The Customer Journey Stories
In a series of upcoming posts, we will be delving into each stage of the Chat Marketing customer journey. Stay tuned!
Chat Marketing is still relatively new. But as chatbots become entrenched in the digital marketing ecosystem, brands are recognizing the need to be more strategic around how their chatbots align with their larger marketing goals. Are they looking to create awareness for their brand? Move customers from awareness to consideration, or consideration to purchase? Retarget window shoppers and cart abandoners? Keep customers in the loop after their purchase?
Most of the time, brands are looking to employ their chatbot in several or all stages of the sales funnel. These brands recognize that Chat Marketing is a fluid strategy that builds and nurtures customer relationships over the long term. They’ve identified the power of this medium to tackle two or more stages of the funnel at once. Going from consideration to purchase, for example, becomes as easy as a single click out of a chat window. It’s a seamless way to engage people and to keep them engaged over the long term.
It also works. Just ask our customer Danette May:
“In the few months we’ve been using Chatkit, we’ve significantly improved our customer support, generated tens of thousands of leads, and increased our revenues 10X over our previous Facebook strategies.”
Brands like Danette May know that in order to be truly customer focused, they need to engage people in meaningful conversations that will resonate at key points in their customer journey. Chat Marketing is the best way to anticipate which messages will impact people at what times, because you’re receiving those insights from the customers themselves. By talking with people, you can identify how best to engage with them.
Those brands also know the decision-making process for customers is not linear. Brands need to be continually engaging customers at every point in their buying journey, whether they’re just becoming aware of the brand or whether they’ve recently made a purchase. Static emails, targeted ads, and Facebook posts are not enough to turn online window shoppers into buyers, or turn buyers into brand loyalists.
What people want has evolved. Nowadays, people want to know a brand is always on, 24/7, and they want to feel heard and helped now — not tomorrow, not in an hour. They’re making purchasing decisions faster, and their attention is spread more sparsely across the Internet. The right message at the right time — a promotion on an item they previously placed in their cart, say — can be even more significant if a chatbot is there to answer questions.
We will be focusing on four stages in the customer journey:
I. awareness
II. consideration
III. purchase
IV. post-purchase
But none of these touchstones exist in isolation. As we mentioned, it’s crucial to keep people continually engaged and to message them at fundamental points in their journey, whether they just opted into your chat or whether they bought something six months ago. The more you speak to people, the better able you are to understand their needs. That is why conversation is truly the future of marketing.
Learn more about how Chat Marketing can help your brand at Chatkit.com.
Stay tuned for our first customer journey story on awareness coming up next!
