10 Ways to Implement Chatbots in Your Digital Marketing

Airbnb, Uber, Marvel, Starbucks, National Geographic, Twitter, Pizza Hut… The list of big brands that are joining the chatbot trend in Online Marketing does not stop growing. Chatbots are one of the big trends of 2017, and they have a lot to offer advertisers. Don’t believe it? Today, I want to tell you why this novelty is sweeping and 10 ways to incorporate it into your digital marketing.

Why use chatbots in your marketing strategy?

• Because they make immediate responses possible. With the rise of digital communication and smartphones, we have become accustomed to not waiting for the answer to our doubts. If a page doesn’t load quickly, we abandon it. If one company doesn’t respond right away, we move on to another. This puts a lot of pressure on brands, as having “24/7” customer service is difficult and expensive. However, even small and medium-sized businesses can make use of chatbots to serve their customers instantly, every day, at every hour.
• Because they intelligently take advantage of the habits of use and consumption of digital media. Employing chatbots in digital marketing makes it possible to be where your consumers are, rather than forcing them to make an effort to target you. Just look at the figures: according to data from BI Intelligence, the four main social networks are home to 2.5 million users, while messaging apps are used by no less than 3 million. Ultimately, it’s about leveraging the places where users spend their time and the ways of interacting that are most familiar to them to offer an opportunity to communicate with your brand.
• Because they make it easier to have a coherent brand image. One of the biggest challenges of branding is making your brand sound consistent across all interactions and all channels. At the same time, you want to keep the customer experience and interactions as consistent as possible, so you can measure results correctly. But if you leave these interactions in the hands of people, you risk them having a bad day or deciding to go off script on their own. Chatbots eliminate this risk, offering a uniform experience that is in line with your brand’s values and tone. Of course, keep in mind that in some circumstances, there is nothing that can replace human treatment.
• Because they help to get more conversions. Chatbots are not only a customer service tool, but they can also positively influence your conversion rates and help close sales. On the one hand, chatbots can help your customers place orders and check the status of their orders, resulting in an efficient and positive shopping experience. On the other hand, a given customer’s interactions with chatbots result in a wealth of information, which your sales team can leverage to improve their work.

How to implement chatbots in your digital marketing

Ready to join the trend? Here are 10 ideas to incorporate chatbots into your online marketing and thus take advantage of all the benefits of artificial intelligence.

• 1) Offer personalized experiences

Something as simple as calling a user by name can completely change the tone of a conversation. And with chatbots, it’s possible.

Chatbots integrate with social media, gathering information about each and every person they interact with. This information can then be used to personalize the interaction and provide a better customer service experience. For example, when the user has a question about our products, the chatbot can not only give them an appropriate answer instantly, but also take the conversation a step further by offering personalized suggestions based on their history and preferences.

• 2) Amplify your engagement

Chatbots are a unique tool because they not only interact with your customers, but they also help them stay longer with you. Unlike other forms of marketing, chatbots can entertain your customers for longer. For example, a video may fascinate users, but once it’s over, there’s nothing left to offer. On the other hand, a chatbot can learn what your prospects are interested in based on their interactions to continue offering them new content every time.

• 3) Reach a wider audience

The natural (or rather artificial) habitat of chatbots is social media messaging platforms, which allows them to reach a huge audience.

That’s why using chatbots in your online marketing can be key to reaching new demographics. By integrating with different messaging platforms, they allow you to be available to them more easily.

• 4) Analyze your customers

Chatbots are a golden opportunity to gain insights into your customers.

As you probably already know, thoroughly understanding what your customers need is essential to offer them better products and services. But unless they have specific incentives, it’s hard to get them to respond to your surveys. Chatbots solve this problem by integrating questions into the conversation in a natural way.

But that’s not all: thanks to its built-in machine learning tools, chatbots can analyze each user’s feedback and information, giving you even more insight into their preferences and interests. Just what you need to optimize your marketing strategy.

• 5) Send custom notifications

If there’s one thing we all hate in marketing, it’s when brands bombard us with emails, text messages, and notifications at all hours, whenever there’s something new about the company, products, or services. And many of those notifications don’t even seem interesting to us.

Thanks to chatbots’ data analysis and learning capabilities, mass notifications can be a thing of the past. Instead, this tool can offer personalized notifications for each user based on their preferences, so that they only know what interests them most.

• 6) Make communicating with your brand more fun

Chatbots can deliver accurate, quality information to users, right when they need it. But at the same time, they can also help them have a great time.

A good example of this is the American supermarket brand Whole Foods, whose chatbot allows users to search for recipes using emojis. This type of chatbot makes communication with the brand more fun and interactive, making it remembered for longer. And thanks to word of mouth, it can even attract more visitors to your brand.

• 7) Create an effortless proactive brand

Brands often approach customer interaction passively, limiting themselves to responding when they are the one who gets in touch. This approach limits the cost and effort, but also the opportunities for interaction.

Instead, chatbots automatically send welcome messages when a new user lands on your website or social media profile, instantly opening a channel for interaction and making the user aware of their presence. This makes the brand immediately perceived as proactive, which improves the corporate image and creates more possibilities to generate interactions.

• 8) Maximize your conversion funnel

Lead nurturing is an essential part of most companies’ digital marketing strategy, but it’s also one of the most time-consuming. By incorporating chatbots into your online marketing, you’ll be able to gather the information you need and send personalized messages that guide users through the customer journey.

• 9) Refresh your social media presence

Expecting your customer service team to be able to answer every one of your users’ questions, on all your social profiles and with full availability, is not only unrealistic but also requires an immense investment of time and money. Add to this the pressure to offer new content on social media, and you have a real resource hole.

Not only are chatbots capable of solving the customer service problem for a much lower cost, but they can also completely revamp the customer experience on social media and give it the boost you need.

• 10) Have fun and experiment!

Do you want to make your digital marketing campaigns with chatbots even more effective? Dare to experiment!

When launching a new campaign, test different variants of each message using A/B tests and compare the results. But don’t just dwell on the obvious: test your craziest ideas and see how they work. After all, chatbots are a new way to engage with customers, so they’re also a perfect excuse to try out new ideas.