How To Grow Your Sales Significantly with Chatbots

Guest post from Angela Baker, freelance writer at WoWGrade and Supreme Dissertations. 

Chatbots are becoming increasingly important for companies, acting as not just a messaging tool, but as a means to reach customers, and communicate effectively.  They’re the newest and most exciting piece of marketing technology, and it looks like they’re here to stay.

However, how can you use a chatbot to increase sales and not just as a form of communication or support? 

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Before we look at how you can grow your sales with chatbots, let’s quickly review what chatbots are. 

 

What are chatbots? 

Chatbots are essentially robots that mimic conversation. They are predominately messaging tools and come in various forms.  For instance, some work on a more “multiple choice” type of system, whereas others use user data to generate human-like conversations.  

You’ve more than likely used a chatbot. Think Siri or Alexa as two of the biggest names out there. In addition, many companies are incorporating chatbots into their website, as they recognize their unique benefits.  

Chatbots have come leaps and bounds in recent times, courtesy of artificial intelligence (AI). They have proven to be versatile, intelligent tools that can automate admin tasks, and generate sales.  

Ultimately, chatbots improve customer experience and push your customers through the sales journey. Below, we explore the possibilities that chatbots can bring you, and how you can incorporate them into your marketing strategy and how you can grow your sales with chatbots.  

 

8 tips to grow sales with chatbots

 

1. Gathering feedback and data  

You’ll likely know the importance of customer feedback and data. Your chatbot could provide you with the perfect opportunity to collect this. Without an incentive, customers won’t spend their time filling out surveys. A chatbot becomes a survey, but with a much softer and steady approach.  

With a natural digression in the conversations to questions, the customer may not even realize that they’re actively leaving feedback.  

How does this affect sales? With the right feedback, you can gain insight into what your customers want and what they don’t want. With this information, you can remodel and shift up your strategy. From this, you can market appropriately and ultimately grow your sales through chatbots.  

 

2. Engagement  

Chatbots are a unique and innovative way to engage with your audience. They arguably offer a unique advantage – in that they retain customers, too.  

Other forms of digital marketing, like social media, fails to keep the customer’s attention for long. They look at an image for a few seconds and then are greeted with another brand’s image seconds later.  

In comparison, a chatbot will catch your audience’s attention, interact, engage, and retain their attention. This gives you more time to sell, or at the very least, advertise various products.  

 

3. Lead nurturing  

Chatbots will also push your customers down the sale path, without obviously doing so. Lead nurturing is an essential part of a company’s marketing strategy. Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with customers, at every single stage of the sales funnel. It’s a combination of marketing and communication and provides help, information, and suggestions when the customer needs.  

This is obviously incredibly important, but also immensely time-consuming.  Chatbots, with their AI technology, gather the information that they need – developing personalized messages. These will automatically help the shopper, at every stage of their buying journey.  

Not only does this eliminate the task for a human, but it’s also much more efficient and reliable. Human’s aren’t available 24/7 for help and suggestions, but chatbots are.  The more sophisticated the chatbot is, the more you can tailor their marketing efforts to every customer.  

 

4. Advertising 

Chatbots are also an excellent opportunity for you to advertise various products.  For example, when you’re having a conversation with a customer, you can recommend products. 

Let’s say you own a biking store. When a customer adds a helmet to their basket, your chatbot could recommend shin pads or other safety equipment.

 

5. Personalization  

Chatbots give you an opportunity to interact with your customers on a personal level. They can gather information about every single customer and use it to develop meaningful relationships with them.  

Chatbots also incorporate localization, which is basically a more advanced form of translation. Localization includes various cultural signifiers, as well as slang words and local terms. This creates a more meaningful relationship with the customer.  

Personalized customer experience is desirable for every company. It increases the chance of a returning customer and helps to guarantee a sale.  

 

6. Content distribution  

Chatbots can also distribute relevant content to the user. You can share related articles and videos to your customers, depending on the conversation that they’re having with the chatbot.  

You can also share your own blog posts or e-books that you’ve created, as part of your content marketing strategy. This gives you an opportunity to advertise other products and engage with your audience more.  

Let’s say you own a natural beauty e-commerce store. Your chatbot could ask what type of skin your customer has, and then direct them to an article on the best products for combination, dry or oily skin.  

 

7. Relevant notifications 

Customers don’t want useless, irrelevant emails and announcements. This is a big mistake that many companies make, which actually causes potential customers to unsubscribe from emails, and gain a bad experience with a brand.  

Chatbots are able to capture data and analyze specific interests – giving them the opportunity to send only relevant information.  

“Customers will genuinely be interested in the notifications that you send, especially if they’re regarding relevant, related products. The best thing about this is that they’re relevant to individual users. Again, this type of targeting isn’t available in many different forms of marketing.” — Adam Peterson, Marketing Specialist.

 

8. Reaching a wider audience 

To generate more sales, you ultimately have to reach new people. Chatbots can help you do this as they are predominately used through social media messaging platforms. 

You can increase your marketing efforts and are ultimately available to help them at any stage. Also, with the inclusion of localization, you can gain multiple audiences all over the world.  

It goes without saying; if you reach a wider audience, you can ultimately grow your sales with chatbots. 

 

Conclusion

Chatbots have become one of the top tools for brands to engage with customers.  The bottom line is; if you create a great, personalized customer experience, you’ll drive more sales in. Studies show that 86% of people will pay for excellent customer service.

Part of your marketing and sales generation efforts should rely on customer experience. A positive experience will keep them returning, and will also generate word of mouth marketing.