October 10, 2020 
The style with which we connect and engage on the internet has undergone a series of changes. Communication on social media is characterised by a sense of immediacy, personalisation and tailor-made experiences. Traditional means of engagements cannot offer this feature.
Conversational marketing may sound complex and puzzling for some people. But it shouldn’t be. It is a style of marketing that utilises a personalised interaction system, improving engagement whilst, reducing expenses and saving time.
The emphasis is on building an authentic relationship with customers and facilitating sincere conversation between business and customers. This can be carried out through the aid of high-quality chatbots, for example, Zebrabuzz chatbot.
The ultimate objective is to improve the user’s experience while limiting or reducing certain encumbrances.
Today’s customers are not passive types. They are not content with idly taking in marketing correspondence and commercials to make purchase decisions.
With the power of social media, customers can now express their pleasure and displeasure about businesses and make suggestions or convey their expectations. By all indications, businesses have to pay attention to customers of this era.
Marketing today is characterised by reciprocity and mutuality between customers, on one side, and businesses, on the other. This feature of mutuality is the basis of conversational marketing.
Conversational marketing is powered by dialogue and engagement, which is necessary for lead conversion. This type of marketing does not just solely place the onus or weight of communication on the brand alone. Consumer interaction is vital.
Why is conversational marketing highly effective? It has the power to build a strong bond with customers, which is possible through interacting with them. Conversational marketing can also streamline and facilitate an enjoyable purchasing experience for the customer.
The purpose of conversational marketing is creating a smooth journey down the sales funnel for customers. This is possible through the aid of tools that facilitate the easy interaction between customers and businesses.
These tools (such as chatbot) can be integrated into instant messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp.
Chatbot, Conversational Marketing and Social media
The most successful businesses are those that pay attention to customers and listen while providing personalised suggestions. But very, unfortunately, a lot of businesses might not be able to initiate conversations with all their prospective customers.
They may depend on advertisements, cold emails and other bulk messaging tools to ‘effectively’ engage their customers.
In the mind of customers, this effort is one-way. It lacks the immediacy to capture the minds of prospective customers, and soon, the message is forgotten.
So what is the solution?
Chatbots.
Chatbots have made it exceedingly easy for businesses to reach out and strike up conversations with large numbers of customers simultaneously.
This type of conversation is of great benefits to both the customers and businesses alike. Chatbots are highly intelligent and ever ready to assist businesses today. A blend of both human insight and artificial intelligent-powered automation will produce fantastic results for businesses aiming to engage customers.
How to use a Chatbot in Conversational Marketing
Most businesses today (especially eCommerce stores) based their sales funnel on cold, complicated, user-hostile and hard to use marketing strategies.
With the help of chatbots, your business will not only engage in conversational marketing best practices but emotionally connect with your customers through personalised interaction.
Here are some tips on how to use a chatbot in conversational marketing:
Initiate conversations with leads instead of asking them to fill forms
One unique thing about chatbot is its high responsiveness. The chatbot can immediately initiate a conversation with your website visitors. For example, Zebrabuzz chatbot can ask routine questions and acquaint, guide or assist your web visitors when making purchases.
With the help of chatbots, you are reaching out to customers and prospects rather than passively waiting for them to engage you.
Get acquainted with your customers and their demands or challenges in seconds rather than days
The traditional style of lead qualifications will involve hours (or even days) of nerve-racking emailing routine or other marketing activities. This is becoming detrimental today.
Since every minute matters in lead conversion, chatbots, as we have earlier mentioned, can be designed to engage your customers in real-time. This will do wonders for your marketing strategy
Don’t lose your leads at any step of the sales funnel
Your leads make enquiries or have an issue waiting to be tackled. Chatbots can direct your leads to whichever content that can correctly solve their issues or completely respond to their enquiries.
At the final step of the sales funnel, chatbots can redirect your leads to your human agents to have a high-level conversation.
Your leads make enquiries or have an issue waiting to be tackled. Chatbots can direct your leads to whichever content that can correctly solve their issues or completely respond to their enquiries.
The power of conversational marketing
Conversational marketing has a lot of benefits for your business. Here are some:
Authenticate your brand
Some of us are bereft of friends that are always there to respond to our chat or text 24/7. Maybe except a few family members. Chatbots offer round-the-clock customer support. Chatbots can immediately create an impersonal conversational atmosphere, bonding up with customers.
Furthermore, Some chatbot platforms ( an example is zebrabuzz) allows you to add a tone or ‘brand voice’ to your bot. This is necessary for a sense of immediacy, emotional bonding and brand loyalty.
Omnichannel marketing/customer service
Dialogue and conversations, as we have mentioned earlier, is an integral part of conversational marketing processes. Which place does your customer engage in the most form of conversations? Everywhere.
It could run on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS and even your website. All these social media channels can be leveraged for a fruitful conversation with prospective customers.
In summary, businesses have to establish their presence wherever customers may be. Customers are easily won over when businesses present a real-time, stress-free, convenient, customised means of seeking for products and engaging them.
Chatbots are good and simple ways of doing this. For example, Zebrabuzz chatbot can be integrated into Instant messaging platforms like (Whatsapp and Facebook messenger), email services, websites and even SMS, creating an omnichannel experience for customers.
Increase sales while reducing operational costs
Yes, we understand what might be going through your mind at the moment. Chatbots are highly effective (for sure) but they are easy to use and very budget-friendly.
Chatbots enhance sales conversions while saving you from expending resources (time and money).
The truth is that there is an initial cost to build a great chatbot. Still, cost-efficient platforms like Zebrabuzz thrive by its highly effective nature, and most importantly, its ability to reduce operational cost.
With Zebrabuzz chatbot, you can easily design and personalise your chatbots, allowing it to align with your business value, to the benefit of your customers.
