Using chatbots to answer customer queries is just one way to use them. Chatbots can now facilitate marketing efforts in a number of ways. They can interact with visitors, suggest products, place orders, and much more. On top of that, do you know that 82% of visitors can become a customer if they chat with you first? So, that’s why there is a growing buzz about “chatbot marketing” – the always on marketer!
In this guide, we will talk deeply about chatbot marketing, giving its overview, benefits, and a few examples. So, let’s head right to it!
- What is Chatbot Marketing?
- Benefits of Using Chatbot Marketing
- Use Cases of Chatbot Marketing
- Chatbot Marketing Examples
- 8 Tips and Tricks for Top-notch Chatbot Marketing Strategy
- Wrapping Up – Uplift Your Marketing Efforts with Chatbot Marketing
What is Chatbot Marketing?
Chatbot marketing is a marketing technique that uses computer programs (chatbots) to automate interactions with visitors on a website or app to generate sales.
Using chatbots in marketing empowers businesses to engage with leads 24/7 without the need for human marketers. You can apply a chatbot marketing strategy for your website, app, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.
Some of the key activities you can achieve with marketing chatbots are as follows:
- Automated Initiation of Conversations: Initiate automated conversations with visitors and qualify leads based on predefined scenarios. It also involves getting contact information for future follow-up.
- Product Recommendation: Suggest the right products to customers based on their behavior/preferences.
- Order Processing: Help customers place orders through an automated process.
- Customer Support: Provide instant response to customer queries using pre-trained data. This involves answering questions, processing refunds, troubleshooting issues, etc.
- Engagement/Retention: Engage with customers strategically to encourage repeat purchases.
In short, marketing chatbots are like human marketers, but they are available 24/7 and can respond more quickly based on pre-trained data.
Benefits of Using Chatbot Marketing
The chatbot marketing technique is becoming increasingly popular in the corporate space due to its wide range of benefits. Some of the key ones are as follows:
1. Boost Engagement and Drive Sales
A marketing chatbot can increase customer engagement on your website. It can start a conversation with a simple prompt like “Have a question”. Afterward, a chatbot can ask more questions and engage with customers to get contact details or convince them to subscribe to the newsletter. Once customers get engaged, they are very likely to make a purchase.
2. Fast Connection of Potential Leads with Sales
Visitors who spend more time on your website, especially on the pricing page, or want more information are potential leads. A marketing chatbot can trigger here, asking the lead to arrange a meeting with the sales team. This helps the sales team get in touch with potential leads faster.
3. 24/7 Availability
The marketing chatbot is your always-active marketer who is available to interact with customers 24/7. No matter if the visitor is visiting your website at 2 am at night, the chatbot will interact with the visitor proficiently. This helps your business have continuous marketing 24/7.
4. Provide Valuable Insights
Marketing chatbot collects different sets of valuable data while interacting with customers. This includes contact details, interests, issues, etc. These insights are helpful to improve marketing efforts. For example, if a chatbot receives more inquiries about a particular product, it means that the product is in high demand among customers.
5. Develop and Upsell Users
If your service involves free trials, a chatbot for marketing can assist users who haven’t finished setting up their accounts. Similarly, it can reach out to those whose trials are nearing expiration. Moreover, it can inform existing customers about recent updates and facilitate connections with sales representatives if they show interest in upgrading their subscriptions or purchasing additional features.
Use Cases of Chatbot Marketing
The chatbot marketing technique is usable in different marketing activities. Different businesses are using it for different purposes. Some of the common use cases of chatbot marketing are as follows:
- Promote products
- Process orders
- Schedule appointments
- Engage existing consumers for repetitive orders
- Provide customer service
- Gather feedback
In short, all the essential marketing activities can be somewhat automated and optimized with chatbot marketing.
Chatbot Marketing Examples
Chatbot marketing is not just a concept anymore. You will find marketing chatbots many reputed companies use on their websites, apps, and social media accounts. Let’s uncover a few of those examples to see how other companies are using chatbot marketing:
1. Lego
Lego smartly used a marketing chatbot in its Christmas newsletter campaign. The chatbot helped parents decide on what Lego set they should purchase for their kids. For that, the chatbot asked about the child’s age and interests and then provided relevant products.
2. Volvo Cars
A German car dealership, Volvo Cars, had many visitors visiting its website to research prices. Therefore, the company set up a marketing chatbot integrated with a Typeform survey to provide customized price quotes according to the details provided by the visitor. This chatbot helped the company increase lead generation by 300%.
Volvo Cars Chatbot. Source: Intercom
3. Mindvalley
Mindvalley provides learning material for personal development. To promote its services, it is using a marketing chatbot. It has integrated a chatbot in Facebook Messenger that engages with customers and then provides customized recommendations.
8 Tips and Tricks for Top-notch Chatbot Marketing Strategy
If the above benefits and use cases of chatbot marketing have convinced you to integrate it into your marketing strategy, then start on it right here. For your assistance, we have below shortlisted a few useful tips and tricks for setting up an effective chatbot marketing strategy:
1. Define Clear Objectives
Chatbot marketing is usable in many use cases. So, you have to define clear objectives for implementing it. These objectives can relate to improving customer engagement, increasing sales, optimizing order placement, etc.
2. Use the Right Chatbot Provider
You need a reliable chatbot provider with which you can create your marketing chatbot. Out of many available options, we found VOC AI Agent one of the best marketing and customer service chatbots.
VOC AI Agent provides an intuitive interface to create a full-fledged chatbot for your business. You can easily train the chatbot with your company data and then customize its performance as you want. The best thing is that the VOC AI chatbot can integrate with your website, Facebook, WhatsApp, and other platforms. In short, VOC AI is an all-in-one chatbot provider for marketing.
3. Provide Live Chat
Live chat is now considered a key to engaging visitors. In fact, 63% of visitors will likely purchase from websites offering live chat widgets.
Although a chatbot is helpful in engagement, some visitors don’t like chatting with it. So, make sure your chatbot allows visitors to speak to a human agent.
4. Deploy Quiz Chatbot Strategy
A marketing chatbot is useful if the visitor starts engaging with it. Therefore, it is important to encourage visitors to use it. One of the best ways is to pop up the chatbot and ask click-based quiz questions. This way, the chatbot can learn more about the visitor’s preferences and offer personalized recommendations.
5. Give Chatbot Your Business Voice
Chatbots should engage visitors by voicing your business’s unique tone and personality. Your chatbot should be formal, professional, friendly, or casual, depending on your brand voice.
6. Collect Feedback
You can also use a marketing chatbot to collect feedback from customers. For example, you can send them a customer satisfaction survey after the conversation is over. The feedback can help you examine the chatbot’s effectiveness and gain valuable information about customer preferences.
7. Use Insights to Track Performance
If you are using the right chatbot platform, like VOC AI Agent, you will be getting useful analytics and metrics. You can use these insights to look at the efficiency and outcome of marketing chatbot and your marketing strategies. Based on that, you can make informed decisions and uplift your marketing game.
8. Display Chatbot At the Right Time
It is annoying to pop up the chatbot as soon as the visitor comes to your website. You have to display the chatbot at the right time when there are higher chances of visitor’s engagement with the chatbot.
Wrapping Up – Uplift Your Marketing Efforts with Chatbot Marketing
Chatbot marketing is an advanced and much-needed marketing technique to deploy today. It automates many tedious marketing activities and helps to boost leads and sales. Therefore, it’s time for you to leverage chatbot marketing for your business. Follow the instructions and tips discussed in this guide and customize the best chatbot marketing strategy for your brand.