Traditional ways of engagement are rapidly fading in 2020. Marketers are struggling to stay relevant, especially as the pandemic-hit world is adapting itself to the new-found digital dependence.
What if there was a way to stay relevant, ensure customer satisfaction, and generate leads all at the same time?
It’s possible to enhance your relationship with your customers through personalization. Today, most industries are beyond the basics of technological intervention and are now finding ways to make the technology fit each consumer as per their requirement. While the early 2000s were dominated by search engine optimization and marketing, the next decade saw the rise of social media and its use for marketing the business. Similarly, 2020 is all about personalization and making the customer feel at home with your brand.
As the use of AI in B2B marketing increases, chatbots are rising as a nifty personalization tool for marketers. In 2019, over 67% consumers have used chatbots for customer support. That’s not just it, the applications of chatbots are growing into all aspects of business now and it has become very easy to drive conversion with chatbots in 2020.
What Is a Chatbot?
Chatbots are programs that use messaging interfaces to replicate human conversation. Many companies use artificial intelligence to power their chatbots, which helps them conduct complex conversations with humans, assess their needs, and solve their problems, in turn, boosting conversion with chatbots.
Chatbot technology has been used for customer support for a while now. But the applications of chatbots have matured a lot since their invention. Chatbot messages can now be used to collect feedback, generate leads, assess the quality of leads, generate custom quotes, and promote content, among other things.
With applications as varied as this, driving conversion with chatbots has become the key ROI focus of most modern marketers.
Why Should Marketers Use Chatbots?
There are several reasons to adopt chatbots as a part of your market strategy; every reason will give you a new way to optimize conversion with chatbots. There are several conversion rate optimization tactics that will help you enhance conversion with chatbots too. But before that, let’s take a look at some of the key statistics for chatbots:
What these statistics essentially tell you, is that driving conversion with chatbots is not only possible but extremely likely, given how consumer preferences are steadily shifting towards 24/7 personalized service.
Chatbots aren’t just novelty additions to the website anymore. You can ensure enhanced conversion with chatbots by offering assistance at all hours, generating quotes, promoting content, and developing a relationship with your consumers even before they interact with an executive from your end.
How to Drive Conversion with Chatbots in 2020
So far, customers have responded quite positively to chatbots. The primary reason for a positive response is that chatbots are designed to be intuitive and conversational. Most chatbots today use natural language processing to interact with customers and create a false mental perception. This leads to customers’ brains believing that they are interacting with a human and accepting assistance more readily- making it easy to optimize conversion with chatbots.
This readiness also reflects in the purchasing habits of consumers. Chatbots designed to help consumers are also programmed to encourage consumers to make a purchase. The more accepting consumers are of chatbots and their assistance, the more likely they are to make a purchase. This is one of the most direct ways in which you can ensure conversion with chatbots, but there are several other ways that often go underutilized.
Improve Customer Service Experience
When you are addressed by your first name, whether it is a friend or a chatbot, the sense of familiarity always accompanies. Chatbots use this small hack to start conversations with users. With a 24/7 presence, a repository of information, and readiness to assist, users receive a better customer service experience which amplifies conversion with chatbots.
Chatbots offer urgent answers to customers and do not work under time or availability restrictions. This builds trust in your business and can easily convert a first-time buyer into a life-long customer. Moreover, as chatbots study customer conversations over a period of time, they can engage them in a two-way conversation.
Drive Customer Engagement
Chatbot functionality is not limited to handling inbound customer service queries. They can also be used to engage customers and generate leads for conversion with chatbots through outbound marketing.
Using chatbots as a marketing tool can help gain better insights into customer behavior, preference, and pain points. This, in turn, drives better customer engagement that will ultimately lead to increased conversion with chatbots.
Increase Brand Value
Chatbots are your business’ front-end office. They interact with customers and visitors, offer solutions to their queries, and respond quickly to urgent questions. This essentially makes your business available all the time to any and all customers. It also makes your business look really good and helps you manage conversion with chatbots.
Additionally, chatbots help distribute content that echoes with the values of the company, forming a long-lasting connection with customers. They can be programmed to interact with people regarding the brand benefits, discounts, problem-solving, and extra promotional offers related to your product or service by infusing personality into the conversation. Many companies also employ chatbots for lead gen operations. It also becomes really easy to manage conversion with chatbots and their functionalities. All of this together is great for building a brand persona and optimizing its core values.
Generate and Provide Feedback
Continuous improvement is the mantra of a successful business. And for this improvement to take place you need to leverage feedback from customers, be it positive or negative. Chatbots can be used to facilitate feedback from customers via online surveys, feedback boxes, and emails. This can bring up hidden issues and help you manage conversion with chatbots.
Bridge the Gap Between Marketing and Sales
Sometimes there is a huge disconnect between marketing and sales. In this situation, chatbots can play an excellent role to bridge this gap. Bots are a more productive way of gathering information, qualifying leads, and setting up your sales team. Looping everyone in on your chatbot content strategy will result in placing marketing and sales on the same page– optimizing conversion with chatbots.
Bots and chatbots might seem like something out of the future, but the future of marketing has officially arrived. Today, in the age of digital revolution if you are wondering whether or not you should incorporate AI marketing into your digital marketing strategy, you’re asking the wrong question. It is time to roll up your sleeves and drive conversion with chatbots.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do chatbots qualify leads?
AI-enabled bots can be programmed to identify customer’s needs and requirements; and optimize conversion with chatbots. This allows them to identify leads by asking a series of specific questions that gauge the intent of the prospect and help them enter the sales funnel.
How do you use Messenger bots for lead generation?
Several leading chatbot companies infuse their bots into apps like Messenger or WhatsApp to offer assistance to their customers. Based on whether it is a part of your outbound strategy or not, the bots are integrated with your CRM and linked to your ads on Facebook.
Do chatbots increase sales?
You can plan your chatbot content strategy in a way that they encourage users to make a purchase. Even if your chatbots offer assistance, they enhance user experience and retain customers while bringing in new ones. In the long run, you can definitely see an increase in conversion with chatbots.