Conversational Marketing: Meet Customers at a Human Level
The personalization of marketing has become a priority across industries, and with good reason. McKinsey’s Next in Personalization Report revealed that 71% of consumers expect personalization. To expect personalization is to expect humanization. And what’s more human than having a conversation? Here enters conversational marketing.
What is conversational marketing?
Defined by its creator, tech company Drift, conversational marketing is: “a dialogue-driven approach to marketing that uses real-time conversations to engage site visitors and quickly move them through the buying journey.”
Conversational marketing is efficient, kindly guiding customers through what might be a completely foreign website to them, rather than letting them endlessly scour a site for what they need, their patience wearing thin.
It eliminates customer wait times and more swiftly qualifies leads. A win-win!
Using chatbots to kick off the conversation
The talkative stars of Drift’s conversational marketing concept are chatbots.
Conversations are the lifeblood of human interaction. We don’t meet up with friends and silently stare at each other, we chat. We engage.
Chatbots are little engagement engines, there to ensure customers leave a website satisfied.
You’ve undoubtedly come across a chatbot while online shopping. Maybe you’ve ignored it, or maybe you’ve taken it up on its offer to assist you, both streamlining and personalizing your shopping experience. Either way, chatbots have become an integral part of today's digital marketing landscape.
Drift eats its own dog food by the bowlful. Upon entering its website, I was immediately greeted by a chatbot. The message read: “Hey there! Looking to take Drift for a spin? You can start in this conversation!” When I returned to the site later, the chatbot popped up again, a persistent fellow, saying, “Hey there! You’re back.”
The typically basic and shallow experience of interacting with a website is transformed into an online version of in-person shopping, during which a salesperson greets you and checks back in after an appropriate amount of time has passed to see if you need help finding anything specific.
Customers crave options, so just like in a physical store, you can opt out of the conversation.
If you’re returning to a familiar site and have no need for guidance, simply reject the chatbot’s help. It’s not like it will turn red with artificial anger and expand to fill the screen until you converse with it.
The conversations are on your terms. What's not to love?
Generate more high-quality leads
If a customer does choose to utilize the chatbot feature, the instantaneous responses and personalized recommendations generate leads more quickly—high-quality leads at that.
In a 2021 survey done by Drift and Heinz, 54.8% of respondents reported a greater volume of high-quality leads generated when incorporating conversational marketing into their marketing strategy.
There’s no need to connect with a customer through multiple steps or tedious forms. They aren’t bots with limitless time.
Conversational marketing is a fast track to customer satisfaction, one that treats customers as the real flesh-and-blood people they are. Plus, you'll be collecting actionable insights with every conversation had.
Humanize marketing one line of digital dialogue at a time, to the benefit of all.
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