Increase Customer Engagement & Boost Sales with Chatbots
These days, we often hear people talking about the “Robot apocalypse.” They speak of doomsday scenarios where machines with artificial intelligence overtake the human race. With quantum leaps being made in the field of robotics (think Sophia), there’s no doubt that automation is making giant leaps, and people are pretty sure, we’re fast approaching The Singularity.
While we can’t predict with certainty if this will happen, what we can say for now is that automation is a great way to get more tasks done with less effort and in less time.
Of late, marketing bots (or Chatbots) have exploded in popularity.
What is a bot?
It’s essentially a piece of computer code that carries out a particular set of actions all on its own. Once programmed correctly with accuracy, the bot completes tasks efficiently and helps you save a lot of time and resources. With a bot, you no longer have to worry about human errors.
What more, bots are easy to set up and can be used in a whole lot of ways. They are easy to program and are highly versatile.
Have we piqued your interest? Here are a few ways to creatively use chatbots in your digital marketing strategies.
#1: Use it to Initiate Communication with your Site Visitors
This is one of the most widely used applications of bots. They can be used to communicate with users who land on your site PPC service. Hence the name Chatbots. With a chatbot, you can automate a massive chunk of your regular work.
Usually, when a visitor arrives on your webpage, he/she is looking for information about your products or services or searching for answers to particular questions. If they can’t find what they’re looking for on the first attempt, they are not likely to come back again to your site.
Helping potential customers is highly crucial to increase conversion rates. But, this becomes difficult if you don’t have a large support team.
This is where a chatbot comes to your rescue. You can set up a chatbot to emulate live talk with your site visitors. Unlike human customer support agents, bots are available 24 x 7 and don’t have any off times. What more, they aren’t likely to get tired by repeating the same task over and over again.
Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while setting up a chatbot for this purpose:
- Make sure that your bot sounds as natural as possible.
- Write the answers in your style. This way the bot is aligned with your branding.
- If the chatbot sounds too formal and stiff, your visitors are less likely to use it.
- For a further personalized touch, give your bot a name and add a display picture for it. You can use a human name and image or go with an abstract design, based on your preferences.
- Alternatively, you can give the bot a name of an actual person working in your customer support team.
#2. Integrate bots with a Messaging Platform
This is one area where bots score high. You can find plenty of chatbots integrated with existing messaging channels like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and others. Chatbots are primarily designed to communicate with users and using them here serves the purpose.
Two significant ways in which bots can be integrated with messaging platforms:
- Backend – Bots can be used to create polls, send emails to customers, optimize SEO, analyze feedback and statistics, and much more.
- Front-end – You can use a bot to interact with your customers in a fresh, new way. These Digital Marketing Company bots talk with your visitors just like regular human customer service agents. They are highly useful for e-commerce stores, as these bots can lead your customers to the right products.
#3. Sell your Products using Bots
This is a continuation of the above. Since this is a topic that requires further explanation; we have devoted a separate section for it here.
Chatbots can be used to sell your products online. They do all the heavy lifting. Integrate a chatbot in your e-commerce store. It then interacts with a customer to find his/her preferences and leads them to the right product. From helping a customer locate the product to taking him/her to check out, the bot interface can handle everything.
The latest bots don’t sound robotic at all. They don’t just shoot off questions to your customers. Instead, it engages in friendly banter with clients to find more about their preferences, age, gender, size, style, etc. Armed with this information, the bot then helps you close the deal.
From a marketing perspective, this is a grand strategy. Your bot does the crucial work of guiding customers through the sales funnel, without being intrusive or pushy. /p>
#4. Provide Customers with a Personalized Experience
A recent study by Adlucent research states that over 71% of customers prefer personalized ads that are tailored to specific requirements of customers. If you don’t provide your customers with a personalized experience, then you’re likely to lose them to your competitors.
One of the best ways to provide customers with what they need is by using bots Web design company in Gurgaon designed for that purpose. Very often, bots can get to know more about client preferences with the help of short quizzes and surveys.
Chatbots collect data from users to provide them with a highly personalized experience. For instance, CNN uses a bot that offers users customized news feeds based on their chosen preferences.
If you’re hesitant to jump on the chatbot bandwagon, then this is a great place to start.
#5. Increase Customer Engagement by Striking up a Conversation
For decades, one of the biggest challenges faced by marketers is how to start a conversation with a potential customer without sounding pushy. Traditionally, ads, copywriting, are some of the techniques employed to initiate a conversation by engaging with the customer.
Today, chatbots can do this for you. Today, several websites display a chatbot as soon as a visitor lands on the page. The chatbot does what a retail associate does in real life. It welcomes your customer to your digital store by greeting them. It then starts a conversation by asking specific questions like, “What brought you here today?”
Even though customers know that it’s a bot, they are highly likely to interact with it. In fact, a recent survey found out that more than 57% of customers prefer to live chat over other modes of communication like emails, telephone calls, etc.
Think about it this way. Imagine you’re walking into a brick-and-mortar store, an employee walks up to you and starts a conversation. Whether you prefer it or not, you’re likely to engage with the employee. This is basic human psychology. Bots do this same purpose online. They help in moving your customers down the sales funnel.
By programming the bots to ask the right questions, your customers feel that they are having a real face-to-face conversation.
#6. Lead Management
Yes, you read that right. Bots can even be used to qualify leads that you generate. Lead management is one of the most tedious tasks faced by any marketing team. For a lead to qualify, it requires plenty of nurturing.
You can now employ a bot to handle this for you. Program a bot with the right set of questions, to help you find out where your customer is in the sales funnel. This is highly effective as very often; customers aren’t even aware that they are conversing with a bot. It looks like just a regular chatbox, and most customers assume that they are talking with a real person on your team.
Once the bot handles the major part of the job, by bringing your lead to the right service or product, you can have a human customer support agent take over to close the deal. Integrating your bot with your existing lead nurturing strategy is a great way to enhance and streamline lead management.
#7. Organize your Marketing Team
Very often, when speaking about “digital marketing strategies” things like social media, SEO, and blog posts are what come to mind. Marketers fail to factor in the performance of the team. The team interaction and communication is an essential element of your marketing success.
This is especially true in the case of remote teams where team members are located in different geographical locations and even work from different time zones. To ensure that your team functions without any friction, you need to get all your team members on the same page. Every team member needs to be aware of their responsibilities while getting a clear picture of the overall project progress.
There are exclusively designed bots for this very purpose. Check out Nikabot and Standup Bot that help you track what everyone is doing on the team and keep team members up to date on what’s happening.
Wrapping it up
Just a few years ago, not many of us would have believed that bots would have come such a long way. The rapid pace of growth in digital marketing in the last few years is unbelievable.
However, there’s one thing that doesn’t change – Your customers expect a royal treatment and demand an optimal user experience. It doesn’t matter if a stellar customer service agent provides them with this or an automated bot does it!
Are you ready to take your digital marketing strategies to the next level by including a chatbot in the mix? Get in touch with our Digital Marketing Company to find out how to integrate a chatbot to meet your specific requirements.