How AI Can Improve Conversational Marketing Within a Company
Conversational marketing: takes more of a dialogue-driven approach when it comes to marketing. Businesses use this approach to engage with customers, allowing for a quicker sales cycle. In return, it provides businesses with a feedback loop in which they gain customer loyalty, engagement, and increased revenue. This marketing technique aims for companies to build firm and lasting relationships with their buyers and customers, and there is a primary component that conversational marketing relies on AI.
AI has recently made a massive technological breakthrough and is being utilized worldwide. AI, such as ChatGPT, chatbots, and voice assistants, has made marketing more straightforward.
How Does Conversational Marketing Relate to AI and the Internet?
Businesses can use chatbots to compose customer interactions while employing a personalized experience. Furthermore, companies could use voice assistants to engage with customers in the foreseeable future. Like AI, various internet resources, such as messaging apps, email, and social media apps, have risen to aid marketing. These are called omnichannel approaches to conversational marketing, where companies can interact with customers through various channels.
What Benefits Does Conversational Marketing Bring?
Conversational marketing immensely benefits companies that employ it. The marketplace is competitive as is, and utilizing properties of conversational marketing can establish your business effectively. There are four main benefits companies can receive when using conversational marketing. Those benefits include:
Receiving insights about customers
Creating solid relationships
Improving engagement levels
Faster speed for moving customers throughout the sales cycle
A portion of conversational marketing revolves around communicating with your clients.
Companies can determine what customers want and do not want. With this information, a company selling products could have a better opportunity to improve them based on the feedback provided by their clientele. The feedback loop allows the company to build more promising customer relationships. Since there are different channels, such as AI and the internet, businesses have a faster and easier way to contact their customers, which results in loyalty and trust from the customer.
AI could aid in the sales cycle.
Businesses could use chatbots to book meetings or send sales agents leads, improving engagement levels.
Customers can access the company's various mediums and information sources directly, personalizing the customer's experience.
Many known businesses, such as Whole Foods and HubSpot, use conversational marketing!
How is it an Underutilized Piece of Marketing Today?
Even though conversational marketing has astounding benefits, why is it underutilized today? There are benefits to conversational marketing, but implementing the system has challenges. AI and human interaction are still big hurdles to overcome. Companies must remember to balance artificial intelligence use and personal interaction when utilizing this marketing technique. Since engaging with customers is a big part of conversational marketing, measuring that is more complex than it sounds.
Traditionally, companies track the number of website visits or sales made and apply those tools to observe how engaged customers are with the business's campaigns.
However, companies must measure engagement differently with conversational marketing, such as customer satisfaction scores or tracking response rates.
Below is a comparison of traditional marketing and conversational marketing and how long it takes with each:
Other aspects of conversational marketing, such as data regulations, must be considered before adequately utilizing it. AI, such as chatbots and voice assistants, are known for collecting data; some customers may be uncomfortable sharing their data. Companies have to ensure they ask for permission from the customer before using any AI system and store all collected data securely following the laws and regulations.
Is Conversational Marketing the Right Path to Follow as a Business?
Ultimately, it's up to companies to decide whether they would like to install this technique into their marketing strategies. Conversational marketing has advantages like more customer connections, a faster sales cycle process, and improved engagement levels. Still, it also has disadvantages, as it's easier to implement accurately if executed correctly. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and for a company to stay competitive in 2023 with AI on the horizon, this marketing technique would be the most efficient for a company to be built to last.