What is Chatbot Marketing – and Why Bother? [guide]

If you are wondering how to produce excellent results with minimal effort, chatbot marketing is something that you should give a go.

Knowing that 67% of customers used chatbots in 2021, not implementing them as virtual assistants for marketing purposes would be a waste of their potential.

Keep reading to learn what chatbot marketing is, how to create a chatbot for your business to help your marketing team, and the golden rules for making the most of chatbot marketing.

What is chatbot marketing?

So what is it, actually?

Chatbot marketing is a form of interactive content that allows businesses to communicate with potential and existing customers more personally. Chatbots are essentially small programs that can mimic human conversations.

They’re often powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which lets them understand the user’s intent and respond to it accordingly. AI makes chatbots incredibly powerful marketing tools because it means they can be used to answer customer queries, provide support, and bring user experience to a higher level.

Chatbot marketing: the benefits for your business

What can chatbot marketing do for your business? Let’s take a look.

#1 Generate leads and collect data about potential customers

Thanks to AI, chatbots can help you generate qualified leads and collect data.

For example, you can see how businesses use chatbots to communicate with their customers. Collecting data and building a client base is essential to gain valuable insights into who your customers are, their needs and wants, which methods you can use to attract them, and what is appealing to them. Adjusting to your customers’ needs and interests will be much easier with that info to hand, isn’t it?

You can use automatic messages within a chatbot tool for lead generation. You can also reach out to potential customers on your website via a chat at the right moment – usually, it is when a customer stays on a page for long or stops moving around it. Then you can easily send automated messages to such visitors at those moments to let them know that your chatbot is there for any questions.

#2 Automate customer interactions to free up time for other tasks

If you have an online shop, you know that people often ask common questions. A customer service bot is perfect for these kinds of tasks. First, design your chat to answer the most frequently asked questions so that your customer service reps don’t have to. Then, by having some of their tasks automated, you and your sales team can devote time to more complicated (or simply, more pleasant) activities, and you can boost your business or ecommerce valuation via better service.

#3 Get insights into customer behavior and preferences

See what customers do on your website with good chatbot software that helps you analyze and learn their preferences. Video recordings are an amazing tool that makes this process much more straightforward and by showing exactly how customers move around your site.

You can track their website movements - what visitors click, which pages they visit, and the moment when they get lost on a page and don’t know what to do next. Advanced chatbot software allows you to select what should and should not be recorded from filters such as mobile devices, form inputs, or email addresses.

#4 Engage customers in a fun and interactive way

As you know, you can reach customers via automatic messages for increasing customer engagement. To make this fun and interactive, think about what message you would like to read yourself. In Smartsupp, you can contact visitors immediately to ask about their preferences and let them choose the answer.

If customers will reach a chatbot first, consider how conversations with those users should look. No limitations here. Create funny and warm responses to provide the best customer service experience possible. Use emojis to make the chatbot more approachable and just have fun. Design the answers as you would like to receive when chatting with a good friend of yours.

#5 Automate marketing tasks like sending out content or coupons

Chatbots can be excellent marketers. Program yours to send out content and coupons to visitors. This is a good opportunity to encourage further shopping by offering discounts or sending out links with more information if a potential client seems hesitant, e.g. a link to a size chart if they are browning for trainers.

#6 Personalize the experience with chatbot marketing insights

What’s more, chatbot marketing can be highly personalized. By collecting data about each customer’s preferences, you can provide a truly personalized experience to each and every one of your clients.

Once you have customers’ data, you can design personalized communication between them and your chatbot. This will also improve their user experience.

A chatbot program can offer the right product to visitors based on what they have been searching for. A chatbot can ask questions about a product that the visitor is browsing for, such as the type of shoes they are interested in or what size they need, etc. In just a few seconds, the chatbot can make a personalized recommendation.

How can you create a chatbot for your business?

To implement bots as a part of your digital marketing strategy and support your sales team, you need to know what features chatbot platforms can offer you.

Creating a chatbot for your business to improve customer satisfaction will be an easy task if you use a good chatbot builder with quick implementation and all of the necessary features. Smartsupp has it all - it’s easy to implement without coding skills as well as being rich in valuable features and chat tools.

Power up your chatbot marketing with Smartsupp

Smartsupp is a cloud-based chatbot builder. It helps customer service teams communicate with their website visitors via chatbots or live chats. With chatbots, you can interpret your customers’ needs and provide support around the clock, including during evenings and weekends (i.e. outside of business hours). Chatbots do the job when there is no agent to provide a quick response.

To start a chatbot marketing strategy for your business, sign up for Smartsupp.

It takes only a few steps to create a chatbot for your business. For detailed instruction on implementing a chatbot, here is a guide on doing so in five steps.

Smartsupp features for chatbot marketing

Smartsupp provides a robust set of beneficial features for your business chatbot marketing. The major ones are:

• video recordings
• automatic messages
• in-depth analysis
• and much more

To measure chatbot marketing efficiency, Smartsupp provides a wide range of insights:

• Conversation rating evaluates the chat experience. For example, you can check how many positive, negative and neutral reviews you’ve received.
• With a chatbots service, you can see the number of visitors triggered by a displayed chatbot. In other words, this metric shows how many visitors saw the chatbot.
• You can also check the reactions. More specifically, how many visitors sent you a message via the chatbot after clicking at least once on the reaction button in the chat box.
• If you want to check how many people clicked the button but did not send a message, take a look at the resolved by chatbot metric.

