What is conversational marketing and why is it important for SMBs?

Conversational marketing is a modern approach to customer engagement that involves connecting with customers through interactive conversations. This type of marketing leverages the power of digital technology to provide personalized experiences, allowing businesses to build relationships with customers.

It differs from other forms of inbound marketing, such as email marketing, as it focuses on creating meaningful conversations and interactions between brands and consumers rather than simply pushing out promotional messages.

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), conversational marketing can be an invaluable tool for building brand awareness, lead generation, customer loyalty and trust among their target audiences.

By engaging customers in two-way dialogues through various channels such as chatbots or social media platforms, SMBs foster deeper connections with their audiences while gleaning valuable insights into customer preferences and pain points.

In this blog, we will explore how conversational marketing can benefit SMBs, from increasing ROI to driving more leads and sales.

The benefits of conversational marketing

Here are the key benefits of conversational marketing for SMBs and their sales teams.

Increased customer engagement

By engaging customers in conversations, SMBs can create a more personal connection with their target audiences. Through engaging conversations, businesses can showcase their products and services more authentically, encouraging customers to take action.

For example, a chatbot can be programmed with qualifying questions to open customer conversations and provide tailored responses. This creates a positive and memorable customer experience, which can help increase customer loyalty and engagement.

Increased ROI

By investing in conversational marketing strategies, such as chatbots or social media campaigns, SMBs can optimize ROI and maximize their profits. These strategies allow businesses to automate mundane tasks, resulting in fewer resources to generate new leads and engage with potential customers.

Conversational marketing strategies are highly customizable and can easily be tailored to fit a specific target audience or marketing channels, leading to optimized results.

Humanize customer experience

Conversational marketing enables businesses to create an experience that feels less robotic and more human. By engaging customers in meaningful conversations, businesses create a more personalized and human experience, leading to greater customer satisfaction.

In addition, conversational marketing helps businesses better understand their customers and their individual needs, allowing them to make informed decisions for product development and marketing strategies.

Drive more leads and sales

By utilizing conversational marketing, SMBs can map out the sales cycle and the customer journey through the sales funnel. As conversations are tailored to the customer’s needs and interests, this can help to increase the likelihood of a sale.

By capturing customer data through conversational marketing, businesses can also gain valuable insights into their customers’ buying habits and preferences. This allows them to create targeted campaigns to drive more leads and sales.

Real-time response

Conversational marketing offers businesses the ability to provide real-time responses to customer inquiries. This can be especially beneficial for SMBs as customers are more likely to make a purchasing decision when they receive a quick response.

For example, a chatbot can provide immediate answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ). Prompt and helpful responses will keep website visitors from investigating the competition and, ultimately, lead to more conversions.

How to implement conversational marketing for your business

Implementing conversational marketing for your SMB can be tricky and time-consuming. Start with these best practices.

Integrate chatbot into your website

A chat service can be integrated into your website or social media platforms to streamline customer conversations. This will allow you to provide automated customer service and quickly answer customer queries.

You can integrate Broadly’s Webchat into your website to start conversations with customers and provide tailored responses.

Use AI-based technology

Leverage AI-based technologies to provide personalized conversations with customers through various communication channels. This will allow you to understand customer needs better and provide them with tailored solutions.

You should also use AI-driven data to gain valuable insights throughout the sales process about how your customers interact with you and tailor messages for a more personalized experience.

Constantly track and monitor

Use a review management tool to monitor customer reviews on various platforms, such as Google My Business and Facebook, responding quickly when necessary and adjusting strategies when needed for improved performance results.

You can take advantage of Broadly’s reputation management tools by monitoring social media accounts for mentions about your business so that you can respond promptly and manage potential issues before they get out of hand.

Tips for getting the most out of conversational marketing

Here are some tips to improve the effectiveness of your conversational marketing strategies:

• Select the right platform that suits your unique business needs: This will ensure that your customers receive the best support possible and that you get the most out of your conversational marketing efforts.
• Keep conversations natural and personalized: Conversations are more effective as they create an authentic connection with customers and make them feel valued. This improves customer interactions and strengthens customer relationships.
• Focus on creating a seamless user experience: Ensure that conversations are easy to understand and focused on solving customer queries quickly. This is essential for customer support and sales reps.
• Use conversational marketing as part of a larger marketing approach: Follow up conversations with curated email campaigns to qualified leads. Such a holistic approach is crucial for increasing the conversion rate.
• Test and optimize: Test different conversational marketing strategies to see which works best for your business and continuously optimize them to ensure maximum efficiency.

Get the conversation started with Broadly

Broadly’s conversational marketing solutions are designed to engage customers, answer their questions and address their concerns in real time. You can use Broadly’s Webchat to chat with clients online through SMS text messages for real-time conversations.

Our Dashboard also offers data and insights to help you better understand customer needs and tailor conversations for a more personalized experience.

Broadly’s conversational marketing tools help you get the conversation started quickly and easily, allowing you to maximize your customer engagement and drive more sales for your SMB.

Excited to get started?