In today’s digital era, it is a common sight to receive a pop-up or chat icon eager to talk to the website visitor with joyful greetings. The power of technology has transformed how we communicate and keep connections with our friends, relatives, and acquaintances. The change has also been reflected in the manner we want to be communicated with brands that have a digital presence thereby altering our expectations and paving the way for conversational marketing.
Conversational marketing is a method where the brand engages consumers in dialogue-driven communications offering personalised experience using AI chatbots which use machine learning and computers to create unique interactions with consumers at a one-to-one level. Chatbots are a form of conversational AI which uses natural language processing to converse with consumers.
The quarantine isolation in the pandemic has raised the expectations of consumers that want brands to listen, understand and effectively solve their pain points. Meanwhile, these meaningful conversations aid brands to revaluate their existing strategies and messaging to discover new consumer behaviour and demands.
A study from IBM confirms that early 80 percent of customer queries can be addressed through chatbots. Such one-to-one interactions will help brands establish long-lasting customer relationships.
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A study from IBM confirms that early 80 percent of customer queries can be addressed through chatbots ie. through conversations.
How conversational marketing benefits brands
Personalised conversations improve satisfaction: Leveraging conversational marketing, digital-first brands can improve user satisfaction by delivering a consistent, purposeful experience at each digital touchpoint. By providing a chatbot, one can increase consumer engagement, confidence, and loyalty by empowering users to interact directly.
Effective marketing: A conversational marketing strategy makes communication with the customers seamless and straightforward. With AI chatbots brands can generate prompt responses making the businesses dependent on such instant messaging services to encourage sharing to the point information to win customer loyalty.
Build trust: According to a study by Salesforce around 41 percent of the consumers do not trust an organisation’s lookout for society well being while making a purchase decision. A report from Drift Insider says that consumers’ frustration over brands and businesses not being responsive towards pain points has grown 5.7 times more since 2019. Forty-two percent of consumers don’t believe that companies are truthful. Implementing AI tools such as natural language processing to showcase authentic voice brands can create empathy and cement trust among users.
Strategise future marketing campaigns: By conversing with the customer, companies can obtain a wide range of information. The insights gained from the conversation will businesses to design specific categories, optimise websites, or create new products. In addition to this one can quantify the impact of the marketing campaign on sales, product development, and in-store management by getting near real-time consumer feedback.
What happens to businesses not using conversational marketing?
Since online shopping is becoming the new norm, companies not embracing conversational may fall behind. Businesses need to consider the importance of customer experience and how the industry is leveraging AI conversations. Today’s tech-savvy consumers demand answers and issues be resolved quickly and with the onset of COVID-19, they crave the in-person connection online that was offered to them in-store.