For deeper analysis, you can choose different time filters to see how the metrics change over time.

What are the best practices for chatbot marketing?

These are our go-to best practices for chatbot marketing:

#1 Make sure your chatbot is properly trained and can understand the user’s intent

Think about any potential questions visitors may have in order to plan a chatbot strategy. Building well-thought answer branches and a conversation tree are key to effective customer communication. Then, try out your chatbot by testing a couple of different conversations to ensure that your chatbot is trained and interprets user intent correctly.

#2 Focus on creating a human-like experience for your users

To create a human-like experience, use natural language as if you were speaking to your customers face to face. It is also good to use emojis and jokes if appropriate, as well as a suitable tone for the situation.

#3 Verify that your chatbot is compatible with all major messaging platforms

When choosing software for your chatbot marketing, check if messaging platform compatibility is provided. Having all of the necessary communication platforms integrated with a chatbot improves the response rate and customer satisfaction.

#4 Ensure that your chatbot is GDPR compliant

GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) provides the rules on how companies can process the personal data of EU citizens. Check if the chatbot software that you want to use stores information safely. Smartsupp is GDPR compliant, so you don’t have to worry about security or data storage.

#5 Don’t forget to promote your chatbot

Let everyone know about the chatbot support that your business offers. Write a Facebook post (and monitor Facebook Ads comments), notify your followers on Instagram, and encourage your website visitors to interact with your chatbot.

#6 Ensure your chatbot is accessible from all marketing channels

Accessibility is crucial for seamless, smooth, and effective communication. So check if visitors and customers can reach you on all of your channels (website, social media, etc.). For better communication, check the platforms’ plugins (for example, Facebook Messenger).

#7 Test your chatbot before and after implementing

Chatbots are still relatively new, so there are bound to be some hiccups along the way. However, if you keep these best practices in mind, you’ll be sure to create a chatbot that provides an incredible experience for your customer journey.

Conclusion

Using chatbots for marketing is an excellent method for reaching out to visitors in order to increase sales and take the customer experience to the next level, since AI allows chatbots to have human-like conversations. Chatbots are a popular way to keep in touch with clients, so it is highly beneficial to use them for marketing purposes. Sign up to Smartsupp to achieve the best results in chatbot marketing.

Chatbot marketing FAQ

Below you can find answers to some frequently asked questions about chatbot marketing.

How can I make sure that my chatbot provides a good customer experience?

One way is to design it with user engagement in mind. When creating your chatbot, consider how you can make it engaging and interactive. Additionally, think about ways to make your chatbot helpful and informative. By keeping these aspects in mind, you can create a chatbot that provides users with an enjoyable and positive experience.

Another way is to test your chatbot before it goes live. By doing so, you can work out any kinks and ensure proper functionality. Additionally, testing allows you to get feedback from users or employee engagement insights to improve the chatbot before it is released to the public.

What are the benefits of chatbot marketing?

There are many, including the ability to reach a larger audience with your message, automate marketing tasks, provide a personalized experience for each, as well as track data and analytics to see what’s working (and what isn’t). And these are just a few of the most notable, so keep them in mind if you’re thinking about incorporating chatbots into your marketing strategy.

Why should my business use chatbot marketing?

There are plenty of reasons to start using chatbot marketing for your business. Chatbots offer a convenient way for customers to get in touch with your business 24/7. Customers can ask questions, make appointments, and even purchase products or services without ever picking up the phone or visiting your website. For example, it can advise on how to invest in stocks.

What’s more, chatbots can help you gather useful data about your customers and their needs. This information can be used to improve your products, services, and marketing strategies. Chatbot marketing is also relatively affordable, making it a great option for small businesses or startups.

Do chatbots work for lead generation?

Yes, they can, in fact, be quite effective. For example, chatbots can help you collect information about potential leads, such as their contact information and the needs or problems they have. Additionally, chatbots can automate the process of qualifying leads to save you a lot of time and effort. As such, chatbots can definitely be a valuable addition to your marketing strategy.

What are some tips for creating a successful chatbot?

Start by thinking about the purpose of your chatbot - what do you want it to achieve? Next, consider who your target audience is and keep this in mind when designing your chatbot’s personality and tone. Then think about what kind of questions you want your chatbot to be able to answer and make sure you have a good understanding of the topic before building it.

Also consider the different ways users might interact with your chatbot, such as what kind of input it will accept and what kind of output you want it to generate. FInally, test, test, test - once you’ve built your chatbot, put it through its paces to ensure proper functionality then get feedback from users to make improvements.

What kind of chatbots should I create for my business?

This depends on your business and your goals. If you’re looking to generate leads, you’ll want to create a chatbot that is designed specifically for that purpose . On the other hand, if you’re looking to provide customer support e.g., in banking industry, you should create a chatbot focused on providing answers to frequently asked questions.

No matter what kind of chatbot you want to create, be sure to keep your target audience and goals in mind.

What are the most common mistakes with chatbot marketing?

One is failing to plan and design your chatbot properly. A chatbot is only as good as its design, so be sure to put some thought into it. Additionally, make sure your chatbot is focused on a specific task or goal. Chatbots that try to do too much often end up being confusing and frustrating for users.

Finally, don’t forget to test your chatbot before you launch it. This will help you catch any bugs and ensure that your chatbot is ready for your users.