In a world engulfed in advertisements, it’s critical to find new and creative ways to understand your prospects and customers without bombarding them with information. One solution is chatbots. While chatbots are known for their customer service use cases, they can add value to your marketing and sales efforts as well.
Here are 5 ways chatbots can change the way you market and sell your product:
1. Interactive experience
From the moment a customer enters your website, impressions are being made; ensuring their first impression is a good one is the difficult part. Chatbots create a user-friendly, personable experience with your customer. Adding creative phrases, twists, images, gifs and personality to your chatbot can prevent immediate clickaways and promote more customer interaction with your company. This creates a unique one-to-one experience for the customer.
Take time to customize your bot by giving it personality or “flair”. This chatbot should reflect your brand and atmosphere accordingly.
2. Data collection
Chatbots gather data from the conversations about customer and prospect’s needs and preferences and store it for later. Storing data allows the chatbot to recall past conversations and provide additional value. When a customer returns to a company site, he or she is remembered and can be assisted accordingly. Additionally, this stored information can be used to send more specific messaging and content to those returning visitors.
3. Personalized experience
Chatbots can be programmed for each individual customer. Take Dominos Pizza for example. Ordering a pizza via their chatbot in Facebook Messenger has never been easier. Not only can customers customize their pizza order through the chatbot – the chatbot can remember their order for next time! This strategy can be carried over into other industries as well. Being able to customize your product offering to each customer through a series of questions or short responses makes for a better user experience.
Similarly, a chatbot can act as a personalized expert or sales rep, offering options that take into consideration the customer’s preferences and stated needs.
For example, Sephora, a makeup company, has a chatbot that acts as a personal concierge for customers by recommending product shades and giving make-up tips.
4. Sales funnel flow
Use a chatbot to assist customers in their searching process, educate them on products, and drive the sale. Bringing up discounts or promotional codes in the chat can be used to incentivize hesitant customers.
5. Troubleshooting
Chatbots help customers find the products they’re looking for, troubleshoot any product errors, and assist in website and product search. By providing convenient and helpful customer support, you can automatically affect the customer experience and chance of product purchase. If you treat a chatbot with similar priority as you would a customer-support agent or store greeter, your customers will notice and your sales will reflect your efforts.
Choosing the right chatbot:
Be sure to invest the time and money necessary for an effective chatbot. According to Clear Voice, it is crucial to invest in your chatbot upfront to ensure it operates smoothly and serves the company’s specific needs.
Always have a human agent ready to take over if necessary. Sometimes customers can be skeptical of chatbots or prefer to chat with a live human. Other times, a chatter’s concern, question, or comment is more than a chatbot can handle. This is why it’s always essential to have a human agent ready as well. And while it is not guaranteed 24-hour service, it can alleviate many issues.
Are you ready to build your own chatbot? View our course Interactive Chatbots with TensorFlow!
About the author: Lexi Hunkler, a summer marketing intern at OpenSesame, is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte studying Creative Marketing and Innovation. When not at work, you can find her on a road trip adventure, painting, or petting the nearest dog.