Where is your audience?
Social media platforms and the prominence of mobile devices have led to a shift in where audiences spend their time. As a result, brands have had to find new ways to reach their target audience.
Seemingly, content was the best way to engage with consumers and build trust in the brand by providing valuable, relevant information on a regular basis. Social platforms are now saturated with so much content that brands are finding it difficult to stand out from their competition.
Following up with prospective customers was made easier with the explosion of mobile devices and widespread access to the internet. Email provided a way for marketers to reach consumers in a more personal space and entice them with offers as well as create a more personal style of marketing. An email addressed to the consumer with a message just for them...what’s not to love?
However, for brands using email correspondence, it has become much more difficult to stand out from the crowd. Today, so many brands are using email that inboxes have become saturated, resulting in a lack of interest from consumers, low open rates and even lower click-through-rates. Email has become less personal as the same email is being sent to hundreds or thousands of consumers at the same time and does not reflect the individual receiving it.
The Answer?
Does digital marketing have the answer to combat declining impact of email as well as personalization and trust issues within digital platforms? Possibly. Chatbot technology – a new and emerging tactic – has lifted off in the past 18 months, allowing brands and businesses to create relevant, personalized messages delivered to the consumer, instantly. So, what are chatbots and how can they improve your marketing process?
Chatbots. What are they?
Bots are computer programs which automate certain tasks, in the case of a chatbot, the task is to communicate effectively with human consumers. Chatbots use machine learning and defined rules set out by the programmer. These rules define how the bot will react to questions and interaction with the consumers. Consumers can interact with the bot through a chat interface such as Facebook’s Messenger app or through a third-party bot service such as Botsify, which will enable chatbot technology to be utilized on a website. Chatbot technology allows businesses to connect with consumers on an individual level, making interactions more personal and allowing consumers to feel closer to the brands they love.
Chatbot Marketing Benefits
In this digital age, consumers are searching for meaningful, personal information which can be delivered to them at the right time and through the correct channel. Chatbots provide consumers with a direct line of communication to brands with minimal friction. Offering consumers a helping hand and valuable advice as well as current offers and coupons they might be interested in through a chatbot allows the consumer to feel that there is always someone looking out for them. There are numerous benefits to employing chatbots as part of your marketing strategy.
- Customer Service: By using chatbots you take away the stress of dealing with customer service inquiries, improve response times as the chatbot is available 24/7 to interact with consumers and increase customer satisfaction with the brand.
- Consumer Analysis: Collect valuable data on the consumers through the language they use when interacting with a chatbot. Keywords and demographic information are valuable pieces of data that can be used to optimize future sales and marketing strategies.
- Personalization: Depending on the responses programmed into the chatbot, interactions can be personal and friendly. This increases trust with the consumer. Personalized conversations with consumers in real-time are much more effective than email blasts with general messages.
- Lead Nurturing: With the information chatbots can collect about a customer, marketers can create customized messaging that guides the consumer along their buyer journey. This ensures the consumer is moving in the right direction, driving higher conversion rates and more qualified leads.
- Data Driven: Chatbots provide businesses with the ability to talk to individual customers in real-time, engaging in automated two-way conversations, at scale. Through these conversations, businesses can monitor and measure interactions with customers and optimize experiences.
- Constant Contact: Human customer service representatives can only communicate with one consumer at a time, whereas chatbots can converse simultaneously with thousands of people. No matter the time of day or the number of people contacting your business at any given time, chatbot technology ensures each consumer is taken care of immediately.
- Additional Sales Channel: Chatbots allow businesses the ability to sell products directly from the interface. With the growth of eCommerce, consumers prefer to shop online rather than go to a store. Chatbots can serve product suggestions to consumers within the interface as well as providing the ability to check out and purchase products directly from the chatbot conversation.
Factoring chatbots into your sales and marketing processes can lead to better customer service, higher engagement rates and more sales. With more businesses using chatbots and seeing the benefits, there has been a drive towards automation of more marketing processes.
Marketing Automation & Chatbots
Marketing automation allows businesses to streamline, automate and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase efficiency and grow revenue faster. The main goal of marketing automation is to target the right customer with the right content. In order to achieve this goal, you must analyze customer data. Name, contact information, and transactional data are critical as they allow you to build a strategy that targets customers with the right message. Through conversations with chatbots, it is relatively easy to obtain all the information you need to be successful in targeting customers.
Marketing automation also leads to enhanced efficiency. Businesses can use the consumer data to send personalized, relevant messages and offers at the most appropriate times through the ideal channels. Chatbots are a vital step in marketing automation. Gathering consumer data, responding to questions, concerns and requests as well as suggesting products that may be ideal for the consumer are all areas which improve the customer experience.
All in all, chatbot technology can be vital to improving and maintaining a quality customer experience. Ultimately it will benefit your business by driving more qualified leads through your sales funnel.
For more information on how you can improve your marketing strategy contact Giant Voices. We have experience in digital advertising, SEO solutions, social media and more. A few of our digital offers include:
- Website Development
- Website Migration
- Website Audit
- SEO Report
- Digital Advertising, and more
