Importance of Conversational Marketing in the Digital Age

Few days back when I was interacting with few students on concepts of marketing, one of the student got fed-up with our conversation and said, "Sir we are confused, one day you say XYZ concept is important, the next day you say another concept is important, and today you are saying Conversational Marketing is going to change the way we communicate with customer. Please tells us which one is important. We will just focus on that....."

When he asked me this question I just smiled because when I was a student, I too behaved the same way. Like in our school days I asked my professor to just focus on the important topics than the whole book but, later I understood by just focusing on few concepts we cannot grow as a marketer and without marketing no business can thrive. I understood marketing approach depends on the nature of business and scope, all we need to understand is be it any approach all focus on consumer needs and wants and then producing products (which can be goods, services, or ideas) that will satisfy them while making a profit. 

Now coming to Conversational marketing. I guess you might have heard this term a lot in recent times. A lot of discussions must also have happened around this topic. But, what exactly is Conversational marketing?

Before we go deep into this topic let us divide into two parts “Conversation” and “Marketing” for better understanding. 

As per dictionary, conversation means a talk between two or more people and Marketing means, the activity of showing and advertising a company’s products in the best possible way.

Now let us define Conversational Marketing based on these terms. 

Conversational Marketing is a method of engaging with website visitors and converting leads via dialogue-driven activities (conversation). This style of inbound marketing puts focus on interactions with consumer, not simply one-way transmission by the brand. It is considered the fastest way to move buyers through the marketing and sales funnels through the power of real-time conversations. It builds and creates experience with customers and buyers.

Conversational Marketing aims to create relationships with the consumer by building trust through conversations and by making they buying experience as smooth and easy as possible. Conversational marketing uses targeted messaging and chatbots (in some cases Ai) to engage with people instead of forcing people to go through forms and wait for days to get a response. It makes easier for people to engage with business and help convert more of the right leads faster. 

Some might not agree with this concept and would like to stick to their current traditional funnel but one thing we need understand is, there was a problem with the way we communicated (market and sell) that is why we are seeing a lot of chatbots coming into the picture. People like communicating with messages because it is fast, easy, and feels like conversation. So, it is not surprising that most of the consumers want to use it to communicate with businesses (majority being email).

Why do we need Conversational Marketing?

As mentioned before, there are few problems with the current process, and it is taking time to generate results. If you look at the traditional funnel. 

Traditional Funnel:

Do you think in this fast paced technologically advanced world customers have time for this?Most organizations would agree with what I’m putting forward. Organizations know Customer base wants more from their service and product, and more from the buying experience. A study from Forrester suggested that 87% of organizations know that a traditional experience is no longer enough to satisfy their customers. Conversational marketing is a response to this demand for better experience in this digital age.

The conversational marketing framework boils down to three steps i.e., Engage, Understand, and Recommend. It doesn’t force the organizations to blowup everything and start from scratch. It is more like turning on a new lead generation channel that complements the existing marketing efforts. 

The benefits of Conversational process over the Traditional funnel process is,

    - Organisations can create a more human buying experience

    - Organisations Learn a lot about buyers and customers

    - Organisations can convert leads to better leads

    - Organisations can shorten the sales cycle

    - Organisations can grow sales

Note: In many ways conversational approach comes more naturally to sales than it does to marketers. This means getting your sales team on board and trained upon presenting and video calls. This will prevent a disconnect between the online marketing experience and that which a lead may have while in the end of the sales team. If linked up well, this will create a smooth buying experience and help you create customers, faster and at a lower lead generation cost.

Endnote: 

Conversational marketing is effective because it "Removes layers of impersonal lead capture and creates an authentic, personal customer experience", "Fosters clear communication — buyers can plainly state their needs, and businesses can more readily understand and assist since there is appropriate context around the request", and "Strengthens relationships as bots can also recommend additional content or products relevant to buyers based on their past behaviour"

Keep in mind, Messaging is the preferred method of customer communication with businesses — 90% of customers want a chat option.