Conversational Marketing - Strategies and Examples

Marketing is something that we see happening around us everyday in one way or another. As the number of companies in the market has grown for each and every service, the competition between them has increased. Now the companies and the businesses are switching to the most innovative methods to promote themselves among the masses. 

Conversational Marketing is also one of the marketing techniques in which the brand endorsement is done by the conversation with the customer and by dialogue driven activities. You must have rummaged through a lot of websites and observed a chat asking ‘How May I help You?’ or ‘What are You Looking for Today?’ and work by allowing you to click on various available options are all the outcomes of the same strategy. 

 

 

What is Conversational Marketing?

 

As the name suggests conversational marketing is simply done by the conversations, a series of dialogues with the customers which seek to promote the product. This marketing technique seeks to work by creating one-to-one interaction with the customer and clarifying their queries and telling them how the service could be of help to them. 

 

Conversational Marketing builds trust and personal relationships with the customer by being a part of an interactive and responsive conversation instead of any one-way advertisement, which is likely to get ignored. 

 

However, business websites nowadays are adapting to these techniques and making their websites equipped with artificial intelligence-based chat-bot, voice assistance-based features. 

 

In some cases, there is a real human behind the chats assisting the visitor on the website throughout their browsing time. Such activities are likely to increase the conversation rate of visitors to customers to businesses as they end up giving personalized assistance. 

 

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How does Conversational Marketing work?

 

Conversational Marketing is a widely-established term for digital advertisements and promotional activities. The main goal of this is to engage the customers instead of feeding them with pre-prepared content irrespective of whether they wish for it or not. 

 

This can be done by the use of automated chatbots which can ask for help as a pop-up once the visitor generates any input on the website to guide them more with what they are seeking. Also, live chats can also be an option, which requires a human behind the chat box available online at the same time as the customer. 
 

The main goal of conversational marketing is to work on the premises of engaging, understanding, and recommending which simply means:

Engaging the visitor in a conversation whenever they generate any action on the website in a conversation as the chat option pops up. This does not merely mean that the role of the chat is over the moment the visitor is answered. This can also work by asking visitors further questions and giving them options to answer it so that they can explore more.

 

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Understanding the query and the issue of the visitor in detail by asking them questions to get more comprehensive details and data. Once the visitor has inserted the query the automated system (or live chat) must be recorded with the action plan so as to cater to the visitor to the best of his information and make them aware of how they are at the right place. 

 

Recommending is the responsive stage where the visitor can understand if the company is what he wants or not. The recommendation of services and solutions in the chat can work as a call of action for the visitor with a fair chance of conversation with the customer. 

 

 

Conversational Marketing Strategy

 

Choosing the best strategy can be a bit subjective for the companies in terms of what they do and how they work. However, here are some generalized strategies that can be kept in consideration for a successful conversational marketing outcome. 

 

1. Choosing The Questions and Answers

 

Knowing the audience and the kind of questions they are likely to ask is the tool to solve this problem. Via the various channels be it online chat, bot-based chat, or even live-streaming what gets important is to understand the kind of questions that are related to the businesses and pre-record answers accordingly in the system. 

 

While doing conversational marketing you need to be aware of the purpose or the assistance you are going to provide via the chat. 

 

The determination of the call of action is what needs to be clear, the visitor is going to get a pop up of the chat to help in getting a purchase or to land on another specific page of the website or to answer the general FAQs about the website is what needs to be clear beforehand and in the case of a bot-based system, recorded in the features. 

 

2. Personalization 

 

Personalization is the key to attracting any customer. Personalization of the chat based on what the customer is likely to ask for,  at what page the customer is, and based on the past activities of the customer can allow the conversion to take place and go in the right direction at the right time, being of most benefit. 

Relevance and on-point answers are of great help in building customer relationships. This can be achieved by the timely testing of the chatbot-based conversation and optimization to allow the conversation to flow in the direction of the findings. 

 

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3. Asking for Feedbacks

 

Post the conversation the feedback can be taken about the chat system. This will not just enable the customer to feel that they have a say but also will help in the optimization of the tools after some time. 

 

If a website has a target timer of a popup message when there is a visitor on the same page for more than a minute and after that, a chatbot is to assist. 

 

It's only the visitor who is likely to tell that if chatbot assistance was useful and the timer can be reduced or they can tell how they were looking for a straight option to connect to an executive via a phone call the whole time and that the conversation was not of any specific help based upon their experiences making the company to go for improvisation. 

 

 

Benefits of Conversational Marketing

 

1. Creating Human-Like Experience 

When a customer gets to speak and be clear about what he is looking for and can get answers based on the requirement in the chat form this creates an engaging and humanlike experience. 

 

Instead of just feeding the customers with all the information available irrespective of the necessity makes them feel irritable and most of the information goes ignored due to its automation. Conversational Marketing makes the informational paradigm shift from one-sided to engaging. 

 

2. Better Customer Experience 

 

Conversational Marketing improvises the customer experience on the website as they get direct answers quickly, their queries get resolved as they enter them without any extra advertisement trying to grasp their attention. 

 

As the systems are able to track the journey of the visitor and their past history with the business they are able to provide them the right information and solutions at the right time, making the experience smoother and effective in building further relationships. 

 

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Benefits of Conversational Marketing

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3. Time-Saving Method 

 

This marketing technique provides for an opportunity to make quick conversions. Initially, there used to be a form-filling and emailing technique adapted by the businesses displayed on their websites for whoever comes seeking the personalized solutions and they relied on time taking in solving queries and in such a time span the customer loss is likely to happen, they are likely to abandon the idea of waiting so long to reply and stick to a company. 

 

However conversational marketing solves this by instantly providing answers to the queries 24*7, in such a case the customer is likely to stick by the company to get clear insights and more information. This will make them move through the sales funnel faster as well. 

 

4. Getting Insights About Customers
 

Chat-based features are likely to provide more information about the customer as compared to the traditional survey and form filling methods. 

 

As the customers go on to converse they can really and quickly tell what they are looking for, what are their interests and choices and asking for their details related to the product or service can be of great help in customizing the experience in real-time. 

 

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In so far as that repeated analysis can culminate into big data analytics and in the future can help in generating further conclusions to grow the business. 

 

 

Examples of Conversational Marketing 

 

Domino’s recent feature AnyWare allows the users to order pizza from anywhere. This operates on conversational channels like Facebook Messenger, Slack, and even text messages by simply sending the pizza emoji to get the conversation started. 

 

Sephora asked the users via Kik Messenger to participate in a beauty habits quiz about themselves which was used to recommend the products most suited for them based on their answers.
 

eBay has created their e-commerce chatbot which is built for Google Assistant and can simply be used from the devices with Google Assistant feature by saying “Ok Google, let me talk with eBay” enabling eBay to show you results based on your voice search. 

 

 

Conclusion

Conversational Marketing opens endless opportunities for businesses to grow and convinces their customers of endless and anytime assistance which is efficient and quick. This builds the customer and business relationship based on a humanlike conversation which culminates into trust and reliance for the requirement. 

This marketing technique helps the users get the best help possible while at the same time provides businesses with a lot of improversization opportunities as they go on to attract new customers and generate faster and effective conversions for the brand.