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Imagine you are planning to go out for a movie with your friends. You need to decide on which movie to go for. What will be the first thing that will come to your mind?
Will you call each of your friends and then finalize on movie? Or would you go to your friend’s place to decide on the movie? Or instead, you will send them a Whatsapp message in a group?
You will prefer sending Whatsapp message right!
This is a fact that most people are now using messaging apps for communicating with each other, than any other channel such as Calls or SMS especially in case of group conversations.
Moreover, some study shows 98% of mobile messages get read and 90% of them get read within 10–15 seconds of being sent.
It is the time, Businesses should leverage this new Communication channel for reaching out to their customers.
With this, the first question that immediately comes to our mind is, how can Mobile messaging help me sell my products and market my business?
Businesses who communicate with their customers via messaging provides more personal feel and attention to their customers.
In one study, 53% of respondents said, they are more likely to shop with a business who they can message directly.
Mobile messaging can broadly be used for the following use cases:
Businesses can engage with their customers by sharing pictures and articles about their products and services through Social media channels.
Companies can communicate directly with their customer through social media channels, answer their queries and collect feedbacks.
With the proper use of Social media channels, you can give your customers an opportunity to buy your products and services in the easiest way possible.
Now that we know the benefits of Social media messaging, its time to find out what platforms should your business use to communicate with your customers.
Platforms are basically different messaging apps that your customers might use to communicate with your business. Typical examples are Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Telegram and many more.
It is important for you to figure out what platforms are your customers on and which platform should you target first. For e.g, if you are in a Fashion business, you might prefer to target Instagram first. If you are a small business, you might target Whatsapp First. Big businesses typically prefer Facebook messenger and Twitter.
Once you have figured out the Messaging platforms that you would like to be available on, the next important thing is to have all the necessary tools to make it easy to connect with multiple customers seamlessly and make the communication as effective and useful as possible.
There are tools available in the market which can really help you with managing the social media messaging. These tools have features to send bulk messages on multiple platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
These tools can also schedule a message so if you want to send a message on daily basis or if you want to send a message on a specific date or on a particular event, these tools can help you with that.
Some Platforms such as Whatsapp and Facebook have their Business versions such as Whatsapp for Business and Facebook for Business which have special features for businesses.
These tools can help you analyze where your customers are coming from, what they are talking about the most and also lets you send automated replies to them using Chatbots or Automatic replies.
OK so by now, you know which platforms to choose and which tools to use in order to communicate with your customers through messaging.
But, for people to message you, they must know that you are available on social media messaging platforms and how to contact you.
For this, your Marketing call to actions must include your messaging platform details such as Whatsapp for Business Phone number, Your Facebook Page details, Your Twitter handle, etc.
Once you have set up all the communication channels, you can start planning about what will you communicate with your customers about and when. Are you going to message them first or will you just respond to their messages.
You can create a template or automated replies for frequently asked questions such as a link to your website, product or services you offer, pricing details, office or store hours and your location, etc.
You can also include photos and videos in your responses. For e.g. A hotel can send messages with photos and videos of their rooms and a restaurant can send photos of the food they offer.
It is very important to keep in mind that do not just bog down your customers with loads of promotional messages. It will not take much time for them to block you on social media channels and the negative mouth publicity will tarnish your brand image.
If you are not responding to people’s messages, you are missing the whole point of mobile communication and worse damaging your brand reputation.
Fortunately, there are many tools available which can handle the influx of messages on social media channels.
You can deploy chatbots which have natural language understanding and artificial intelligence. What that means is these chatbots can not only understand what your users are talking about but can also intelligently reply to their questions within seconds.
So by now, you have decided to communicate with your customers on messaging platforms and you have decided to get a chatbot to handle automatic reply to the questions of your customers and prospects.
Now the question is how to get a chatbot for your business. Fortunately, nowadays, it is very easy and cost-effective to get a chatbot. Also, the deployment will take not months but days.
The first and foremost question is, which platform do you need the chatbot on? Would you like to have a chatbot on your website which can automatically answer all the questions of your website visitors?
Or would you like to have a chatbot linked to your Facebook and Twitter accounts so that when someone sends a message on your Facebook or Twitter page, the chatbot can respond instantly?
Soon, it will be possible to have chatbots linked to your Whatsapp for business account. With that, your customers will get an instant reply when they send a message on Whatsapp.
A simple chatbot that answers basic frequently asked questions might cost you $100 – $200. An advanced custom-built chatbot with NLP and AI might cost you between $1000 – $1500.
There might be some monthly fees if you use chatbot builder platforms such as Manychat or Chatfuel. However, you should have some technical expertise if you want to get the bot done by yourself.
The best way to get a Chatbot done is to hire an expert. They can understand your use-case, your requirements, the platforms on which you need chatbots and then, they can build a custom chatbot for your business.
Using messaging to communicate with your customers has the potential to dramatically change the business and take it to the exponential growth path.
Chatbots or smart assistants with artificial intelligence can help you with automating the communication with your customers.
Chatbots can reach out to a large audience on messaging apps and be more effective than humans.
If you are interested in learning more about Chatbots and how you can leverage messaging platforms in your business, then please visit us at https://axlewebtech.com or contact us at [email protected].
Blogs about Chatbots, Alexa Skills, Voice Bots, IOT, Web Apps and thousands of new web-based technologies.
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- Chatbots For Business
- Chatbots
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Blogs about Chatbots, Alexa Skills, Voice Bots, IOT, Web Apps and thousands of new web-based technologies.
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