Chatbots are here now for a decade, and we love them! 67% of consumers worldwide used a chatbot for customer support in the past year.
Industries taking advantage of a chatbot are Real Estate, Travel, Education, Healthcare, Finance. Undoubtedly the adoption rate differs for all the sectors.
The future is to be predicated on the rate of benefits any industry can get from the usage of bots. We are not far from the scenario where 85% of customer services will be handled without a human agent. There is no task that cannot be automated with the help of bots; chatbots are capable of performing all the tasks which a human can do, for instance, marketing.
Let’s checkout traditional ways of marketing
- In the late 90s, I can imagine 200-250 agents working 9 to 5 to get customers on-board with the business. Getting the contact details from authority and making calls each day. Explaining the product/service and making them understand its benefits. The process goes on until and unless a lead turns out to be a paying customer.
- The second method is cold emailing, reaching out to a bunch of people that are prospects and may turn out to be customers. Following up with them on a regular basis and getting them closed is what the target of the sales team. Isn’t it?
- The third way could be influencers. Reaching out to influencers in your sector and making them a fan of your product/service, in turn, they would return the favor by recommending it to others. This is a little tricky, but this definitely works!
- We can’t ignore the regular updates through newsletters that hit the inbox of almost all leads and customers.
- Last includes all the publicity, flyers, brochures, magazines, referrals, and more.
Effectiveness of traditional marketing
Traditional means of marketing gave satisfactory results but did not appear to be promising in the long run as the time frame converting leads into customers is more.
Also, in multiple ways, the measurement of success is not accurate. This would probably make traditional techniques as inefficient.
With the modern era, modern marketing techniques came into existence which includes
- Social media marketing,
- Ads on multiple platforms such as google, bing, various social media, and affiliates.
- Product placement and more.
Apart from all the digital resources, there has been a lot of increase in the creatives means of marketing by marketers. Genius marketers don’t miss out on any marketing strategies that are left unexplored.
Along with the other strategies taken into consideration, the chatbot also experimented with marketing for different tasks.
The ways of marketing where a chatbot can do the job are:
Addressing the audience in a personalized manner:
Everyone likes to be treated as a VIP. Especially customers expect to be addressed in a unique manner from brands they like. And a bot is the perfect match to do so.
Chatbots can remember users’ info and their preferences and based on that; a bot can interact in a more personalized manner as a human does.
Customer Engagement:
With a chatbot, one can send personalized broadcasts that would include deals and offers. This might also include new launches and more through various channels.
A chatbot can play a significant role in the sales funnel:
Choosing bots for user interactions for your brand can turn out to be beneficial, imagine a user landed on your website or your Facebook page. Greeting them with all the required info and understanding their requirements can lead to a new customer, this can also help you know your customer requirements better.
Feedback is as valuable as your product/service:
Feedback plays a prominent role for any kind of brand and therefore reaching out to your customers for feedback is necessary, which is generally done with series of questions drafted in the form of surveys or calls conducted for 1 to 1 conversation.
Bots can do this more efficiently than any other way. The reason behind bot’s efficiency is that a bot can be trained according to the services/product used by the customers.
How brands are implementing a chatbot for marketing
Multiple brands have launched messenger bot after mark Zuckerberg’s announcement. To name a few, brands like Levi’s, hello fresh, Nissan, coca-cola, Adidas, etc. used messenger bot for customer support as well as convenience to make payments through Messenger.
According to Neil Patel, facebook messenger bots have 88% open rate and 56% click-through rate, which is pretty good for any marketing campaign to imagine.
Include chatbot in your marketing strategy
It can be said that many creative ways are included in modern marketing techniques, and marketers do not hesitate to experiment with new innovative marketing ways.
Of course, the chatbot has become a “must try” tool for any brand. And brands do not need a heavy budget to build a chatbot. Now it has become a few minute tasks that can be accomplished by any non-tech person.
Apart from using it in multiple ways, there are several benefits to doing so.
Benefits of including chatbot in your next marketing campaign:
- Ease in reaching our the targeted audience
- Capable of functioning on multiple platforms simultaneously., hence increasing reach to your audience.
- It helps increase customer engagement.
- Helps customers solve their query in no time, and therefore influencing their buying decisions.
Wrapping it up
The majority of big brands have concluded the effectiveness of chatbot for their marketing efforts, and they swear by its results. If you are someone who has not yet thought of including one for your business, then you should think over it.
There are a number of ways of having a chatbot even if you are building it from scratch. DIY chatbot platforms make it easy for anyone to get their hands on AI chatbot and voice bot.
