The Next Addition to Your Marketing Department Should Be a Chatbot Chatbots bring powerful AI capacity capable of boosting sales and reshaping marketing.
By Murray Newlands Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
There's no doubt chatbots are forever changing the way businesses operate and the way that marketers approach marketing. Not only do these virtual assistants have the ability to impact almost all aspects of a company, they're also great customer service tools that can provide assistance around the clock.
However, chatbots aren't just customer support or a self-service option; these AI-powered assistants can improve an organization's productivity by providing help to different departments like human resources, marketing, production, and sales.
A chatbot in itself is a new channel and a new way to communicate. You have to think about a new user interface and conversational commerce.
Implementing a chatbot into your company can have an incredibly positive impact on your sales and marketing department. In addition to helping your employees close more sales, chatbots can take on some of their responsibilities and automate certain processes that allow them to focus on other activities.
Chatbots are a valuable resource which can boost your overall sales and conversion metrics, yet implementing them into your strategy may not always be straightforward. Because of this, I've created an article to help you understand how chatbots can help increase your conversion rates and the overall profitability of your company.
Related: Enterprise Chatbots Platforms and the Future of Work
The Power of AI-Powered Virtual Assistants
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the technology responsible for the widespread and popularization of chatbots. AI-powered virtual assistants are dedicated pieces of software that implement machine learning and natural language processing to communicate with users.
Chatbots have the ability to communicate with individuals by using natural language, so they can participate in cohesive dialogues and fulfill requests based on these conversations. For example, if I wanted to learn more about a company's values, I could simply reach out to their chatbot, ask questions about the topics that interest me, and receive the answers directly through the virtual assistant.
Although chatbots have traditionally required coding knowledge or huge budgets, thanks to platforms, you can now create AI-powered bots without any coding knowledge whatsoever.
One thing you always need to keep in mind is your bot's functionality. Users prefer a basic chatbot with limited features that work rather than a complex assistant with glitchy features. I suggest you start off by creating a basic bot and slowly introduce new features as it learns new skills so it can grow at the same rate as your company.
Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business
Increasing Sales Conversion Through Chatbots
Chatbots are amazing sales tools that can influence your conversion and closing rates. AI-powered virtual assistants can directly help your sales team close more deals by providing them information during a sales call. In addition, these bots can also allow your clients to place, edit, and check on orders once they've been processed, creating a positive experience that will lead to more sales in the future.
Related: How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding
At ChattyPeople we learned that chatbots can help increase sales conversions because they:
Measure Real-Time Engagement
When it comes to sales, there are different types of conversions. For some organizations, this may mean purchases, while for others, it can mean generating a lead. Regardless of the type of conversion, chatbots allow you to measure engagement in real time. You will be able to identify when your audience is most active and push promotions to them based on their usage hours and patterns.
Related: Make Chats With Chatbots Work
Gather Information
One of the most exciting parts of implementing a chatbot is the ability to collect information about your target audience, which will help you build better marketing and sales campaigns. AI-powered assistants can collect this information from social media profiles, browsing habits, or by directly asking users about their interests.
Help Create Buyer Personas
In order to take advantage of the information you collect, you need to utilize it effectively. You should use these details to create buyer personas, or fictional depictions of your ideal clients. Keep in mind that you have to be as specific as possible, so don't be afraid to give them a name, job, age, and income approximate. You should then use this fictional depiction to build your marketing campaigns in a way that truly speaks to your potential customers.
Related: 7 Ways Chatbots Can Benefit Your Marketing Strategy
Qualify Prospects
Qualifying prospects is not a new concept, but chatbots let you take it to a whole new level. By analyzing browsing and purchasing patterns, interests, and other relevant demographics, you can qualify prospects and show your sales team where each prospect is located within the buyer's journey. They can then focus on leads that are close to becoming sales and nurture the prospects at the top of the funnel.
Engage Leads
Conversational chatbots have the ability to build a more personal connection and engage leads because they're designed to provide support around the clock. Moreover, AI-powered bots have the ability to display personality and empathy, creating a stronger bond with users.
Become a Direct Sales Channel
As previously mentioned, your chatbot can easily become a full-blown sales channel for your company. Thanks to the development of e-commerce applications, you can now integrate payment solutions into your chatbot, allowing them to take orders and make purchases without even having to switch applications.
Related: Top 7 Chatbot Monetization Strategies You Need to Know
Launch Promotions
Chatbots interact with users through their preferred messaging and social media apps, so there's no better channel to reach them directly. Launching a promotion to your chatbot means that users can receive personalized promotions to their mobile phone, increasing your chances of landing their business.
Nurture Leads
Creating a lead base is a great start, but you have to nurture them in order to turn them into customers. Nurturing is the process of moving your prospects down the sales funnel naturally until they become customers. Chatbots help you nurture your leads because they set up direct communication lines with your customers and send relevant pieces of information at crucial parts of the decision-making process.
Provide In-Depth Analytics
Like all digital marketing and sales tools, chatbots can collect, render, and analyze information that you can then use to build more efficient campaigns. You can also collect internal data about your company and develop a mechanism to address the most common causes of low productivity.
Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips
Finally...
Although developing and perfecting an AI-powered virtual assistant takes time, you can increase your sales conversion rates if you implement it correctly. Follow the steps outlined above to make sure you build a conversion-driven bot that will help your sales team close more deals and generate more leads.
