Over the last few years, chatbots have undergone significant improvements, thanks to natural language processing and AI (Artificial Intelligence) that run them. Today, marketers across the globe are integrating these extraordinarily versatile and sophisticated tools to automate their business processes.
Apart from being quite efficient in dealing with customer queries, these AI-powered chatbots, when integrated with your marketing strategy, can help considerably in converting leads to lucrative long-term buyers.
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Today, the majority of people spend most of their time on messenger applications, so much that it has overshadowed other types of communication. Facebook Messenger has more users than as compared to Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
This fact is useful for marketers as the likelihood of having more open rates by communicating with customers through the messenger app is higher. Users are 80 percent more likely to read or open messages from brands when sent via messenger.
Another study revealed that 34 percent of responders were more willing to communicate with AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants for e-commerce related queries.
However, a single team will not be able to manage every communication. That is where chatbots come to force. Plus, with the advancement in natural language processing as well as AI, chatbots are much easier to communicate with and integrate into one’s marketing strategy.
According to Gartner, consumers will manage 85% of their interactions with an organization without even communicating with a human by 2020.
Here are a few ways to integrate chatbots in your marketing tactics:
Chatbots can be incorporated with social media to gather information about every user who has interacted with it. As such, when a customer approaches with an inquiry, the chatbot can offer accurate solutions and even step up the conversation by providing personalized shopping suggestions based on the user’s preferences and purchase history.
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Aside from engaging with customers, chatbots can also retain them, meaning they can entertain your customers much longer as compared to other types of marketing. For example, let’s say you gain your client’s attention with a clip. While this clip might be quite engaging, it doesn’t have more to offer once it ends.
A chatbot, on the contrary, can acquire the attention of your customers and even gather data from the interaction, enabling it to offer relevant information about your services, products, and brand.
Essentially, chatbots can up-sell as well as cross-sell in an engaging, personalized, and conversational manner.
By integrating chatbots in your marketing strategy, you’ll also have the opportunity to collect your customers’ feedbacks. Unless people gain something in return, they’re most unlikely to spend any of their time answering survey questions.
However, a chatbot can gather feedbacks by introducing these questions naturally while interacting with them. Furthermore, when used in conjunction with the relevant machine learning tools, chatbots can even examine customer feedback and other data, providing you with a clear understanding of what your consumers want.
As such, you can alter your marketing tactics to cater to your consumer’s needs, thereby creating a more inbound marketing approach.
Aside from helping you send quality content to customers, chatbots can also make it more fun for consumers to interact with your brand. For example, Whole Foods’ chatbots enable its customers to look for recipes via Facebook messenger by using simple emoji’s.
Such kind of chatbots help in making your marketing more interactive and fun, and also leaves a lasting impression. Additionally, it can boost your website visitors by sharing links to relevant content and other blog posts available on your site.
Generally, brands are quite passive in their approach in terms of consumer interactions. They communicate with their clients only when the consumer contacts them first. By implementing a chatbot, your audience will receive a welcome message automatically when they visit your social media profile or website, making your consumers aware of your chatbot’s presence.
This awareness will give the impression that your brand is always proactive, thereby improving your brand’s reputation, increase in consumer interactions, and a timely boost in sales.
Messaging applications are now the top channels for marketers to reach their audience. Hence, it’s no wonder why chatbots are becoming so popular. By integrating these sophisticated chatbots in your marketing tactics, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about your consumers, devise your marketing efforts, extend your consumer base, and earn revenues from your brand’s social media profiles.