The Bot Plan: Your Guide To Making Conversations Convert
Apr 09, 2018
Apr 09, 2018
10 min read
10 min read
2000 was the year of Search Engine Optimization, 2010 was the year of Social Media and it seems like 2018 is going to be the year of chatbots.
In one of our previous blogs, we talked about how chatbots have failed miserably in their endeavor of sparking meaningful conversations with users.
But the tables have completely turned now!
The recent developments in the field of AI and chatbots have made huge leaps from the start of this year and haven’t looked back ever since.
Developers have now found a sweet spot to make chatbots work like they are supposed to and brands are jumping on this bandwagon again in heaps
And modern chatbots are surprisingly easy to set-up and install. You can easily set-up one on your website, messaging platforms or social media accounts as there are now quick integrations available to use your chatbot on the platform you like. But the best part is that most of them don’t require any coding knowledge at all
From a marketing perspective, chatbots have always been great at driving engagement. Combined with the recent advances in AI, NLU (natural language understanding) and machine learning, they really have become a force to be reckoned with.
So if you are looking to hire a chatbot for marketing your own brand, there is no better time than now! Here are a few ways you can make use of AI-powered chatbots to provide an amazing user experience and better market yourself to your users -
1. Exceptional Customer Support
Starting with the obvious, It’s a no-brainer that a chatbot can easily be your next best customer support executive that’s up and working 24*7.
Providing quick replies has always been a hurdle for brands trying to provide excellent customer support and with chatbots, it becomes fairly easy. Whether your customers are seeking for help on your website or one of your social media accounts (most probably Facebook), employing a chatbot on your preferred platform will help reduce friction and boost your overall customer experience marginally.
While this is the most basic use-case of a Chatbot and the sole reason for which they were used for initially, modern Chatbots can do a lot more.
2. Interact with website visitors
When users visit your website, most probably they’d want to look at your products, they even can have some burning questions about the products and services you provide and would love some quick answers. According to a study, If you are not able to answer quickly, they may never return to your website again. In situations like these, a chatbot can really be your knight in shining armor. There are chatbots dedicated to providing this functionality on a website through live-chat. Give it a nice profile pic, a conversational tone, and a swanky name, and your users won’t even know if they are talking to a bot or a real person. Or you can keep it simple and straightforward like Levi’s. 
Levi’s Indigo helps its website visitors find their suitable products (which we’ll talk about in a while), get help and read blog articles, all accessible through the chatbot. Users really don’t care about it as long as their problems are being taken care of. Also, 48% of users prefer choosing live-chat as a medium to interact with a brand rather than emails, according to a study.
3. Qualify the best leads
I like how Drift has explained it nicely on their homepage how their chatbot (or leadbot) can really transform your sales funnel for good. They even gave this simplified process a name - ‘Conversational Marketing’ Also, did I mention Drift is the only company that managed to bring the limelight back on chatbots with their newly named concept? So, being experts in ‘Conversational Marketing’, you’d think they’d know a thing or two about how to convert leads, right? I thought the same and tried out their Driftbot for a while and every time I visited their website, the Driftbot always had something new to say to me to make me convert. 
And this…. Which you can do on your site as well, your creativity is your limit when it comes to converting leads through conversational marketing. But one thing is for sure, chatbots indeed cut a lot of time out of your customer journey, which is always a good thing, for both your business and your customers. Conversational Marketing lets your sales team focus on the best leads filtered by your chatbots in, as drift mentioned, minutes. Some people have said that lead qualifying chatbots have shortened their lead qualifying process by 18 days! And when integrated with Salesforce and other tools intended for your sales team, it can really streamline your sales processes.
4. Sell in a conversational way
If you are a B2C brand, selling your products in a casual manner becomes easy with a chatbot as everything is done with conversations and not hard selling. And customers will be prompted to buy as well, as they’ll be shown personalized items based on their own choices. H&M has their own bot to sell their products on the platform Kik. If you had typed ‘Shop this’ instead, then the chatbot would redirect you directly to their site to make the final purchase. See how simple the process becomes for users! Or see how Macy’s chatbot on Facebook does it.
