Conversational marketing is a powerful tool that can help businesses engage with their clients in a faster and more efficient way. If you start using conversational marketing for your business, it will pay off in more ways than one.
According to a recent survey, 79% of businesses that use conversational marketing have experienced an increase in revenue, sales, and conversion rates. The same survey suggests that more and more customers expect businesses to offer instant communication, which is exactly what conversational marketing can help you with.
Given the fact that conversational marketing is generally a new form of online marketing, a lot of organisations and online businesses still aren’t using it to its fullest. What many business owners don’t realise is that conversational marketing can increase user experience, save a lot of time, and even grow revenue.
Its high efficiency and convenience make conversational marketing stand in a class of its own. By incorporating conversational marketing tools like live chat support and chatbots into your website, customers are more likely to repurchase your products or services.
This article will explain the basics of conversational marketing and what makes it such a good business strategy. It will also list some of the best conversational marketing practices that business owners can use to their advantage.
What Is Conversational Marketing?
Personalised user experience plays a significant role in the current marketing landscape. Along with 24/7 customer support and easy access to the product or service, customer experience can ultimately dictate the success of your business. This is one of the many reasons why conversational marketing has taken the marketing world by storm.
Conversational marketing refers to one-on-one real-time interactions between a customer and a business. It can be realised through automated chatbots, live chats, conversational artificial intelligence (AI), voice assistants, and similar technologies. What’s more, you can use different channels and outlets for your conversational marketing strategy. For example, websites, paid ads, social media platforms, and even instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can all help you get started with conversational marketing.
Conversational marketing is closely related to other areas of business, such as sales, advertisements, eCommerce, branding, and more. It provides consumers with customer-centric engagement that’s both genuine and timesaving. This is very important because people expect to find what they’re looking for almost instantly in today’s fast-paced world.
Consumers also respond well to conversational marketing because they often prefer instant messaging to other, more time-consuming methods of communication, like emails and phone calls. When you take into consideration how long it takes businesses to reply to emails or if they even answer the phone, it makes sense that messaging has become the most popular form of communication. This is where conversational marketing comes in.
At this point, you may be wondering what the differences between digital marketing and conversational marketing might be. Unlike digital marketing, conversational marketing takes place in real-time. Customers who ask a question on your website or who are in a hurry will appreciate quick responses much more than you think. Digital marketing also aims to attract a mass audience, while conversational marketing focuses on the individual customer and their needs and preferences.
There are many advantages of using a conversational marketing strategy to grow your business. Since it allows for instant responses, it facilitates interaction between the customer and the business, thus saving both sides a lot of time. This leads to an improved customer experience, which results in higher conversion rates, increased website traffic, and greater revenue.
Not only is this marketing method quick and easy, but it also allows for authentic and genuine communication. Conversational marketing methods, like live chat support, have been proven to boost repeat purchases. It’s why it’s the go-to strategy for increasing customer loyalty.
Another reason why you should consider getting into conversational marketing is that it will help you understand what your clients really need. The information and feedback you gather from these tools will help you improve your website and your business in general. By creating positive experiences, you will build trust with your clients, ensuring their return.
The Conversational Marketing Best Practices
Conversational marketing may be a confusing concept for business owners who have solely relied on more traditional forms of online marketing. No matter what kind of business you have, all clients will value personalised communication and instant responses. This is exactly what conversational marketing will provide you with.
Here are seven practices you can use to create an effective conversational marketing strategy:
Choose the Correct Platform
The first step of setting up a conversational marketing strategy is to decide where the conversations will occur in the first place.
Conversational marketing can usually be realised through chatbots or live chat tools. Chatbots are built based on pre-determined messaging templates, and they pop up every time someone clicks on your website or performs a certain action. Live chats allow for real-time messaging, and they’re usually available on conversational landing pages.
To choose the best-fitting platform for your conversational marketing tool, you need to know your target audience and their preferences. Keep in mind that third-party integrations need to be enabled on your eCommerce platform. In addition, make sure to choose a page that receives the most traffic and attracts high-intent visitors who are more likely to buy something. This will result in increased conversion rates.
