Bots have been the talk of the town in various industries for a while now – and even a small digital marketing agency in the Philippines or around the world, could not ignore the benefits that this stellar technology has brought to the marketing landscape. However, how do they help brands increase customer engagement and conversion rates? More so, how do they contribute to the growing digital marketing scene given the strict competition? Well look no further, here are the ultimate five perks of having chatbots in your marketing strategy (that can also enlighten you about the growing popularity of the said technology).
Before, if a customer messages you on a particular channel late at night, the response may be expected the next day – regardless if it’s urgent as your team is already off site. Today, given the popularity of various instant messaging apps, notably Facebook Messenger, Kik, and WeChat, being available to your customers is much easier especially that these apps are the primary home of chatbots. If you haven’t heard it yet, Uber has used a bot in Messenger lately – and the market has never been happier until then. The real-time presence of the brand made it much easier and convenient for the customers to reach them especially when they are needed most. Furthermore, people are much more comfortable now in instant messaging apps that they are on it 9 times a day and five times more compared to other applications. If this isn’t marketing, then what is?
One of this technology’s significant prowess is their ability to track consumer data – which is, by the way, one of the most important factors that a brand should consider for their business to grow. You can program the bot to track the customer’s purchasing habits to easily analyze the pattern of the buyer’s journey.
From doing so, you will discover which specific service or product your customers prefer – which will ultimately give you a gist of what particular product you should focus on and which product is becoming a liability to your business. Furthermore, this also helps your brand’s chatbot extend its knowledge base to answer your customers’ questions more accurately and specifically – and of course, for the bot to better promote your products to your customers in the future.
One factor that a customer considers in purchasing a product is the means of the payment. No one would definitely prefer hassle over convenience, anyway. Given this factor, many businesses of today have preferred using chatbots to make payments easier for their customers. An instance of which is Facebook Messenger’s integration of payment platforms such as PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and much more that made it possible for customers to pay their purchased product with one tap, and at the same time, not leaving the app itself. That’s practically what customers today wanted to happen – fewer apps for every purchase. Hence, if your brand is hesitant over this technology, your marketing’s missing a lot.
A personalized experience is a good way to attract, and of course, maintain customers because they get to experience a genuine service through your brand. Personalization does not only come in terms of a website, a Facebook page, or a YouTube channel, but also in chatbots that communicate with your customers. It can appear in the form of addressing customers by their first name or using the curated data from the customers’ purchasing patterns and habits to offer products or service that they may also be interested in. With regards to this matter, it’s important to note that personalization helps your brand get further to the buyer’s journey, and eventually, convert leads.
Of course, apart from providing better customer service – chatbots also makes it possible for your brand to build stronger relationships with customers, and eventually, increase customer engagement. How? Most often, brands take customer engagement as those instances where people likes, shares, and comments on a video uploaded by the brand. However, this does not guarantee customer loyalty – who knows, every person on the likes list has liked many other campaigns over the web. So what sets chatbots apart is its capability of conversing with your customers in a natural human language. In fact, there are brands that have extended efforts on customer engagement using chatbots. An example of which is Disney’s marketing strategy with regards to the movie Zootopia. They contracted Imperson to build a bot in Facebook Messenger using the character of Officer Judy Hopps, which is the main character in the movie, to create a fun and interesting crime-solving mystery adventure between the customers and the bot. The result? Users spent an average of 10 minutes conversing with her – which made Zootopia reach a gross of over $1 billion in the first three months of the said movie release around the world. Terrific!
Chatbots are blowing the world away and brands are integrating this technology into their marketing strategies to keep up with the competition. Given this point, if you want your brand to succeed today, and of course, in the long run – trust chatbots to back you up for success.