What is Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing is the art of understanding the consumer and creating a seamless, frictionless experience that enhances their day-to-day lives. The result? Your brand gets to be the hero that they talk about with their friends. We’ve been hearing a lot about “conversational marketing” for a while now. But what does it mean?

Let’s walk through the contents of this article:

• Conversational Marketing
• Value of Conversational Marketing to the Customers
• Features of Conversational Marketing
• Benefits of Conversational Marketing 
• Hippo

We know for a fact that the human attention period has decreased. According to a study by Microsoft, it has now dropped to 8 sec, which is less than a goldfish. Now if a customer is looking for something, you have an average of 8 seconds to help them or they will leave. The question is how to do that. And the answer is quick and valuable support to the customers.

That’s where Conversational Marketing kicks in.

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Conversational Marketing: The New Age of Marketing

41.3% of consumers use conversational tools for purchases. This is up from 17.1% since 2019 and shows that modern chatbots aren’t just useful for customer service, they can drive conversions and close sales too.

According to a report by Heinz Marketing:

• The customer experience has transformed over the past year
• Businesses are using Conversational Marketing to create better digital customer experiences and achieve their pipeline goals
• Your business can engage buyers more effectively to accelerate revenue across the marketing funnel.
• Conversational Marketing has more effect on B2B businesses than on B2C businesses.

Conversational marketing aims to create a healthy relationship with customers by building trust and creating value for them through meaningful conversations.

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Value of conversational marketing to the customers

Conversational interfaces allow users to control devices and programmes using natural language. Conversational interfaces such as chatbots (which integrate with messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger) and virtual assistants (such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa) have emerged in recent years. As the use of conversational interfaces grows, so will the opportunities for marketers to use them to better meet the needs of their customers. The way to provide that is Conversational Support. 

Conversational Support vs Traditional Support

Conversational support can be optimised by understanding the conversational support funnel. The conversational support funnel helps you deliver better support through various methods and ultimately improves customer engagements.

Features of Conversational Marketing:

Chatbots

A chatbot is the most convenient, quick and cost-effective way of customer engagement.

According to Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report, usage of chatbots as a brand communication channel increased by a whopping 92% since 2019. 24.9% of buyers used chatbots to communicate with businesses in 2020, up from 13% the year before. (Source: Drift)

• Automatic chat assignments
• Lead generation
• Customisable chatbots

Live Chats

Chatbots are great but sometimes you need to add a human touch to the conversations. Take over any chat and provide the best possible solution.

Feedback rating

Feedback ratings from your customers not only provide you with valuable information that can help you with improving customer experience but also shows you value their opinions. By asking your clients for feedback you communicate that their opinion is important to you.

Personalisation

According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a brand that provides personalized experiences.

And Statista says, 90% of U.S. consumers find marketing personalization very or somewhat appealing.

51% of marketers say personalization is their top priority. 

Private Notes

Personalisation is incomplete without context. You need context from previous engagement so that customer knows you care.

Customer Data Platform

CDPs enables loyalty-building strategies by solving the problem of fragmented, siloed data.

They organise customer data in a way that enables large-scale personalization.

Integrations

Third-party integrations like CRMs and e-commerce platforms are a must for an online presence. A good conversational marketing suite provides you with integrations across the board. 

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Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is defined as “the quickest way to move buyers through your marketing and sales funnels by leveraging the power of real-time conversations.”

Conversational marketing benefits businesses by: 

• Engage target audiences in genuine, meaningful interactions.
• Increase trust and loyalty among prospective and existing customers.
• Reduce friction in the buying process to help your prospects move through the funnel more smoothly.

While the premise of conversational marketing is as simple as fostering a genuine sense of connection with your buyers, putting it into practice is surprisingly difficult. Keep these tips in mind to ensure you’re on the right track to a successful conversational marketing strategy.

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Hippo Conversational Marketing

Hippo can provide you will all the features mentioned above and more including:

• Branded Application: A white-labelled app so that you can create your brand and your customers don’t see a third party named on your platform that you don’t want to show.
• Reasonable Pricing: It’s absurd for startups to pay for a MarTech as much as an established enterprise. Hippo brings you pricing that matches your size and your needs.
• Omnichannel Marketing: Make Hippo conversational platform a part of your whole marketing strategy. 

Sign up for a free demo for Hippo today and get a 14-days free trial. Head out to learn more about conversational marketing.