It’s easier for businesses that communicate with customers personally to turn them into repeat customers.A new study by Localiq shows that offering customers live chat on your website can lead to a 12% increase in conversion rate. Companies can adopt various ways to engage with their customers, conversational marketing being one of them. 

Conversational marketing is a good way for companies to talk to their customers in real-time through chatbots or messaging apps. The goal of conversational marketing is to engage in quick communication. A survey by Sinch found that about 89% of customers prefer a two-way conversation using messaging apps. 

Conversational marketing uses tools like WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, and other text messaging apps to initiate a back-and-forth conversation between businesses and customers. This can help develop a good relationship with customers and open up new opportunities to understand your customers.

Conversational Marketing: What You Need to Know

Conversational commerce is one of the most innovative approaches you can adopt to engage with your customers. These interfaces are accessible on popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, text, etc. If done correctly, it can help you build stronger relationships and drive real business results. 

Here are some key points you need to know:

Conversational marketing creates two-way interactions 

Conversational marketing focuses on creating two-way interactions with your customers by exchanging messages. Conversational marketing aims to build familiarity and trust through these discussions. 

Unlike traditional marketing, conversational marketing engages in real-time, one-on-one conversations to interact with customers. 

Through two-way conversations on popular messaging platforms, you can immediately address your customers’ queries and interact with and guide them through the buying process.

It leads to a higher engagement rate

A recent study by Wagawin shows that conversational exchanges lead to about 33%  higher engagement rates and improved sentiment towards the brand. 

Customers are more likely to complete a purchase when they have a direct conversation with a company because they will get all the information needed from the direct source.

It does not necessarily deal with business size 

The size of a business does not matter in conversational marketing. Even if you own a small business, you can compete by using a local, helpful tone when assisting your customers on messaging. 

As an individual who owns a large business, you can aim for a casual and respectful style when conversing with your customers. The most important thing is to focus on building understanding to guide your customers toward helpful products and services.

Conversational marketing proves to be more effective in customer-based platforms 

To implement conversational marketing successfully, you must be available on platforms customers are already present on. 

This means actively participating on messaging sites WhatsApp for Business, Messenger for Businesses, live messaging apps on websites, SMS/text, and other popular customer platforms. 

You need a professional and friendly customer service team 

It is also important to build your customer support staff to approach every query reasonably and provide required assistance in a friendly yet professional manner. 

Polite conversations help gain customers’ loyalty and increase referrals. 

The Impact of Conversational Marketing on Customer Experience

Conversational marketing has significantly changed the way businesses interact with their customers. It has improved customer experience by promoting immediate and interactive interaction between businesses and consumers. 

You can address your customer’s concerns immediately through chatbots and live chat features. These help you offer customers customised recommendations and product suggestions based on their past purchases. 

This can reduce the stress in the buying process, making it easier for customers to make decisions and complete purchases.

One of the most important uses of conversational marketing is for conversational commerce. Through conversational commerce on WhatsApp, you can process orders and give customer support all on the same platform. 

Conversational marketing can also help you gather data that can be analysed to understand customer behaviour. This can help improve your marketing messages and offers to ensure your products and services please and relate to customers. 

Implementing Conversational Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide 

Follow the steps mentioned below to make conversational marketing effective for your customers. 

• Find out what platforms your customers use the most; they could be social media apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger.  

• Choose the right tool to allow real-time interaction using chatbots or live chat software.

• Make a detailed plan about how and when you talk to customers. Create automatic responses to common questions and possible answers.

• Test it with a small group first to see where your communication skills need work and make changes based on their feedback. 

• Train your team to manage conversations effectively and focus on empathy and problem-solving. 

• Gradually scale up by promoting your conversation entry point across multiple channels and monitor key metrics such as response rate and the likes. 

Following these steps can enhance customer satisfaction and build meaningful relationships. 

Why Conversational Marketing Matters: 6 Key Advantages

Conversational marketing offers the following advantages:

Build customer relationship

Conversational marketing allows you to engage with your customers in a personalised, empathetic manner and build a long-lasting relationship. This strategy promotes a two-way conversation whereby your customers can express themselves. This can help build customer loyalty, satisfaction, and strong relationships over time. 

Solve customers’ problems

With a prompt approach to resolving issues, customers will likely perceive your brand more favourably. By enabling instant and interactive discussion, conversational marketing provides room to build a highly convenient platform where all customer queries are addressed quickly. This can help prevent frustration and improve the purchase experience. 

Increased engagement 

Maintaining back-and-forth dialogue can improve customers’ participation. With conversational marketing, you can capture and retain audiences’ attention for an extended period. 

You can also guide customers through their buying journey, right from information search, purchase to post-purchase support. This can strengthen mutual understanding, which can lead to increased engagement. 

Improved data collection

This strategy provides a detailed insight into customer attitudes, opinions, language preferences, and product perception. You can capture emotional sentiment and analyse discussion topics to gain clients’ opinions. This can help in making informed decisions to satisfy customer’s needs. 

Drive Measurable return on investment 

Conversational marketing can enable you to quantify gains from analysing business data such as lead generation, higher conversion rates, increasing order value, and expanded customer lifetime value. It delivers a competitive edge that strengthens your business goals and offers a high return on investment. 

Enhanced personalisation

Personalisation can improve brand perception, increase order value, and build higher customer satisfaction. Thus, by conversing and interacting with your customers, you can deliver relevant and customised experiences across all your channels based on their past purchase behaviour. 

Conversational Marketing in Practice: Examples

Here are brands that have successfully implemented conversational marketing :

• Anthropic – Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that uses conversational AI to power two chatbots – Claude and PBC. Claude can answer general questions, and PBC (politically balanced chatbot) can have nuanced discussions around political topics.

• Domino’s – Domino is best known as a pizza plug. Their chatbot on Facebook Messenger allows customers to place and customise pizza orders through natural conversations. 

• IKEA – IKEA is a company that sells furniture and home accessories. The company leverages services like Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, which enable tasks like shopping, checking inventory, and getting assembly help through voice conversations.

• Microsoft – Microsoft uses bots like Clippy and Cortana to have human-like dialogue with users seeking solutions to a problem.

• Spotify – Spotify is a digital music service where you can listen and download music. Their chatbots on Facebook Messenger and Telegram help users discover music, build playlists and manage their accounts conversationally.

Shiprocket Engage 360: All-in-One Communication Platform to Engage Customers

Maintaining personalised conversations with your customers can go a long way in improving your brand image. 

The best option is to partner with a company that is very good at maintaining such a conversational flow, like Engage 360. 

Engage 360 is an all-in-one conversational marketing platform that enables you to engage with your customers via conversational websites and apps like WhatsApp. 

As a communication tool, Engage 360 can help you automate marketing, provide support through chatbots, and leverage other features like click-to-WhatsApp to acquire more customers. 

Engage 360 can help you with automation, personalisation, and analytics to generate leads, convert them into buyers, and drive repeated purchases. 

So by partnering with Engage 360, you can be sure that they will provide an integrated solution that can maximise your customer’s life cycle engagement, helping you to scale your operation through personalised conversation. 

Conclusion

Conversational marketing is an approach that is important to build strong relationships between you and your customers. With conversational marketing, you can learn more about your clients and gather data that traditionally cannot be gathered through surveys or statistics. 

Examples of conversational marketing include chatbots, messaging apps, text or SMS, etc. You can choose any means to reach out to your customers. You just have to analyse which is more suitable to your business requirements and needs.