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March 26, 2021 - By Barron Rosborough

Out of the Nest: Chatbot Conversational Chatter

With messaging apps on the rise and the demand for conversational marketing increasing, 2021’s outlook for chatbot marketing continues to rise towards what Insider Intelligence predicts will become a *$142 billion industry by 2024 – up 4,971% from 2019 (from $2.8 billion).

For this week’s deep dive, we’ll take a look at the growing chatbot marketing sector, including efficiencies that implementing a chatbot solution can bring to your business.

The reality today is that consumers demand 24/7 service no matter what type of company they are engaging with [B2B, B2C or D2C], with nearly 40% of internet users preferring to interact with chatbots vs. live agents.

What does that mean for businesses?

Utilization of AI messaging via a chatbot solution in industries such as healthcare, finance and technology (amongst others) drives inherent efficiencies within your marketing ecosystem including:

  1. Driving an automated pipeline of sales activity by allowing prospects to book meetings or subscribe to newsletters
  2. FAQ automation for faster information gathering
  3. Allowing consumers to browse and purchase products directly from the chatbot itself

It’s important to note, however, that chatbot solutions are not meant to replace a full marketing strategy and in-fact there must be a level of human interaction across the consumer journey. These solutions must derive actionable insights from the user in order to entice them down the funnel and through your omnichannel funnel.

If implemented correctly, these chatbots will simulate human interactions, while on the back-end learning more about your audience so that you can further automate tasks. In fact, it’s estimated that the healthcare, banking, and retail sectors will be able to save an estimated $11 billion annually by 2023 purely through the automation of certain tasks via chatbots and AI.

So how does one implement conversational marketing, or chatbots, into their strategy?

Strategizing & Building

Strategizing & Building

As exciting as implementing a chatbot can be, it’s important to flush out your entire strategy, including conversation trees, to ensure all possible paths of the conversation are set before you go live. Work with a strategist who will sit down with you to understand your business model, what problems the chatbot will provide solutions for, and what the tone of voice should be. Remember, it’s all about human conversation.

From there, define your goals and use cases. Are you looking to use the chatbot for customer service? Do you want to give prospects the ability to book meetings? Do you want to showcase your products and push people towards purchasing? All of this is vital information in understanding how the chatbot should interact with your digital audience.

Once you’ve identified the basic roadmap the chatbot should follow and how you want it to engage with your audience, it’s time to build all of the content. When building out your trees, have an out-loud conversation with yourself or your team. Where do questions pop up? Do all questions have answers or point people to the answers? Where does the chatbot end and human interaction begin?

Optimization and Testing

Testing & Optimization

Now it’s time to test! Push your chatbot live and start monitoring how the interactions are flowing to mend any “broken” conversations that may arise. If your chatbot is functioning the way you intended, you’ll see an uptick in your target metrics. If not, reverse engineer the conversations to pinpoint the missing link.

By leveraging chatbots, businesses are able to automate top-of-funnel conversations that provide actionable insights around a user’s behavior, meaning you now are more informed about the user before they are passed over to your live representative. This empowers your customer service team and provides a superior customer experience.

Brands around the world are taking advantage of chatbot architecture to drive a 24/7 digital experience … are you?

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