What Is Chat Marketing (And How Using ManyChat Can Help Grow Your Business)

Carl Taylor | December 19, 2022

One effective way for you to acquire leads and engage customers is by marketing through chat. But only if you’re using the right chat messaging tool.

Did you know that the first instant messages were meant for emergency communication purposes?

The U.S. Government used it to manage its emergency response systems during crisis situations. And nobody else could use it, apart from programmers and users in their computer chat rooms.

Decades later, instant messaging has become a common mode of communication for most people.

With the way it has successfully integrated itself into our daily lives, it’s not surprising that businesses are now using chat marketing to their advantage.

But this form of marketing isn’t just about sending a message and getting a response. You still need to set it up correctly so you’re feeding your customers the right information and properly interacting with them.

Fortunately, there are multiple tools you can use to help your business leverage instant messaging to grow.

In this article, you’ll learn more about chat marketing and how you can use it to your advantage. You’ll also learn about an incredible tool to help you do your chat marketing right.

What is Chat Marketing?

This type of marketing is a strategy that allows you to get leads and interact with your customers through instant messaging. Among the popular messaging channels used today includes Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram DM, WeChat, Viber, Telegram, etc.

It’s a marketing strategy that focuses on using chat as a way to promote your brand, products, or services. It allows you to announce new offers, brand updates, product launches, discounts and promotions, and other recommendations to your target market.

But why should you start paying more attention to your chat marketing?

The 4 Reasons

Reason #1 – Allows Real-Time Lead-Capturing And Qualification

One of the many ways you can apply chat marketing is via live chat. Here, your sales representatives, for example, can interact with your customers and build a relationship with them. And they can connect with online “window shoppers” who show interest in your business.

The best part about this is you can do all of these in real-time.

It works to your advantage because you only have a 5-minute window with leads. That is, you have 5 minutes to respond to the inquiry of a lead before they lose interest. Every minute that passes, the lead gets colder.

Fortunately, chat messaging can eliminate this problem. And you don’t even have to be answering immediately.

Chat messaging apps can be programmed with chatbots that’ll provide answers to your audience’s most frequently asked questions. This ensures that your leads can get answers until they choose a real person to chat with them.

Also, live chatting with leads gives you the chance to subtly qualify them. You can ask questions to ensure that you’re dealing with your ideal customer and not a problematic one.

Reason #2 – Gives Customers Control Over Engagement

In chat marketing, it’s not just businesses that initiate the sales conversations. It also gives leads control over when they want to chat and talk about doing business with you.

When a lead initiates the contact, it usually means they’re already half-decided on the product.

With a reliable chat messenger app, you can immediately entertain these leads. This gives you a higher chance of converting them soon.

The chat feature also makes it easier to converse extensively with leads. Your sales representative can engage with them to clear any doubts they may have about your offer. If they feel stuck about the decision, it’ll be easier to give them that final push to decide in your favour.

Reason #3 – Creates An Environment for Personalised Conversations

With a great chat messaging app, you can make personalised conversations possible.

For instance, you can get information about that customer so you can go to their chat inbox with the right messaging framework. That means you can give them the right recommendations that’ll suit their specific needs.

What’s great about this feature is that it sets the foundation to build a long-term relationship with your customer.

A personalised conversation will make customers feel like you’ve taken the time to get to know them. This familiarity will make them feel special and can increase the chances of converting them into loyal customers.

Reason #4 – Makes Client Objections and Complaints More Manageable

Once you’ve engaged with a potential customer, you can lead the conversation so they’ll ask questions. You do it to reveal any objections that they may have. And since you’re talking to them in real time, you can easily address these objections.

At the same time, chat messaging will allow you to address complaints from existing customers. It gives you the chance to investigate the issues and try to avoid negative feedback on your business.

Some live chat software can even provide you with customer data so you can monitor recurring complaints and issues from customers. This way, you can come up with a plan to improve the overall customer experience.

You can also set up your chat messaging software to provide automated answers so customers can solve simple issues on their own.

Keep in mind that the success of your chat marketing efforts will depend on the software that you’re going to use. Make sure that you integrate this software into your existing systems.

