Why you Should use a Chatbot in your Business?
Customers are becoming demanding not only in the way they choose to buy a product but also in rethinking the way they communicate with various businesses. Businesses are striving to keep pace with ever-fickler customers. We all know that companies speak the language of the masses. The demand for quick engagement and customer satisfaction is everywhere and continues to grow. Traditional online companies are unable to match up with the advancements in Artificial Intelligence. That is why Artificial Intelligence and Automation are very viable instant communication devices.
Business leaders and decision-makers are turning towards chatbots and are investing more in chatbot development and deployment.
So, what are chatbots? Well, Chatbots are one of the ways of automating customer communication and engagement in an accessible, simpler, and faster process. Chatbots converse with the users using natural language, through voice or text, rather than traditional websites. It has become an exciting tool in the user experience environment.
With the increasing demand for messaging apps, chatbots are the new frontier of marketing. Before moving ahead, let’s understand the meaning of chatbot marketing. Chatbot marketing is a type of marketing that uses chatbots to promote products and services with targeted messaging to increase brand visibility, boost customer engagement and automate lead generation processes. They are used to engaging with existing and potential clients to get a sale. According to research done by SalesForce, 52% of customers are likely to switch vendors if a company doesn’t provide them with a personalized experience. Also, 65% of B2B stakeholders are likely to do similar in terms of companies they reach out to.
Src: Drift
Brands are now implementing chatbots and connecting them with messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc., or add to their website. What’s something that can save businesses billions and is preferred by 69% of consumers?
That’s right, CHATBOTS!
With the rapid adoption of Conversational AI, marketers need to keep up the pace as chatbots are becoming the most effective marketing strategy in 2022 and beyond.
Before we dive into the reasons behind why chatbots are the future of marketing, let’s look into how they can benefit marketing teams:
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Redirecting users into a chatbot rather than into a lead web form increases the conversion ratio and customer engagement.
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Answer FAQs and hand over more complicated queries to live specialists.
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Send product updates, special promotions, personalized discounts and offers via messaging channels where open rates are more than newsletters.
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Lessen shopping cart abandonment rates on websites.
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Remarket customers and send them back to finish a conversation.
Src: intercom.com
Advantages in Deploying Chatbots For Marketing:
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Increase lead generation: If you make your chatbot ask something like, “Hi, Let me know if you have any questions” or “welcome to the page, please tell me how can I help you?” These simple pings from the chatbot can help a visitor interact with the bot without disrupting the browsing experience. And with the power of conversational marketing and questionnaires, you can collect information on these potential leads to determine whether they are quality leads or not. With chatbot marketing, a business can easily move prospects down the sales funnel and help them make the buying decision.
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Save time and money: A chatbot helps a business scale marketing conversation with minimum resources and efforts. Gone are the days when business hours used to be a thing. In order to provide people the best customer service is when a business is there for them whenever they need it. It could be 7 in the evening or 3 in the night and this could be done through the use of chatbots. A chatbot is a one-time investment that needs no salary and no vacation.
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Boost customer engagement: A chatbot can retain customers for a longer period of time than any other form of marketing. They don’t just engage but they keep them hooked post-interactions. A chatbot can read customer’s interests and send them relevant notifications according to their interests. The conversation held in messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp etc., with around 5 billion users increases the chance to communicate with a highly targeted audience on a global scale.
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Quick responses: When a chatbot is able to solve a customer’s query about the product or service instantly, it not only solves the problem but gives the user a positive experience. This further improves the brand image and brand loyalty.
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Collects data for analysis: Since users directly converse with the chatbot as they do with their friends or families, a chatbot can collect valuable information about customers. Information such as their address, their taste, their likes as well as their dislikes. Apart from the insights chatbot can also collect real-time feedback from the customers resulting in improving the products and services of a brand. Chatbots often help with the data analysis of the information collected from various customers for gaining insights into the customer’s needs and preferences. This analysis helps to adapt and optimize various marketing strategies to help achieve better outputs.
Now, you know why chatbots are necessary for marketing, let’s move on to how they can fit into your marketing strategy:
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Auto Qualify Leads & send to sales instantly: Earlier sales representatives used to qualify leads for the business. Now, technology has made it easier with chatbots automating lead qualification processes. Chatbots ask appropriate questions to customers making it easy and engaging for them to pick options relevant for them and submit their contact details. This reduces the sales cycle and improves the entire process. It also saves the sales representative’s time to focus on more complex tasks. High-quality leads are instantly provided to sales, increasing the chances to get a sale for the business.
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Schedule Meetings: Booking appointments was considered a time-consuming task. Well, not anymore. Having an AI-enabled personal assistant bot to schedule meetings and appointments saves a lot of time for the business as well as visitors. With chatbots, a user can schedule, modify and cancel meetings with just a click.
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Enable making orders: You don’t have to stand in queues to order a pizza or make a call to reserve a table anymore. Conversational bots are programmed to communicate in a meaningful manner with users and to carry out different tasks from answering common questions, booking a table, making reservations or payments. Chatbots allow you to purchase without the hassle.
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Tracking orders: Chatbots provide real-time tracking of the order. A customer can simply ask the bot “Please share the shipment status” and a chatbot will be able to provide all information. The information includes the order details, date of the delivery, time, tracking map and many such details. In the end, it also asks for feedback at the end of the delivery to improve the tracking better.
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Share news and updates: With chatbots, it is easy to share top updates and news via messaging channels to the users. Personalized notifications are sent to users to keep them up-to-date with the brand’s work, its product and services. A chatbot can support a business to stay in touch with its customers and keep them engaged.
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Personalized discounts and recommendations: Brands look for countless ways to interact with customers. Interacting with customers helps them trigger responses and target them based on their interests. With chatbots, brands are able to hold a personalized conversation with each individual. One way is by incentivizing customers to make purchases by offering discounts whenever they interact with the chatbot. Chatbots also allow brands to have two-way conversations at scale which gives them the opportunity to gather information to create a valuable experience for the user.
One can agree that this is the right time for businesses to understand the importance of chatbots and what they can do in the world of marketing. Conversational AI can be a powerful tool for marketing departments when chosen and used correctly. They are low-risk and high result mediums that have helped many adapt and even thrive in these times. So, the next time you think of ways to connect with customers, generate more leads and provide a user-friendly environment, think of a chatbot.
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