Conversational marketing involves one-on-one engagement between customers or leads and a company that occur in the moment rather than contact formats with delayed responses such as email. This interactive tactic utilizes personalization and constant availability to provide convenience and a human touch to business-to-consumer conversations.
What is Conversational Marketing Used For?
Lead Capture
Asking for contact information comes off more natural when done via conversation. While lead capture forms definitely have their place, conversational marketing can be used to gather valuable information from a prospect in a way that feels organic rather than sales-y. You’ll also be able to compile more insight about leads based on the questions they ask than you would with a simple form.
Q&A
Even if you have a dedicated Q&A section on your site, there are bound to be a few aspects about your company or services left uncovered. Bots supply a quick and easy way for site visitors to learn details about your business offerings that pertain to their particular pain points or concerns.
Lead Nurturing
When a visitor begins a chat, the content of the conversation can be used to suggest relevant resources and actions that will further their understanding and move them along the buyer’s journey. Whether it be a correlating ebook or an offer to schedule a phone conversation, next-steps can be offered throughout a chat that aid in conversion.
How to Implement Conversational Marketing
Chatbots
While the idea of chatbots may sound robotic and detached, these technologies have advanced to the point where you can program bots to have a very personal tone and feel, helping customers reach appropriate resources and solutions at all times. Site chatbots may be programmed for different greetings and information depending on which webpage a user is on or have a more generalized set-up that simply accounts for conversation in its responses. Essentially, a chatbot can be complex as you make it.
Live Chat
While not always an option for businesses to employ 24/7, Live Chat is an even more beneficial form of conversation marketing. Rather than using an automated bot, Live Chat utilizes a real company representative to respond to site visitors. As you can imagine, this chat type has a higher value as it gives a more personal/human touch and allows for more specific, detailed dialogues to take place which also aid in building trust.
Other Conversational Marketing Strategies
Though chat is one of the more popular ways to implement conversational marketing, there are plenty of opportunities to utilize this engaging tactic through other technologies such as messenger apps and text messages. For example, Domino’s allows customers to order food by sending the company a text using only the pizza emoji. With the emerging popularity of voice-activated devices such as smart speakers, some companies have also begun optimizing their technologies to permit users to make purchases through voice-powered bots.
The main point of conversational marketing is not what formats you use, but administering a customer-centric marketing approach that makes use of real-time actions and responses and the ability for users to connect with a business at all hours of the day.
The sooner you follow up with a lead, the better your chances are of converting them into a customer, which is exactly what makes conversational marketing so powerful. With the constant opportunity for conversation, you can strike while a lead is hot.