The ever-evolving digital landscape means businesses are constantly changing to go along with it. It means looking for new and innovative ways to better connect with customers. There’s a promising development lately, along with the uptick of UGC on the market – it’s called Conversational Marketing. This lets companies engage in personalized, real-time conversations through digital channels with their potential and existing companies. With the ability to leverage AI and natural language processing, businesses can create more human and life-like interactions. This will help build trust and loyalty while maintaining the expectations of responsive communication across the board. 

Technology has fundamentally changed the way we talk to each other. The internet and mobile messaging are, by nature, two-way channels. This simple fact opens a vast new world for marketers. Today, companies use digital media to send the most well-crafted marketing messages. Most brands, however, treat messaging like it’s a one-way channel. They aren’t ready to field replies, resulting in a poor customer experience.

We will be looking at conversational marketing and how it can benefit you as a small business owner. Wouldn’t it be nice to be ahead of the curve? Well before the the competition leaves you behind?

See Also: Why we LOVE UGC (and you should TOO!)

What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational marketing, as we’ve covered, engages customers with natural language on digital channels and platforms. This allows people to create real-time interactions that feel personalized and genuine – in turn, it builds trust and loyalty with potential customers and maintains existing connections. The tech behind conversational marketing includes artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). These enable businesses to create human-like interactions, like chatbots or voice assistants, which can understand and respond to customer questions. 

Some examples of conversational marketing channels include chatbots on a website or mobile widget, social media messaging platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat, and voice assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Other channels like Email, SMS, and video chat can also be used for conversational marketing.

The goal here is to provide a more personalized, efficient, and human-like experience for customers seeking answers to their questions compared to more traditional forms of customer service like phone and email support. As customers want around-the-clock 

Conversational marketing aims to provide a more personalized, efficient, and human-like experience for customers compared to traditional forms of customer service, like phone or email support.

What are the Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is remarkable because it puts the customer front and center. By using live and automated-based chats, businesses can get to know their customers on a deeper level, make individualized recommendations, and connect customers with the agents most qualified to assist them. This relationship-based marketing technique will benefit more than just the customers. It also takes a massive workload off the sales and support teams.

Customers can express their issues, get answers to their questions, provide information, and receive recommendations – 24-7, 365 days a year. Sales teams can, in turn, wake up to pre-qualified leads and potential customers, eliminating the “busy work” through AI’s automation. This is done with routine marketing outreach, data recording, and customer support. There’s so much more, including:

Increased Engagement: The real-time interactions of conversational marketing allow businesses to engage with customers live, leading to increased customer engagement. A customer who can quickly get help from a chatbot on a site is much more likely to continue browsing and, in turn, make a purchase than one who has to navigate through a phone tree or wait for an email response. 

Improved Experience – The conversational, human-like interactions can understand and respond to customer inquiries, making the customers feel attended to rather than put off by something that feels generated and stiff. This is where AI and NLP come in – they can improve the customer experience, building loyalty between customers and your brand.

Cost-Effective and Scalable – Chatbots and voice assistants can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, meaning they can take a large volume of customer inquiries without needing additional staff. This can help you reduce your business’s customer service costs and improve the overall efficiency of your business in turn. 

Data Collection and Analytics – Conversational marketing can provide valuable data points, like customer inquiries, which can help you gain insight into your customer’s needs and behaviors. You’ll be able to inform future business strategies and improve customer experience. 

Customer Relationship Building – Conversational marketing has the potential to personalize and create an authentic relationship with the customer. This can make-or-break customer loyalty and help build brand advocacy. 

Conversational marketing might not replace traditional marketing efforts, but it makes them more efficient while satisfying customers who expect around-the-clock engagement. 

How to Implement Conversational Marketing

Implementing conversational marketing looks different for every business and everyone’s needs. Your strategy won’t look the same as anyone else’s, but there are some techniques you can implement across the board. 

Choose The Right Channels – Choosing the right channel is important to getting the best reach for your target audience to align with your business goals. There are a variety of different channels available, including: 

Chatbots

Social Media Messaging

Voice Assistants

In particular, Chatbots can help you ease customer pain points, gather actionable information, surface content, and direct potentials to the best solutions. If your target audience is likely to use a specific app, like WhatsApp, then it might be beneficial to focus on that channel directly.

Find your Target Audience – Identifying and understanding your target audience can help you inform the design and tone of your conversational interactions. You’ll want to identify the following: 

Demographics

Pain Points

Interests

Ways they want to interact with your brand

Design and Tone – The design and tone of your brand’s conversational interactions should align with the general aesthetic and voice. This can help ensure consistency across all your marketing channels and help you build trust with your customers. 

Create and Test a Conversational Script – A well-designed conversational script is pivotal to your success in conversational marketing. This includes identifying and addressing common customer questions, including logical fallbacks and error handling. Test your script with a small beta group to gather feedback and make all the necessary revisions before going live. 

Implement Data Collection & Analytics – Measure the performance of your conversational marketing efforts, as the information gathered can be crucial to optimize and improve your new strategy. Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and average resolution time. Analyzing this data will help you to gain insight into customer needs and behaviors and inform future strategies. 

Conclusion

Conversational marketing can be an innovative and effective way for businesses to engage with customers through real-time, personalized interactions. Leveraging emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and natural language processing can allow enterprises to create human-like interactions to build loyalty and trust. The benefits of conversational marketing include increased engagement, boosted customer experiences, cost-effective practices, scalability, and valuable data collection and analytics. With well-implemented conversational marketing strategies, businesses can foster deeper relationships with their customer. Overall, this can improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of their customer service. 

The digital landscape continues to evolve and change, and businesses can invest in conversational marketing to give themselves a significant advantage over their competitors. Keeping in mind that conversational marketing isn’t a one-time effort. It’s a continuous, ongoing process that needs to be continuously optimized and improved. This feels like a daunting task. And to most, it might be – but that’s where the talented team at SSP comes in. 

Working directly with experts allows you to automate and grow without increasing overhead. SSP’s team of marketing professionals is ready to help you implement Chat-bots, integrate your FAQ, and create a round-the-clock ecosystem for your customer experience needs. We can help you better connect with and understand your customers, monitor your reviews and online reputation, and much more. Scheduling a consultation is one step to taking all that stress off your shoulders. That way, you can focus on what you do best: running your business. 

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