Why are chatbots great for sales and marketing?
Since messaging apps have become a way for brands to reach their customers, chatbots have become more important.
Sales and marketing go hand in hand, but do chatbots? The new wave of chatbots, also known as virtual assistants, are much more sophisticated and smart because of artificial intelligence (AI). Besides being great for customer support, chatbots can be great for sales and marketing as well. There is already a large preference for communicating with brands through chat. So here are a few ways to use chatbots for your marketing and sales efforts, in order to bring these efforts one step further into the future.
Great way to keep your customers engaged.
Chatbots are great for customer engagement and not only that, they are great for retaining them. With everyone being accustomed to using messaging apps in their everyday communication, it has become the favourite way for customers to communicate with their brands as well.
Furthermore, according to a study by Gartner, chatbots will power 85% of all customer service interactions by the year 2020. A chatbot can catch your customers attention and learn from the interaction, allowing it to send relevant information regarding your brand, products, and services. It’s able to up-sell and cross-sell in a personalized, conversational, and more engaging way.
Allows you to show off your brand.
Whether you have a fun or a serious brand, it can be adapted in the way your chatbot communicates with your customers. It is a great way not only to give information to the visitors of your web and social media pages, but to engage and make it a more pleasant and seamless experience, with that making it a more fun one. Using pictures, gifs and emojis in your chatbot allows for a more visually appealing and memorable experience.
Chatbots are great for gathering information.
Taking care of your leads is a crucial and time consuming part of every company’s operations. Whether it is to collect leads or measure interactions, chatbots provide for a seamless way to collect and analyse your customer information. For example, some companies use chatbots for customers to fill in forms in a conversational way. Chatbots also enable seamless gathering of information to further more personalised guidance of your customers through their buyer’s journey. These carefully crafted campaigns will allow you to personalise your marketing efforts for max effect. Others use this technology to really gain insight into what customers are interested in and what they care about, measuring how they feel about your brand, products/services and your customer service. With that you can remodel your marketing strategy to become more focused on your customer’s needs, thus creating more of an inbound marketing approach. An effective sales funnel increases sales.
Reach a wider audience.
As chatbots can be integrated into social media messaging platforms, they are able to reach and engage much larger audiences from different demographics. This in turn allows you to increase your sales and shows your customer that you’re ready to meet them wherever they feel the most comfortable.
Chatbots make your brand look more proactive.
Usually, businesses approach their clients when they have expressed interest in their product, while chatbot can welcome your customers once they arrive on your web and social media pages and directly start up a conversation. This allows for your brand to seem more proactive and customer-centric, enhancing your brand’s reputation increases interactions and leads to growth in your sales numbers.
Chatbots decrease your response time.
Very often customer support lines are busy and customers that have to wait for a long time to get answers will move on to your competition–which is bad for business. Having a large customer support team is very costly. Research shows that 91% of customers would use an online knowledge base if it were available and tailored to their needs. A chatbot can serve all your customers at the same time, keeping them engaged 24/7. It is an important point for your business as 52% of customers say they have made an additional purchase after receiving good customer support. Happy customers are always good for business.
It would be fair to say that these chat-driven social media systems are the future of everyday business. To further reinforce this statement, statistics show that already the majority of customers prefer social media, compared to telephone to seek customer support from which many of them expect real-time responses. Chatbots enable changes, allowing businesses to thrive through customer interactions.
Want to find out more about using chatbots for your sales and marketing?
Contact us at hey@faqbot.co
