Conversational Marketing Common Misconceptions
CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING IS TOUTED AS THE FUTURE OF MARKETING THOUGH MANY PEOPLE THINK THAT IT IS JUST ABOUT CHATBOTS.
Conversational marketing is a customer-centric and dialogue-driven approach to marketing. It has become the go-to strategy for driving customer engagement, improving customer experience, and growing revenue. The name itself tells a lot about the term already – but if you’re wondering how conversational marketing works, why it’s so important in 2021, and where it fits in with the world of inbound, keep on reading!
Conversational marketing is based on one-to-one interactions in real-time across multiple channels. It enables you to foster customer relationships and improve your online customer experience by communicating and customising interactions online.
A combination of interactive experiences such as live chat, chatbots, and messaging apps are used to enable these personalised conversations.
While the dreaded Chatbots, in particular, have made conversational marketing more accessible. The solutions are regularly grouped as the same thing, but chatbots are just a part of conversational marketing – like a goalkeeper in a soccer team, you wouldn’t argue that they make up the entire team.
Any form of two-way communication, like phone and email, or the interactivity built into modern digital publications and catalogues can be part of a conversational marketing strategy. Although messaging is the most popular way to get in touch and reach out to customers. People love to chat and want instant responses, which is part of the reason why messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, both with more than 2 billion users, are so popular.
The key in conversational marketing is assessing and understanding what your customers’ preferred channels are and adjusting your tone of voice accordingly – dialogue with chatbots and live chat is usually quite informal and mimics a casual conversation.
Conversational marketing is the fastest way to move buyers through your marketing and sales funnels through the power of real-time conversations. It builds relationships and creates authentic experiences with customers and buyers.
Instead of forcing people to go through lead capture forms and wait for a response, conversational marketing uses targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage with people when they’re on your website, in your catalogue or publication.
Making it easier for people to engage with your business will help you convert more of the right leads faster. Which means happier customers and a happier company.
HOW CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING IS CHANGING THE WAY YOUR CUSTOMERS BUY
There’s a problem with the way we’ve been taught to market and sell – it no longer matches how buyers buy things. Think about it – when you’re not talking to someone face-to-face, where do most of your conversations happen? For most people, the answer looks a lot like this:
People love communicating with messaging because it’s fast, easy, and actually feels like a conversation. So it’s not surprising that 90% of consumers want to use it to communicate with businesses (and the majority prefer it over email) according to a recent survey from Twilio.
But most businesses are still forcing people to jump through endless hoops before a conversation can ever take place.
Buyers and customers don’t have time for this anymore, and the numbers show it:
- Only 43% of people answer cold calls.
- The average email open rate has fallen below 20%
- The average landing page conversion rate is only 2.35%
The B2B buying process has become cold, impersonal, and way more painful for the buyer than it needs to be. Even worse, most businesses don’t even understand the B2B buying process to begin with, meaning their communication is all about them and not about how it helps the customer.
Today, B2B buying decisions mirror B2C more and more. We need to make business actually feel personal again.
Conversational marketing builds relationships and creates authentic experiences with customers and buyers. It enables true interaction and builds trust.
SO HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY DO CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING?
Implementing conversational marketing doesn’t force you to blow everything up and start from scratch. It’s the fastest way to move buyers through your marketing and sales funnel.
It’s more like turning on a new lead-generation channel that complements your existing marketing efforts. We boiled it down into a simple framework called the Conversational Framework.
The Conversational Framework boils down to 3 steps:
- Engage
- Understand
- Recommend
It’s how you have conversations now and build relationships in today’s world. It’s not a new marketing and sales funnel. It’s a new way to move people through your funnel.
For a breakdown of each step, see our article What is Conversational Marketing?
WHY DO YOU NEED CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING?
There are many issues with current marketing activities that have led to this new development but in short, people are demanding more. Most companies would agree that their customer base wants more from their service and product, and more from the buying experience. A study by Forrester suggested that 87% of companies know that a traditional buying experience is no longer enough to satisfy their customers.
Conversational Marketing is a response to this demand for a better experience in the digital age.
CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING LEADS TO CONVERSATIONAL SALES
Conversational Marketing is the platform and technology used to engage, qualify and convert leads that want unassisted sales. It is basically the way in which you can work out exactly what users want, understand their pain points, and offer them the appropriate service or marketing in real-time. For those potential customers that need more assistance or have queries, they are put in touch with a member of staff. In order for a Conversational Marketing strategy to work, the concept of dialogue must not stop after qualification, it must be implemented also in the sales team and across relevant stakeholders.
Conversational Sales is what happens within the platform between the lead and the member of staff and is a crucial part of the customer journey. For a more comprehensive rundown on Conversational Sales, see our article Conversational Marketing Leads to Conversation Sales.
CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING IS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
Conversational marketing offers substantial value to the business in terms of reducing lead generation costs and CPA. By providing a customer-centric online experience, it’s easier to not only attract quality leads, but engage and nurture them in a meaningful way, resulting in more effective lead generation, and higher quality customer relationships.
