid in the development of successful chatbots to scale your Conversational Marketing campaign.