There will be no sales without marketing; without sales, there would be no business. Everyone wants to raise the bar regarding revenue regardless of the industry’s size.
But how to do that? How do you increase sales? Most importantly, how to stay consistent with growth? Well, the answer to all the questions is marketing!
We are witnessing the evolution of marketing. Conversational marketing is part of that evolution. Gone are those days when customers would reach out to businesses after seeing billboards. It’s the virtual era; everything they need is on the Internet, so why take marketing elsewhere?
Along with marketing, customers are evolving too, and studies show that 82% of customers expect an ‘immediate response’ to their sales or marketing queries. Now that’s a big chunk! Conversational marketing is what’s needed to satiate customers’ needs. Before you ponder any more, let’s get into it.
What is conversational marketing?
Conversational Marketing is a strategy for engaging website/application visitors and converting them into leads by conversing. This marketing method emphasizes collaborations and interactions with the purchaser, not just one-way brand transmission.
Conversational Marketing means building bonds with the customer by building faith through discussions and making their purchasing experience as smooth and straightforward as possible.
This marketing technique does not mean you have to stop your other marketing activities; it is an addition that takes your marketing ten steps further. Conversational marketing aims to gain the buyer’s trust, convert them into leads, connect marketing and sales activities, and sort out the sales funnel, so the customer’s journey is smooth from start to end. An edge of conversational marketing-
Benefits of conversational marketing
1. Personalized and more Human Experience
Everything revolves around a personalized experience. Conversational marketing is done through fruitful discussions and eventually converting the buyer into a qualified lead. So, conversational marketing impacts in three ways:
It will give a more human experience to the customer.
At the moment, every individual is saturated by the amount of information that is available around them. Billboards, television/radio ads, newspaper ads, pamphlets pasted all around, and more. In between this plethora of information, customers are looking for personalized experiences, and conversational marketing provides precisely that!
Due to the reasons mentioned above, a business using conversational marketing will be able to nurture leads faster and better, which will escalate the sales cycle, gradually helping the company grow.
2. A Better Understanding of Customers
Why is a customer visiting a website? Which product are they looking for? What is the best seller and why? Answers to all these questions will help you understand your customers better. When you know your customer inside out, you can improve their buying experience by providing them with precisely what they are searching for.
Is the product of good quality? Is the product affordable? Conversational marketing lets you know all about your customers and their preferences.
3. Huge Scope of Scalability
Conversational marketing is a strategy that can evolve with your business. Is your business growing? So can the conversational marketing tactics! Any technology or technique that isn’t scalable or has rigidity issues will be futile in the long run for your business. However, this is not the case with conversational marketing.
For instance, chatbots have preset responses to a customer’s probable questions. If the conversation gets complex, the bot can forward it to a human without causing inconvenience to the customer.
4. Provides Immediate Response
We are witnessing a fast-paced environment where every individual wants answers as soon as they ask a question. Thanks to the Internet! The number of steps a customer must take to get answers to provide them with a splendid customer experience must be minimized. Conversational marketing helps reduce the number of steps and provides a valuable customer experience.
5. Shortens Sales Cycle
Surfing the entire website to find one product- is both a waste of time for the customer and a delayed product sale for the business. Through conversational marketing, products and services can directly be brought to the customer instead of them wiping through the website repeatedly.
6. Convert More Leads
With the shorter and faster sales process, the efficiency of the business increases as more leads can be generated and converted simultaneously. If a customer gets flattered by your services, then you might get an additional benefit of ‘word-of-mouth marketing.
Traditional Marketing VS Conversational Marketing
Marketing, sales, and support are three sides of the same triangle; without this triangle, a business cannot sustain itself. Support helps build a reputation for the business, while marketing generates leads and sales convert them.
But these departments work separately in traditional marketing while they work together in conversational marketing. A chatbot can take care of marketing, sales, and customer support. So what is best for your business? Let’s find out!
1. Personalized Marketing
As aforementioned, the driving force of marketing today is personalization. But with conventional SEO and SEM marketing tactics, creating customized content for every individual is not feasible. However, AI chatbots can provide the same. For instance, if a visitor is coming for the second time on your website, then the chatbot can greet them with their name instead of a general greeting and hold a conversation about the earlier conversation. This is why conversational marketing has one over traditional marketing.
