Customers are important for business, they are the foundation for the success of any business. All the marketing strategies of an organisation concentrates mainly on satisfying the needs of the customers. Businesses are trying to personalize the interactions with their customers and are working to build a stronger connection with them.
Customers prefer conversational interactions with a brand. If you want your customers to repeat the business with you then you must ensure them great customer satisfaction through all the stages of the marketing process. For any business strategy, to work, businesses should understand the preferences of their customers. Your marketing campaign should identify and address the customers needs to become successful.
Companies put lots of efforts to convert a lead. For real-time conversations with customers or buyers, conversational marketing is the best way.
Wondering,
What is conversational marketing?
Conversational marketing is a marketing approach used by organisations to develop customer loyalty, improve engagement, grow customer base and revenue. This approach emphasizes listening to customers needs, communicating with customers on a one-to-one basis. It helps you to distinguish your brand from others in the market and encourage customers and potential customers to engage with your brand and it’s products. With conversational marketing, you can shorten the sales cycle, create a human buying experience.
Simply put, conversational marketing occurs when organisations engage with customers and prospects in real-time. They interact with customers on a personal level to learn more about them and their needs. With a rise in internet and social media channels have opened up new lines of communication to companies. Brand voice and customer loyalty are highly important for a business to prosper.
Businesses are using intelligent chatbots and targeted messaging to engage customers or potential customers on their website instead of lead capture forms. The easier it is for people to interact and engage with your business the faster your leads will get converted. To make it simple, happy customers will lead to a happy company.
People, in general, enjoy communicating. Be it face-to-face or messaging. Statistics show that more than 85% prefer communicating through texts over other methods of communication. When customers visit your website, if they have to hoop through several loops before they can have a conversation, they may lose interest and you may end up losing a potential customer.
In a traditional funnel,
Customer visits a website
↓
Fill a form
↓
Become a lead to company
↓
Assigned as a lead
↓
Enrol in the email automation
↓
Schedule the qualifying call
↓
Schedule a sales call
↓
Talk to an executive
If a customer has to pass-through these many stages to communicate with your brand, they may lose interest. Statistics show that most buyers don’t have time for this anymore. According to statistics, Only 40% of people answer cold calls, email opening rates have also fallen. The businesses are becoming impersonal and cold, unknowingly increasing the distance between buyers and the company.
What is the fix to this problem?
Businesses should start becoming personal again. Conversational marketing is the answer, it creates an authentic experience and improves relationships with buyers and customers. The brands are using social media platforms and automated chatbots to engage and understand their customers. This is not a new concept, it has been around for a long time and these are few conversational marketing examples, that have improved the engagement and drove business to success. They are,
Email Marketing
Customer loyalty programs
Live customer support
Customer Success
How do companies do conversational marketing?
If you’re thinking that implementing conversational marketing requires you to start from scratch. Then you’re wrong? It just enhances your marketing strategy and moves your buyers faster through the sales funnel. It is a new lead generating channel that complements your existing marketing efforts. For your conversational marketing to work all you have to do is engage, understand and recommend. This is how your conversations will help you in building relationships.
Conversational marketing is not something out of the books, it is just an improved marketing and sales method that helps you in converting your leads faster.
Engage
Forms are not in trend anymore. If you want to convert a lead, then you must act fast. If you engage with your visitors when they visit your website through intelligent chatbots, it will improve conversion rates and increase opportunities for business. This way you will also provide your customers with a personal experience. When a customer clicks on the “book a demo” or “contact sales”, your bot will start a conversation with them. You can keep the conversation flowing and move customers through the funnel rather than forcing them to wait for a follow-up email.
No business operates 24/7, what if a customer comes when you’re not operating?
You would lose a customer, right?
But if you have intelligent chatbots or other marketing strategies in place, irrespective of the time you can engage with customers when they engage with you. Send targeted messages to customers, who are interested in your products.
Understand & Recommend
Did you know? If a company wants the best results then they must respond to a customer within 5 minutes of the initial contact. Even if you’re a minute late, the odds of qualifying the lead will decrease by 400%. With conversational marketing, you can engage with your customers 24/7 and generate new leads. The chatbots will qualify the lead and understand their needs in real-time. You can make bots ask qualifying questions and the bot will then have conversations with them and understand them better. This will help bot in recommending the next steps to the customer. It will speed up the process and save time and effort of your employees.
Bots can engage and understand the lead, but at the end of the day they are still machines, right?
To close the sale, it is important to have human interaction. Once bots connect the lead to the sales team through their intelligent routing, then it is time for your representatives to focus on selling the products. Right leads will go to the right representatives at the right time, bots assign leads on the rotatory basis. They even book meeting for the qualified leads too.
Conclusion
Bots nurture and take leads to the next stage. They reduce the waiting time for a customer and don’t force them through the sales funnel. It improves both communication and loyalty between the customers and the brand. Customers are important for businesses as they improve business and bring in more potential customers through word-of-mouth. Are you using conversational marketing strategies to engage with your customers? Yes, you’re on the right track. If not, then it is high time you implement this approach to drive more conversions and improve your sales.