Online businesses bring out amazing offers and opportunities to attract customers. The best ever-evolving approach to grow engagement and boost customer loyalty is through the natural way of “Conversational Marketing”.
Please to have a conversation with you, let’s begin.
Conversational Marketing is the customer-friendly feedback approach that allows communication in real-time with the help of conversational marketing tools (chatbots, LiveChat, messenger apps) to guide a customer to take a needful step to complete the buying process through the buyer’s journey with personalized messages which solve problems and provide a solution to customers pain points to build trust.
Why Conversational Marketing for engaging prospects and customers?
Whether it’s online marketing or offline marketing, the ways to attract and get customers are different but the motive is the same to create a want and desire of a brand in the mind of a consumer.
To evoke this desire, the competition between companies for promoting their brand is all dependent and decided on ‘user experience’ and how a business could provide a better user experience online to stand out from the competing brands.
Establishing an online presence and building trust by providing user experience is based upon “conversational marketing”. It is the apt approach being used for understanding a user’s behavior and activity, getting the interested customers through marketing and sales funnels as per their preference which helps the companies gain loyalty and establish long-term relations with the customer.
For what purposes businesses can use Conversational Marketing?
Conversational Marketing also known as the customer’s feedback approach has become useful for every business and company to implement it online limiting the work of involving sales teams, and inquiry calls. However through real-time conversations with the consumer to provide what they need and want to get informed about only qualified leads are transferred to sales reps or the designated person who would be responsible for sales completion for that consumer.
Technology has advanced, and so has its inclusion in marketing strategies and online customer relationship management. With the help of chatbots, live chats, and other tools (all thanks to artificial intelligence involvement in different sectors and industries) more companies could connect with the right people serving them the right content and growing their customer base.
For every stage of the buyer’s journey, companies and businesses have different purposes that they try to incorporate with the particular need of the customer within those stages which help them build desire for a company’s brand leading them towards their purchase decision with the help of conversational marketing.
Purposes can be many –
- Attracting customers, lead generation.
- Leading customers to a product page/informative resources.
- Help solve queries and educate about the company.
- Limiting the use of forms to make conversations appear more natural with acquiring relevant information and details of a customer (but as per their will).
Should a company/business use this approach to complete every marketing goal through every channel and medium?
To interact with customers in a much more spontaneous way, brands try to leverage this real-time conversation approach making the process, technology-savvy, and easy to get along with for everyone.
Though this option of marketing is high in proficiency and efficacy that doesn’t mean marketers should use it for the completion of every goal.
For generating leads and directing them throughout the buyer’s journey or to designated marketing/sales reps, conversational marketing via its helpful tools and messaging bots helps to inform customers and equip them with just what they need or prefer to know which guides them towards their buying decision.
Conversational marketing includes messaging platforms to give a personalized experience to the customers, but as per brand wants their website visitors to download materials and information there isn’t much requirement for using chatbots and messengers and automating the pop-ups could even annoy them and looks less authentic impacting overall user experience. So, as in the case of using it through every platform or medium to gain an online presence, using it wisely for interaction through the right message could grow your customer base and build trust for the company.
How come conversational marketing is implied and knows exactly what you prefer?
Through the means of conversation in real-time for customers and serving first-time visitors of the website with the required information on how to best utilize their online presence taking a step forward to take necessary action, conversational marketing with the assistance of AI automation and user behaviour present the needed questions with solutions to record user’s reaction.
For this purpose, experience rating forms or survey forms even what pages a viewer on a company’s site visits and what he/she clicks, form the base questions for prospects to know their needs and to provide what they prefer.
What are the efficient tools for making Conversational Marketing a success? Which companies provide their top services regarding?
Like ‘No one size fits all”, the same way, not one single marketing strategy works for every brand or company. Many techniques had to be applied to see what works and fit well.
As mentioned above not always conversational marketing is needed for the completion of every marketing goal, for the sake of keeping it real and natural for attracting leads willing to convert. These goals can be successfully aligned with effective conversational marketing tools to entertain customers and save time.
Facebook Messenger bots.
The initial tool which every marketer recommends and uses is Facebook messenger bots which invite customers to lean into the conversation flow and know about their desire to have information or buy any product/service. This tool can attract a large customer base through Facebook, as many people use it today.
Cost: No Cost, it’s free but needs a developer to set it up through paid software.
Botfuel.
It is the messaging platform that exactly knows how to engage a customer whether it’s for on-sale or off-sale. The key here is to converse with the visitor to simplify their search for their interested product.
Cost: Free up to 5000 messages per month.
Intercom.
An interesting tool to get customers by providing them with a conversational user experience. It’s trusted by tech giant companies for making available better marketing and support. It also re-engages customers with targeted content and email campaigns.
Cost: It carries different plans for different stages of business (start – $39/month, grow – $99/month, accelerate – $499/month, scale – $999/month)
Some of the top conversational marketing companies include:
Markentive
The company delivers business consulting, marketing automation, and CRM assistance consisting of conversational marketing tools.
Campaign Creators
The company specializes in creating digital sales funnels for further sales opportunities through lead nurturing with the help of market automation tools.
Webs (B2B Inbound Marketing & Sales)
This company supports other B2B companies by providing digital marketing services including working with IT and business software and interactive CRM tools.
Smart Bug
The company provides digitization services with data-driven strategies and insights using and applying inbound marketing methodologies for growth in marketing ROI.
How did Conversational Marketing Drift become profitable? (What’s the insider story of Drift)?
Marketing companies/agencies as well as digital marketers all over the world know and are aware of the potential of various platforms delivering and using a personalized approach to customer services. Conversational marketing is one such approach to engage the web visitor or customer.
But do we know how these two terms started gaining visibility via association with a marketing company?
‘Drift’ a marketing and sales platform branded these terms and soon became a leader amongst the niche.
The company benefitted from the use of chat technology for connecting with customers by making sales and marketing the core.
However, the sales reps couldn’t effectively handle various support questions. So there, a need felt to create a chatbot to further streamline sales-related chat and to make the sales reps’ job easy as well as clarified.
Hence, this conversation based on chatbot technology needed a name to justify this service. Drift used the concept of ‘Conversational Marketing’ to be visible.
Read the story here.
The Bottom line
This conversational approach helps to engage and retain customers by interacting with them, when the customers want and where the customers want.
As people communicate with others daily through different interfacing platforms, this marketing approach has made the way more user-friendly for website viewers, visitors and audiences for connecting with their brand as well as getting better information to encourage them with their next step and coming across quality content all delivered via chat conversations to support the customer’s views and wish to acknowledge themselves and companies can align the value of their brands with the needs of their customers.
Conversation helps in establishing a connection, connection helps in evoking interest, and interest motivates us to take a step further with decision-making. This simple way and reason to use conversational marketing combines best customer relations practices along with re-engaging opportunities and sustainable growth for any company.
Now you know where to find your insightful marketing reads. Stay tuned for more…
