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The importance of conversation in generating sales is undeniable. In the last decades, conversational bots have been incorporated into the digital sales process and are opening a new and improved stage in customer service: the conversational marketing era.
This article will describe the main aspects that you need to keep in mind regarding conversational marketing and its benefits when it comes to analyzing the current needs of modern users to satisfy them and make them choose your company first.
At its core, conversational marketing bases its features on having primarily a set of data categorized as a dialogue that would be then turned into a conversation.
Conversation is the tool that path the way to a sale.
At its core, conversational marketing bases its features on having primarily a set of data categorized as a dialogue that would be then turned into a conversation.
Keeping this principle in mind, conversations have been installed at the center of digital sales through a groundbreaking technology: the chatbot, also known as conversational bot.
And, what lies behind this behavior?
With the fast speed mentality of modern societies, consumers expect instant answers from companies. That is why perfecting conversations and humanizing the sales process is essential to meet this demand.
At SimianBot we implement an AI system that allows companies to incorporate the new communication modality into their sales.
Conversational marketing is a tool that uses conversations as an added value in the user experience. Furthermore, it improves sales processes and applies automation through auditory or visual interfaces, thus humanizing customer service.
Conversational marketing is a type of advertising strategy that understands the value that conversations add to the sales experience, and automates some of them through means that simulate a human conversation.
The primary idea behind conversational marketing is to make interactions with clients time-effective by reducing the conversations waste, trying to solve problems on websites, apps or other media, where they wear themselves out trying to get a straightforward answer.
By doing this, conversational marketing allows customers to create interactions when they want them in the most simplified yet efficient way.
Conversational marketing understands that today's users do not want to be sold to. Instead, they want to be advised, assisted and listened to in order to buy a product or service.
In this buying process, the core values are personalized interactions and transparency.
Conversational marketing can provide them through its constant availability, its custom-made approach and its familiarity: after all, the contact is happening through conversation and not through a static and distant bulk of information. This applies not only to apps and websites but to all existing platforms or means of communication including Whatsapp, the most widely adopted messenger tool worldwide.
The idea, then, is to have real conversations!
Conversational marketing is part of a new era taking place in marketing that aims to guide its services to the user and their needs—rather than just focusing on the products it is trying to sell.
The fast way of getting answers through conversational marketing addresses the need for interaction and immediate responses, as well the growing demand for searching personalized services or products.
This behavior makes a difference in conversions, which tend to be low in traditional sales formats. In fact, only 43% of potential customers answer phone calls, 20% open emails, and only 2.35% leave their data on landing pages. These statistics indicate that sales have to place in their center humans need rather than simply products.
Despite this reality, only 2% of websites currently have representatives to greet potential customers.
As mentioned, conversational marketing has understood that traditional marketing has forgotten the warm treatment with potential customers and, as a result, it tries to humanize sales. That is why conversational marketing is using chatbots or conversational bots increasingly to put an end to difficult-to-navigate interfaces. In a way, this change in the game is modernizing a traditional tool, such conversation, and incorporating it into the often dry setting, such as sales.
One of the main principles that we implement at SimianBot is our customers' feedback, not only about our service but also about using a bot in their conversational marketing strategy. As a result of incorporating our services into their platform, clients reported that they experienced “an increase from 5 to around 100 leads a month”.
Two significant factors to highlight are the ability to immediately satisfy the requirements of their potential customers and the use and advantages of artificial intelligence to obtain insights.
It’s not a surprise to see that brands that use chatbots make shopping on their sites or finding information a much more meaningful experience.
To name just one example, Starbucks allows orders to be placed via text messages assisted by a chatbot and, with this decision, it helps its sales to be completed more easily, while also building rapport with its customer and therefore, reinforcing the company’s name.
These are just some of the advantages of using chatbots through a company website, but we are yet to explore the way they can be integrated into social media. That is the case of Facebook, where conversational marketing was capitalized on the Facebook Messenger platform in its early days, and today it uses many other options to get its experiments off the ground.
As a matter of fact, any platform that supports chat can serve its purposes, and that is why it is commonplace to see chatbots running on Apple Business Chat, SMS, WeChat, Line, Slack, iMessage and even Telegram.
Having covered what conversational marketing is, it is now time to understand how its central features can be essential to make it part of your strategy.
On-Demand Real conversations.
Today's consumers want immediate responses and this includes having real, live conversations with companies. Just having immediate contact serves as the cornerstone to satisfy this need.
With conversational bots, companies can make sure that potential customers can have a personalized conversation at all times, without having to wait to be reached by a traditional representative and thus risking losing their interest.
The idea is not to replace human interactions, of course, but rather to answer potential customers' initial questions beyond human speed and thus provide them with a much more satisfying experience. In the interviews we conducted, most of our clients mentioned that visitors served by SimianBot were satisfied with the service they received and appreciated the prompt response. Actually, one of the most used words in conversations with our bot is 'Thank you'.
Leading the conversation to the right place.
While one-to-one conversations are the most effective, they also have their limitations. It is very difficult for the right representative to get involved in the appropriate situation from the very beginning. Instead, customers normally get escalated through different departments until they reach the person that can handle their requests.
By asking probing questions of chatbots, the ability to scale conversations reaches unprecedented levels.
Bots can hold huge amounts of conversations simultaneously without any variation in performance or effectiveness and reducing costs.
Building networks through chatbots.
Conversational marketing focuses not only on capturing leads but also on engaging in conversation with contacts who are interested in the business. This improves the quality of those contacts and, consequently, of conversions.
In this way, we can move from a passive model such as the contact form to an active and engaging model such as bots.
Customized responses.
One of the best practices when using conversational bots is to take advantage of opportunities to individualize conversations and optimize them so that they are just right for potential customers.
For this reason, it is important for each company to understand its business needs, customers and prospects and to treat them in a friendly and natural way. Small details such as using the customer’s name or implementing a personalized greeting, can be reason enough to make the experience remarkable.
That’s why at SimianBot we make sure visitors are responded to immediately in a way that truly represents your brand identity.
Getting Feedback from Multichannel.
Every conversation is an opportunity to obtain valuable information.
Another feature of conversational marketing is to use the feedback from conversations. This information can result in useful data for your business that you can then apply to improve your attention, service, or products.
In this context, Multichannel is used to express the quality and simultaneity of chatbots. Their scope of development is very varied, as these conversations can range from traditional media such as the telephone to digital media such as Facebook, your company’s website, WhatsApp, among others.
Conversational marketing tools such as chatbots, are as varied as there are needs in the market; here are some examples:
By now, it shouldn’t come as a shock to see conversational marketing trending this 2024, since it incorporates very well the values to which traditional sales must return, but with an added technological twist: personalization, warmth and a human touch, along with the immediacy with which users seek attention.
Conversational marketing has made the customer’s need the center of sales and of data recollection, replacing sales with help, distance with warmth and using its constant availability, conversational marketing is breaking the barriers of human interactions in sales.
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Still not convinced?
Augusta Acosta - Personal Trainer