5. Studded with Analytics
Usually, chatbots come with analytics, if not, there are bots that can provide this functionality to a bot.
Anyways, the thing to focus here is that bot analytics can come in handy if you ever choose to employ a bot for your brand. With the help of analytics, you can easily monitor all the chats your bot has had with users, see the most searched for products, track conversions, return visits & more.
But most importantly, analytics can be used to see if the conversational tone that you’ve set for your bot is going well with your user base or not. And if your bot is not making many conversions, you can easily change the tone of your bot to get the best out of your bot’s marketing efforts. Modern chatbots have come a long way from just being your customer support executives. Today, they can proudly be your brand’s voice, the first point of contact and sales executives.
While I have tried to list some cases where you can use a chatbot to enhance your brand’s user experience, you can use them in a lot more creative ways, totally depends on what you want to do with your chatbot.
Top Seven Benefits Of Using Twitter As A Tool To Drive Traffic In 2021
Currently,Twitter is ranked at the 6th positionamong the most popular apps in the world. Twitter receives a massive amount of engagement, it receives almost500 million tweets per day!Digital marketers believe Twitter is a great place to build a community of customers and an excellent social media platform to market products. --> Source:Pexels--> Twitter advertising revenue went up to $899 million in the first quarter of 2021. That means it saw an enormous 32% hike in advertising revenue when compared to the previous year.According to Statista, as of April 2021, Twitter had 199 million daily active users. As per the statistics released by Twitter in the first quarter of 2021, the totalTwitter ad engagements also went up by 11% within a year.Hence, it is quite obvious why brands and businesses are so keen to market their products on this specific social media website. Here are some of the key benefits of using Twitter as a tool for marketing and driving traffic in 2021. 1. Connect directly via direct messaging Just like several other social media platforms, even Twitter has the provision of reaching out to accounts via private conversations. Two users can hold private discussions over Twitter like any other social media app. The only requirement to enable dialogue between two accounts is that they must follow each other. Due to this feature, marketers felt Twitter isn’t a great place to come in touch with celebrities or influencers. However, they think it’s a perfect place to engage customers and provide them with an authentic and personalized experience. Source:Pexels 2. Use engagement tags. The best way to deliver your tweets to a particular customer or an individual user on Twitter is by using the “@” feature. In this way, your tweet reaches directly to the recipient. Many businesses use the features to quote another brand, artist, influencer, etc., during a collaboration. Another great advantage of the “@” feature is that it allows users to receive tweets from people they might not even follow. The branched algorithm of Twitter enables users to witness tweets from multiple other users depending upon how their followers engage with other accounts. The network algorithm also allows the user to see similar types of content that they usually engage with. With such a feature, you can club your Twitter marketing services and end up getting a tremendous amount of engagement and reach. 3. You Can Post Multiple Times A Day! Unlike other social media platforms, Twitter is pretty friendly with brands and businesses posting a thread of tweets. Almost every Twitter Marketing Service Agency will recommend you to post fifteen tweets a day. Such freedom over the number of posts isn’t there on Instagram or Facebook. Since tweets feature for a short interval, Twitter’s algorithm is fine with multiple tweets. It keeps the continuous feed engaging and allows you to send regular updates. In this way, your brand or business can stay relevant among the audiences. Marketers that provide Twitter Marketing Services use this feature as an opportunity to create a mixed variety of content. The most successful Twitter marketers use Tweets to educate audiences about a specific product or service; they post images, polls, QnAs, etc., that keeps the consumers engaged. 