What is Chatbot Marketing? Benefits, Strategy & Tips

You might have been forced to think that chatbots are mainly used for customer support. However, that is just one way of leveraging the amazing technology we know as AI chatbots. With the correct approach, a chatbot is able to power the marketing department effectively so that a lead is never overlooked. It allows us to attract website visitors and turn them into potential leads for a company’s sales team.

Here is a detailed look into how chatbot marketing can be leveraged to engage visitors.

1What is Chatbot Marketing?

Let’s first delve into what exactly chatbot marketing is. It is a specific marketing technique that utilizes computer programs to automate interactions with potential prospects and customers, either in your app or on your website, to generate sales.

Utilizing chatbots inside marketing strategies allows the companies to qualify and engage with leads at all times, regardless of whether the sales and marketing teams are online or not. Just as chatbots can be utilized to answer support-related queries, they can also be used to initiate conversations with customers and qualify certain leads.

Chatbots also provide immediate responses to customer queries so that you have 24-hour customer service. The data that is collected can be used to understand emerging trends and consumer pain points so that a more personalized consumer experience can be offered.

There are other ways in which chatbot marketing assists in engaging customers and brands more closely:

• Resolving a problem or an issue
• Provision of a detailed response to a question
• Connecting the correct support team for a certain issue
• Sharing of quick responses regarding products, discounts or services

2Benefits of Using Chatbots for Marketing

Apart from automating and streamlining customer care, chatbot marketing can greatly impact your business in different key ways:

Chatbot Marketing Saves Money and Time

According to a survey, more than 23% of consumers expect a brand to respond to their question within two hours of time. By responding automatically to common consumer queries that do not require any human support, you tend to save resources and time that can be utilized in meaningful ways.

Several interactions with the customers can be automated by combining AI-based and rule-based algorithms to ensure that there is no gap or delay in response time. Moreover, by utilizing chatbot marketing in the customer support process, access to customer information can also be provided beyond the usual working hours.

Generation of Revenue and Leads

Chatbots can acquire the required information to provide adequate support, particularly when they have been plugged into the website. For instance, when a chatbot inquires from the users why they are visiting a page, this automated communication can assist customers in finding everything they want and nudge them towards conversion.

In the same way, when set up, chatbot marketing tends to boost sales by proactively sending notifications about discounts and offers to speed up the purchase process.

Moreover, these chatbots derive intent from the communication done by qualified leads and customers. This helps send customers down the right path, whether it is about acquiring support or conversing with the sales team.

Guiding Users Towards Better Outcomes

Customers, especially the new ones, might usually be confused about where to find information that they really need. By asking a series of different questions, the users can be redirected to the right places where they can get the correct information. This also means receiving support for issues other than sales, such as refunds and delivery tracking.

Common questions that the marketing chatbots might include are:

• What are you looking for?
• Where are you based?
• Have you forgotten something in your cart?
• Do you need personal support?
• What’s your order number?

Acquiring Customer Insights

Marketing chatbots also hold great importance when it comes to the proactive collection of relevant insights through intelligent social listening. The data gathered as a result of chatbot conversations can be utilized to improve the overall customer experience and inform product descriptions, personalization, and development.

The sentiment analysis capabilities of the chatbot can be utilized to dig deeper to understand customer demographics, past purchase decisions, and clickstreams. This allows for the creation of a highly personalized offering. This can also provide businesses with a competitive edge that can fill in the market gaps and deal with consumers more efficiently.

Unique User Engagement

Chatbot marketing is a great way of engaging with consumers reasonably interactively. For instance, Domino’s allows its customers to order pizza by simply sharing the pizza emoji. The chatbot can further ask more questions if necessary. These smooth user experiences also ensure that consumers remember a brand for its great customer service.

3How to Create a Chatbot Marketing Strategy?

In order to create an efficient chatbot marketing strategy, it is important that one has a properly structured plan. Let’s look at how it can be created:

1Defining Chatbot Marketing Goals and Use Cases

The most significant step towards marketing chatbot creation is to narrow down your expectations from them. This means that the goals are properly defined from the start. Is your business goal generation of brand awareness or customer acquisition? Do you wish to ease out the customers’ woes or help them get better product insights?

Being mindful of what needs to be accomplished as one builds a user experience can lead to a more successful and faster outcome.

2Selecting the Appropriate Platforms

For best reaching your audience, it is important that one selects the right platform to incorporate the marketing strategy. This will guide you in determining the user experience and the queries your chatbot needs to ask. For instance, a present customer on Twitter might have varied questions as compared to a new customer who has reached out on Instagram.

Moreover, you will also have to consider options, as the chat conversations will vary based on the networks, pages and channels that your programs live on. For instance, these options may include the website, Messenger by Meta, Twitter Direct Message or Instagram Direct. This is especially important because demographics tend to differ for every social network.

