AI-powered chatbots will soon take away some of the roles of humans at workplaces. This is given that enterprises are determined to automate various processes and functions using AI and Machine Learning. This is for various reasons including efficiency in enterprise operations, cost reduction and also to ensure satisfying customer service. The areas where AI-powered chatbots are used mostly in the role involving customer interaction. And chatbot marketing trends in a number of already established or growing businesses.
So what are AI-powered chatbots and how do they operate? Chatbots are also referred to as technology-driven personal assistants. They are programmed in a way to mimic human interaction via audio and text chat interfaces. Through in-built Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, these smart assistants can effectively serve in marketing. These technology-driven assistants have a huge potential of replacing the live agents in various roles in marketing if deployed effectively.
But the question is how businesses should deploy chatbot marketing. The defined goal is to guide small and big enterprises on the best approach for deploying this new marketing trend. Here are a few ways to achieve the successful deployment of chatbot marketing.
#1 A Well-Defined Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that is encapsulated to achieve the marketing objective. Just like other enterprises, it is important to make sure you have a good plan that is clear and well researched. These are important making sure that bot marketing achieves correct implementation. Businesses should ensure that they have a proper marketing strategy, to have a guaranteed success. The same is important when it comes to using chatbots for marketing.
To get started, you have to first define the problem that you are addressing. As known, chatbots handle different issues from customer service to marketing. Let’s assume that the goal that you want to achieve is improving marketing. Going forward with a Chatbot, you have to make sure you have identified the specific marketing function that you want to address. For instance, it can be to:
- Build the reputation of your brand
- Drive engagement on your website
- Increase brand awareness
The specific reason to deploy the marketing chatbot tool will help to determine the best way to use it. This can be done by deploying marketing chatbot through various messenger apps or on your website. But before you come to a conclusion, you have to determine the strategy that will guide you.
Businesses fail when deploying chatbots marketing because they fail to strategize a plan.
A good example of a company that achieved great success with chatbot marketing is Sephora. This is because the company had a clear plan of what they intended to achieve from the beginning of the project.
#2 Personalize the Experience
Just like the way we do with the way we write our own style or brand on social media, think about having the same for your chatbots too. Companies fail when they make their bots sound more robotic by choosing “bot-ness” of its voice and tone. And one of the most important places to nail this voice and tone is in the opening greeting from your bot.
Things like:
- A catchy hello message.
- And a conversation flows with plenty of options to capture as many possible user journeys as you can.
#3 Deploy Marketing Chatbots on your Website
Most enterprises have achieved success by deploying pro-active live chat on their website. In the case of retail sites, the chatbot will mostly offer support to shoppers who have limited experience in online shopping. The online shoppers are always in confusion before buying any product and hence, they want to ask about products and prices before making any final buying decision. Ensuring easy and quick interaction improves customer experience and clients to come back. To deploy marketing chatbots on your website you can do so by coming up with a conversational landing page, conversational banner, or a conversational form.
#4 Send simple surveys to Customers
Think you have come up with a perfect product, and it is important that you make sure your marketing bot is simple. A simple digital marketing chatbot will always increase customer engagement driving more sales. Naturally, people prefer simple procedures for complicated ones. Therefore, whenever you come up with a marketing bot that seems complicated for the users going through the payment procedures, then the thought of benefits for your business should be wiped out. This is because users will criticize your new system affecting the rate of adoption.
Example
Domino’s Pizza has invested in a marketing chatbot that eases the process of buying pizza and other snacks online. A simple text message will initiate the pizza ordering process at Dominoes. The chatbot runs on multiple social media platforms and makes the ordering of any beverages simple.
Building a bot and going for its marketing is not as easy as it might seem to be. This is the reason why businesses have to make sure they have a proper strategy in place before they invest in AI-powered bots. A proper Chatbot strategy is crucial for ensuring successful chatbot marketing for any size of business.