4. Develop A Consistent Brand Voice With a flexible posting schedule, Twitter is a social media platform that can help your brand build its voice and personality. The tonality and texture of your tweets depend upon the kind of brand or business you own. The brands that sell pop-culture merchandise will have a sassy, more casual tone, whereas firms that deal with stocks or bonds shall use a more informative and formal style. Several fast-food companies have done campaigns that attract the youth; they talk about music, lifestyle, and more pop-culture stuff. Many media entertainment or production houses use a sarcastic tone to keep their audiences engaged daily. Humor is one of the most popular elements that businesses use to keep their audience hooked. With a consistent and unique brand voice, you can interact with potential customers who share your existing clients’ same interests. However, as a public brand or business, you must take care of old and problematic tweets as they can cause some severe backlash. Otherwise, you can use Twitter to display the kind of energy your brand radiates. 5. Twitter Advertising Is Cost-Effective So many companies are now looking for Twitter marketing services because advertising via Twitter is cheaper and more effective than many social media platforms. Most ads on Twitter cost a business something over a dollar! However, Twitter provides excellent scope for optimization. A Twitter Marketing Service Agency can help you create campaignsthat can maximize the impact of your ad. For that, you need to hire a team or a marketer who knows how to spend wisely and uses data-driven strategies to target your ads. You can perform A/B testing with your campaigns and customize them as per your preference. When it comes to optimization, Twitter is incredibly user-friendly! Source:Pexels 6. Influencer Marketing In today’s modern world, no one can underestimate the power of influencer marketing. Celebrities on Twitter are known for their trendy tweets, and they have a lot of engagement. Many marketers have created phenomenal influencer Marketing campaigns that have yielded a higher return on ad spend. However, there are too many influencers on Instagram, due to which there are too many products! Hence, you need to have a much fresher approach to influencer Marketing as Twitter has an enormous amount of potential to scale businesses. Twitter is also famous for having a high-purchase intent audience. Therefore, when consumers come across their favorite celebrity and an advertised product, they are more likely to purchase it. 7. Twitter Can Help You Drive Traffic To Your Website Nowadays, social media platforms act as a homepage for businesses. As we discussed above, Twitter is the perfect place to develop a unique voice for your brand. Many users visit and follow the Twitter accounts of their favorite brand. If they get to see a well-optimized Twitter profile of the brand, they are more likely to become your brand advocates. Many brands and businesses use Twitter as a medium to send traffic to their website. They also link their Twitter accounts on their website. In this way, when a consumer visits a website and finds a Twitter handle, they quickly check that out. If the brand can maintain a consistent identity across all channels, it helps them create their unique brand voice. Now you know the reason behind Twitter Marketing Services being so popular. If customers get to a well-optimized Twitter account, they are more likely to become your brand advocates. Due to this reason, several brands and businesses rely on Twitter Marketing. Twitter also provides some fantastic metrics and native analytics within the platform, such as demographics, lifestyle, behavior, and mobile footprint. These metrics are pretty helpful to know if your marketer is planning to launch a campaign. ...
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Three efficient ways to enhance your brand through social media
With the increasing popularity of social media in the past years, it has become an integral part of the brand identity in the market. No brand can take the risk of not including social media in their marketing plan. Driving awareness and engaging with the audience is not only a primary function anymore. In addition to this, social media now also be considered to build trust and long-lasting loyalty in the audience. Social media has always been a playground for B2C companies. However, it doesn’t mean that B2B companies can’t leverage the power of social media to become the brand. Some of the B2B firms have already hit the gold through social media. Optimizing social media, according to your brand values, can make a positive impact on your brand development. Being on the B2B network like LinkedIn is not enough to enhance your brand value. Engaging with the audience in the right way is also necessary for your brand reputation, as one wrong step can do drop your brand to zero as well. The main question arises on how B2B companies can enhance their brand value through social media. Here are three efficient ways in which to enhance your brand through social media. Create an Online Brand Persona Source: freepik In layman words, the brand persona is a collection of personality traits, attitudes, and values that your brand showcase in the market to connect with the right audience. According to usability.gov, “The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and quantitative user research and web analytics.” A brand persona helps to establish trust