October 12, 2020 
There are several styles of marketing which you can use to drive your buyers through your purchase funnel. The best is conversational marketing because it is highly effective, quick, cheap and has the ability to create a positively unique experience for your customers and buyers, as well as win their loyalty. It utilises ‘real-time conversations’.
With conversational marketing, your customers wouldn’t need to go through the stringent process of filling lead capture forms or become frustrated because they would have to wait for hours before you respond to them.
Conversational marketing boost customer engagement by utilising AI-powered chatbots and targeted messaging on your website or social media channels.
With conversational marketing, you are guaranteed an increased customer engagement as well as ease of access.
This, in turn, will contribute to effective lead conversion and capturing. Your business will witness fantastic growth in the long run.
Conversational Marketing is revolutionary and game-changing
Marketing, as we know it, is evolving rapidly. This has affected the way businesses try to strategize their marketing plans. A lot of businesses are too slow to understand the pace at which marketing is changing.
Let’s pause for a minute and take our minds back to the last time we interacted with someone in a non-physical or face-to-face situation. Where and how did it happen?
There’s a huge likelihood that it occurred similar to this:
Communicating or interacting via messaging services is now ‘the new normal’. Most individuals enjoy instant messaging because it is simple, devoid of delays and resembles a real conversation.
Today, as much as 85% of consumers are keen on utilising instant messaging services for business communication.
The fact that a lot of customers still encounter arduous processes and long delays before interacting with some businesses is indeed unfortunate.
In this age of light-speed internet connection, response time is changing rapidly.
Just as friends send messages and receive replies instantly and families set up a group on instant messaging service to make plans at a faster rate, businesses are expected to respond to customers swiftly and in real-time.
We live in the age of instant messaging, customers are eager to have conversations with businesses at their convenience.
No need to be afraid. The whole process is easier to understand. The truth is that tools for conversation and interaction over the years have been improved upon but the importance of communication and what it represents has never changed.
Communication is deemed helpful when it is empathic, sincere and individualised. Technology has helped to scale up this method of conversation. This is at the heart of conversational marketing.
So what is conversational marketing and what advantages does it present to your business.
As defined by Drift, conversational marketing is simply “a one-to-one approach to marketing that companies use to shorten their sales cycle, learn about their customers, and create a more human buying experience.”
What this means is that conversational marketing happens when you do a real-time engage with old and new customers in an individualised and tailored way.
One of the best social media channels for conversational marketing is Facebook Messenger due to the huge customer base, direct personalised, and simplified messaging service.
Currently, chatbots are the most important conversational marketing tool.
The Features of Conversational Marketing
You might be tempted to think there’s no difference between conversational marketing and my present marketing strategy. I have my business account on many social media platforms. It means I am communicating with my customers.
As a customer-centric business, that is quite close. The following are some of the major characteristics of conversational marketing. This should help you revamp your marketing strategy.
Real-time interaction
One unique feature of conversational marketing is that it recognise the power the customer has.
Today, it takes few bad reviews or dissatisfied customer to ruin a growing business.
Conversational marketing acknowledges this and allows your business to always be available for real-time conversation at whatever time the customer needs you.
Whether it is at 3am on a Sunday evening or 2 am on a Friday afternoon, your business will be open to conversation with customers.
Afterall, conversational marketing revolves around the customer, not the business.
Scalable conversations
Yes, conversations happen at customer’s convenience, so scalable conversations is a reality.
In reality, a customer wants your attention, even if you are interacting with hundreds of other customers or prospects.
The customer is in a haste to get his complaint rectified or enquiries responded to satisfactory. For small and medium-sized businesses, this situation may be worrisome because they lack either the manpower or cash. So what is the fix?
Chatbot.
Chatbots provide round-the-clock customer support to commonly asked or simple questions already found in the knowledge base of your business. Chatbot does not eliminate human interaction but enhances it.
Convenience
Conversational marketing thrives of offering value to customers. With chatbots, your business can reach out to your customers at their comfort zone.
Put differently, any channel your customer is comfortable in — Facebook Messenger or SMS, with a chatbot or sales agent. Customers are wary of businesses that the primary channel of contact is a phone number.
It is far easy and convenient for them to initiate a quick chat to any business of their choice via messenger.
The Benefit of Conversational Marketing
High Sales Conversation
With conversational Marketing, you can engage with your customers using cutting-edge technology like chatbot and this can in turn positively impart lead conversion and qualification.
Through conversational marketing, you will be gain insight to the demands of your customers and provide them marketing or customer support service in real-time.
For new customers who are in need of information or need help, you can connect them to your human agent via chatbot.
An effective conversational marketing strategy revolves around dialogue and this guide your customer interaction.
Brand loyalty and Better customer experience
Conversational marketing can boost your relationship with your customers. Today, with the growth of instant messaging platforms, we can now interact and communicate with our friends easily and continuously.
This suits conversational marketing because the easier customers and prospects find it easily to contact your business, the more they stick with you. This is technically referred to as customer retention.
Conversational marketing connects your business with customers, providing an easier and more effective way of interacting and keeping in touch. This means of communication is characterised by natural and friendly conversation.
Chatbots are now powerful tools for business to use to engage with customers naturally.
Instead of the stringent and tiresome lead capturing form, customers can now chat up and give tid bits of their informations via conversations carried out in a stretch of time.
For instance, businesses that use Zebrabuzz chatbot reported as much as a 30% increase in lead capturing in the first month alone.
Brand Tone and Personality
Conversational marketing is not only hasslefree and favourable for customers, but can portray your brand personality.
With the aid of chatbot, you can integrate content marketing into the fold by sending blog posts, pictures and emojis that aligns with your business aim.
Your chatbot can be friendly, intellectual or playful – depending on how much you want it to represent your business. Customers will continue to engage and interact with your business if they find your chatbot pleasant and accessible.
