What is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational marketing is the process of brands communicating relevant, personalized and real-time messages to audiences. Or simply put, having actual conversations with their users.

Crucially though, companies no longer have to be in the same physical space as a customer to do conversational marketing. Thanks to modern tech like chatbots and personalised website experiences, every brand can now have 1-2-1 conversations with users at scale.

Conversational Marketing on Websites

It’s often said that websites are our digital storefronts.

Now, imagine a physical store that is beautifully laid out. Has all the products on display, has striking visual elements to lure you in, and has promotional offers splattered across the walls. But, when you enter this beautiful store, there is no one to help you or show you around.

No one to answer your questions. No one to help you pick the right product or service. No one to talk you through what happens after you buy. And no one to even help you complete your purchase. Would you buy anything?

This is the trap many modern websites fall into. Visually striking, lots of sales messages, but no relevant help or support for users. Support that might ultimately be the difference between the user continuing their buying journey on that website or not. In short; no personalization, no interactivity, no conversation.

Benefits of Conversational Marketing

In today’s digital world, where information is instantaneous, users expect quick answers and tailored solutions. This is true across all industries, from B2C to B2B. Gone are the days when customers were willing to sift through dense websites or wait for an email response.

Users want instant, contextual interactions – and they want them now. This trend is only likely to accelerate, since as a society we are becoming more used to relying on AI and pilot tools.

A website without conversational elements risks alienating potential customers, leading to poorer user experiences (UX), lost sales, and missed opportunities.

Let’s break down why conversational marketing matters:

Enhanced User Experience: Websites equipped with conversational tools, like chatbots or live chat, provide users with immediate assistance. This reduces frustration and increases satisfaction.
Read how Conversational Marketing improved onsite engagements metrics by 92% for a Robotics manufacturer.
Improved Conversion Rates: A guided experience helps users find the information or products they need, streamlining their journey toward making a purchase or taking the desired action.
If users cannot find what they are looking for on websites quickly, many simply give up and bounce. Read how Conversational Marketing helped a glass supplier increase revenue per visitor by 62%.
Real-Time Personalization: With conversational marketing, interactions can be tailored based on user behavior, preferences, and history. Personalization fosters trust, loyalty, and a propensity to buy from a brand.
Read how Conversational Marketing helped increase sales 40% for a Car Subscription service despite a drop in traffic.
Efficiency in Sales and Support: Automating initial touchpoints with conversational tools saves time for both users and businesses, allowing human agents to focus on high-value interactions.
Read how Conversational Marketing streamlined contact centres by 32% for a Pensions company.

How To Do Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing might sound complicated to do, particularly at scale, but it is surprisingly simple with the right technology.

To revisit our storefront analogy from earlier, think of what you would want from a customer assistant in a physical store. You would want them to greet potential customers, ask them if they need help finding anything, answer FAQs about your products, and help them through the buying process by providing trust signals.

There is no reason a website can’t do all of those things through conversational marketing. Here’s some examples of tools that can be employed to do so:

Chatbots: To act as a constant ‘customer assistant’ should the user decide they have a specific question to ask.
Inpage Tools: To spark conversations organically with users as they browse specific content.
Visual Interactive Experiences: To ‘gamify’ the process of browsing your site, and to create interactive memorable connections.
Smart Forms & Calendars: To allow users to have conversations with you at their own time and convenience.
Live Chat: To give your users the extra trust signal of talking to a real person associated with your business.

Conversational AI Marketing

Naturally, AI has supercharged the potential of conversational marketing. Since brands can now use generative and conversational AI to speak to users in real-time.

With tools like Leadoo AI, users can now ask any questions they want, and brands can shape how an LLM will respond to them instantly, and what onsite pathways it will direct them to.

Even better, because of the power of LLMs, tools like Leadoo AI can:

Conversational AI creates incredible possibilities for marketers, but also some potential pitfalls. After all, it is by definition ‘artificial’ intelligence, and marketers can never know exactly how AI will respond to each individual user.

That’s why if marketers are employing conversational AI, they must be clear on its guardrails and prompting. With Leadoo AI, this takes the form of Knowledge Bases, where customers control the exact content AI models are trained on, and respond with.

A knowledge base can be a single URL, an entire domain, or a catalog of files you upload. Our model is then trained on this content, and uses it to answer questions, with customers able to specify exactly what it can or cannot comment on. The length and tone of responses it should give. Or even if it should prioritize certain topics or links in its responses.

With these kind of guardrails in place, marketers are in a position they never have been before. Where AI can power real-time conversational marketing in ways we could only have dreamt of a few years ago.

If they get it right, this can lead to enhanced UX; improved Conversion Rates; true real-time Personalization; and efficiency in both Sales & Customer Support.

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