Social Media Marketing Strategies With Chatbots Marketers who blend chatbots with social media are way ahead of the game and likely to stay one step ahead.
By Murray Newlands Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Marketers cannot do their jobs without facing the now widespread world of social media. Its worldwide prominence means it operates according to a strategy and mix of its own, rather than just a small chapter of the more generalized marketing mix. But, social media is not the only marketing tool in the spotlight.
Alongside influencer marketing the chatbot has become one of the most talked about and newly-adopted social media tools in marketing today. Using chatbots in your social media marketing strategy increases website traffic and sales while offering a new level of customer service to your audience. The marketing mix is a way for you to assess if you are balancing the four elements of product, price, place, and promotion to meet your customers' needs and your sales objectives. But, how does the chatbot marketing fit into your social media marketing strategy? I've put together an explanation for you below.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Provide Intelligent Assistance
Your audience is contacting you via social media as it is an easy-to-use communication channel that can be accessed from anywhere, on a variety of devices. There are two types of bots: rule-based ones and artificial intelligence-powered ones. Because rule-based bots require an exact command input, consumers will likely lose patience and give up as soon as it does not detect the flow of the conversation. Making your bot intelligent will help you better communicate with your customers, as well as increase your social media engagement, and its effectiveness.
Related: Enterprise Chatbots and the Conversational Commerce Revolutionizing Business
Implement Your Chatbot Across All Possible Platforms
It started with Facebook Messenger chatbots, but now chatbot building platforms are allowing companies to build bots that can be used on Twitter, Kik, Slack, WeChat, and many others. Tools such as my chatbot builder Chattypeople make it easy to create a chatbot in a matter of minutes. This customer support bot can boost your business by:- Working seamlessly with Facebook Messenger and comments
- Pushing offers and promotions on demand
- Taking orders from Facebook
For the first time ever, messaging apps have surpassed social media apps in usage. This marks a critical point in consumer behavior, so adapting chatbots now will pave the way for future success.
Related: Enterprise Chatbots Platforms and the Future of Work
Create a consumer resource on your audience's preferred platform.
Many bots today are used as a consumer resource, offering information such as weather updates based on a person's zip code. This is not only valuable to your audience because they get the information they want quickly, but also, a great way for you to generate data about your customers. These types of bots allow you to learn a mound of information about your customers. For example:- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Product preferences
In effect, you are reaching out to your audience and gathering information about them on their preferred communications channels and social media messaging services.
Related: Pretty Soon, Chatbots Will Be Able to Understand How You're Feeling
Use email integration to build nurturing campaigns.
Chatbots are versatile tools and can be integrated with email in order to create nurturing campaigns. Lead nurturing is key to moving leads down your sales funnel, and chatbots will collect valuable information that will tell you when to deliver relevant content to your consumers. Before you create your nurturing campaign, make sure your answer these questions:- Have you set a tangible, measurable goal?
- Have you created target personas?
- Do you already have relevant content to share with your clients?
Publish your content directly to your audience.
Chatbots are an effective marketing and distribution channel because they can deliver personalized messages and content to your audience. Your chatbot will distribute your content to consumers based on their interests and preferences. This, in turn, will drive more traffic to your website, and if implemented properly, increase conversion rates.
Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips
Correlate it with your sales process.
Companies that have online shopping carts should create a bot that works as a sales assistant. Not only can chatbots usher your clients during the sales process, they can also upsell and cross-sell to them. Chatbots give your clients exclusive attention and advice during the sales process, answering any questions about your product, price, or shipping. Based on client selections, chatbots can then offer additional product suggestions that may spark consumer interest and easily rebuttal any objections your customer may have with buying more than they originally intended. In addition to the above, platforms like Chattypeople will allow you to monetize your social media and messaging apps right off the bat. Aside from being able to place orders through Facebook Messenger and comments, many chatbot tools integrate with the most popular online payment wallets such as Paypal.
Related: How Chatbots Will Evolve In One Simple Flowchart (Infographic)
