Businesses use chatbots as a marketing strategy to advertise their products and services. Chatbots are computer programs designed to engage with users using pre-programmed scenarios or artificial intelligence. Marketing chatbots can be incorporated on the company’s website, Facebook Messenger or other messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
Chatbots in Marketing
1. Chatbot Marketing for Lead Generation
Lead generation is an indispensable aspect of marketing and is arguably the most prominent chatbot application for marketing purposes. It is highly probable that lead generation will remain one of the top bot use cases for marketing in 2022.
To begin with, they serve as a welcoming alternative to the despised online forms. Furthermore, they represent the simplest and most uncomplicated category of chatbots for websites to implement.
A lead generation bot serves as the initial stage for several businesses to delve into conversational marketing. It is especially suitable for businesses that rely on clients and require salespersons to follow up on leads.
2. Chatbot Marketing for Lead Qualification
Generating leads alone does not suffice for numerous businesses.
In order to simplify their process of acquiring customers, they require an automated evaluation of lead quality and probability of conversion. A skillfully designed chatbot can evaluate the level of interest of prospective clients as well as their position in the customer journey.
Extending the lead-generating conversation with case-specific qualification questions is often all that is needed to create a qualification bot in numerous scenarios.
With the increasing prevalence of no-code tools and builders for chatbot technology, companies and brands can now gather a plethora of qualifying data without detracting from the user experience.
3. Chatbots for Quote Generation
Is your business reliant on providing quotes to possible customers? Have you calculated the amount of clients you miss out on because they are unwilling to make a call? Or the number lost to larger competitors who offer instant online quotes around the clock?
For any enterprise utilizing customized quotes, it’s crucial to value each individual who approaches with inquiries or concerns as they could eventually become a major account. The crucial components are promptness and precision.
Having a chatbot available on your website, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp account at all times can offer prompt service and generate quotes based on customer feedback right away. Additionally, it can serve as a qualification bot and inform sales representatives when a potential valuable lead finishes the chat, and even initiate a chatbot to human transfer.
If a bot has natural language processing capabilities, it can offer users more information while gathering essential data, making it superior to a form.
4. Chatbots Marketing for Appointment Booking and Reservations
Certain businesses rely heavily on bookings and reservations, while others utilize them as a targeted marketing technique to offer customers samples of their goods or services. In any case, leveraging bots for marketing purposes through scheduling appointments and bookings is likely one of the most effective methods – particularly for conventional brick-and-mortar establishments.
Sephora’s Facebook Messenger bot is a well-known illustration of this application. The beauty product firm introduced a bot that permitted clients to schedule an in-store takeover appointment utilizing their bot, resulting in a remarkable 11% increase in conversion rate as compared to their other booking avenues.
5. Chatbot Marketing for Loyalty Programs
Capgemini’s research reveals that a staggering 54% of loyalty accounts are dormant and almost 33% of enrolled members leave the programs without ever utilizing the benefits, either because they forget about them or are ignorant of their existence.
By incorporating a chatbot onto your website, app, reminder email, or more preferably, a popular messaging app such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, you will be able to achieve the following:
- Remind the members about their point balance in a friendly way
- Gamify the loyalty program experience (e.g., letting users earn points by solving puzzles, submitting selfies with products, offering customer feedback, taking personalization quizzes. etc.)
- Encourage members to redeem their points and rewards
- Send reward reminders
6. Chatbot Marketing for On-Site Services
When chatbots and messaging apps collaborate, it creates an opportunity to make digital marketing more functional and demonstrate its advantages in a tangible manner. This opens the door to offering on-site, practical services through mobile-friendly chatbot marketing, including:
- Providing business location and opening times information and answering other common questions
- Sending virtual receipts to save the environment and collect data (which you can use to associate purchase information with specific clients, observe purchase habits, and ultimately personalize offers and shopping experiences)
- Providing WiFi password
- Sharing the list of menu items of services
- Providing a timetable and room information about events/classes/meetings.
7. Chatbot Marketing for Community Management
Marketing is becoming more personalized and on a smaller scale with an emphasis on relationship building and attentive listening. However, only large corporations have the financial resources to hire sufficient staff to handle this approach, and even then, it may not be the most apparent way to generate profits.
It doesn’t matter if you manage an online or offline group or community, building a bot is essential to successful marketing. A chatbot can supervise a specific user group or community, providing benefits such as:
- Invite new members into the group;
- Share locations, times, and updates about offline or online meetings and events;
- Offer general community news and updates;
- Inform members about the rules and ensure they are followed (e.g., monitor foul language or self-promotion activities);
- Enable members to ask questions and receive prompt answers about relevant topics.
8. Chatbot Marketing for Content
Chatbots have advanced significantly in their ability to interact, making them a separate platform that requires a distinct marketing strategy.
By utilizing a chatbot, you can enhance your blog’s attraction to readers, offer your podcast to a broader audience, and gain more views on your online video channel, ultimately increasing your fanbase while keeping them informed.
Irrespective of whether you operate in a B2C or B2B capacity, it’s possible to dispatch proactive (notification) or reactive (on request) messages. Distributing pertinent content through platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or on the web can help users conserve valuable time.
Your followers/customers can utilize a content marketing chatbot and reap the benefits.
- Listen to podcast episodes, watch videos, read articles, check out case studies, etc. directly without leaving the bot
- Receive updates about new episodes or articles
- Look up topic-specific content on request
In addition, if you have knowledge about the preferences of users, you can customize bot alerts according to their choices. Furthermore, the conversational structure simplifies and makes it easier to relate to current pop-culture marketing trends.