3Building the Chatbot Content Strategy

The next step in the creation of a chatbot marketing strategy is figuring out the content which you want your customers to engage with. FAQs are a great start in building chatbot conversation flows for guiding users to the best answer without needing any individual support from your team. Your chatbot content strategy can be built by asking your internal team the following:

4Sales

Your sales teams usually have critical conversations with their prospects. It is best to figure out which issues may prohibit a user from converting into a customer.

5Customer Service

The customer services team at your company probably talks the most to your customers. It can be a good idea to inquire about the trends that they view in the most commonly asked questions.

6Marketing

Marketing professionals can provide great insights into why customers may reach out to social channels. These queries are crucial for your social media chatbots to be trained on.

The existent content can be evaluated to observe what supports the audience’s needs best before the creation of new content.

7Design the Marketing Chatbot’s Personality

It is a good idea to give the chatbot a personality. It humanizes the interaction and aligns it with the brand identity. To let customers know that they are interacting with a bot, many companies also name their bots. Copywriting teams can help set a consistent voice and clear guidelines for the chatbot.

8Writing a Welcoming Message

The welcome message is vital for engaging users and getting them to respond to the bot. The best welcoming messages are ones that have set expectations, are compelling and ask queries.

9Build All Possible Conversation Trees

Every conversation that your chatbot will have with your customer is going to be different. Some conversations may go across multiple levels, while others may stop after just one question. It is best to build a conversation tree for every question.

10Adding Visual Components

Create attractive messages by including images, emojis or animated GIFs for the chatbot conversation. Adding such visual components brings more personality to the chatbot messages. It helps reinforce the messages that are sent, thereby increasing conversion rates.

4How Can You Use Chatbots in Marketing?

There is a massive potential waiting to be unlocked when it comes to chatbot marketing. The following use cases will help with the application of chatbots in marketing.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is likely to be one of the top applications of chatbots in marketing. Chatbots in lead generation are the perfect friendly substitute for the online forms we all hate. Moreover, they are also the most straightforward chatbots to put into practice.

Lead Qualification

For businesses, things do not stop at lead generation. The quality of the leads and the likelihood of conversion are essential to assess. A well-constructed marketing chatbot can easily gauge the interest of the client during the purchase journey.

Appointments and Reservations

The main aspect of some businesses is reservations and appointments. Others utilize them as a dedicated strategy for providing customers with demos of their products or services. Booking appointments and making reservations are the best ways of using bots for marketing, particularly for conventional office businesses. Engaging in conversational marketing can make a huge difference for businesses.

Community Management

Marketing today is all about creating relationships and listening. However, not every company can afford to hire employees to tackle the required task. When you run a face-to-face community or something online, for the sake of successful marketing, it is essential that a marketing chatbot is built.

A chatbot in community management can perform several different functions, including inviting new members to the group, sharing times, locations and updates regarding online or offline meetings and events, offering general community updates, informing members regarding rules and ensuring they are followed and enabling members in asking questions and receiving quick answers.

5Set up Marketing Chatbots with ChatInsight AI

When it comes to marketing chatbots, you cannot compromise on the choice of the chatbot. ChatInsight AI is one of the best marketing chatbots available in the market. It can be trained on the customized data as your business need. Moreover, it can be used as a training assistant for new hires, a support tool for the customer support team, a guide for IT-related support and even a marketing assistant. It provides immediate answers, tailored content, and supports multiple languages without configuration.

By leveraging the capabilities of ChatInsight AI in marketing strategies, businesses can enhance customer engagement, streamline lead generation, personalize marketing efforts, and gain valuable insights to drive growth and success in their marketing campaigns.

6Best Practices of Implementing a Marketing Chatbot

If you wish to bring the best out of a marketing chatbot, it is essential to follow the best practices given below:

List the Problems

It is best to list your marketing goals before you begin building a marketing chatbot. Rank them on priority and then see which ones are the most pressing. This will help in finding out which problems require the most attention.

Choose the Communication Channels

Each chatbot framework integrates with different communication channels in a unique way. Before choosing your chatbot solution, first look into where you wish to place this chatbot. Will it go on Facebook Messenger or Twitter? Select the chatbot solution accordingly.

Selecting the Right Chatbot Solution

Now that the problems have been listed, it is time to pick the right tool so that it can make a difference. What is the best way to verify which chatbot solution suits you best? You can sign up for free trials or take product demos. Test out different solutions and then make your decision.

Conclusion

With chatbot marketing, AI isn’t replacing your sales or marketing teams. However, when properly utilized, it can help grow this team’s potential. By leveraging marketing chatbot, businesses can support their team in a better way. Each social interaction reduces the customer’s effort and takes them to a superior purchase experience.