You’ve probably heard: Bots are the future, and chatbot marketing makes no exception. And when talking about the future, it is always worthwhile recalling the past.
Marketing in the 2000s was dominated by Search Engine Marketing and Optimization (SEM and SEO). The early 2010s saw the rise of Facebook and social media marketing (SMM). Most recently, we’ve seen mobile marketing rise. And nowadays, it’s all about messaging and automation.
As the world of marketing is developing at tremendous speed, it is imperative to follow the trends and make the most of the new opportunities the market offers.
What is a chatbot?
Chatbots are the true modern manifestations of Artificial intelligence (AI).
Put simply, a bot is nothing more than a computer program that automates specific tasks, typically by chatting with a user through a conversational interface. The most advanced bots are powered by artificial intelligence, helping it to understand complex requests, personalize responses, and improve interactions over time. This in hand will allow for companies to implement optimized chatbot marketing strategies.
Are chatbots useful?
Let’s discover the main benefits chatbots offer.
1. 24-hour Availability
Chatbots offer a 24/7 response system, thus also providing continued communication between your business and your customers. It is a well-known fact that customers do not like to wait to find the most basic answers to their questions. The situation is even worse with frustrated customers.
2. Instant Answers
While operators are able to focus on one customer at a time, chatbots can answer thousands of questions at the same time. Chatbots make it possible to provide instant responses to multiple customers thanks to the internet, software mechanisms, and the speed of the cloud.
3. Personalized Outreach
Chatbots are also capable of collecting and processing a huge volume of customer data and use it to personalize outreach.
The entry-level algorithms collect standard information, namely email address, location, or devices customer use, while the advanced versions are even able to find out what customers think about certain products and services, what they are looking for, or what challenges they are facing.
All these can be later used to predict customer behavior, offer personalized recommendations, or even improve products and services to make them more appealing to the target audience’s preferences.
4. Endless Patience and Elimination of Human Errors
While customer representatives can be very frustrated from time to time and often lose their patience depending on a problem, chatbots do not face such a problem.
Another, not less significant advantage of chatbots is that they eliminate human error. While your customer support agents can forget and mix things up, chatbots are machines that seldom make mistakes.
5. Positive Impact on SEO Ranking
Chatbots have a positive impact on SEO results, as well. Using a chatbot can improve your SEO ranking, but only if it enhances customer experience on your site, and only if used properly.
Here are a few benefits that chatbot may offer:
- Increasing time spent on a landing page
- Decreasing bounces
- Better ratings
Chatbot statistics to consider
- The chatbot market size is projected to grow from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $9.4 billion by 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.7%.
- According to a HubSpot research report, 71% of people are willing to use messaging apps to get customer assistance, many do it because they want their problem solved, fast.
- A recent study showed that 58% of B2B companies use a chatbot on their website.
- 65.1% of businesses who have implemented chatbots are in the SaaS space. (Relay)
- Studies suggest that chatbots can decrease current global business costs of around $1.3 trillion which are related to approximately 265 billion customer service inquiries by up to 30% yearly. Moreover, chatbots can also deal with up to 80% of current routine questions.
The future is truly promising for the Chatbot phenomenon. However, let’s not forget that customers do not always fully appreciate self-service channels and often prefer personalized attention that chatbots are not able to provide.
A word of advice from the inSegment team – while investing in technology to help streamline operations and maximize customer experience is ALWAYS a good idea, a fully automated, self-service model for managing customer relationships eliminates the human component that is so often critical to delivering a positive customer experience. Keeping the right balance is the most crucial factor here. Contact inSegment to learn more about our experience with chatbot marketing and the best practices to implement a successful strategy.
