Marketing is one of the most important parts of any business. Marketers are constantly looking for new and inventive tools, including automated one, to move closer to achieving their objectives. Automated tools, such as chatbots in marketing, have helped businesses to reach new heights.
Implementing chatbot marketing is a time- and cost-effective strategy to provide continuous support, increase conversions, and reduce customer turnover. All you marketers need to do is integrate a chatbot into websites and other social media channels. According to research, Chatbots are reportedly the source of disruption in 56% of all industries. One of the studies shows that 53% of service companies anticipate integrating chatbots during the next few months in order to provide their customers with a great customer experience and reach their business goals.
So, if you’re planning to integrate chatbots in marketing but wondering how to use chatbots in marketing, then this is the post for you.
In this post, we will discuss the most significant benefits of implementing chatbot marketing, as well as how to use chatbots for marketing.
Chatbots, as the name says, are the bots that chat with your customers online. They are pieces of software that make use of established rules and/or machine learning in order to determine what a human user wants and provide the appropriate information. Chatbots can be used for several purposes, including text messaging (SMS), chat windows on websites, or messaging services on social media.
Bots can help marketers accomplish their marketing objectives in a very smooth manner. They simply eradicate the need for human help in an organization. Also, they provide faster and better results to the customers based on their queries.
More likely than not, people spend more time on messaging apps and less time on social media; chatbots are becoming an increasingly crucial tool for digital businesses. There is no doubt that the rate at which people are using messaging applications and chatbots in marketing will become a new norm in the future.
How these Chatbots do benefits marketers?
Today’s customers are money rich but not time rich. They need an instant solution to their problems o queries. Chatbot marketing plays a crucial role when it comes to providing your customers with a great experience.
Lead creation is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. Even more so, it is one of the most common applications of chatbot marketing, and that’s the reason they’re gaining immense popularity. Having the right lead can help you achieve your business goals and increase business revenue. Chatbots make things simpler for all, including your customers.
For a client-based company whose leads are to be followed up by a salesman, this is the ideal tool. Constructing a conversational exchange of 2–4 questions for this type of bot is a simple effort that can be accomplished quickly. In addition, several companies that provide chatbot services also provide pre-made bots for generating leads.
2. Qualifying Leads using Chatbots in Marketing
Only generating strong leads is not sufficient to thrive in the business world. You need to have proper strategy and tools to convert these leads. Chatbots can help marketers in this regard. A properly programmed chatbot can gauge a prospective client’s level of engagement and where they are in the buying process.
The initial conversation can be automated so that users volunteer the data the agent needs to provide better service without being prompted to do so by a human.
Drift’s internet chatbot, for instance, helps to qualify leads and collects contact details. Using these details, a salesperson can get in touch with those customers later. This chatbot not only saves sales teams time by answering frequently asked questions but also helps them close more deals by delivering qualified prospects.
With more high-quality leads and free time, the team will be more satisfied with their contributions.
3. Help You Make the Best Use Of Your Resources
By replacing human interaction with automated processes, businesses can free up resources that were previously dedicated to answering routine questions. You can help your staff spend their time on other crucial business tasks by freeing them from responding to incoming inquiries. You can equip them with social listening tools so they may proactively identify and join pertinent conversations.
4. Involve Your Audience in a Special Way
Gone are the days when businesses had to deal with client inquiries in a pretty generic and non-personalized fashion. Today, businesses use chatbots in marketing. Chatbots provide a novel, exciting, and engaging approach to interacting with products and services.
For example, Domino’s Pizza’s Twitter is an excellent case in point. Domino’s now supports customers ordering food using emojis in social media posts. Robots from Domino’s then take those orders and ask for any follow-up inquiries they might have. These bots make customer interaction frictionless and memorable. So, the next time when a person needs a recommendation for supper, they’ll come back to you.
5. Give ‘Out of Hours’ Help
Your customers can have a query at any point in time. Of course, not every business can provide round-the-clock assistance to its customers. So, in such a situation, it becomes a task for companies to respond to inquiries on weekends and holidays. Know that your customers now anticipate a faster response time than you can even imagine. According to research, customers expect a response time of zero to four hours.