Automation Agency has helped other clients in the past with this type of integration. In our experience, choosing the right program can maximise chat marketing’s ability to increase your sales and improve customer satisfaction.

ManyChat – The 6 Key Features

There are various chat messaging software applications available online. But one of the most highly recommended is ManyChat.

It’s a chatbot software platform that you can set up within minutes so you can touch base with your customers in no time.

Here are 6 incredible features that make ManyChat stand out among the rest.

Feature #1: Clean and Simple User Interface

If you want simplicity in your apps, you’ll like the dashboard provided by ManyChat. It’s clean looking and offers two user interfaces that even the non-tech-savvy can easily understand.

The first interface is the Basic Builder. It allows you to organise the content that you’ll use in your chatbot. And it provides a specific flow and a straightforward progression for the conversation.

The second interface is the Flow Builder. It gives you a visual approach when editing your chatbot conversations as you can use the drag-and-drop feature. This helps you connect messages and set up the flow of the conversation based on how the customer answers.

With both interfaces, you can test the chatbot and preview the flow of the conversations you’ve set up.

Feature #2: Multiple Chatbot Elements

ManyChat has plenty of chatbot elements to help customise your chat marketing. Among your options include the use of images, video, audio, emojis, free text input, attachments, phone number and email validation, location sharing, quick replies, and many more.

It’s a bit challenging to see what all these elements are. But you can use the examples available on their site to get an idea of your options.

Feature #3: Data Collection of User Information

Since ManyChat has both phone and email validation options, you can easily build your database as you engage with your customers. For example, you can add questions in the conversation to get the information you need from the customer.

ManyChat also allows you to organise your database through custom tags that’ll group specific users. This way, you can easily review the customers you’ve chatted with and segment your database to send the right message to the right people.

Feature #4: Messaging Broadcasts, Sequencing, etc

It’s very easy to set up message sequences or broadcasts through ManyChat. What’s more, it doesn’t have to be just one flow of conversation. You can set up different message sequences, depending on how the customer answers your chatbot.

For instance, you can create a conversation sequence for customers who want to subscribe and a different sequence for those who want to unsubscribe.

And if you want to send a broadcast message, it’s easy to set up as well. Its overview feature allows you to avoid replicating message broadcasts so you can send them to the right user segment.

Feature #5: Impressive AI Features

The AI and NLP features of ManyChat are clear and simple. You can set up specific keywords to trigger the type of response that you want the AI to use.

However, you have to be careful because the AI can’t support intents and doesn’t have automatic synonyms for your chosen keywords. That means you have to be thorough with your keywords to ensure that every inquiry will trigger the right conversation sequence.

For instance, you have to specify if the conversation sequence will be triggered when it detects the entire long-tail keyword, or as long as it contains a portion of that keyword.

Feature #6: Omnichannel Chatbox Experience

ManyChat can be used across multiple messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, SMS, Emails, WhatsApp, and of course, your website. This means your users can reach you in different ways and you won’t miss their inquiries.

You can also use different channels to answer your customers. For example, if a customer sends an inquiry through Facebook Messenger, ManyChat allows you to reply via email.

Do note that when it comes to the SMS feature, it’s only limited to North American customers. But you can use third-party apps in the ManyChat App Store to widen your SMS reach.

Leverage Chat Marketing to Grow your Business

Chat marketing is about using words with the purpose of acquiring leads and converting them. But if you don’t do it correctly, you’ll end up having your messages ignored and your profile blocked.

You can avoid that by setting up your chat messaging using the right chatbot software. ManyChat has proven that they’ve got the right features that can help you create a functional and customized chat sequence for your customers.

This chat software also allows integration with various platforms that Automation Agency has handled before. These platforms include Zapier, ActiveCampaign, PayPal, and Stripe.

If you need help setting up your chat marketing, our Automation Agency Heroes can help.

Get in touch with our Concierge Service so we can work through the process of integrating ManyChat into your systems.

About the author 

Carl Taylor

Carl Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Automation Agency. For the past 10 years Carl has been building businesses and marketing them online through the use of Sales Funnels, Email Marketing Automation, Landing Pages, and Wordpress Websites. Carl is also a #1 author and highly sought after speaker and consultant whose work has impacted thousands of businesses across various industries worldwide.

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