Chatbots are most popular nowadays. Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization(SEM & SEO) dominated the marketing sector in the 2000s.
Social media marketing got popular around 2010 after social media giant Facebook gained popularity.
The most recent marketing trend that was observed was the rise of Mobile marketing as new apps were being launched every single hour of every single day.
People are more inclined towards using messaging apps like Whatsapp, Telegram, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Slack, etc.
What are Chatbots?
A bot is basically a computer program that automates certain tasks, by chatting with a user through a conversational interface.
A good marketing strategy will be focused to attract as many customers as they can and meet their customers where they are.
With the boom in usage of messaging apps (Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, Slack), most customers can be found surfing on these apps. Most of the businesses have incorporated their own bots on these messaging platforms.
Even if the bots haven’t taken over marketing yet, they are here to stay for sure. Basically in marketing perspective it’s not Bot vs. Human but mainly Bot vs Bot as there are both good and bad bots online.
We live in a world where people want quick solutions to everything, that’s why voice search is gaining trend and social media platforms are thriving to kill the boredom.
In these testing times of pandemic, when there is a shortage of manpower, marketing through Bots can be a very good alternative to human marketing in general.
A bot can be both simple and complex at the same time as they supposed to answer some specific set of queries for the customers.
Bots are designed specifically to accomplish certain tasks in less time and provide a better solution to an existing problem. Chatbots are majorly using by app developer companies.
Benefits of Using Chatbots for Marketing:
- Operate without the help of a human – One doesn’t need human intervention if they have chatbots to take care of the queries raised by the customers. Chatbots can function independently on their own as they are developed with complex algorithms of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. It’s a very good alternative especially if there is a shortage of humans.
- Time-Saving – Chatbots are time-saving as they reply quickly. One doesn’t have to wait to connect to an actual human for seeking a response to their concerns. They provide 24*7 support which is a little difficult to achieve with humans.
- Capable of providing instant solutions – Chatbots, with their inbuilt intelligence provides instant solutions to all the issues and concerns raised by the customers. 80% of the customer queries are easily resolved by the Chatbots.
- They learn and evolve continuously – They don’t use depend on the AI for answering queries but also learn continuously to improve the quality of the support offered.
- They never complain – Humans might get tired by answering the same and repetitive questions of the customers, but chatbots don’t. They neither get tired nor complain and are always responsive to customer needs. In short, they are extremely customer-friendly.
Also Read: Why Outsourcing QA Is More Important Than Ever
Following are the ways through which bots are expected to transform marketing and to help businesses capitalise:
- Helps in better customer engagement – If a customer clicks on an online ad, then it is referred to as customer engagement online but this kind of engagement is passive. With the help of chatbots, customers get to actively engaged with the brand as there is direct one-one communication taking place between the bot and the customer.
- Help in getting direct insights from the users– The customers chat with the chatbots just like they chat with any other human, so it helps in getting very close and personal insights of the customer.
- It provides opportunities for personalisation– Brands these days, with the help of the chatbots, like to have a very personal conversation with the customers like knowing about their likings and disliking and promote their business accordingly. But brands should make sure to strike a balance between personalisation and privacy of the customer.
- Helps in bringing brand personality to life– Strategically implemented and well-designed chatbots are capable of infusing personality into conversations. It can help the business to promote its brand effectively.
A Bot is expected to help reduce time spent on a task with preferably a better solution than one which previously existed.
But they must not provide responses that are not useful or non-customized even if they are fetching the results from an authentic or verified source.
Bots are a great good tool and can help the marketing sector achieve its goals as it provides all the great things promised with lowered costs, standardization, improved customer intelligence, multilingual communication, and reduced training costs, 24X7 supports and many other good things.