Conversational marketing is a relatively new marketing tactic that involves engaging with your current and potential customers, providing each of them with a personalized experience. As with all marketing tactics, the goal of conversational marketing is to drive new business. This predominantly digital marketing method can be implemented on multiple platforms, including your website and social media pages. In this article, we will discuss the fundamentals of conversational marketing and provide some options you may want to consider adding to your own marketing strategy.
Direct, Live Engagement
Conversational marketing facilitates direct, live engagement with current and prospective customers. It essentially eliminates certain aspects of the sales funnel, which potentially deter people from reaching the final step, making a purchase. While website contact forms are necessary and provide a place for users to quickly send an inquiry to you or your team, the addition of a live chat enables you to engage with that user immediately. There are various ways to create and implement a live chat environment for customers to interact with seamlessly.
Live Chat Software
There are many different live chat applications you can easily add to your website. The right option for you depends on your specific needs. Some of the most popularly used live chat software available include:
Several of these applications also include customer relations management (CRM) functionalities and the ability to implement automated chats. Automated chat clients, or chatbots, can be manually set up to include responses that you have prewritten. For example, suppose you know that no one will be available to respond for a specific amount of time. In that case, you can create a message that automatically responds to users, informing them that somebody will reply to their inquiry as soon as possible. You can also include a place for users to input their email addresses which not only enables you to respond to them later on but also provides you with the contact information you will be able to use in future email marketing campaigns.
More advanced (and understandably more expensive) automated chat clients may use AI to interact with users. These innovative technologies interpret the messages being received and respond to them in a manner similar to how a professional customer service representative would. You can also use this software to recognize the type of question asked and have it forwarded to the employee best able to handle it.
Social Media
Certain social media platforms also provide you with ways to engage with your customers directly. For example, your Facebook following can always message your business from its Facebook page; additionally, you can include Facebook Messenger right on your website. This implementation gives any user logged into Facebook the ability to message you directly without leaving your website. In addition, as with the live chat software mentioned above, you can create automated responses so that potential customers aren’t left awaiting a reply.
