As consumers have more choices and have become increasingly impatient, companies are focusing more on improving and personalizing the buyer's journey. This journey begins at the awareness stage and culminates when a consumer makes the decision to buy. A company can take this even further through retention efforts that include service and building their brand online.
While standard marketing methods such as social media campaigns, distributing content, and email funnels are still relevant, conversational marketing is more individualized. It not only meets the customer where they are in the buying process but does so on their time schedule.
By conversational marketing, we're referring to real-time chat. In most cases, these are chatbot apps in which a business invests to deliver buyer-focused experiences through a website, app, or social media site. Consumers can get their questions answered or have objections addressed 24/7 by an intelligent "bot" as opposed to filling out a form (most won't don't this) and waiting for a response which may never come.
Of course, any business must look at bottom-line results, and it seems risky to adopt new technology. However, the adoption of these methods has been so widespread that something must be working. In fact, there are several ways that you can track the ROI of your conversational marketing program.
Look Closely at Engagement
Just having a generic chatbot probably isn't going to do much for your business. Conversational marketing is most effective when businesses take the time to create customized solutions for consumers.
For example, your customers might come to you with some frequently asked questions before a sale or visit to your store. These might relate to business hours, driving directions, or the features of your products. If you program your bot to answer these questions as they are asked, you'll probably get higher rates of customer engagement.
According to Drift, a company that sells chatbot solutions, only nine percent of their interactions with B2B company "forms" turned into a response in under an hour. A staggering 55 percent never received a response. In contrast, 59 percent of marketers report chatbot response rates 10 percent or higher from store visitors, but the average for a form is just two. This represents an increase of over fivefold.
Measure Direct Traffic to Product and Landing Pages
Since conversational marketing allows you meet customers where they are in the Inbound sales funnel, you can use these methods to make them aware of your products or services, consider them as the solution to their issues, or decide that your company will get their business.
Many of these conversations will refer customers to company product and landing pages for additional information or even to make the purchase. This is another one of the ways you can track the ROI of your conversation marketing efforts.
Track Customer Buying Patterns
Getting a better understanding of your customer's buying patterns is priceless. Maybe your company has been making some educated guesses about the customer's journey based on a list of assumptions. If a few of those assumptions are off-base, your results are sure to suffer.
Because conversational marketing is interactive, your company ends up with a wealth of data about what customers want and need, instead of relying on guesswork. By collecting enough of this information, you can create more effective models for each successive customer visit.
Get Customer Feedback
If you're not sure whether an instant messaging solution is helping or annoying customers, you can just ask them. Not only do you want to use these interactions to build a better model for the next customer, but also to gauge your efforts along the way.
This would involve giving customers an outlet for providing feedback, generally as soon as possible after the interaction. Create a (very) brief survey for consumers to complete after a chat session. Find out whether they received the information they were looking for, ask if it was "easy" or "difficult" to get answers, and ask about their next steps.
Track Your Businesses' Reputation
Anything your business does online or offline has the potential to impact its reputation. What's changed is that you can now track your reputation through mentions of your business on social media sites and online reviews.
When you use conversational marketing effectively, your business can boost the visibility of its brand. The results will be a better customer experience, improved branding, and more exposure for your business online. Set up social media monitoring software as well as Google alerts for your company name and its products to track these reviews and comments.
Reduction in Call Center/Support Costs
Support after the sale is vital, and few customers have patience when something they've already paid money for isn't working as they've expected or they need additional instructions. If your company has invested in a call center solution, it can likely reduce some of the costs by using a chatbot or other messaging app to help these customers.
Track how much you've reduced your support costs after implementing a conversational marketing program to get another metric for ROI. Remember, these are also customers that can give you repeat business once they see how well you perform after the sale.
It's understandable that many brands are risk-averse, but things like voice search and instant messaging are here to stay. Though increased sales will be the easiest ROI for conversational marketing, we've provided you with several other ways to measure the success of these programs. When your company makes itself available to consumers in real-time, it has the opportunity to increase engagement and act as a personalized guide at any point in that customer's journey with your business.
Interested in learning more about how one of these unique marketing solutions can benefit your business? Contact Connection Model to request an assessment or for more information.
Written By: David Carpenter