within the audience plus helps in maintaining loyalty among your customers. For a small business, the easiest way to create the brand persona it to envision the type of audience that will be interested in your product or services and then creating a marketing message that will attract the right audience towards your brand. With an authentic persona, one can develop trust in its audience and help to maintain loyalty as well if you are perplexed about how to create one. Not to worry, with some of the few steps, you can create an authentic brand persona. Build a personality image. Create an overview of your brand List the traits you want to highlight Pick out the features from the above list that can speak for your brand Describe how your brand will speak in public. Make sure to put an example of a script with it. Describe your engaging tongue, which will help you to figure out how you engage with others. Find out a style guide of fonts and colors that will go with your brand. If your thinking we are good without buyers persona. Then you are directing your brand without any focus. This can be harmful to your image in the market, and persona creates a connection between your brand and your target audience. If you don’t create a persona initially, then on the later stage, some out of the box personality will come, and you can’t figure out what to do with it. That will not convey the right impression of your brand. Have a crisis management plan Source: freepik A crisis can occur both online and offline, but one thing is sure that any of the crises will follow the social media route nowadays, as research shows that 80% of customers engage with brands through social media. These crises can include unhappy customers that post nasty comments on social media, delivery problems, or it can be any marketing flaw. While some of these issues can be resolved quickly, and some of them can take a shadow of crisis if the right action is not followed. This is where a crisis management plan comes into play that helps to sort out the issues at the earlier stage. Social Media Crisis Management Plan To manage the crisis over social media can be a bit of tricky task at first. But properly managing them can be essential for your team’s success. If your stuck in between or don’t know from where to start, we have a list of components that should be included in your crisis management plan. Identify the source Not every online problem or turmoil has an online origin. It can be some of the news in the media that took the face on social media. It is always beneficial to be sure about the source of the problem, which can help you to take a right step through a proper channel. If a problem occurs offline, take a look at your social media accounts and try to find is there any response related to the issue. If there isn’t one, you can expect them soon. If the people are posting already on your timeline, look for the damage that has been made so far and try to find out trends in the posts. Before taking any action, evaluate the situation that will ensure you’re making a long term crisis plan. Categories the issue as problems or crisis Next step in handling the social media crisis to analyze the severity of the problem. You may think the problem or crisis is the same thing. However, there is a line of difference between them. A problem is a minor customer service issue that can be solved with your standard customer service tactics. On the other hand, the crisis affects a large group of people and requires an appropriate response from your side. It is important not to consider a problem as a crisis as this can pull negative attention towards your brand. Social media is a public forum, and users watch the company every time they engage. If you are not sure about the seriousness of the issue, it is always good to start with your regular customer service tactics. Use internal flowchart Not every problem has the same level of acuteness. So why every problem should have the same respondent? More acute the issue is, more seniors should be respondents. Creating a flowchart should help you with who will contact the issue based on severity. Source: convince&convert It would be best if you did not stick to this flowchart only as it is vital to know that every problem requires a different solution. It is good to take a semantic approach, but some critical solution requires out of the box solution as well. Connect with media Source: freepik Connecting to prospective buyers and customers is an obvious step when marketing through social media. But you don’t have to stop there. Social media offers you more than that. In other words, to increase your brand presence, you can also connect with social media influencers, bloggers, journalists, and other active people who are making content in your niche. By using social media, reaching out to the right audience with the right media will build a strong relationship with your audience, and you’ll be able to tap into the right market. ...
