The use of chatbots in Inbound Marketing is already a reality. This Artificial Intelligence (AI) software is used to be self-sufficient in carrying out tasks. They achieve a new functionality by managing to communicate with the user in real time to resolve doubts or incidents. It has become a trend in digital marketing for the advantages it brings to an online business. During 2020 it was very useful to provide the customer with the personalisation they needed because of the confinement. According to Statista, 70% of the Spanish population frequently uses Whatsapp. For this reason, the assistant robots are close and reliable to the user, who is familiar with the instant messaging service. Inbound Marketing is directly related to its characteristics since, by focusing on the user experience, it is crucial for a marketing strategy.
Consequently, chatbots also improve loyalty, brand image and conversion data. You can automate your funnel by having them guide consumers through the website and end up making a purchase. The questions that users ask the chatbot can be decisive in the decision making process. Once this phase is over, the chatbot can ask the user to complete the purchase action. There are non-intelligent chatbots, also called ITR, which work based on predefined commands. On the other hand, there are intelligent chatbots, known as "Word-spotting", which is more conversational and recognises words or "Smart Chatbots", which base their system on AI and learn with each interaction.
Benefits of using chatbots in Inbound Marketing
- They take care of the relationship with users by responding quickly to their questions.
- They report errors and resolve them immediately.
- They are able to perform more than one task at the same time, such as answering questions, recommending products or booking appointments.
- They are continuously learning from user behaviour and interests.
- They are embedded in the website without the need for an external application.
10 uses for chatbots in Inbound Marketing
The chatbot simulates the appearance of a real person because, in addition to responding in writing, it can enable a voice response, show multimedia content and ask questions. It is a minimally invasive tool to meet the user's needs. Due to the specialisation of the digital world, there are many uses that can be given to this virtual robot in your Inbound Marketing strategy. These are the 10 main ones:
1. Improve the user experience
The user is the key element of an Inbound Marketing strategy. Chatbots are able to take their experience on our website to its maximum exponent. In addition to offering personalised attention, this can be reliable and fun. For example, with the use of emojis. This communication channel is far away from the traditional commercial call.
2. Helping prospects move through the sales funnel
These robots carry out a data analysis in which they recognise where users are in the funnel and offer them personalised recommendations to guide them on the decisions they are hesitating to make and suggest that they take action. It has been proven that automated chats capture a greater number of leads.
3. Analysing data
These programmes are capable of gathering a large amount of data on the users who visit the website: information on tastes, interests and time spent on our site. These analyses are valuable to know the status of the marketing campaign or to improve it for future occasions.
4. Broaden your audience
Nowadays, it is common to find in almost all companies a chatbot incorporated, they are synonymous with updating, therefore, they provide an overexposure that in turn attracts all types of users.
5. Being present on social networks
Including the use of chatbots in a marketing strategy means getting the seal of modernity. This feature will make the company more present in the digital world and, therefore, in social networks.
6. Giving visibility to new offers
One of the great benefits that chatbots provide is the ease of communicating some kind of offer to the customer. The bot will provide this information in the chat window to direct the user to the right page immediately. These promotions can be presented several times if the customer has not paid attention the first time.
7. Buying products through intelligent chat
The rise of e-commerce has made this one of the main uses. The bot, which already knows the user's details, only has to send the product to their address if they want it. This strategy appeals to many customers because of its immediacy and is already common on fast food websites such as Burger King or Just Eat for ordering food for delivery.
8. Suggest products
The personalisation of the user is enhanced with the intelligent assistant as, by knowing the user's purchase history, it knows what products to recommend. This has a high success rate as the customer is likely to be interested in what the robot is offering and buy it.
9. Send notifications
Chatbots can save a lot of emails or text messages and are capable of notifying the customer of information from their window without interrupting their web browsing.
10. 24 hours a day service
Its technological factor makes it a tireless tool of our campaign. Regardless of the time of day it will continue to operate. This is important for the Inbound Marketing strategy because it provides a natural communication between the customer and the company.
Advantages of a chatbot over an email
Both are tools to establish communication with the user. The objective of strengthening relationships is to sell the product or service we offer. Email marketing fulfils this function correctly, but chatbots have different advantages. These are some of them:
- Immediate response: While it is true that email marketing can be automated to generate a response to a given action, the chatbot is able to respond immediately to personalized responses. This is due to its AI-based algorithm that manages to respond to the user in about 10 seconds.
- Presence in the digital age: Chatbots are a new and updated tool. They have the ability to be integrated into the brand's website, maintaining the interest of their audience and being present in the digital world. It ensures a greater number of potential customers.
- Human character: The chatbot is programmed to look like a person. You can have a conversation with him to give us information. Email marketing incorporates personalisation features, but is less interactive. Users are more open to receive messages from the conversational bot. According to a study by HubSpot, a Facebook Messenger message has an opening rate of 80% compared to 33% of email.
3 steps to build a chatbot for your Inbound Marketing campaign
- Decide on usability: The first step is to be clear about what we are going to use the chatbot for. Knowing what we expect the bot to do and in what way will determine the type of conversations it initiates and their tone.
- Define architecture: The architecture of the chatbot will establish its functionality and responses. It will also deal with data access and business logic, i.e. the chatbot will identify the profile, call on the database and offer a series of services to the profile.
- Choose type of chatbot: Based on the type of interaction, one type of chatbot or another can be preferred. At the same time, they have different budgets: we can choose between contextual chatbot, which works through AI and machine learning; keyword chatbot, which offers suggestions based on the searches made; voice chatbot, which receives questions through voice channels or service chatbot, which receives a question and responds with questions related to it to offer specific content.
4 platforms to create a chatbot
HubSpot: Through its chatbot generator you can create a virtual robot that has personalised conversations with your customers. It provides support, schedules meetings and qualifies potential customers. It also allows you to access the history of conversations with each customer and enable messages for each specific user. It has the ability to be included in a website without the need for coding.
Landbot.io: This platform is interesting because it is adaptable to any company. You can develop a virtual assistant to your liking and easily integrate it into your website or instant messaging application such as WeChat, Google Sheets or Mailchimp.
Chatfuel: This platform is used by companies with high recognition in the digital world such as Uber or TechCrunch. It integrates into any service including Twitter, Instagram or Youtube for free.
SnatchBot: It allows you to create a chatbot for free from Facebook Messenger, Telegram or Skype among others. Its NLP engine works in 135 languages so it provides more reach and its interface is accessible.
