Humans are selfish.
Okay…maybe not selfish but definitely a little self-absorbed which still brings up back to our original point. Humans are selfish.
Don’t worry, no matter how humane you think you might be, there’s probably a little selfish trait in you too.
This selfishness is one that has also stretched to communication.
In personal relationship, when people send questions, they want answers the moment they send it.
In the marketing world, it’s exactly the same, even worse.
While in the real world, sometimes, you can afford to ignore some conversations, but in the marketing world every conversation with your customer matters. Every message counts. You cannot afford to ignore your audience or you risk losing out on potential customers.
This is why your business needs Conversational Marketing
What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational marketing basically means a more intimate and personalized form of marketing where customers are able to interact with your business whenever they want to on a one on one level. It runs across multiple channels. It helps you improve your customer relationships and online customer experience by communicating and customizing interactions online.
An important element in conversational marketing during the 21st century is the introduction of Live Chat. With Live Chat, you are able to still communicate with your customers in record time even when you are not online. Live chat features automated responses and can redirect your potential customers to you directly.
Conversational marketing is great for your marketing because a quicker and more personal communication system will help you generate more leads and conversions for your business.
Conversational marketing is the trendy topic of the day, but if we are being honest, it is just one tiny piece of a whole puzzle. Communication is a must for a great relationship to exist between you and your customers. Conversations must be heard, questions must be answered, audiences must gain clarity.
Elements of Conversational Marketing
Look, if you’re a marketer and your content are already tailored to suit your customers at every stage, then you’re almost there with your conversational marketing. This is because conversational marketing is very customer based.
These are the 4 Elements
- Customer Centric
Conversations in the marketing world is mostly initiated by the marketer themselves. With the use of Live Chats, your audience can begin conversations with you when they feel like. The focus is on them. They could decide to start a conversation early in the morning or late at night before going to bed. Not only Is the experience more personal for them, it is also satisfying. It takes away the frustration and impatience of having to wait a while for a response.
Customers should be able to pick up things right where they left off whenever it is convenient for them to continue. The most important to remember is that conversational marketing is built around what your customer need not what your business needs.
2. Conversations are scalable.
Because conversations happen on customer-time, all conversations need to be scalable. It doesn’t matter if you are currently talking with 1000 people, when any of them want a problem solved, they want it done immediately.
Without live chat, that can be a huge challenge because you do not have enough man power to respond and resolve issues of more than 1000 customers as fast as possible.
This is where chat box comes in to play. Using a chatbot, you are able to provide constant support for your customers and audience in general. This will reduce the possibility of losing some potential customers. As important as it is to make use of chatbots to serve your customers better, do not forget that it is still an automated experience for them. It should never take the place of real human interactions.
3. Conversations have context.
Context in a conversation is what will make your messaging easier for both your customers and your company. You cannot just have conversations with your customers because you want to, it should have a context.
An example is this; Imagine you called a company to report about a bug issue on an appliance that you got. Then, two days later, you called them up again to help you out with something else, its natural to want them to remember you and your earlier complaints. With Chat bots, you’re able to have a more solid conversation pattern with your customers and you can always go back to previous questions asked for a much better context.
This has been previously stated over and over again during the course of this article, people want their problems solved. And they want it solved immediately.
This is why you need to make a CRM part of your conversational marketing strategy. The more you know about the customer and the more you can demonstrate that in the conversation, the more helpful you’ll be.
4. Conversations meet customers where they are
Conversational marketing is very customer oriented. Conversations meet your customers wherever they are, whenever they want it to while still providing the best value to them.
And that means conversations should happen on the channel that best suits your customer which could be over the phone or through a messenger. It could be based on real human interactions or chat bots.
“Businesses should strive to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person, with the right information, on the right channel, every single time.”
3 Benefits This Marketing Creates For Your Business
Conversational marketing isn’t new — we have conversations every day in the digital marketing space. What’s new is the benefit you didn’t know it can provide when used right.
Let’s quickly explore the major benefits it has;
1. An Exciting Way to Get Answers from Customers
What better way to get answers from your customers than creating a safe space for conversation where you can interact easily with them.
A lot of your customers use mobile devices to surf the internet. This means that the content that they’re are most likely to interact with are mobile oriented contents.
How many times do you find yourself picking up your phone to endlessly Perdue the web? Well…the same goes for your audience.
Conversational marketing uses mobile channels like messaging apps and emails to reach their audience.
This means that you can get a feedback from a customer or have them answer questions as well as gain more meaningful insights in a way that is easy and non invasive for them.
Your audience could be lounging in their bed all day and still be interacting with your brand in a quick and efficient way.
2. Conversational Marketing Helps You Gain Valuable Information About Your Customers
Think about it for a minute; when else do you get your customers or your audience in general to really tell you what they want, how they want it and when they want it in clear details?
You do not get that privilege of picking their minds if you’re not engaged in conversational marketing.
With conversational marketing, you are able to gather a large data scale of your customers for FREE.
Most Chat interfaces in messaging apps can store important data which can then be used for optimization .
This will help you improve your customers interactions, upgrade your products and produce more valuable contents.
Not only does live chat help solve the immediate customer’s concerns and keep them on the site, the information from that chat can help you determine if you need to fix a part of your website’s UX or send out more detailed instructions on how to apply the discount.
If you are able to identify your customers pains, you can save your business thousands of dollars and also help them save thousands of dollars.
Conversational marketing makes it easier to identify the products or services you should cross sell or upsell.
3 Conversational marketing helps build customer relationship
Thanks to chat apps on social media, you can now talk with your friends and family anytime you want to. This helps foster a more intimate relationship with them. The same goes for your customers. Once they feel like they can reach out to your brand at any time, they feel a stronger and more stable connection
With messaging apps and social media, we’ve found a way to talk with more friends, more frequently. Conversational marketing can drive lead generation by reaching new audiences on different channels or by giving people a more convenient way to get in touch with support.
Bots allow companies to collect a lot of information in a natural way. Instead of coming face-to-face with a long form, customers can share a little information over the course of multiple conversations. And not only is conversational marketing more convenient for customers, it’s also a great way to show off your brand’s personality.
Through copywriting, images, emojis, and videos, you can give your messaging conversations a personality — one that reinforces your brand. Customers and prospects are likely to keep engaging with your brand if you make it enjoyable and easy to do so!
