Chatbots are designed to complement your website and social media presence, having scripted conversations with potential leads to help solve common problems and build strong relationships.
They also help businesses to generate and nurture more relevant leads, collect better data and improve their sales potential.
Six & Flow can help to introduce ChatBots into your overall inbound marketing strategy. We can find the software best suited to your needs, streamline your sales pipeline and script your brand voice.
People like to talk. People especially like to talk about themselves. They like to be asked questions and they like to know you're listening. It's one of the many things that makes us human, and a leading reason for the growing popularity of conversational marketing.
Conversational marketing platform Drift describes conversational marketing as:"The process of having real-time, one-to-one conversations in order to capture, qualify and connect with your best leads."
We’d like to go further than that; ChatBots are another arm to your sales team. They are front-of-house for anybody and everybody who visits your website, a personal concierge that gets things done to a high standard at all times. A good ChatBot is not only your new best friend, it’s your customers’ best friend, too.
Excitingly, conversations are now moving from consumer-to-consumer to consumer-to-business. Here at Six & Flow, we're seeing our own clients develop a growing preference for real-time communications.
Read more: Our guide to growing lead volume and improving lead quality with ChatBots
But with that shift comes the same expectations. We want our conversations when we want them, not when you're ready to reply. Sales, support, general information… Your potential customers have questions and they want you to answer them, now. Chat - especially real-time chat - has fast become the centre of the mobile universe. Communication habits are changing, and so are our buying habits. Between 2015 and 2016, ecommerce purchases through WeChat more than doubled. It's a huge area of growth, especially in the mobile marketing sphere.
As a marketer or salesperson, a one-to-one or even in a one-to-few relationship has always been sustainable. But what happens when you start widening your scope of influence? Is it still scalable?
Read more: ChatBot best practices a guide for business leaders and marketers
For Six & Flow, the most exciting thing in marketing for 2018 is ChatBots. They take conversational marketing and give you scope for growth.
In the same way we're attuned to open an SMS (yet ignore an email), chat is inherently part of our modern psyche. It forces us to take notice, and has changed the psychology of our communication habits as a whole. We've learnt to appreciate the speed, the conversation, the ability to combine groups of people into one conversation, and it's raised the bar for our expectations yet again.
According to Hubspot, 55% of customers are interested in interacting with businesses through ChatBots to solve problems. Meanwhile, 57% are interested in the instantaneous response they can provide. There’s nothing stopping your brand from replacing long, complicated forms and followups with real-time conversation, using a ChatBot designed to be as personal as possible with your audience.
A ChatBot marketing philosophy should be as organic as your overall marketing strategy. Scripting is essential to make sure your bot is able to solve problems and direct traffic, and be as personal and human as possible to replicate the nuances of the language used by your target market.
It’s not enough to just set up a ChatBot and watch leads and sales increase. It’s important to not only have the right program in place, but also make sure it’s aligned with the rest of your inbound marketing strategy to create a solid flow of high-quality leads that convert.
Read more: Using ChatBots for personalisation, a best practices guide
Conversational marketing isn’t a new thing. ChatBots are already part of our daily lives; Forrester Research reports that 86% of millennials they spoke to believe brands should use ChatBots to promote deals, products and services, and 67% say they’re very likely to purchase from a ChatBot.
ChatBot technology has been implemented by brands including National Geographic, Whole Foods, Domino’s, Starbucks, Duolingo and many other companies to boost business with great effect. Specifically, they’re using ChatBots to improve:
We can’t overstate just how important a holistic inbound marketing strategy and philosophy is to the success of any conversational marketing strategy. For instance, research by PwC found that 78% of consumers were influenced by social media in some way when purchasing. If that’s where your audience spends the majority of its time, it’s essential to marry your social media marketing and biddable strategies with your ChatBot to either build that initial conversation and drive traffic, or instantly target people who are ready to buy .
Most conversational marketing frameworks offer some common features:
If you’ve made it this far, then it’s fair to assume you’re interested in implementing a ChatBot strategy into your inbound marketing model, whether you’re interested in growth, are a business looking for better-quality leads or are interested in conversational marketing to refine and perfect your sales strategy.
Read more: Our guide to growing lead volume and improving lead quality with ChatBots
If you’re still teetering on the edge though and need a little bit more convincing, allow us to simplify everything and tell you the benefits of our own experiences when implementing ChatBot strategies for ourselves and our clients. ChatBots have allowed them to:
The ChatBots we’ve implemented for some of our clients have gone a long way to handling all of the monotonous stuff for them and solving numerous small customer problems, meaning sales reps and marketing teams can focus 100% on their tasks and concentrate on those that require a human touch.
Conversations are, naturally, two-way. Having an overall ChatBot client having numerous conversations has allowed clients to ethically collect information about the people that matter to them most in transparent ways. When you’re having conversations non-stop, you’re learning non-stop.
Conversational marketing platform Drift claims it has added 15% more new leads to the top of its sales funnel simply by having conversations with potential customers through ChatBots. Conversational marketing is incredibly engaging; instead of seeing people visit and leave your site, ChatBots can begin meaningful conversations with potential leads and encourage them to explore.
Drift also point out that ThriveHive has been able to shorten their sales cycle by 63%. In real terms that equates to a four-day sales process instead of an average of 11 days.Not only have we seen similar results with our clients, but ChatBots have also gone a long way to aligning their sales and marketing departments overall, streamlining the lead generation and nurturing process.
Again, Drift points out that conversational marketing now drives 50% of their business. With the right knowledge, scripting abilities and customer insight, ChatBots and other conversational marketing methods can better round and perfect your sales pipeline, giving potential customers immediate access to your company’s expertise at all times for their needs.
