It is a common misconception that chatbots are useful only for customer support. With the right setup, AI-powered chatbots can be a powerful tool in your digital marketing strategy and help your buyers have a very personalized experience with your company.

In this deep dive piece, we take a look at the future of marketing where conversational AI chatbot solutions play a major role in the entire process.

What does chatbot marketing entail?

Chatbot marketing, or bot marketing, is a technique that utilizes automated messaging to directly communicate with prospects and current customers. This can occur on your website or in your app and is intended to generate sales. By utilizing chatbots in marketing strategies, companies can effectively engage with and qualify leads 24/7, without being limited by the availability of their marketing and sales team. Similar to using support chatbots for answering support queries, chatbots can also be utilized for initiating conversations with website visitors, qualifying leads, and even upselling customers.

Messenger chatbots are created by humans, not powered by them. The messages that are sent are based on context and the AI prompt set by you, which helps target your leads and potential customers. For instance, if you prefer your chatbot to only be visible to users who are not signed in, you have the option to do so. You also have the option to show different pricing options to visitors who have been on your pricing page for longer than 30 seconds, even if they are not signed in.

Moreover, the data collected can provide insights into customer preferences and trends, enabling the delivery of a more tailored purchasing journey and customer experience.

Some of the ways chatbot marketing capabilities facilitate closer engagement between brands and customers are:

• Providing concise relevant responses regarding discounts, a product, or a service
• Addressing a complaint or problem
• Providing a comprehensive response to an inquiry
• Finding the appropriate support team for a specific issue

Chatbots used in marketing frequently incorporate prompts that allow customers to select options to determine their intentions and guide them toward making the right choice. Using keywords in chatbots allows them to carry out specific complex tasks based on the customer's input in the message. This can increase their efficiency and proactivity.

The many benefits of chatbot marketing

In addition to its ability to assist with scaling, streamlining, and automating customer care, chatbot marketing can also have a significant impact on your business in various other important ways:

Cost-effective and time-saving strategy

AI-enabled chatbots allow for the automation of customer interactions, ensuring quick response time without delay. Furthermore, the utilization of chatbot marketing in customer support allows customers to access information outside of regular working hours. Automating responses to common customer queries that don't require a human customer support team is a cost-effective way to free up time and resources for other important tasks.

Lead generation and revenue growth

Chatbots can gather essential information for effective nudges, particularly when they are connected to your website. One way chatbots can assist customers is by asking why they are visiting a webpage, which can guide them toward finding what they need and potentially converting. Chatbot marketing has the potential to increase sales by proactively sending notifications about offers and discounts, thus expediting the purchase process.

Moreover, marketing chatbots can be utilized to provide website visitors with a straightforward prompt, such as "Please feel free to ask any questions," or even a welcome video to initiate a dialogue. Chatbots can then inquire for additional information, such as email and company size, to gather basic qualification details. Utilize the combination of these details and data enrichment tools to effectively segment your users and tailor their upcoming actions. For example, suggest first-time visitors sign up for the newsletter while recommending return visitors to book a demo thereby pushing them further down the sales funnel.

Assist users in achieving more favorable results

Buyers may sometimes have difficulty finding the information they are looking for. This is commonly observed with new users. By asking a series of qualifying questions, users can be directed to the most suitable place for finding the information they desire. This may also involve additional assistance beyond sales, such as delivery tracking and refunds.

Some common questions that you can engage the users within a chat window are:

• What is it that you are searching for?
• What is your current location?
• Have you forgotten something in your cart?
• Do you need assistance?
• May I please have your order number?

Obtain information on customer preferences and behaviors

Chatbots are important for collecting relevant insights through intelligent social listening. Data collected from chatbot conversations has various applications such as enhancing customer experience and providing insights for product descriptions, development, and personalization.

Machine learning-driven text analysis and sentiment analysis of chatbot data can provide valuable insights into customer demographics, web clickstreams, and past purchase decisions, enabling the creation of personalized offerings. This can provide a competitive edge, allowing you to address market needs and serve customers more efficiently.

