Conversational Marketing 101

Do you have that one friend who never seems to keep quiet? They just seem to keep talking about how their lives are going, what they can do for you, and how you should live your life. We are talking about that friend that never seems to let you chip into a conversation. They can be pretty annoying, can't they?

You risk turning your brand into that friend if the only interactions you have with customers are one-sided. You may offer customers the best services and unmatched products, but do you really take time to figure out what they really want? Making your products, services, and experience customer-centric is a sure way to keep customers engaged throughout every stage of the sales funnel.

In fact, 87% of today's consumers claim that personalized and relevant brand content positively influences what they think about a brand. Conversational marketing is among the best ways to offer personalized experiences to increase your revenue. Here's what you should know about it and how to apply it.

What Is Conversational Marketing?

Getting your brand message across to your customers was straightforward in the past. It was as easy as creating a newspaper ad, sending direct mail, acting out a TV commercial, or hanging a billboard. While these methods might have been effective for interested customers, they lacked a human touch. They are also easy to ignore. Today, customers are bombarded with multiple messages from brands to the point that conventional marketing strategies aren't enough for any brand to stand out.

Unlike the convention, conversational marketing is a feedback-based marketing technique that creates relevant, meaningful, one-on-one conversations with the target audience. Conversational marketing leans heavily on automation in a world where connecting every customer to a dedicated customer service agent is nearly impossible. Some of the best examples of this strategy include using chatbots and website live chats to communicate with the customer.

Why Should You Consider Conversational Marketing? 

• To humanize your brand: Conversations make your brand seem more human and approachable. They make people relate to your brand and help create a connection with your target customer. 
• Offer 24/7 availability: Even on their best days, your customer support staff and sales team might not succeed at responding to every customer request in a timely fashion. When 60% of your customers are unwilling to be put on hold for more than a minute, delayed responses could be bad for your bottom line. Conversational marketing ensures that you can always respond to customer requests, no matter the time of day or night. 
• To get to know your customers: Your customers' perspectives and pain points all matter to your business. You should embrace any channel that can give you a deeper understanding of your customers. By allowing you to have personalized one-on-one conversations with your customers, conversational marketing makes creating buyer personas easier. Some of the conversational marketing tools in the market even come with data analytics capabilities for an easier time drawing insights from conversations. 
• To move customers through the sales funnel more smoothly: It is easy to frustrate customers if they don't know their way around their purchase journey. Some prospects might only need a slight nudge to convert. Conversational marketing helps you walk alongside your leads every step of the way to prevent frustration and encourage conversion.

Three Examples of Successful Conversational Marketing Campaigns

Some of the biggest organizations that have learned to implement conversational marketing include:

1. World Health Organization

WHO has always been a go-to resource for everything health-related. During COVID-19, people sought trustworthy and relevant updates, and WHO was one of the best resources to turn to. To cater to the increasing demand for information, WHO launched a Facebook Messenger Chatbot.

Additionally, WHO launched a WhatsApp chatbot to increase its efficiency at offering government agencies pandemic-related updates. Both chatbots have helped the organization interact with more than 12 million people, a number that has been increasing with time.

2. Lyft

Being the second-largest US ride-sharing company, Lyft has no other choice than to step up its communication game. For such a company, timely communication is crucial to providing great experiences. Lyft launched chatbots on multiple platforms, like Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Amazon Echo.

Customers are only required to click the car icon on these platforms to start a conversation with Lyft. The chatbots will let customers know about the brand of the car, its estimated time of arrival, and the car's licence plate. The strategy also provides them with enough data about what customers need, which they have been using to improve their conversational marketing approach.

3. London & Country

Lead qualification is not always easy. Telling apart customers that are ready to buy from those that are just shopping takes time. London and Country, a leading UK mortgage broker, has found a way to use conversational marketing for lead qualification.

The company uses chatbots to qualify leads. The attractive and well-designed bots ask leads questions that help identify their progress in the buyer's journey. In fact, the bots can also help get new prospects from these leads.

The Typical Conversational Marketing Framework

Conversational marketing typically follows three steps; engagement, understanding, and recommendation. The first step is to look for ways to engage your customers in a conversation. Instead of having them fill forms that might take longer to answer, you can engage them through a website live chat or a social media chatbot.

You can have them initiate the conversation or start the conversation yourself. The latter is ideal for customers who are highly likely to make a purchase after a little nudge. Next, you need to understand the lead, their pain points, and their perspectives. Quick responses to an engaged lead are essential, considering that 5-minute responses make lead qualification 21 times easier than 30-minute responses.

Let your bot ask relevant questions. The conversation the bot initiates should emulate the ordinary sales representative to customer conversation. The last step is recommendation, whereby the bots recommend a step that rhymes with the lead's stage in the purchase journey. If a customer is willing to purchase, it can redirect them to customer service agents for that human interaction. Remember, quick responses can save your business a lot.

You could also have the bots schedule a meeting for the lead with a specific sales representative. If the lead still needs some nurturing, the bot can recommend materials and resources that help them go further in their purchase journey.

Humanize Your Brand

Customers want to feel appreciated and heard. With conversational marketing, you can directly interact with the customer for easier lead nurturing and market analysis. Implement conversational marketing today for an easier time interacting with customers.