Why include Chatbots in your Marketing Strategy?
‘Chatbots’ have become quite popular in the online marketing world. Businesses are making use of them to facilitate customers and, above all, to increase sales. So what exactly is a chatbot? What does it do? And where can you include it in your marketing strategy to improve your business? Let’s look at the answers.
What is Chatbot?
A chatbot is, as the name suggests, a robot programmed to chat with people. Artificial Intelligence drives most of the chatbots, which means they can provide accurate answers. And this makes them pretty beneficial. But there are scripted chatbots as well which work well only within the script programmed into them.
What benefits Chatbot offers?
Chatbots can automate several tasks. They can replace your helpdesk agents successfully. What’s more is that they don’t even tire! Now let’s take a look at some of the benefits chatbots offer.
1. Productivity Enhancement: When businesses like you employ chatbots, the workload associated with your helpdesk agents reduces greatly. As chatbots handle the bulk of work, your helpdesk agents become more productive and resolve serious customer complaints quicker.
2. Reduce Human Error: When it comes to humans, there’s always room for errors. But this is not the case with chatbots. The ones which have been programmed well will function better than your helpdesk agent who just won the employee of the month award! Above all, fewer errors mean satisfied customers!
3. Cost Less Than Manpower: Chatbot is an automated solution which can address a number of your customers at the same time. So, which is better — A helpdesk agent addressing only one customer at a time or a relatively cheap chatbot that can address many?
4. Personalisation Factor: Using a chatbot you can provide personalized answers to your customers. Personalisation results in better engagement which, in turn, implies increased sales. For example, if you are an e-commerce website, deploying a chatbot would be a wonderful idea. Because chatbots can tailor chat conversations to suit customer requirements, it leads them to the right product.
Where to Include Chatbots in your Marketing Strategy
Chatbots are quite useful. No doubts about that. Now let’s take a look at where they can fit into your marketing strategy to serve your business well.
1. To Assist Your Website Visitors: Many websites are deploying chatbots as virtual assistants to personalize the customer experience. From offering a warm greeting to asking the right questions, they can guide your website visitors in the right direction. A proper guidance ensures they don’t feel lost and walk away from your website.
2. In Your Sales Funnel: Businesses have also begun including chatbots in their sales funnel to analyze the prospects of a lead turning into a customer. Instead of user surveys to which they may or may not respond, place a courteous chatbot in the sales funnel. The results would be surprising.
3. To Understand Your Customer Demographics Better: You can also use chatbots to understand your customer demographics better. All using the valuable feedback provided by the customers to your chatbots. In other words, you can narrow down on your target audience and well, target them more effectively!
The above list is not exhaustive and the role chatbots play in improving online businesses is increasing at an unprecedented rate.
Final Thoughts:
Chatbots are here to stay. They can be your helpdesk agents. They can play host to the users visiting your websites. And they can help your customers narrow down on what they are looking for. Above all, they are always up for a friendly chat to quench the thirst of your inquisitive clients. So, why not include them in your marketing strategy and take your business to newer heights!