By reducing the typical wait time for a response, you can enhance customer experience and can successfully retain the customer for a long time.
Chatbots come in handy in such a situation. Integrating chatbots in marketing will allow you to answer your clients’ queries in a timely fashion, even when your company is closed. In a nutshell, chatbot marketing help you better meet the needs of your customers.
6. Schedule Meetings and Make Reservations
One of the finest ways to use bots for marketing is to schedule meetings and make reservations. You have complete control over the selection of leads you qualify and the options you provide to customers for scheduling appointments with your staff. Chatbots can be programmed to confirm in-person, over-the-phone, or video meetings at a time and place of your choosing. Specific meeting times can be scheduled if needed.
A properly programmed chatbot can arrange meetings with certain people on your team or inside a specific division. You can schedule appointments with whichever best suits your team and company with a chatbot built specifically for you.
The best thing about chatbot marketing is that once your website’s chatbots for scheduling purposes have been installed, you won’t need to do anything. Chatbots do the heavy lifting of converting qualified website visits into scheduled meetings as you go about your day.
Example: The Sephora Facebook Messenger bot.
7. Customer Loyalty Programs
Oftentimes, members of loyalty programs fail to get the full benefits of their memberships because they either fail to use them or just forget about them. More often than not, people have no idea how many benefits or points they have accumulated.
However, chatbots come in handy in such a situation. They can remind members of their current point total so that they can utilize their points.
8. Bots Can Help Promote Contests
Promotional contests have always been an effective tool for reaching a wide audience. Now more than ever, chatbots provide them with the means to develop into something much more capable.
You can implement a chatbot on any platform, be it a website, landing page, app, messaging app, or social media. These bots will do everything needed to promote contests, including draw focus, recruit potential participants, provide responses to content questions, and so on.
You can have a simple giveaway (where people sign up for rewards), a user-generated content competition, or a comments/social shares competition. Doing so will help you grow your customer database, raise brand awareness, and have fun while interacting with possible new clients.
9. Chatbots In Marketing Help Collect Reviews & Feedback
The marketing process would not be complete without reviews, testimonials, and recommendations. In order to stay ahead, you need to gather consumer feedback, which is something few people are willing to do.
In addition to providing prospective consumers with reliable reviews (or links to reliable reviews), your marketing chatbot can also act as the voice encouraging current customers to provide their feedback.
Let’s now take a look at how you can use chatbots in marketing.
Here we go…
How To Use Chatbots For Marketing
The marketing industry is becoming increasingly intimate and targeted. Building rapport and listening skills are crucial to staying ahead. And that’s when chatbot marketing comes into play.
You can use a chatbot for myriads of purposes, including gathering feedback and reviews, collecting responses, and so on. Here are the top considerations while you make use of chatbots for marketing.
1. Research the questions that are asked the most frequently by questioning your staff
FAQs play a crucial role. When developing a bot, one of the first things you should think about is the content that it will include.
For example: If the purpose of the bot is to assist consumers and provide prompt responses, then we recommend taking a look at the questions that are asked the most frequently about your brand to choose the content that would be most appropriate to launch the bot with.
2. Enabling making orders
A chatbot can be a lifesaver if you run an online store that sells products such as clothing, food, accessories, and so on. An AI chatbot marketing will allow you to take orders straight within the chat.
If a user is interested in a product or service but is not quite ready to make a purchase, a chatbot can at least narrow down their options before they speak to a real person.
3. Providing assistance and support to customers
A chatbot can be very helpful when it comes to answering frequently asked questions. In addition to being available around the clock, the chatbot is also useful for overcoming the challenge posed by multiple time zones.
No matter where a company is situated, a chatbot could assist a company anywhere in the world that does its business in India. Also, it will eliminate the need to staff a separate customer service department for different sifts.
4. Scheduling meetings
Chatbots can be used to make bookings and scheduling meetings a breeze for service providers.
For example: If you’re a fitness trainer, you may link your business to your Google Calendar. Your virtual assistant will handle your appointment management while you perform other tasks.
5. Collect the feedback of your clients
The vast majority of clients typically ignore pop-up requests to complete feedback surveys. However, when a chatbot asks for their comments, people are considerably more ready to engage in conversation.
