What is chatbot marketing & why do you need it?

 

 

In a fast-paced time when you have to innovate to stand out between competitors, a chatbot is no longer a luxury tool that you may or may not use, but an integral one to sustain your business. There are many uses for a chatbot that we’re going to discuss in a series of articles, but in this one, let’s discover how you can utilize your Widebot to optimize your marketing strategy and processes. How can you reach high engagement with your customers and prospects, and solve their problems in an easy, cost-efficient, and intelligent way?

What is chatbot marketing?

Long story short, chatbot marketing is when you promote your products and services using a chatbot, by integrating it with the different channels you use such as your website, mobile app and social media platforms like Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Long story long? Scroll down to understand better how you can use a chatbot to optimize your marketing performance and create an impressive branding for your business.

Benefits of chatbot marketing:

• Saves resources

Time, money, manpower…using a chatbot for your business cuts down all these resources so that you operate more efficiently and utilize your assets where they’re needed. Instead of spending hours getting back to every message you receive from a customer or a prospect and allocating several employees for the job, you can now get back to everyone with minimal resources.

• Quick responses

No one’s a big fan of long response time. Using a chatbot, customers and prospective customers will get immediate responses to their inquiries with only a short buffer time (3-10 seconds for instance) that you set to make it feel more humanly.

• Available 24/7

You have a regular 9-hour work day? Chatbots don’t. At any time during the day or at any day during the week, your chatbot will act as a representative to your business whenever your audience needs to reach out to you. If you’re running a healthcare platform, for example, it makes all the sense to be available to your audience’s inquiries at all times; especially during times like these where everyone has tens of questions regarding the pandemic that come to mind all around the clock.

• Work automation

With the speed at which the entire world is advancing, it does not make sense to keep doing the same tasks over and over again if they could simply be automated, saving precious time and effort. Chatbots will automate certain marketing tasks so that you could keep your low priorities at the back of your mind. Instead of curating responses to your customers’ questions each time they strike up a conversation with your business, your chatbot can automatically respond with the most suitable reply from a list of pre-stored responses that you enter when building your bot.

• Adaptive to all industries & businesses

No matter what industry you work in or what type of business you’re running, there are a variety of chatbot templates that are suitable. Hospitals, restaurants, technology solutions, e-commerce businesses and a lot more are using chatbots across their different marketing platforms to create impactful conversations with their customers. 

• Humanizing your brand

Position your brand as one that understands and adapts to its customers, in terms of their needs and their interests. A chatbot adopts the tone and voice of your brand so that it feels less like a robot and more like a human chatting with your audience. If your brand speaks in Arabic and operates in an Arab country, then build an Arabic chatbot that interacts with your audience in a language and dialect that they understand.

• AI-based

Most chatbot builders are determined by sequences, or a set of responses to certain questions by the user. At WideBot, your chatbot can be intelligent!* AI-based chatbots learn from your customers, and enhance their responses based on their new learnings. That way, your chatbot performs better by the day and well understands your audience’s needs.

*AI-based chatbots are an enterprise plan feature. Contact our sales team if you want to learn more.

Read more: 5 ways chatbots can boost your business to the future.

Uses of chatbot marketing:

1. Sharing news and updates

A chatbot is a great tool to spread the word about your company news or product updates and releases. That way your audience is always informed and up-to-date with your business activities.

When launching a new service or releasing features, you can:

• Share the news with prospects who reach out to you through your chatbot and want to better understand the services and products you provide;

• Gather feedback from your customers after their purchase;

• Market the new product and direct the traffic to your chatbot who would answer the users’ inquiries and present your offerings in a conversation-like method, instead of your website.

2. Brand engagement with customers

Using a chatbot facilitates conversation with your prospect and current clients, and conveys the impression that your business is up to the minute with the global technological advancements of its time.

Instead of traditional methods such as email or phone, your brand is close to your customers and uses similar platforms to the ones they actively use, like WhatsApp, Facebook and Snapchat. People can engage with your brand and feel that you’re only one message away whenever they have an inquiry or need to learn more.

