How Chatbots are Important for Your Digital Marketing Strategy

By Sachin Agrawal

A few years ago, the idea of artificial intelligence (AI) was bounded to fictional movies only. But now, AI has become a part of everything. It’s the most common technology in digital space – whether it is about Google Assistant for your Android, or Siri for your iPhone.

AI plays a crucial role in every industry –
even in digital marketing. There are several implications for AI in the world
of digital marketing, but among all chatbots are the most exciting.

You must have noticed, chat windows popping
up within a few seconds of your visit to some websites, offering assistance,
haven’t you?

That’s the chatbot.

What Are Chatbots?

Chatbots are AI-powered chat machines that
enable you to automate a large part of the customer communication process. They
simulate a conversation with a user in familiar language through websites,
messaging apps, mobile apps or telephone.

You can even program your chatbot the way
you want. You can plan that with particular answers to frequently asked
questions such as “how much do your services cost?” or “what is your exchange
policy?” 

Do you know, 77% of customers won’t purchase on a website if there’s no live chat option available. The reason is quite obvious. Chatbots save your time and energy, too. They step in and do work for you.

These chat machines are now everywhere, and
if you want to stay competitive in this digital era, it’s important to
assimilate chatbots into your digital marketing strategy. 

Why Are Chatbots Important for Business?

Chatbots play a very important role in business growth. They streamline interactions between your services and the audience to enhance customer experience. Do you know that a chatbot can carry out the task of many customer support agents?

A chatbot is the most cost-effective customer support solution. With the help of a chatbot, you can improve your customer engagement process and functional efficiency by diminishing the cost of customer support.

Chatbots help consumers solve their
problems quickly and conveniently. They enable consumers to have a proper
record of the conversation with the bot. These bots are the future of brand
engagement.

How Chatbots Change the Digital Marketing Game?

In the past few days, online marketing was
intimidated by search engine optimization and marketing. The first decade of
present century experienced the
golden era of social media marketing, and now we are entering the era of
artificial intelligence. AI technology is transforming the face of digital
marketing, and chatbots are the biggest example of that.

Chatbots carry out multiple conversations
with your audience in a better way. These AI-powered chat machines allow brands
to connect and engage with their customers directly.

Chatbots function as a virtual assistant
for consumers whether you ask Siri to create reminders, or Alexa to play songs
from your favorite artist. You can program
your chatbot and add it to your websites, applications or emails. Chatbots
enable you to reach out to your potential customers, get useful information
from them, respond to their queries and mentor them towards making any
purchase.

Automate Your Digital Marketing Process

We all know, digital marketing takes time and lots of effort too.

Chatbots make marketing more streamlined
and easier by automating the beginning of the process, which sets you free and
allows you to work on other things.

Whether it’s about gathering contact
information, responding to customer queries or assisting them in making any
purchase, chatbots manage prime steps of marketing process, the best way.

Chatbots are the great human engagement
enablers. They make your work easier by handling the initial communication with
your customers, and collecting all the necessary information from them.

Boost Brand Awareness

Chatbots can automate a huge part of the
marketing process, which implies that you and your team are capable of handling
a higher volume of marketing conversation, and that promises more brand
awareness, resulting to more sales.

Chatbots enhance your brand engagement.
They allow you to get connected with more customers, begin more conversations.
This helps in improving your customer’s experience, generate more sales and
build a deeper rapport with customers.

Bridge the Gap Between Sales and Marketing

We perform lot many rigorous activities as
part of marketing, to enhance sales.

Chatbots bridge the gap between marketing
and sales by converting
more prospects into customers.  This
is the most efficient way of gathering information from potential customers,
qualifying leads and setting your sales team for success.

There is no doubt, that chatbots may seem like something out of the future, but the future has is here.

Now, that you are aware of the basics of chatbots, you are ready to enclasp the future and incorporate these AI-powered chat machines into your digital marketing strategy that surely will drive great results for your business.

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Sachin Agrawal is an Enterprise Architect and heads up Business & Technology at Tarika Technologies. He carries expertise and a flair for writing on Management Consulting, Software & Analytics and Digital Media. Apart from distilling his technical ideas into creating innovative solutions, he is a practitioner of Haidong Gumdo and at his leisure, taps the Cajon and strums his Guitar!