Conversational marketing has changed the communication game for many companies. Even the largest market players have seen the impact that a friendly, engaging brand voice can have on their audience. The resulting upticks in sales, online engagement, and positive reviews prove that a focus on relationships and personalised marketing tactics can shorten the sales cycle and keep customers coming back for more.
Though conversational marketing has grown in popularity, many companies still aren’t sure what it is or how to implement it. Our team at TouchSMS created the ultimate guide to conversational marketing, plus three advantages the approach can give your company.
What Is Conversational Marketing?
Depending on who you ask, you may hear a variety of answers—and, more than likely, they would all be relatively correct. The real-time marketing strategy operates through one-on-one customer conversations with your sales team members or an instant communication tool. This cutting-edge approach to marketing helps capture, connect, and qualify leads without the need for forms.
Customers and prospects can instantly initiate chats through conversational marketing software. The convenience and easy personalisation add a human element to AI-powered customer service tools that improve trust. Additionally, the 24/7 nature of conversational marketing can empower your company to keep up with your global audience.
Channels for Conversational Marketing
The flexibility of conversational marketing makes it easy to implement into virtually any inbound marketing campaign. However, you should consider three main channels for the best results:
Email Marketing
Nearly every company uses email marketing to connect with current and potential customers. As companies and consumers develop closer relationships, engaging emails help shorten the sales cycle and build a loyal following.
A friendly, conversational voice creates natural interest in your email’s content. From there, you can inform your customers of sales, promotions, new blog posts, or exciting CTAs without the dreaded “sales-y” tone. You can even inspire your customers to call or email your marketing and sales team for more information.
However, when writing a conversational email marketing campaign, don’t forget the proper flow of promotional emails. Keep the tone friendly and engaging but remember to introduce your audience to your products in the first email. Then, follow up with emails explaining why customers should purchase your products and offer a limited-time opportunity to do so.
Chatbots
Chatbots – or conversational artificial intelligence (AI) software – have become a mainstay for e-commerce companies. These chatty applications mimic face-to-face and live chat interactions with customers for enhanced lead generation and customer engagement.
Once a visitor lands on your homepage, the bots initiate a conversation with simple questions that determine the client’s needs. While these questions simply seem helpful, they offer a hidden benefit: qualifying leads without requiring time and energy from your sales team.
You can also employ chatbots through social media messaging apps like Facebook Messenger. These messenger bots quickly greet customers and provide product recommendations, assistance, and other critical tasks. If needed, the chatbot can connect customers with a team member to answer additional questions or finalise a purchase.
SMS
With a 98% open rate, marketing teams can easily leverage mobile messaging to create a more intuitive customer journey. At its most basic level, SMS marketing has two steps: send customers an offer and wait for their response.
However, experts know that SMS marketing requires more than a quick promotional text. SMS marketing places dialogue at the forefront of your communication tactics, making it an impactful channel to test out your company’s conversational marketing strategy.
At TouchSMS, our powerful SMS platform allows companies to implement and automate messaging quickly. Your team can create auto-responses based on keywords to improve communication and assist customers with purchases or returns. Our flexible integrations even work within your current marketing framework, allowing you to get started right away.
3 Benefits of Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing provides countless benefits when integrated into an existing marketing strategy. However, companies may find that conversational marketing’s greatest strength lies in its focus on continual, timely customer engagement.
Other benefits of conversational marketing include:
1. Convenient Customer Support
When you integrate conversational marketing software into your website, customers can ask questions and receive help at any time of the day or night. If your sales team isn’t available or your customer service department has gone home for the evening, the software can handle requests and provide support.
2. Personalised Service
Rather than pushing out the same stale dialogue to every customer, conversational marketing tools can collect data, personalise messages with customer names and purchase information, and add context to ongoing chats to improve the customer experience. Chatbots can even address pain points and assist customers in choosing the best product to fit their needs.
For example, suppose a customer initiates contact with a chatbot and has questions about a shipment. If the customer comes back later with questions about their purchase, your website’s conversational tools will have the order information on hand and can provide immediate assistance.
3. Customer Feedback Collection
Finally, conversational technology can quickly collect and analyse customer feedback. As companies work to improve customer experience, implementing suggestions can significantly impact the way leads perceive your brand.
Manual feedback collection can become challenging, but many conversational marketing platforms have a built-in survey function so brands can learn what’s working, what needs improvement, and what customers hope to see in the future.
Conversational Marketing Tools from TouchSMS
Conversational marketing plays a pivotal role in taking brands to the next level. If your marketing strategy has fallen short of your expectations or your customers simply want more engagement, it may be time to implement a conversational marketing software strategy.
Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. At TouchSMS, we work with organisations across Australia to implement and manage conversational marketing strategies through our SMS platform. For more information on our services or to get started, give us a call at 1300 794 419.