For a bonus point, if you want to use chatbots, make sure they match the overall design of your website. You don’t want it to stick out too much.
Focus on Interactivity
Once you implement chatbots or live chats into your website, you’ll want to make them as interactive as possible. The great thing about chatbots is that you can program them to pop up every time someone comes to your website or does something on it. By greeting first-time visitors and encouraging them to contact you, users will feel more reassured and satisfied.
The welcome message can be anything you want, but it’s a good idea to keep it friendly and hospitable. The chatbot can also give your clients automated answers to help them reach their goals faster. This will also help them navigate through your website more easily.
Remember, just because chatbots are automated message generators doesn’t mean that they can’t be personal and human-like. If programmed correctly, chatbots can even be a better alternative to real customer support employees. Of course, while they can’t replace genuine human interaction, chatbots are available 24/7, and they’re always in a good mood.
Plan Your Conversation Flows
When you decide on the chatbot’s or live message feature’s location, the next step is to think of all the potential conversation flows that might take place. If these conversational marketing tools can’t help your visitors reach their goals, they’re ultimately useless.
Begin by deciding what the chatbot is supposed to do. Will you use it to answer questions, promote your products or services, or help visitors navigate through your website? Keep in mind that the conversation flow should sound as human-like as possible.
Chatbots and live message features aren’t only there to provide your customers with answers. They’re also the ideal tool for collecting feedback and information that you can use to improve your website and business. What’s more, you can use the information you gathered from your visitors to constantly update the conversation flows, minimising any gaps in the dialogue.
One method is to ask your visitors for their contact information, which you can use to reach out to them directly. Of course, this shouldn’t be the first reply they receive from the chatbot, but a last-resort option.
Aim to Guide Your Customers
Once the chatbot’s role is defined, you need to make sure it will guide your customers through the whole process. This is a great tool if you want your chatbot to help your visitors find what they’re looking for. You can do this by implementing pre-defined answers and button-based bots.
How well the chatbot guides your customers ultimately depends on the conversation flows. Another way you can make the chatbot more helpful is to ask the website’s visitors for feedback. Not only will this show that you appreciate their input and value their opinion, but it will also help you fix any mistakes within your business that you didn’t even know existed.
Keep Language Simple and Casual
Aside from sounding friendly and welcoming, you will want your chatbots to use simple, casual language. Keeping the chatbot’s messages too formal will result in them sounding serious and cold, which might discourage visitors from engaging with your website. Everyone likes friendly customer service, whether it takes place online or in real life.
It’s a good idea to use short sentences and simple vocabulary that anyone can understand. Once again, the whole point of the chatbot is to speed up interactions and give the visitors what they came for. The conversation flow should be understandable and straight to the point.
Integrate With Social and Email Whenever Possible
The whole point of conversational marketing is availability and easy access. You can expand your business’s availability by integrating your chatbots with your social media platforms and email newsletters. Spreading your reach will allow you to find even more potential clients.
The more client-related information you collect from your website, social media platforms, and emails, the more you will be able to improve your business’s performance.
Combine Conversational Marketing With Lead Magnets
A useful conversational marketing strategy is to offer lead magnets to users who visit your website. Lead magnets will help clients who want to educate themselves on a topic your business is related to. These can take the shape of email newsletters, guides, free subscriptions, samples, consultations, and any other type of information that can help them. The trick is to offer the lead magnet within the chatbot’s conversation flow.
If you’re interested in creating lead magnets as part of your conversational marketing strategies, Automation Agency can help you.
Start the Conversation
Conversational marketing might be the new kid on the block, but it has certainly proved useful for many business owners.
This form of marketing can help your business grow in numerous ways. By providing your clients with instant replies and a personalised user experience, you can count on improved customer loyalty and guaranteed returns. This leads to a greater conversion rate, more sales, and increased revenue.
Once you install the chatbots or other live action tools on your website, you’ll be able to sit back and relax, letting the automated messages do their thing.
Staying ahead of online marketing trends might not always be easy, especially because new ones pop up every time you turn around. If you need help with your online marketing, Automation Agency is here for you. Our online marketing services can help you get into conversational marketing and improve your customers’ user experience. If you are interested in our services, feel free to contact us.