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Things You Must Remember Before Adopting Marketing Automation
The application of marketing automation in this digital world has entirely reflected on the small and local businesses and big-scale industry-specific firms. In 2019, The global market size of marketing automation solutions was at $15.6 Billion. It is expected to reach a whopping $25.1 Billion valuation by the end of 2023. It is accelerating growth aspects for these industries, but it functions as a helping hand in minimizing the burden off your marketing division. Another study suggests that the automation software industry would increase at a CAGR of 19.2% between 2020 and 2025. It means that the value of the global marketing automation software industry would triple by 2025. At this moment, most businesses have already invested in Marketing Automation to synchronize their time and resources with the help of technology, resulting in effective and optimized marketing. In simpler words, marketing automation allows your business to leverage technology to do marketing tasks by replacing human resources. Since these tasks are routine and mild, mostly email targeting or repetitive chores such as auto-responding to pre-sales leads, etc., technological aid is considered an ideal resource for them. Marketing automation somehow affects your marketer’s duties and responsibilities and transforms their complex functions into much simpler tasks. As a result, your marketing department gets time to be creative for designing marketing campaigns and ponder upon increasing brand awareness via product and service quality. In addition, the best thing about emphasizing technology is that you source out the best results at the right time with purposeful business insights and data analysis that elevate your firm’s productivity. The best action plan for businesses worldwide in this modern time is to put marketing automation into operation and consider lead generation and nurturing their primary tasks. By doing so, you’re not only allowing technology, or say, Artificial Intelligence, to automate your business’ marketing requirements but remove emotional presence in some of the tasks with practical machine learning elements. Source: Pexels What To Do Before Committing To Marketing Automation? After your business has given a thought to MA being a full-fledged tech aid, you must have a list of things ready to check before diving into the implementation of marketing automation. Luckily, below is the list of those factors that one should think about MA to supersede human efforts and time . 1. Creating A Strategic Plan With technology surpassing your business marketing routine tasks, you may have to draw and implement a new strategy altogether. For obtaining the best results, your business has to undertake its goals and objective statements related to marketing and how you used to establish marketing campaigns. To begin with, list down why marketing automation would be the right decision for your business- refer to the global statistics for efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and customer engagement projection. Diving into the marketing automation world without a firm strategy could be daunting, like shooting an arrow in the dark- inefficient and less promising. Moreover, you’ll not only be deploying unnecessary monetary funds and efforts but lose crucial time. You could have used the time to explore or work on new opportunities. 2. Having Quality Content By implementing a strategy to obtain marketing automation services, your next step would be to plan out content delivery to your prospects. Having good quality content on your plate is crucial to engaging your customers with the correct information. With marketing automation and content working together, your business will experience a positive shift in sales, thus increasing your revenue growth. Therefore, having a firm grip on high-quality content creation is significant to trigger the buying process. Another benefit of producing good content for your business would be greater customer engagement on your website. If a customer stays on your website by engaging with the last level of content that takes them to the purchasing page, it can increase the conversion rate. 3. Align Your Departments Bringing technological aid to your marketing department does not mean the other departments of your business firm would not be affected or could relate to it. You must bring harmony to your marketing, sales, and other divisions, right from the beginning. When you plan to give your marketing strategy a new shape, it is crucial to comprehend its effects on the business sales and anticipate the customer behavior/actions after introducing marketing automation. Synchronize the objectives of your marketing and sales departments to make the most of marketing automation tools and enhance your marketing campaigns then and there. Incorporating your sales experts into the marketing automation systems facilitates their understanding of the importance of sales-ready leads and how to nurture those leads to obtain positive results. 4. Training Your Division Heads For The Change It might sound efficient and convenient in upgrading your marketing campaigns, departments, and experts towards automated aid, but, in reality, it requires constant training and development to understand the complexities of marketing automation. Your business marketers must show interest in learning about MA; they must continue the practice to specialize in the industry-specific roles for your business. Consider working on the product and marketing automation tools to explore the loose ends and define a sharp plan that would help take advantage of MA tools. In addition, your marketing team can create data statistics after working with the marketing automation software to link with the initial objective strategy that can be studied by your sales team as well. 5. Setting A Benchmark In the end, before implementing marketing automation, set your business benchmarks in terms of revenue, lead generation, customer base, etc. These benchmarks must be objective-driven, so your business can achieve them with marketing automation’s aid. Once you’re clear with the benchmarks, develop ways to measure your results after successfully implementing MA tools. Having that said, you may want to explore expert guidance from a leading brand. Saffron Tech is your one-stop shop to narrow down your marketing automation system requirements. With our team of experts empowering your marketing approach, we aim at providing an efficient and cost-effective service to help you assess which marketing automation tool would do wonders for your business type. Visit our website and sign up to dive into our services! ...
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