Marketing has come a long way from its initial days of ordinary approaches.
New trends have made their way in and out of marketing and each trend brings with it a new dimension of innovation. With rigorous research in the field of marketing, personalized approaches have integrated themselves deeply providing brands the opportunity to interact with the customers and clients upfront. This is the reason that Conversational Marketing is also a favorite of many social media agencies to enhance engagement with users online.
The conventional approaches of calls and emails have become obsolete, giving way to Conversational Marketing.
To begin with, Conversational Marketing is a common and popular practice in marketing for interacting with the users either through automated messages or through live chats.
Let’s take a look at the most promising aspect of Conversational Marketing, chatbots
Chatbots, what, why?
An interesting approach to Conversational Marketing is chatbots. Chatbots are messaging or chatting programs used to simulate a real interaction between humans. One can very easily find chatbots online these days and with time interaction with chatbots has become more refined due to the introduction of Artificial Intelligence.
Incorporating chatbots on a website does not only give prompt service to visitors with instant responses that are, more than often, basic inquiries and simple questions but also gives a human touch to the conversation, thus adding trust to the equation.
For instance in a survey by Drift, 55% of total people who used chatbots expected them to receive instant replies to their queries. Chatbots are extremely beneficial for websites and businesses thanks to their direct and uncomplicated solutions and follow-ups. In fact, India ranks second in the world in terms of chatbot use which is 11% of the total chatbot usage in the world.
Chatbots are a real asset to businesses across the globe, however, in a recent study by Tidio, 46% of users prefer to communicate with a real person instead of a chatbot. This doesn’t come as a shock since it is more comforting to talk to a real person than to a computer program. Here is where Live Chats come in.
Live Chats are yet another form of Conversational Marketing where individuals communicate with users in real-time using online software. Live chats are more comprehensive, due to obvious reasons, and are more effective in clarifying complex questions but at the same time demand more time than chatbots which are present on the website 24*7.
Why is Conversational Marketing Important?
Now after this comprehensive brief on Conversational Marketing and its various modes, a question that comes naturally is “Why exactly is Conversational Marketing important?”
For starters, it is an excellent means of instant communication with the users. Users don’t exactly prefer to toil on a website for longer periods than is necessary, the attention span of customers has drastically decreased and no one wants to wait for their queries to be answered through emails and phone calls anymore.
Another positive aspect of Conversational Marketing is the personalized approach and an unprecedented feedback mechanism. A live or automated conversation allows instant replies while at the same time acquiring valuable feedback from the users that can be used to optimize the performance and functioning of the website and business. In the long run, this makes for a positive conversion rate of sales generation from prospective clients and reduces the window of negligence.
Ending this Conversational Marketing guide with examples of AI chatbots being used by some of the biggest conglomerates of the country.
TATA group and many of its subsidiaries use TIA, a personal assistant with the capability to voice-assist.
Tripper, a virtual conversational assistant of Club Mahindra to guide the users through its services.
Mindtree Artificial Conversation Interface (MACI) is a chat assistant that helps in services like finance, Learning, and Development, travel, GDPR, etc.