What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational Marketing: The Future of Customer Contact: a blog around conversational marketing, which is the objective to let people find you and allow them to interact with you on their terms.
The name itself indicates that conversational marketing focuses on using communication to connect with customers, but if you're wondering how it works, why it's so important in 2022, and where it fits in with the world of inbound marketing, keep reading!
Conversational Marketing is a way of keeping track of customer preferences, and it is a way of gaining an insight into what your clients are thinking. It is almost like having a conversation in which you are interested in everything the customer has to say.
Conversational marketing is a way of communicating with your customers that involves a two-way dialogue. It’s not just about getting your message across, but also about listening to your customer and responding accordingly.
This field of marketing is the next step in the evolution of marketing. It’s all about understanding the needs of your customers and delivering the right message to them at the right time. It takes into consideration what they want to know, when they want to know it, and how they want to get their answers from you.
The goal of conversational marketing is to create a smooth journey for your customers from start to finish. This smooth journey is achieved by using tools to understand and communicate with the user in the way they want. This can be done by using tools that integrate options like messaging apps such as WhatsApp, SMS, phone calls, and social media into one platform. This holistic approach means that the user and the sales team are seamlessly linked up, allowing for Conversational Marketing to take place.
Conversational marketing VS Inbound marketing
You may ask yourself what is the main difference between Conversational Marketing and Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing covers all the aspects of your marketing strategy that draws prospects and customers to your business. Primarily, this relates to website traffic. Inbound marketing tactics would include SEO, social media and content marketing.
Inbound is about being proactive in attracting customers as opposed to being reactive and responding to customer inquiries. It focuses on creating and publishing content that attracts prospects who are actively looking for information about your products and services.
Conversational marketing is not just about using tools and platforms to talk to customers in a conversational manner. It’s also about creating opportunities for them to talk back. In order for a company to be conversational, it needs to create avenues for customers to engage with you on their terms, not yours. That means making sure content is shareable, responding quickly when someone reaches out via email or social media, and providing a support channel where customers can chat with someone from your team.
Conversational marketing is much more than just having a chat, it’s about creating an environment where your prospects and customers feel comfortable enough to ask questions, give feedback and even make suggestions.
To do this, you need to:
Create a culture of openness and honesty - If people are afraid of getting ‘fired’ for being honest, they won’t ask questions or share their thoughts. Instead, they’ll resort to complaining directly on social media which could damage your brand reputation.
Encourage questions - Ask open-ended questions that allow people to express themselves without feeling judged or pressured into giving the ‘right’ answer. You want them to feel comfortable enough so that they will continue talking to you throughout their journey with your company.
Respond quickly - Responding within 24 hours is ideal but even if it takes longer than that, make sure you acknowledge their comment/question immediately so they don’t lose interest in having a conversation with you
Social media can therefore cross both in-bound and conversational marketing strategies and the two goals should align. You should be presenting a clear and consistent tone and messaging whether you're tweeting to your followers or chatting with a prospect.