When a customer interacts with your brand, you have a certain duration on each platform to restart or continue the conversation with them. For example, on Facebook Messenger, your chatbot has 24 hours to send promotions about your products or services; which could trigger the users’ interest in learning more, and hence, securing a sale.

Read more: New Messenger Policies: all you need to know.

Even if you can’t make an immediate sale, engage your audience so that you build rapport with them that would guarantee the success of future interactions. Using quick, entertaining polls, for instance, you can get valuable insight about their interests and what they would like to see more of.

3. Qualifying leads

If you want to optimize your sales funnel, then it is important that you are able to distinguish between hot leads and cold leads, leads who are ready to buy your product and leads who are still hesitant and want to learn more.

When a user lands on your website for example, you want to immediately find out whether they’re a prospective client or they’re a random visitor who does not know anything about your business. Having a chatbot start a conversation to ask the visitor some qualifying questions that determine who relevant of a lead they are can make a difference between whether you secure a deal or lose it.

Hot/warm leads cannot be lost due to insignificant reasons, so these are directly sent by your chatbot to the sales team to seal the deal; while cold leads who could potentially be interested in your product or service are offered the information they need to make up their mind. This way you save resources that could be wasted on all sorts of an audience, even those who are completely irrelevant, and focus your efforts into what will help your business grow.

 

4. Personalized user experience

Human beings have the tendency to want to feel special. Because chatbots simulate human-like conversations, each customer that interacts with the chatbot gets an experience that is different from everyone else’s; especially if the chatbot is AI-based, as it responds based on each user’s behaviors, interests and responses during the conversation.

Personalization gives the audience a unique experience, as you are giving value and significance to each one of them. This plays an indirect yet impactful role in encouraging your prospects and customers to grow fond of your brand, and promote more sales in consequence.

Getting started:

1. Plan
2. Build your bot
3. Promote

Planning

The first step in anything is to plan, which in this context means: set goals and a strategy for your chatbot, and decide on the channels that you’re going to utilize it in.Make sure that you have a solid marketing plan that you will launch and follow once your bot is up and running. How many sequences will you create, and how will the flow of each of them go? What language will your chatbot operate in? What will be your welcome message?

• Set SMART goals for your bot: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound).

• Decide on the channels that your chatbot will operate on. Are you going to limit it to your website, or are you going to use it on Facebook and WhatsApp as well?

• Create a character for your bot, including a voice and tone that matches your brand’s.

• Build a user’s journey for customers who interact with the chatbot and their potential responses.

Creating your bot

You’re not a techie? No problem. 

Contrary to some belief, creating a chatbot for your business does not require any tech background whatsoever. Using Widebot’s intuitive platform, you can build your own bot in less than 10 minutes. 

Ready to build your own bot?

If you want a custom chatbot, that is AI-based, you can contact our sales team who will match you with your business needs. Talk to an expert.

Read more: Your step-by-step checklist for building chatbots.

Promoting

It doesn’t stop at building and publishing your chatbot, the determinant of a great performance is making it known and publicized to your audience so that they engage with it. So how can you bring users to your bot?

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my chatbot understand different Arabic dialects?

If you’re using WideBot, then your chatbot can speak both Arabic or English, depending on your brand’s voice and tone. You can choose a standard language or your chatbot can reply according to your customers’ language and dialect. WideBot is the only platform where your chatbot can speak using every Arabic dialect: Khaleeji, Egyptian, North African, Levantine…it’s got it all.

Are chatbots powered by AI?

Not all chatbots are artificially intelligent; some are set up with specific sequences and flows that they follow in the conversation. AI chatbots learn from your customers and adapt to each of their interests and the way they speak; so the more conversations they have, the more intelligent their replies will get. If you want your chatbot to be AI-based, then WideBot’s dedicated AI team will help you build one that meets your business needs.

What platforms can I use a chatbot in?

We can integrate your chatbot on:
• Your company website;
• Facebook Messenger;
• WhatsApp;
• Instagram;
• Telegram;
or any channel you need a chatbot in.

Want to try it out for yourself? Head out to our website so that you can get started for free and build your own chatbot today!