Users can be engaged in a unique manner

Chatbot marketing allows for customer engagement in an interactive manner. These seamless user experiences contribute to customers remembering your brand for its excellent customer service. Keeping interactions interesting leads to increased engagement as well.

You can even nurture and upsell users using chatbots. If you offer free trials, bots can offer help to users who haven't completed their setup and check in with people whose trials are about to end. For customers, let them know about new features and connect them to the Sales reps if they're interested in upgrading.

Creating an effective chatbot marketing strategy

To develop an effective chatbot marketing strategy, it is important to have a well-organized plan. Determine your target audience, their engagement with your brand, and the metrics for measuring success.

The following is a step-by-step guide for creating your AI chatbot marketing strategy:

1. Outline your chatbot marketing objectives and the use case

The first crucial step in developing chatbots for marketing is to define your expectations for them. Clearly state your objective, whether it be customer acquisition, brand awareness, product insights, customer service improvement, or any other specific goal.

For instance, if your social team discovers that they are unable to handle the volume of messages on certain networks, it might be beneficial to utilize bots on those channels. If your website team is experiencing low conversion rates, utilizing bot marketing may be a potential solution to increase conversion there.

Considering your goals and being mindful of them while developing the user experience can result in a more efficient and successful outcome.

2. Select the relevant platforms to leverage

Conducting audience research is crucial to determining the appropriate platform for your chatbot marketing strategy.

This will assist you in determining the user experience and questions your chatbot should ask. For instance, an existing customer on Twitter may have different inquiries than a new prospect who contacts through Instagram.

Moreover, chat conversations will vary depending on the platforms where your programs are hosted, be it pages, networks, or channels.

3. Develop a content strategy for your chatbot

The next step is to determine the content that customers should engage with during the chatbot interaction. The idea is to design these interactions with customers which can

Which format is most effective with leads? Certain leads show a positive reaction to direct written content or visual mediums such as videos. Some people might prefer references to content such as case studies or third-party research.

What is your desired promotion? You should modify the messaging of your marketing chatbot at any time to highlight new features, popular content, or upcoming events.

What action would you like leads to take next? The leads you're targeting may consider signing up for an email list or subscribing to your blog, even if they're not ready for a call or demo. When you are familiar with the next step in your sales process, customize your message to align with it and incorporate an app to prompt prompt action. It is recommended to include a "just browsing" option for visitors who may not be interested in chatting at the moment. They should have the option to message at a later time.

4. Define your bot's voice and personality

Giving your chatbot a personality enhances the user experience and ensures consistency with your brand identity. Some brands choose to assign a name to their bot to inform customers that they are interacting with an automated system. This provides them with the opportunity to maintain transparency with customers while cultivating a professional tone.

5. Write a professional opening message

The welcome message is crucial for user engagement and encouraging them to interact with your bot. Effective opening messages are those that are compelling, establish expectations, and invite questions.

• Strive to be captivating
• Set expectations
• Ask questions

6. Mapping customer journeys

After the initial set of questions, it would be helpful to plan the trajectory of the conversation. With AI conversational chatbots, this step is taken care of automatically when you engineer the prompts. Ensure that the instructions for the AI chatbot are clear and precise so that it can lead the conversation the way you want.

7. Have clear call-to-actions built into the conversation

The chatbot interaction should culminate with a call-to-action (CTA) once a user has responded to all your questions and is ready to move forward. CTA buttons can be used in conversations to direct consumers to a specific product category or page on your website, to share their experience with a friend on social media channels, or to go directly to their cart. Your bot can serve as a valuable conversion tool by guiding users to their intended destination.

8. Test your chatbot conversations

Chatbot journeys can often become intricate webs of dialogue. That is why it is important to test every interaction to ensure they are functioning well and meeting customer requirements. Many chatbot platforms offer live preview functionality, allowing you to test your flows before launching them.

