Chatbots have significantly developed in the last few years, owing to the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) that controls them. They now serve as sophisticated tools and can assist you in automating several business processes.
Apart from being efficient at handling customer care queries, chatbots can help to boost marketing initiatives and drive the customer smoothly through the sales funnel. Given below are some of the ways in which chatbots fit into your marketing strategy:
1. A Personalized Experience for your Target Audience
Interacting with someone who identifies you by name impacts the nature of the conversation greatly. Chatbots align with social media and gather information about every individual they come across. Chatbots respond to queries accurately and further provide shopping advice based on users’ interest and behaviour.
2. Keeps the User Engaged
Chatbots are successful in engaging as well as retaining your customer. This is because, unlike other marketing efforts, chatbots have the capacity to entertain your audience for long. For instance, a video has the ability to engage the target audience but once it is over, the users’ interest in you is also over. On the other hand, a chatbot grabs the users’ attention, captures more information while interacting with them and sends personalized as well as engaging content relevant to your brand, product, and services.
3. Enhances Your Audience Network
Chatbots mostly exist on social media platforms. This means that they are able to reach vaster audiences and can tap larger demographics for your brand. They can be integrated with different messaging applications giving the customer more avenues to connect with you. As a result, you are in a better position to enhance sales with newer opportunities and prospects.
4. Capture Customer Feedback
A chatbot makes it easier for you to collect feedback from your customers. Generally, people do not like to answer questions or complete a survey if there is no incentive involved in it. However, a chatbot subtly approaches the customer gathering feedback in the form of questions through conversations.
Furthermore, by installing the right machine learning tools, chatbots can analyze the data that has been received, giving you more insight into how you can improve your marketing strategies. You can focus more on your customers’ needs and develop an inbound marketing plan which helps to generate leads and sales.
5. Develop Relevant Messaging
A brand’s messaging is crucial to make or break its image. If customers constantly receive emails, newsletters, and other notifications, they tend to get irritated. Chatbots analyze the data that has been collected and send out customized and relevant communication to users through social media. This way, consumers only receive the information they are interested in and seek to know more about the brand.
6. Make Brand Interactions Fun
We all know that chatbots deliver quality information to customers but what they also do is make communication fun. This means that your marketing efforts make a lasting impact on your consumer and increase the number of users visiting your website. Links to relevant blog posts and other content pieces can be shared for consumers to interact with the brand.
7. Proactively Reach Out to Customers
Brands generally like to adopt a passive approach. They only communicate with a user when they have been contacted. A chatbot, on the other hand, welcomes the user when they visit your website or social media page and inform them of their availability. You appear to be more proactive this way and therefore enhance your brand’s reputation, increase interactions and sales numbers.
8. Make the Sales Process Smoother
Leads must be nurtured to help buyers successfully complete their sales journey. However, this can be a time-consuming process. Chatbots enable you to collect important information and accordingly send personalized messages to the users.
A chatbot-based lead-nurturing campaign can be made extremely successful by capturing user data and performing split testing on the messages you create for the target audience. This approach helps you to understand the right marketing strategy and really nurture every lead that comes your way through the website or social media profiles.
Conclusion
Two-way communication via messaging applications has become the ideal way of interacting with customers and reaching out to them. This is exactly why chatbots are becoming the need of the hour. A chatbot integrated into your marketing strategy can help you gather information about prospects, personalize marketing efforts, improve target audience reach, and generate more sales and revenue through social media.