What is Conversational Marketing in 2022: All You Need to Know
Updated: Jul 20, 2022
Wondering how to grow your digital sales revenue in 2022? Have you considered conversational marketing? Sounds unfamiliar, I bet. That’s because conversational marketing is a relatively new tool that many digital marketers are yet to wrap their heads around. But really, it is as simple as it sounds.
At the heart of conversational marketing in 2022 is a particular focus on creating an interactive/conversational buying experience for every visitor interacting with your site or ads.
So in this piece, we’ll first examine what conversational marketing is, then we’ll dive deeper into how it works, and how you can leverage this new strategy to generate more leads and drive more conversions with your campaigns.
What is a Conversational Marketing Strategy?
To keep it simple, conversational marketing is a personalized marketing approach that actually talks to your customers without you being directly involved in the conversation. Think about using chatbots, live chat, voice assistants, and messaging applications to engage every customer that visits your website or social media channels. Conversational marketing is a revolutionary brand communication channel that uses automation conversations to drive sales.
Interesting, right? It’s more like integrating artificial intelligence into your sales funnel. But why bother about conversational marketing when cold calls and traditional B2B or B2C marketing styles still yield results? When you realize that more buyers will opt for a seamless buying experience, and conversational marketing offers just that, I bet you’ll rethink your existing strategy! To make it even more effective, you can strategically position these experiences at every customer touchpoint, such as your landing page, social media channels, and PPC (paid advertising) campaigns.
This is the new style in digital marketing — opening a channel of back and forth interaction with the client until they make a purchase. Unlike the traditional way of doing marketing, which tells the customer to do this, do that, fill out this form, or jump through several hoops, conversational marketing makes the customer feel like they’re having an actual conversation with you.
“Conversational marketing allows brands to engage prospects with real-time conversations that easily lead to more conversions.”
Do you know why it is effective and gaining popularity by the day? People actually like conversations via messaging; it is fast, easy, and often feels like a regular face-to-face interaction. This is similar to HR chatbots that many organizations are now using to improve employee engagements, people analytics, and process efficiency. Many digital marketing strategies eliminate the part where the customer makes an input.
Conversational marketing, on the other hand, re-introduces the customers’ ability to articulate their preferences, ask questions and get real-time feedback, thus personalizing visitors’ journey with your brand. If you’ve ever been engaged by customer support or banking chatbot, then you already have a feel of what conversational marketing is.
This time, the bot’s mission is to give you, the visitor, an interactive buying experience. So instead of forcing buyers and customers to jump through endless hoops before a conversation can ever take place, why not simplify the process for them?
Conversational Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing
Yes, inbound and conversational marketing are two sides of the same coin. The difference lies within their approach; Inbound Marketing prefers to attract customers through channels, like social media or email, while Conversationalists focus more on actually talking with them when customers visit your website or social media platforms. Both strategies have always been about being customer-centric so there isn't really any conflict here!
Chatbots for Conversational Marketing
Chatbots are a crucial component of conversational marketing. They offer an immersive experience that simulates face-to-face interactions and provides more personalization than traditional media channels do, making them perfect for reaching individuals on their smartphones (or other devices).
Today, chatbots come in all shapes and sizes with various capabilities. Some can be more sophisticated than others but they are still easy to use for those who don't have much experience coding them or designing user interfaces that will help you get your message across while staying within budget constraints!
Chatbots are a new way to engage customers by automating the process of gathering data, providing information about products/services, and qualifying leads. The fact that they're so common on websites like Facebook or Twitter means you need one too!
So, How Does Conversational Marketing Actually Work?
“Instead of scheduling a meeting or call, conversational marketing shortens the sales cycle by providing real-time answers and solutions to customers.”
Like I said earlier, it is as simple as it sounds. In fact, conversational marketing is the fastest and easiest way to move buyers through your marketing and sales funnel. You don’t have to tear down your existing structure; you only need to make some modifications. Conversations help us build relationships in real life — that’s exactly how conversational marketing works.
The conversational marketing framework first engages the visitor, understands their need, and finally, offers/recommends smart solutions based on those needs.
Step 1: Engage Leads with Chats
I know what may readily come to mind here is having a live chat, but you can’t run live chats 24/7; even if you do, it may not be possible to keep the pace as you get more leads. So the solution here is running a human-like chatbot that takes the customer through your sales funnel unassisted (at least until there’s a need for human interference).
This way, you can meet your customers' needs in real-time and drive more conversions in less time. There’s a huge difference between this and asking customers to fill out a form and have you contact them or schedule a call; you are speaking to them while they are live on your website.
Step 2: Understand What the Customer Needs
The traditional approach to qualifying leads involves email marketing, cold calls, etc., but with conversational marketing, you get to understand what the visitor needs immediately, based on already set answers to likely questions.
Again, the “fill out this form, and we’ll contact you approach” may take a day or two before initiating a conversation with the customer. In contrast, a conversational marketing chatbot engages the customer right from the point they make contact with your website.
Considering that the chances of winning back the customer after a day or two (that is, if they haven’t found what they were looking for) is slimmer than when you answer their questions immediately, we can say that conversational marketing is more efficient than email marketing for converting leads.
Step 3: Offer Smart Solutions Based on Perceived Customer Needs
This is where your sales team comes in. Luckily, chatbots aren’t just conversational; they operate with human-like intelligence and are smart enough to know when to route the conversation to a human representative. The bot engages with the prospects until the need for a one-on-one interaction becomes inevitable.
This way, your sales team can actually focus more on selling — including leads generated from automated marketing like this one. What's more? You can even program the bot to schedule calls and meetings with clients based on the availability of active sales agents.