An effective marketing strategy serves as a crucial roadmap for an entire business, regardless of its size.
Organizations have the opportunity to promote their business, court the right type of customer/client, and allocate their resources adequately while improving the firm’s reputation at the same time.
Business success and positive results from a marketing strategy depend on focusing on multiple approaches rather than just one.
The era of technology and the internet allows companies to use digital marketing strategies which are both cost-effective and beneficial to the overall cause.
Digital marketing makes us think of social media websites and different tools we can use, but we rarely think that chatbots can serve the same purpose.
How can chatbots benefit your marketing strategy? Find the answers below.
What is a Chatbot?
Chatbots are computer programs that use artificial intelligence to mimic conversation with people. These bots are primarily used in customer service where they interact with clients and help them resolve some issues in order to make sure that customer service workers have more time for demanding tasks.
Chatbots are everywhere; on the websites of many businesses, on messenger apps like Kik and Facebook messenger – you name it.
A person just needs to type or ask a question and the bot provides an answer. Chatbots are also improving with the evolution of technology as developers strive to make the way they communicate more human-like.
Chatbot Marketing: The Interaction
Even though chatbots are usually customer service tools, they have many other uses too.
It is a little-known fact that chatbots can improve a company’s marketing strategy and aid in business growth.
After all, chatbots pose as a new means of interaction with customers. And in the meantime, they also boost overall sales and conversion metrics in more ways than one.
Digital marketing is all about finding new communication methods and reaching a target audience across multiple channels. To do so, marketers analyze data, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and modify their campaigns.
Chatbots can do both communication and data analysis.
To marketers, these bots capitalize on automation through platforms that have amassed large audiences already.
Let’s take a look at different ways chatbots can enhance your marketing strategy too:
1. Customer Satisfaction
We’ve already established that the primary use of chatbots is in customer service, but it can also boost your marketing efforts.
How?
Branding is an important aspect of marketing. The goal is to ensure that customers associate your brand with positive, rather than negative opinions.
Poor customer service, problems that aren’t fixed and a lack of care for customer’s issues only contribute to a negative attitude toward the brand, thus undermining your marketing campaign.
On the other hand, chatbots make customer support more efficient and increase their trust in your brand.
In turn, they associate your company with efficacy, care, and all the positive values thus making your marketing strategy more successful.
2. Analysis of Consumer Data
Digital and social media marketing trends are all about gathering consumer data and using it to alter and modify their strategies for greater efficacy.
Chatbots play an important part in analyzing consumer data and optimizing marketing strategies and sales.
For example, companies can program chatbots to track customer data and track purchasing patterns in order to understand how consumers react to their products.
By analyzing the gathered data, companies can market products or services differently in order to get the best reactions and boost sales.
At the same time, you can identify the strongest or the weakest aspect in your offer and work to improve, re-launch, and modify it to achieve your business goals.
It is also important to mention that a chatbot’s ability to analyze consumer data saves money you would spend on hiring an analyst who would give you the same results. Chatbots also eliminate the risk of human error.
3. Personalized Ads
Chatbots are also incredibly useful for creating personalized ads.
For instance, first of all, the customer contacts your chatbot with some question or inquiry.
Of course, your chatbot greets the customer and thanks them for contacting your customer support. The chatbot then proceeds to gather some more important information.
When a customer provides the required info, the chatbot asks them to wait for a few seconds. And during this time, a person’s full name and information they provided is utilized for the generation of personalized ads.
Personalized ads are crucial for lead conversion and are an important marketing strategy.
These figures don’t lie:
- 71% people say they prefer ads that are tailored to their interests and shopping habits
- 75% people confess they would prefer a world with fewer, but personalized ads
- 87% people believe personalized advertising means unique content based on their previous purchases
- Consumers are more than twice as likely to click on an ad for a product, if it’s personalized
- 44% people say they would be willing to provide brands with information like their name, address, and interests for more relevant ads
4. Active Customer Interaction
A common mistake that many organizations and businesses repeat constantly is passive customer interaction.
What does this mean?
Passive interaction refers to those situations when brands only respond to customers, but they don’t reach them.
Even worse, it is not uncommon for businesses to use social media platforms only to post updates while ignoring their current or potential customers altogether.
Probably, you might have encountered a bunch of complaints on social media profiles of multiple companies where people have expressed their disappointment about the lack of customer support and were angry that their issues were ignored.
It is needless to mention that a lack of communication and passive interaction is bad for your reputation and has a negative impact on marketing.
Chatbots give you an opportunity to establish active interaction and reach out to your customers, thus promoting your business at the same time.
For example, a chatbot can interact with a customer to check whether he/she needs assistance. In turn, the customer feels close to the brand and knows their potential problems will be taken care of immediately.
5. Nurturing Leads
The benefits of chatbot marketing also extend to using data they collect to create and develop customized messaging that would guide the customer through their “shopping journey” on your platform.
This simple action ensures that customers are moving in the right direction and enhances their overall experience with your business.
After all, marketing isn’t just about generating leads, but nurturing them in order to ensure they convert into customers at a higher rate.
Chatbots make the entire process of generating and nurturing leads easier, which is particularly beneficial if you bear in mind this aspect of marketing is the most challenging part of many businesses.
The graph below presents the poll where companies described their most common struggles.
6. Maintaining Presence
We use messaging apps more than any other platform, which is why maintaining a presence on these networks is a great way for marketing growth.
Estimates show that instant messaging apps are 20% bigger than social media websites and 36% of consumers who use messaging apps also use at least two other apps.
More than 1.2 billion people use Facebook Messenger while WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging app in the world.
Facebook Messenger and other apps also give you the opportunity to use chatbots that help businesses maintain their presence.
At the same time, you get to save money that you’d spend on other marketing approaches while the company is available to customers 24/7.
The company’s availability to customers plays a big role in marketing.
7. All-Inclusive Shopping
A keyboard or voice-activated chatbot system can create an all-inclusive or one-stop shopping experience for customers.
How?
For instance, users can ask a specific question and receive an instant reply.
Based on their queries, chatbots can present ideal products for customers together with the product they have searched for.
This increases sales because these recommended products are those that suit the customers’ needs and preferences.
8. Reach More People
Just a few years back, chatbots were only present on the websites of various companies. When visitors visited those sites, chatbots would pop up and assist them.
Nowadays, chatbots have moved on to social media and messaging platforms, which can only be a good thing for your chatbot marketing efforts.
Thanks to their presence on messaging apps, chatbots can reach a wider audience and gain an interest from a whole new customer base.
Plus, you can integrate them across different platforms and apps for an even greater reach.
Conclusion
Chatbots have been around for decades, but their popularity increased significantly with the latest technologies that allow brands to use them across social media.
The main purpose of chatbots was to act as the first line in customer support, but they are more than that.
Chatbots have a tremendous potential to improve every marketing strategy, regardless of how big or small your company is. They gather data, allow you to analyze it and identify strengths and weaknesses.
Also, chatbots make your brand available to customers 24/7 thus aiding branding. And they also enhance the overall experience a person has with your brand.
Do you have any insight to add about chatbot marketing?
Please let us know your thoughts by dropping a comment below. 🙂