2. Lead Generation
If you are tired of filling out forms on every website you visit, why do your customers do the same on your website? It is one-way communication and a tedious task. Traditional marketing tactics involve getting a form filled out by the customer and then reaching out to them and discussing further.
Conversational marketing, on the other hand, makes sure that the conversation is two-way. The customer does not have to fill out any form, and all their queries can be resolved immediately.
Related: Why do you need to Automate Customer Communication?
3. Affordability
If you want to magnify the returns on your investment, you should focus on reducing operational costs. But with traditional marketing, the scope of reducing operating costs is next to impossible. It demands huge capital and human resources. But with conversational marketing tools like chatbots, the costs can be minimized as the bot can handle monotonous sprint desk tasks. Later, to convert a lead into a customer, human intervention might be needed.
Types of Conversational Marketing
1. Live Chat
The first form of conversational marketing is live chat. Live chat helps a customer to communicate with the business in real time and is proven to generate up to a 73% satisfaction rate. Furthermore, 22% of people said they prefer live chat because they do not like talking on the phone.
Live chats are an impeccable way to provide your customers with after-sales support and are utilized best by e-commerce platforms.
2. Chatbots
The other name of the chatbot could possibly be a selling machine! Chatbots have revolutionized customer service, and the growth has been immaculate. Chatbots are the advanced version of live chat; there is no human, but the ‘human touch’ is still not lacking. Highly personalized conversations can take place even with chatbots. These conversations are quick, to the point, and reveal the intentions and expectations of the customer. If you are wondering why you need a chatbot for your business, then here are your answers:
Almost 69% of the entire conversation is carried on by a chatbot.
Chatbots help you to know your customers better by storing their data all in one place and putting it to use the next time the customer visits.
Your business will be available to your customers around the clock. So next time, you wouldn’t miss a lead because you were out of the office!
They help minimize business expenditures in the long run since they are a one-time investment that optimizes operational costs.
Customers will be more satisfied since they can use your help whenever needed.
Chat360 comes with an end-to-end solution for conversational marketing through chatbots. It has helped several businesses: Enrich, Honda, Ford, and many more. It has helped the brands keep their image intact and grow their business by engaging customers and holding meaningful conversations.
3. Voice Assistants
“Hello, Siri, please play apple music.”
That’s it, that’s voice assistant for you. Voice assistants are intelligent chatbots that work based on the spoken word. Even though AI technology is improving with voice assistants daily, there is still much scope for improvement. However, these voice assistants still cannot be incorporated for business purposes as they might be a hassle.
Conversational Marketing Channels and Strategy
Channels
1. Websites and Landing Page
The Internet is the first place everyone surfs to find information about a product/business. So online presence is way more important than offline presence these days. You might be working from the basement of your house, but you must have a good website if you want to grow your business, especially for conversational marketing.
Through this, you will have complete freedom and ownership when you host the chatbot’s live chat on your website. It also allows you to check the analytics and the leads and customize your chatbot as per your business’s requirements.
Get a chatbot for your business now and customize it as per your needs.
2. Instant Messaging Apps
Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram are not just social media applications but also the hub of marketing. Customers are more likely to open a WhatsApp message than a text message, so reach out to them on the platforms where your target audience would be more active.
3. Branded Applications
The good thing about conversational marketing is that it is highly flexible. You can have a chatbot for third-party apps like WhatsApp and your brand’s application, and branded applications are another channel where you can incorporate conversational marketing.
Strategies
1. Let Chatbots Take Over
It’s time to replace the form-filling culture with chatbots. As soon as a customer reaches your website and has any query, they can resolve it then and there. Also, a chatbot will help gather more relevant information about the visitor.
2. Chatbot Presets
A chatbot will be the first one to interact with a visitor. So preset the greetings, questions, and relevant answers to probable questions a visitor might ask. The first impression is the last, and it goes for your bots too.
3. Page Relevance
A notification or chatbot popping up on every page will annoy the customer! So set your chatbots on relevant pages with the most visitors.
Conversational Marketing for the Win!
Customers are a priority. Having a user-friendly website and using the right tactics to engage visitors will help improve customer retention, eventually helping you grow the business. Conversational marketing is a complete package that will do it all for you. Chat360’s conversational marketing platform provides everything you need to enter the game.
It has revolutionized conversational marketing by providing sturdy solutions that have helped several brands grow. It’s time you get in the game too!