The marketing chatbot: always on, always available
You could believe that chatbots are solely useful for providing customer service, however this is only one application for them. A chatbot can power your marketing with the appropriate setup, ensuring that you never miss a lead.
If website visitors talk with you initially, they are 82% more likely to become clients. Therefore, live chat is the way to go if you’re seeking for strategies to increase the effectiveness of your marketing plan. But how can live chat be staffed for marketing purposes without drastically increasing headcount? utilizing chatbots for marketing. Here’s a detailed look at how they might be applied to engage website users and generate leads for your sales staff.
What is marketing with chatbots?
In order to generate sales, chatbot marketing is a marketing strategy that uses computer programs to automate conversations with prospects and consumers on your website or in your app. Even if your marketing and sales team is not online, using chatbots in marketing tactics enables businesses to qualify and engage with leads at any time and in any capacity. You may use chatbots to initiate discussions with website visitors, qualify leads, and even upsell customers in the same way that you can use marketing chatbots to respond to support inquiries.
Chatbots for Messenger are created by humans; they are not powered by them. Based on the rules you provide, they deliver your leads and potential customers the precise communications you want them to see. So, for instance, you can make your bot visible just to website users who aren’t logged in. You may also choose to have it show up for non-logged-in users who have been on your pricing page for more than 30 seconds.
advantages of chatbots in marketing
The wonderful thing about chatbots is that they never stop working. When your team members are unavailable, they’ll keep your marketing machine running and help them out when they’re busy. The following are the main facets of online marketing platforms that chatbots can automate:
Engage and sift through leads. Use your marketing chatbots to display a straightforward invitation to chat, such as “Let us know if you have any questions,” or even a welcome video, to website visitors. In order to gather basic qualification information like email address and organization size, bots can then ask more questions. To segment your users and personalize their next actions, combine these information with that obtained from data enrichment technologies. For instance, prod repeat visitors to schedule a demo while encouraging new visitors to sign up for your email.
Send sales-qualified leads with high intent. People who take the time to go through your pricing page or click the “Get more info” button are probably really interested in your offering. To rapidly qualify and schedule a call with your sales team, use your chatbot.
Develop and upsell to customers. If you provide free trials, bots can assist users who are still setting up their accounts and check in with users whose trials are about to expire. Customers should be informed of new features and connected to sales representatives if they are interested in upgrading.
Examples of real-world chatbot marketing
The development of chatbot technology has allowed them to quickly take the place of conventional web forms on your website, giving users a more convenient way to contact you. Let’s look at a few instances.
How a Volvo dealership generates personalized quotations using bots
The German car dealership Volvo Cars Amberg has one of the greatest uses of chatbot marketing that we’ve seen. A marketing chatbot with an integrated Typeform survey was added to the business’ website since more and more prospective automobile buyers are visiting dealership websites to study prices. This allows the company to instantly and completely personalize price quotes based on visitors’ input.
According to Tobias Wamser, the marketing manager at the dealership, the chatbot had the following effects on the business’s bottom line:
On our website, we were able to enhance lead generation by roughly 300%. Additionally, we are able to give high-quality leads priority and provide them with a more tailored experience.
In addition, because chatbot leads can obtain rapid responses to their inquiries or schedule a test drive online, they are 200% more likely to buy a car than contact form leads from the Volvo dealership.
How to configure SimpSocial for marketing chatbots
Are you willing to try out chatbots? Start by registering for a free trial of SimpSocial if you haven’t already.
We provide straightforward task bots that you can deploy live in a matter of minutes to swiftly begin gathering visitor contact information anytime they initiate communication with your staff. Our task bot for “qualifying leads” can continue the discussion and ask brief questions to qualify the leads.
Try our Custom Bots to proactively engage website visitors and provide a more personalized client experience. Your staff may concentrate on the complex issues that have a higher impact, increasing customer trust and loyalty, while Custom Bots handle the straightforward inquiries (and smoothly redirect the more complicated ones to the appropriate personnel). To launch your first Custom Bot, follow these three steps:
1. Choose where and when to place your bot.
Query these things:
What types of leads are we trying to attract?
Do you want to send communications to everyone or just a certain group, like those who want to buy something? The segmentation to be added in the subsequent steps will depend on the response.
What time of day do your leads respond best to marketing messages?
Do leads who find you on Google respond well to your existing marketing messaging on their first visit, or do they normally need to visit you a few times before they’re ready? You can find out when your chatbot should emerge from the response.
What pages or actions indicate a lot of interest?
The length of time spent on your website’s pricing page, feature page, or contact form is frequently an indicator of high lead interest. It will be easier to decide when and where to display a chatbot when you are aware of the actions that indicate strong interest in your product.
2. Create convincing bot messages
This is how:
Which format appeals to lead generation the most?
Some leads respond favorably to plain text or more visually appealing content, like videos. Others might like hyperlinks to articles that include case studies or independent research.
What are you trying to advertise?
You may change the messaging of your marketing chatbot at any time to highlight new features, well-liked content, or impending events.
What do you want prospects to do after that?
The leads you’re aiming for might not be prepared to schedule a demo or hop on a call, but they might think about joining your email list or following your blog. If you are aware of the next stage in your sales process, you can modify your message accordingly and incorporate an app to promote quick action. No matter what, we advise incorporating a “just browsing” option for users who aren’t yet ready to start a conversation. Later, they can always message.
3. Design your initial bot.
You’re now prepared to create your first bot as the information above has been organized. Simply follow the directions provided here, or look at these bot templates for more ideas.
Lead capture, qualification, and routing
While you’re away, generate leads
By using product recommendations, first purchases will rise.
Increase lead conversion on your price page.
Find high-value visitors, qualify them, and schedule calls with them.
Guidelines for a spam-free chatbot experience
Marketing chatbots can successfully close the gap between “first-time visitor” and “qualified lead” with the proper audience segmentation and messaging. To create a great user experience that is consistent with your brand, keep these suggestions in mind when you build your first few chatbots.
Don’t act like your bots are people.
Despite how helpful they may be, chatbots are not humans. Giving your chatbot a real name and a generic headshot of a person can only confuse potential customers. If they expect a human response and instead receive something entirely different, regardless of how helpful that response may be, they will likely think you are playing a practical joke on them.
Your chatbot should still sound conversational while doing this. A marketing chatbot should sound like a member of your company when sending messages.
Activate chatbots when they should
If they arrive abruptly or in the wrong locations, chatbots have the potential to be both annoying and downright intrusive. Use your chatbot to assist visitors on important conversion sites, but only activate it after a short period of time. And for users who indicate that they are prepared to make a purchase, rapidly connect them to a human being or embed a billing app within Messenger to assist them in finishing the transaction.
Test and improve
It’s okay if some leads don’t reply to chatbots. As you test your bot marketing, you might find that only leads who satisfy certain criteria, such as SaaS firm employees who have visited your site more than three times or product managers who have read more than five blog articles, respond to your messages. To learn what is and isn’t working, keep an eye on your engagement reports. Make changes to your chatbot’s behavior to target leads who will engage rather than attempt to elicit a response from every visitor.
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