You can utilize a chatbot for marketing to collect feedback on the products and services that you offer. When it comes to marketing, data is more vital than anything else; hence this is of utmost significance when creating marketing plans.
You will be able to develop stronger, more focused marketing strategies in the future with the input of your existing clients.
The procedures of up-selling and cross-selling can be readily automated with the help of chatbots. In addition, they are able to maintain a high level of individualized attention to each of the customers.
Depending on the transactions made by your consumers, your chatbot can propose related items that other customers have also purchased. The majority of e-commerce websites, such as Amazon and Flipkart include a feature that displays related products that buyers may like to purchase in addition to the item they’re looking for.
7. Keeping tabs on the orders
You are freed from the headache that is inherent in the process of selling things whenever you use chatbots. A properly programmed chatbot will allow you to track the packages that your customers have ordered.
8. Suggesting recent events and developments
When individuals initiate the conversation with your company, you might want to make suggestions to your customers regarding upcoming launches, new releases, etc. You can maintain communication with your audience and keep people interested with the assistance of a chatbot.
Tips To Utilize Chatbots in Marketing Effectively
Undoubtedly, you would want to use chatbots for marketing. Here are some of the best tips to use chatbot marketing effectively.
1. Create distinct pathways for the discourse
When finding solutions to problems, your chatbot ought to be very detailed. Make sure to limit the user’s selection of possible replies and construct a conversational tunnel. Make sure consumers know they can reach out to a real person at any time in the event that your chatbot is unable to understand their question.
2. Differentiate your bot from the others
Since the purpose of a chatbot is to imitate a discussion with a real person. Make sure to give your bot a name that is relevant to your field.
Be sure that the tone of your conversation is consistent with the overall image of your brand as well as the specific market you are targeting. For example, a more formal tone should be used when discussing matters pertaining to finances, medical care, and insurance, while a more casual tone should be used when discussing other types of services.
3. Data collection
You can always ask your customers for the information, including their names, ages, locations, and so on. Your goal is to offer a mode of engagement that is better tailored to the individual’s specific needs.
In addition, if your audience finds that chatting isn’t the most convenient way of communication for them, ask them to leave their email addresses so that you may continue the conversation on other platforms.
4. Include visual components in your messaging
The inclusion of visual components in your messaging is something that you should consider. Make sure that you choose the voice that is appropriate for your company. You may connect with your clients on a more personal level by including human touches like emojis, photos, and GIFs in your communications with them. Example: Domino’s Pizza Twitter.
5. Include buttons for a Call to Action (CTA)
Including a CTA in the messaging of your chatbot is a smart method to promote conversions and make it easier for users to proceed further down the funnel. Adding CTA buttons allows you to point a user in the direction of a certain page inside your app or website so that it is simpler for them to complete a transaction.
6. Inform your users that they are using chatbots
Users should be informed that they are interacting with a chatbot. You should be honest with your clients by informing them that they are having a conversation with a chatbot. This is a straightforward activity that will go a long way toward earning the trust of your audience. Moreover, it will prevent the potential for your chatbot to make your consumers feel awkward.
7. Test and optimize
Testing is an essential aspect of enhancing the success of your chatbot over time. Know that testing is an essential part of improving the performance of chatbot marketing. After putting your chatbot into production, you should begin collecting data and looking for methods to improve its performance.
Following the introduction of a chatbot, you should conduct an analysis of the ways in which your audience interacts with the chatbot. You can even demonstrate it to some of your friends or coworkers to gain insights into how to enhance it.
8. Spread the word about your chatbot
It is important that people are aware of your chatbot so that they can have a smooth conversation with your brand.
Putting it all together…
With this, we conclude our article titled ‘guide on how to use chatbots in marketing. Hopefully, this article will help you understand the importance of chatbot marketing and integrate chatbots into your website and social media handles.
Having a properly programmed chatbot can help you grow your business tremendously and exponentially.
So, if you’re planning to use AI chatbot marketing, then WeeTech Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is your best bet! We can help you set up marketing chatbots. We can help you build your chatbots from scratch.