9. Embed the chatbot where you want and monitor

After completing the above steps, you are prepared to publish your first chatbot. Monitor users as they interact with your bots to ensure smooth customer journeys without any recurring issues. The data collected from chatbot conversations is equally important. Evaluating this information can provide valuable insights to enhance your chatbot experience and marketing strategy.

Best practices for a great chatbot marketing experience

Marketing chatbots have the potential to effectively bridge the gap between first-time visitors and qualified leads through proper audience segmentation and messaging. When creating your initial chatbots, it is important to remember these tips to ensure a consistent and positive user experience:

Don't portray artificial intelligence chatbots as human

Chatbots, despite their usefulness, are not human. Providing your chatbot with a real name and a stock profile photo can confuse prospects. If they anticipate a human response but receive something different, regardless of how helpful that reply may be, they may feel as though they are being lied to.

The chatbot should maintain a conversational tone while ensuring a neutral tone of voice. The messaging from a marketing chatbot should reflect the voice of a human agent.

Timing is crucial when triggering a chatbot

Chatbots can be disruptive and invasive if they appear too quickly or in inappropriate locations. Utilize the chatbot to assist visitors on important conversion pages, implementing a time delay before triggering it. For users who express readiness to make a purchase, incorporate a billing application directly within the Messenger platform or promptly connect them with a staff member who can assist them in finalizing the transaction.

Continuously make it better

Not all leads respond to chatbots, and that is acceptable. During bot marketing testing, it is possible to identify that only leads who meet certain criteria respond to your messages. For example, employees of SaaS companies who have visited your site more than three times or product managers who have read more than five blog posts. Take a look at your engagement reports to gain insight into what is and isn't effective. Instead of focusing on eliciting a response from every visitor, modify your chatbot's behavior to target the leads who are likely to engage.

Various ways you can use chatbots in marketing

Overall, there is significant untapped potential in chatbot marketing. The following use cases provide examples of different scenarios in which a conversational AI chatbot can spin your next campaign and help with customer acquisition.

Generate leads

When discussing chatbot marketing capabilities, lead generation is an essential element to consider. It is one of the most popular chatbot use cases in marketing overall and deserves the first mention.

There are many reasons why a chatbot as a virtual assistant in lead generation is really popular. Firstly, they are a convenient alternative to online forms. Additionally, they are the simplest and most practical type of chatbot to implement on a website. These chatbots will field the initial set of customer issues, understand the customer expectations, and based on their readiness, collect their contact details.

For many businesses, a lead generation bot serves as an initial entry point into the realm of conversational marketing. It can be an effective tool for a client-based business where leads require follow-up from a human agent.

Qualify leads

For many businesses, generating leads alone may not be sufficient.

To optimize their customer acquisition process, it is necessary to automatically evaluate the quality and likelihood of conversion for leads. A well-constructed chatbot can determine the interest of the potential client and their stage in the purchasing journey.

In some instances, the process of creating a qualification bot simply involves expanding the initial lead-generating conversation by incorporating case-specific qualification questions.

With the increasing accessibility of chatbot technology through no-code tools and builders, brands and companies can gather substantial qualifying information without any negative impact on user experience.

Generate quotes

Every business that depends on personalized quotes understands the importance of every potential customer with common queries and questions. You never know how big that account might end up being. Both speed and accurate answers are important.

A chatbot available on your website, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp account can provide instant responses and quotes based on customer responses at any time.

Moreover, it can function as a qualification bot and transition leads into the sales cycle when a valuable lead finishes the conversation, potentially even initiating a handoff to the sales team.

A bot is more beneficial than a form as it can offer the user extra information while gathering the required data. It is even more beneficial if the bot possesses natural language processing capabilities.

Book meetings & take reservations

Certain businesses rely heavily on bookings and reservations. Some businesses use them as a strategic approach, implementing marketing campaigns aimed at attracting customers to demos of their services or products.

