What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational marketing can be briefly and simply defined as marketing based on real-time conversations, using personalised messaging and intelligent chatbots on websites or social media to make the conversion process more efficient, interactive and human. 

You might have seen conversational Artificial Intelligence in the form of chatbots, virtual assistants, and on social media platforms?

The biggest advantage of conversational marketing is the ability to aid a customer on their brand discovery journey and keeping them engaged and interested in one’s products. 

Have you looked for a new laptop recently from a well-known brand? Within minutes you might have received content in your inbox or your social media feed about laptops from brands you never knew existed? 

Or perhaps you bought something online? And soon after there’s a personalized message via SMS or email asking for feedback and sending you delivery updates. 

If you’re getting ads and content relevant to your recent searches and purchases, then the brand’s AI is doing its jobs — listening (analytics) and engaging (personalizing) to the client’s behavior. 

The important thing to get right at this point is to meet the customer where they are. The brand image as well as the CTA has to be personalized and enticing. 

This is where conversational marketing really shines.

Conversational marketing helps cut through the advertising clutter and enables brands to interact and engage with customers in a more personalized and immediate way — anytime and anywhere.

Conversations cannot exist in a “vacuum”; they need context and should become more intelligent as more information is gathered. This is important for two reasons. First, because it is what customers expect and second, because context is what makes the exchange of messages convenient.

People want to get the answer to their question as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. That’s why it’s so important that a CRM (we use Hubspot) is part of your conversational marketing strategy. Context means gathering, storing and making accessible customer data, from recent orders to visits, even some personal data they have previously provided and expect you to remember. The more you know about the customer and the more you can use that information in conversation, the more useful it will be.

How can Conversational marketing help your brand?

Conversational marketing is a great way to gain new and valuable information about your customers.

Think about it, don’t you learn more from your customers through their own words about what they want to do, learn or change? You don’t get that directness with a website or an advertisement.

With conversational marketing, you can collect that data at scale. This is especially important in messaging channels. Chat interfaces can record data that can then be used to optimise customer interactions, product improvements, more useful content and more.

For example, CNN uses a bot to provide its audience with personalised content based on keywords. Users simply send the bot a message with a topic they are interested in, and it will send them related news. Not only is this a quick and easy way for readers to receive the news they are most interested in, but CNN is also collecting valuable consumer data with each chat.

Once companies collect that consumer data, they can use it to define trends and make more informed decisions. For example, imagine your company redesigned its website or provided a discount on a product. If a prospect or customer is having difficulty navigating the new website or ordering a coupon, they can live chat with a representative to receive instructions on how to better navigate and find a solution to their problem.

Not only does the live chat help resolve customers’ immediate concerns and keep them on the site, but the information from that chat can help you determine if you need to fix a part of your website’s user experience or send more detailed instructions on how to apply the discount. Being able to determine common customer pain points as they occur can save a company thousands of dollars.

And not only is the data collected useful for recognising technological problems and customer pain points, but it can also identify opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling. If a customer is talking to a rep about a product they are considering purchasing, the rep could use that opportunity to point out other items that customers frequently buy based on past interactions.

If you want to find out how conversational marketing can help your business, then get in contact with us.