How chatbots can be key to business growth in 2018

Chatbots sound like the perfect solution for a lot of companies, especially those who want to better streamline their customer service departments to ease the burden on their staff and leave customers better informed should they ever have a problem.

Many believe chatbots are beyond them though; that the technology represents an incredibly expensive marketing solution that offers no guarantee of results. The technology itself can represent a hurdle to marketing managers too; how can something like a scripted chatbot seriously replace human conversation?

The answer to that latter point is that they shouldn't. Chatbots aren't a replacement for the human element of your business. They're there to support your overall strategy; they can provide answers to the most common questions to customers in a simple way, for instance, negating the need for them to frustrate themselves spending time going through multiple customer service channels.

Chatbots are also a fantastic way to nurture leads for your business, again providing interested leads at the beginning of the sales process with the information most relevant to them. That can help you to better collect the most relevant data for your needs in a transparent way, as well as introduce them to your products and services, better informing them for when they're ready to be contacted by your sales and marketing teams.

Creating chatbots is easier than you think

Chatbots are growing to be an essential part of the modern marketing mix, and are much easier to implement than you may think. Chatbots don't equate to having robots man your stations with artificial intelligence running the show; they can be simple to create (depending on your needs) and can be dispatched amongst the channels most relevant to the growth of your business.

Over in the U.S., for instance, makeup brand Covergirl created a chatbot modelled on popular influencer Kalani Hilliker, with conversations scripted to reflect her personality. It was hosted on social media app Kik, where their target audience spends its time, with interactions helping to boost coupon downloads.

The strategy was a hit, amassing 91% positive sentiment among users and generating 14-times more in conversations than a simple sponsored social media post from the influencer it was modelled on.

For larger-scale results, you only have to look at case studies provided by chatbot specialists Drift. Drift is one of the most common chatbot providers on the market today, with an easy-to-use platform that can be integrated effectively into most websites.

Company RapidMiner has been using Drift's services for a while, with their chatbots helping conduct approximately 1,000 chats a month. RapidMiner says that Drift's chatbots resolve about two-thirds of customer enquiries, passing the most difficult problems to a human team to resolve. Drift has helped RapidMiner capture over 4,000 leads and attract over $1million to their open sales pipeline.

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Chatbots can perfectly complement any inbound marketing strategy

There are many other success stories out there regarding chatbots, and how they've helped brands across different backgrounds to boost sales, streamline their customer service capabilities, collect better data and much more besides.

As the examples above also underline, the customisable nature of chatbots can help brands to target the customers most relevant to them to achieve specific goals as part of an overall growth strategy. To that end, chatbots are the perfect ally for any and every inbound marketing strategy, providing information to the people who matter to you most in a quick, effective and personal way.

Chatbots are set to be a key marketing tool for the year ahead. They're also more affordable and less complex than you may have previously though; the sooner you implement a chatbot into your inbound marketing strategy, the sooner you can have more relevant conversations with potential customers and build strong, long-term relationships with them.

Find out more about how chatbots could be your secret marketing weaponin the year ahead by speaking to the inbound marketing specialists at Six & Flow today.