Making reservations and booking appointments using bots can be an effective marketing strategy, particularly for businesses that operate primarily offline.

Whether you offer online services or operate a more traditional business, participating in conversational commerce, even through something as basic as making reservations through all communication channels, can have a significant impact.

You can let your potential and current customers book meetings, consultations, tables, seats, etc right from the messaging channels.

Loyalty programs

It is commonly known that many loyalty programs are not utilized by their members.

Many people often overlook their loyalty programs or are uninformed of the rewards they have accumulated. A chatbot on your website, app, reminder email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc., can remind members about their point balance in a friendly manner.

On-site services

Chatbots have the potential to enhance digital marketing by translating its effects and benefits into tangible reality, making it more practical. Some of the services that can be offered through mobile-friendly chatbot marketing include on-site and real-world options such as:

• Providing information on business locations, and opening times, and answering customer questions.
• Sending virtual receipts helps to promote environmentally-friendly practices while also allowing for the collection of valuable data (which can be used to associate purchase information with specific clients, observe purchase habits, and ultimately personalize product recommendations and increase customer satisfaction).
• Sharing the WiFi password.
• Providing a list of menu items for services.

Run contests

Contests have consistently proven to be an effective marketing technique. Today, chatbots provide them with the means to become even more so. Bots have proven to be successful, and there is no denying that the offer of a valuable prize can quickly engage people in conversation.

Additionally, this chatbot marketing use case is compatible with various channels, including websites, landing pages, apps, messaging apps, and social channels. It is capable of managing the entire process from beginning to end.

This method is an effective way to quickly expand your contact list, increase brand awareness, and engage potential customers interactively and entertainingly.

Collect reviews

Product reviews and recommendations play a crucial role in marketing. Your marketing bot can provide potential customers with reliable reviews or links to reliable reviews, while also serving as a friendly prompt for existing customers to share their opinions.

First, users are more likely to respond to a bot due to its natural behavior. Bots are most effective when they operate within their preferred platforms, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, without causing any disruption to users.

Typically, a customer would need substantial dissatisfaction or frustration to take the effort and time required to provide feedback. Unhappy customers are not concerned about the user-friendliness of your review system, while happy customers are.

Community management

Marketing is becoming more personalized and focused on smaller audiences. The key is to establish relationships and practice active listening. However, only large companies have the financial means to hire sufficient staff to undertake the task, and even then, it may not be the most apparent profitable strategy.

A chatbot that supervises a community or a specific group of users can, for example:

• Extend invitations to new members to join the group.
• Provide details of the locations, times, and updates regarding offline or online meetings and events.
• Share community news and updates.
• Inform members about the rules and ensure that they are being followed, such as monitoring for foul language or self-promotion activities.
• Invite members to ask questions and receive timely answers about relevant topics.

Content marketing

Chatbots have become a recognized channel with their content marketing strategy due to their engagement capacity.

A chatbot can assist you in attracting readers to your blog, listeners to your podcast, or viewers to your online video channel, enabling you to expand your following and provide updates to keep people informed.

You have the option to send proactive or reactive messages, regardless of whether you operate in a B2C or B2B setting. Sharing relevant content through various platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or the web can help users save valuable time.

Once user preferences are known, bot notifications can be customized according to those preferences. Additionally, conversational setup facilitates responding to pop-culture marketing trends in a more accessible and relatable manner.

Conduct surveys

Surveys can be used to gather customer feedback, rate customer service, collect leads, expand your customer base, and increase awareness about your business.

Chatbot surveys enhance marketing strategies by providing a cost-effective alternative to single-use survey software. Transforming a survey into a conversation enhances interactivity and enables greater personalization. Additionally, a chatbot with an engaging personality may enhance survey completion rates.

Supercharge your marketing with Chatden AI chatbots today

Chatbots won't replace your marketing team, but with the proper setup, they'll help you feel like you've grown your team by 10x. If you're ready to advance your marketing with chatbots with all the advanced features that one can wish for, take Chatden for a spin!