Not just selling products, marketing has a whole new purpose now. Businesses are spending a huge amount of digital marketing budget on improving their ranking on SERPs, website content, email communications, etc. Although businesses keep updating their digital marketing strategy regularly, the strategies are still not efficient enough to focus on improving digital experiences or utilizing the consumer insights generated by Artificial Intelligence. However, conversational marketing ticks all the above boxes while getting business from both desktop and mobile devices.
Table of Contents
What is Conversational Marketing?
Examples of Conversational Marketing
What Are The Benefits Of Conversational Marketing?
How to Implement Conversational Marketing for Business?
What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational marketing is an emerging digital marketing technique. It allows businesses to make use of artificial intelligence and facilitate personalized one-on-one conversations with their customers (mostly over mobile-based messaging apps such as Live chat, Chatbots, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, etc.). With the rising popularity of messaging as the key mode of conversation among the millennial generation and growing use of applied AI, conversational marketing is fast becoming a popular digital marketing tool by helping businesses in building their brand voice.
But how does conversational marketing work? It is a feedback-based approach that relies on listening to & understanding the needs of customers or potential customers and altering the marketing strategy accordingly. Engaging in one-on-one conversations builds consumer trust and motivates them to move further in the sales funnel.
Examples of Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing includes but is not limited to social media or chatbots. It is an umbrella term that includes a few traditional marketing techniques and a number of new tools.
Here are some examples of conversational marketing:
- Email Marketing
- Live Customer Support
- Customer Loyalty Programs
- Customer Success Programs
- Social Media Marketing
- Business WhatsApp
- Business Chat Widgets
What Are The Benefits Of Conversational Marketing?
Before answering this question, lets take a look at some Conversational Marketing Trends 2022. As per research conducted by a leading marketing analysis organization:
- 67% average sales increase after implementing a conversational chatbot
- 63% of customers who interact via live chat on business website revisit the page
- 71% consumers want to interact with businesses via messaging apps
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2019/10/25/ai-stats-news-us-consumers-interest-in-using-chatbots-to-interact-with-businesses-rise-to-62/?sh=95eda3d39746
Customer Experience plays major role in purchase: With the rise of internet, it has become easier than ever for consumers to find alternate products or services. Comparing different alternates available online has become an indistinguishable part of the purchasing process. So, the question is what are the deciding factors for final choice? As most of the products in same quality band are comparable in their features and price, customers rely heavily on their experience with the business. Consumers tend to choose the products or services that offer an easier, fluid, and compatible purchasing process. Conversational marketing allows businesses to create a seamless experience for consumers by bridging the communication gap and making the customer feel valued.
Real-time Conversations: Social-media has resulted in major behavioral changes in people. One such change is the desire to message and get a response in real-time and without any delay. This habit trespasses the barriers of personal communications and effects the consumer behavior as well. Consumers desire to be able to message the businesses to find details about products, features, pricing, complaints, feedback, etc. and get a response immediately. Also, they like the conversation to be easier where they can counterquestion the businesses’ responses or can ask trailing questions easily. The traditional modes of digital marketing communication such as web forms, email, fax, etc. are time consuming and don’t suffice this consumer desire. However, conversational marketing allows real-time communication which builds customer’s trust and helps in conversion by answering the consumer doubts in real-time.
Did You Know? The average abandonment rate of traditional web forms by customers in the digital marketing industry is 2.3%. (Source: Market analysis by Impact)
Customer Interaction translates into Business Opportunity: Lets take a look at the traditional buying process. A consumer decides to buy a product, he visits a store, takes a look at the products, and chats face-to-face with the sales person for making the final decision. In modern scenario, business website has become the new store-front. Although the footfall in physical stores has declined, but there is a gap where customers miss the face-to-face interactions with sales person to facilitate their decision. Conversational marketing fills in this gap! Consumers might overlook this gap while making small purchases, for example headphones; however, conversational marketing plays a major role for businesses dealing in high-involvement purchases such as cellphone bundle, choosing car dealership, insurance companies, financial institutions, luxury travel, house rentals or sales, etc.
Conversational Marketing makes way for Conversational Sales: Potential customers or business leads can be broadly divided into categories –
- Leads that want unassisted sales
- Potential customers who need a few answers before converting
Conversational marketing helps in promoting sales in both cases. In case of first group of leads, conversational marketing offers a platform to engage, qualify, & convert the leads by understanding their needs, pain points, and offering products or services accordingly. In case of potential customers who might need a higher level of assistance or have a few questions, conversational marketing offers tools to connect them with business staff who may help them clear the doubts and make the purchase. The interaction between the potential customer and staff on the platform is termed as Conversational Sales.
How to Implement Conversational Marketing for Business?
Like any other digital marketing technique for businesses, conversational marketing needs thorough planning. Before jumping to the most asked question – how to build conversational marketing strategy, let’s delve into what you need to do before starting your journey with conversational marketing.
- Choose an engagement tool: Businesses may start with a basic chat tool, however in order to develop an efficient conversational marketing strategy, it is advised to have a complete tool package that includes chatbot, message broadcast, and live chat features. The engagement tool needs to be embedded in the business website. It sends the chat or call conversation starters to website visitors for encouraging them to engage with the chatbot.
- Know your audience & message: Analyze the website traffic, the pages that receive maximum traffic, how long the visitors stay on the page, etc. This will help in designing the landing page and deciding the conversation starters.
- Plan conversation for every audience segment: It might not be practically possible to divert every website visitor to a staff member. So, plan qualifying conversations for every audience group. Here are some examples of questions-
- Trigger – What action will start conversation?
- Conversation starter – What will the first message to encourage consumer engagement?
- Script – What questions will the tool use to qualify leas before redirecting them to staff?
- Impress the qualified audience by providing targeted content
Once you have the answers to above questions, follow these steps to draft an effective conversational marketing strategy:
- Set the goal for the marketing campaign
- Decide your target audience and segment it
- Set the trigger action
- Define the conversation starter
- Qualify and filter the lead down the sales funnel
Conversational Marketing is a new but growing concept. Do you have more questions? We will be excited to assist. Contact us at https://www.vanqmedia.com/ or +1-800-438-9172.
