When you hear the word “inbound marketing,” you probably think of engaging blog posts and educational videos. Both tools can be entertaining and useful to a brand’s audience; however, there are two potentially more successful ways to engage your audience: conversational AI and live chat.
Businesses are using chatbots and live chat into their websites and social media channels as part of their inbound content marketing initiatives. When a customer enters one of a company’s owned channels, they are frequently greeted with a chatbot or a live chat rep. Having said that, it is usually the visitor’s option to take the first step and interact with a business’s conversational marketing solution.
You’ve come to the correct place if you want to learn how conversations are changing the future of inbound content marketing. These three reasons will provide you with a better overall understanding of how they can assist your company’s inbound content marketing initiatives.
1. Customers can contact your company at any time.
When a company’s customer base grows to a certain extent, it becomes difficult to keep up with each contact. Every prospect or customer, rightly or wrongly, believes their purchase or problem is the most important. According to Drift’s State of Conversational Marketing research, from 2019 to 2020, customer frustration with no access to assistance outside of office hours increased by 1.4x.
A chatbot or live chat solution can assist you in accommodating clients regardless of when they contact your brand. Instead of requiring consumers to phone or email your company during specific hours, give them the choice to directly communicate with your brand through chat anytime they choose. This rapid communication option should assist your consumers to avoid long lines and response delays.
Keep in mind that a live chat solution may still result in long lines depending on how many support personnel you have and how many people are asking for help. Consider using a chatbot to provide faster assistance for the most common questions your customers and prospects contact you about. Bots can handle many queries at once thanks to automated routines. A customer or prospect will be able to communicate with your chatbot even after business hours have ended.
Create a chatbot script that sounds human and is consistent with the style and tone of your business. Prospects are more likely to feel at ease conversing with a bot that employs genuine, conversational language than one that sounds, well, robotic.
When your audience sees how useful bots can be, they will value them as well. Customers will be more likely to trust your bot and your business if they find it has solutions to many of their questions.
2. Chatbots Can Provide Personalized Content to Customers
Chatbots can share content with site visitors based on what they’ve said in the conversation, similar to how a live service professional tailors solutions for consumers.
If a user searches for general information about an industry trend or issue, the bot may link them to a top-of-funnel blog post. In addition, a bot will link a visitor looking for pricing information to the brand’s pricing page. The extent to which a chatbot may do this depends on the sort of knowledge base to which the chatbot interface or software that runs the chatbot is tied.
However, these personalized content choices aren’t only based on what clients ask for in the chat. Artificial intelligence (AI) processing in a bot can “remember” information from prior chats and utilize that knowledge to make recommendations in the future. Assume a user experienced difficulty accessing their account dashboard the last time they contacted you. In their next interaction, if they inquire how to conduct an action in the dashboard, the chatbot may give along with a resource on how to sign in simply for good measure.
Bots that supply users with personalized material on a consistent basis will help foster loyalty. They’ll want to interact with your brand’s bot since they know it gives useful information in seconds.
Content also does not arrive in a single form. Many firms are already aware of this and produce a variety of material, such as blog articles, podcasts, and videos. Unfortunately, many of the material resources that a company provides might become buried deep within a website, making it difficult for users to find.
Distributing content via your bot can help give it new life. Conversations can be utilized to repurpose content that previously generated a substantial quantity of traffic for your brand. It’s a chance to help promote engagement with your earlier material without having to entirely rewrite it. If the information is relevant to the needs of the user, there’s a strong chance they’ll read the entire blog post, podcast episode, or video your bot sends them.
3. Conversations Can Boost Your Sales Funnel
One of the most difficult problems for any organization is converting prospects into customers. To accomplish this, you must lead customers through a sales funnel and have content available for them at each stage.
You can quickly increase the speed of your sales funnel efforts by using a chatbot or live chat system. A chatbot or live chat representative can communicate directly to your user to determine where they are in the sales funnel. Some consumers may be just starting their search, but others may want a little more information before making a purchase.
Your chatbot or live chat solution can assist with lead nurturing regardless of where your user is in the sales funnel. They can ask precise questions, respond to a customer’s product query, and even forward a lead to a person who can provide more particular assistance (with the lead’s agreement).
You can even use a chatbot on your Facebook company page. When someone enters your company’s Facebook page, they may be greeted by a chatbot that provides them with the basic information they seek. It’s also an excellent approach to send clients to your website, where they can learn more about a certain product or topic if they’re interested.
In this way, chatbots and live chats not only help identify leads but also move them through the funnel. They can get to the heart of what a user is seeking and match them with the best solution on your website.
Do You Need More Assistance with Your Inbound Content Marketing Efforts?
Conversations are an excellent method to augment your inbound content marketing efforts, but you must ensure that you are still conducting competitor research. Investigate how they use content to drive leads and customers to their brand, so you can engage your audience even more effectively.
If you’re searching for a quick and easy approach, our competitive virtual services and the team can collaborate in your business!