Chatbot Marketing: Benefits
Among the primary advantages of chatbot marketing are:
Increasing involvement and revenue
Utilizing chatbots for conversational marketing on your website can enhance customer engagement and ultimately drive sales. These marketing chatbots can even be programmed to process orders and guide customers towards completing a purchase. Given Juniper’s findings that chatbot expenditures will surge from $7.3 billion in 2019 to $112 billion in 2023, this strategy can be highly advantageous.
Dividing traffic into segments
Using chatbots in marketing can assist in dividing traffic and promoting your products to the appropriate audience, which is crucial because studies indicate that almost 77% of a business’s return on investment (ROI) results from personalized and aimed communication.
If someone indicates interest in your pricing or one of your collection’s products, the chatbot categorizes them as a warm lead. Utilizing this grouping of users, the chatbots can effectively interact with them at opportune moments.
Availability around the clock
A marketing chatbot is available to offer recommendations and assist with orders, even if a potential client is browsing your website at 3 am. By doing so, the shopping experience can be enhanced and additional sales can be achieved, particularly considering that approximately 51% of your clients anticipate your availability all day and night.
Supplying information for examination
While engaging in a conversation, your marketing chatbots have the capability to gather the names, contact information, and interests of the visitors. In addition, data pertaining to the effectiveness and productivity of the bot can also be gathered for analytical purposes.
By examining the data, it is possible to augment your knowledge repository and enhance the efficacy of your bot. Additionally, you have the option of incorporating a survey for evaluating customer satisfaction at the conclusion of the chat in order to gain further insight into the guest’s perception of your company.
Qualifying leads
According to research, businesses that respond to customer inquiries within an hour are seven times more likely to convert them into leads. To increase your chances of success, it is essential to promptly reply to customer queries. You can take advantage of marketing chatbots, which can provide round-the-clock assistance, suggest products, and offer promotions to boost sales.
Tips for an Effective Chatbot Marketing Strategy
have the potential to improve customer engagement and increase conversion rates. Sales-oriented chatbots have the ability to enhance customer interaction and boost conversion rates by bridging the divide between a first-time visitor and a potential customer. Through audience segmentation, these chatbots can deliver tailored messaging to ensure maximum impact.
1. Set Objectives
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of your chatbot strategy, it is imperative that you have a clear understanding of your goals. This is why it is vital for your marketing team to establish objectives and identify metrics that can be used to gauge success. Objectives may include enhancing sales figures, boosting subscriber numbers, or elevating the overall customer shopping experience.
2. Use a Chatbot Provider
It’s important to understand that utilizing a chatbot marketing firm does not equate to employing a marketing agency. While they offer the software, it is up to you to design your own chatbot.
Using a chatbot platform is a more convenient, efficient, and cost-effective alternative to building a chatbot internally. Opting for a marketing service that offers artificial intelligence chatbots can help you avoid wasting time and effort.
3. Offer Live Chat
Inform your prospective clients that there is a sincere individual readily available at the click of a button. There are certain individuals who prefer not to engage with an automated assistant, hence the importance of your representatives. It is crucial to provide your site visitors with the opportunity to communicate with a human representative, as it may retain a potential customer and result in a successful transaction.
4. Use the Right Chatbots for Marketing
Numerous kinds of chatbots exist, all serving distinct objectives. Therefore, ensure to opt for the ones designed for marketing objectives. A few instances of marketing chatbots you can deploy encompass:
- Product recommendation chatbots
- Place an order chatbots
- Schedule an appointment chatbots
5. Give your Bot a Voice
It is important to ensure that your marketing chatbot’s tone of voice aligns with your brand. For example, if you specialize in funeral products, it would not be appropriate for your chatbot to be lighthearted. On the other hand, if your business involves selling children’s toys through an ecommerce store, your chatbot should be cheerful and incorporate humor to fit the theme. Your chatbot should reflect your business in the most authentic manner possible.
6. Launch a Quiz Chatbot
If you’re curious about what your visitors are searching for, consider asking them. By doing so, you can provide more customized and precise suggestions. Additionally, you can gather information about potential customers that could be utilized later on for advertising your products and services.
7. Use Chatbot Newsletters
To ensure your website visitors stay informed, in addition to your email newsletter, send brief updates containing pertinent information for your clients such as new releases, products on sale, and upcoming offers.
8. Direct People from Facebook Ads to the Chat
By creating a chatbot through Facebook Messenger that engages with users via a product quiz, you can develop advertisements for your Facebook page, which will lead potential buyers to the Messenger chat. This approach results in increased engagement, a creative product showcase and better click-through rates to your ecommerce store.
9. Collect Feedback
By sending uncomplicated surveys and follow-ups to your customers once the conversation has ended, you can amass their feedback and acquire valuable information on their inquiries, areas of interests, and predisposition to recommending your business. This approach can determine whether you are satisfying their needs and pinpoint areas you need to revise for enhancement.
10. Track Performance
To enhance your customer service, monitor the performance of your marketing chatbots using analytics and metrics. This approach provides valuable insights that you can apply to modify the bot’s decision-making tree, including its triggers and messages sent to prospective clients. Thus, it is essential to monitor the bot’s performance regularly and make timely adjustments.
Side notes
One effective way of promoting your business is through chatbot marketing, which involves utilizing chatbots to automate the marketing of your products, gather leads, and receive orders through either your website or a messaging app of your choice.
Here are a couple of factors to remember:
- Some of the benefits of marketing chatbots are boosting sales, generating leads, and providing help to your customers 24/7.
- You should set objectives before you start your chatbot marketing campaign, give your bot a personality that matches your brand, and collect feedback.
- Always track the performance of your chatbots, don’t leave them on their own after launching.
