Achieving a chat marketing plan that allows you to get involved without being intrusive in the lives of your users, seems like an impossible task. The appearance of a pop-up window with an unknown person wanting to ” help ” your clients is usually not well accepted. It tends to be a double-edged sword that crosses between discomfort and acceptance.
Live chats, chatbots, and related messaging tools have enhanced the online shopping experience . They have managed to open new and fast channels of communication between the buyer and the seller.
The secret of this innovative technique of customer service such as chat marketing goes hand in hand in the way in which the conversation is maintained.
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Why should you do a chat marketing plan?
As reviewed by Market Research Magazine Inc., 51 percent of consumers say a business should be available 24 hours a day , 7 days a week. While younger consumers, who are between the ages of 18 and 34, claim to use live chat regularly for customer service.
The chatbots and instant messaging are an important source of data. Something you can use to improve your content and understand the relationship between your products and their consumers. For this reason, large organizations and the most powerful personal brands are opting for this communication strategy. Always in order to generate links between the communities and their services.
These are some of the benefits of making a chat marketing plan so that your business not only adopts more clients, but also becomes the lovemark they will defend:
A.- It is a direct communication channel with clients
Providing clients with a direct line of communication can streamline the process of answering their questions . Saving time and frustrations when making a call to the customer service number. Who does not want the one who saves time and money?
B.- Improve sales, ruling out objections
Being present at the moment when the customer is still questioning whether to press the purchase button or not, allows you to assertively address their concerns, anticipating their objections . This tool is an opportunity to make your buyers feel more confident about their decisions.
C.- It saves you money as a company
Can you pay a real, living person to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? You’re not alone. Many companies have call center services, but the expense does not make it an option for all small and medium businesses.
With live chat, multitasking is possible. Support specialists can juggle multiple chat boxes, within reason. In the same way that many users have different instant message conversations going on.
Chatmarketing provides a practical way to answer customer questions outside of normal business hours.
Still thinking about text messaging is profitable?
In the culture of instant gratification, users don’t want to wait for a reply to in their email. The main trends for e-commerce in 2020 indicate that the increase in chatbots in conjunction with automation are the leading strategies of the winning businesses .
Most people have come to accept communication from texts as part of their daily lives. In fact, text messages have been shown to have open and response rates as high as 98% and 45%, according to studies by Gartner in late 2019.
Also, if you think 90 percent of the time, a text message is read within the first three minutes of receiving it, it’s well worth the investment to evaluate the conversion.
Some studies indicate that customers who receive text messages from companies tend to have a 40% higher conversion rate than those who do not. That is why it will be useful for you to follow these 10 tips to make an effective and indispensable marketing chat in order not to scare your users:
1.- Make it simple
It is one of the keys to making an effective chat marketing plan: Try to keep communications concise, understandable and clear . As in life itself, talking too much, being repetitive, and giving long answers can confuse users.
2.- Give it a name
Did you know that you can customize the name of your bot to fit your brand? In fact, it is the most recommended. Even if it’s a personal brand, you can make it speak and look like you, which is sure to help with brand recognition. And it will clearly indicate that the user is interacting with a bot messenger.
3.- One thing at a time
Although multitasking is one of the main benefits of chatbots and chat marketing, it is important that you organize your schedule to accomplish a single task. Then it will be time to add features progressively so as not to overwhelm your human and binary team. Which, in addition, will allow communication with your users not to become difficult.
4.- Combine Email Marketing and Chat Marketing
With average email open rates exceeding 19% and limited click rates at around 2%, this type of marketing is flexing its force with open rates above 80% and click rates above 30%.
So combining both strategies can be a great plan . It’s as simple as building a list by attracting new leads, nurturing those customers, providing them with relevant content, answering their questions, and turning those leads into paying customers. All this in a multi-channel strategy that takes advantage of each channel in what is best.
5.- Take advantage of the open chat window to create real links
Unlike Email Marketing, which tends to focus conversation on user groups, chat marketing is much more interactive, personalized, and conversational .
During the conversation through the chat you can, in addition to sending information, extract personalized content for them. This is a value-added service for followers that puts even more control in your hands. And that will help them get what they want on demand, increasing confidence with your business.
6.- Clear communication as humans, without being informal
One of the most powerful advantages you can get from making an effective chat marketing plan is that it allows you to show yourself as a more spontaneous brand . Of course, you should not go too naturally.
A message presented in an inconvenient tone to an angry customer may disadvantage you. And ignite a flare of criticism harmful to your brand. So make sure that your messages are handled with the same criteria with which you communicate in the offline world with your customers.
7.- A single idea per conversation
Like when hundreds of open chats appear on your mobile and you don’t have time to read them all, what do you do? Scans. The same goes for chats to sell. Plan them to develop a goal aligned with your brand strategy. It is another of the axes that you should not forget before making a chat marketing plan.
8.- Remember that it is not a monologue
Chat marketing is two-way communication. Therefore, it offers several response options to your chatbots to make it a conversation. It includes two answer buttons to collect key information that is very specific and leaves no doubt.
9.- Attract, don’t sell
An open chat just to sell is unbearable. It’s like when a friend writes to you just for interest. If you use your chat marketing strategy in this way, you will only be seen as spam. What will make your potential buyer get bored of you and block you.
So, to make a chat marketing plan, alternate contact between your clients from time to time with relevant content . Before selling to them, propose a dialogue to find out where they are in the sales funnel .
10.- A conversation that connects
All businesses that prosper start from the positive relationships they create with their consumers, both loyal and those who are still close to buying. And a lot of that discussion of how to retain past customers and attract new ones comes down to personalization .
The more you can make someone feel like you’re there to serve them and meet all of their specific needs , the more likely it is that they will not only become a buyer and user of your product or service, but also defend it.
Bonus: A strategy according to what your customers need
One of the main reasons consumers prefer chat is because they can continue to take steps toward a purchase decision without compromising on exclusive time. And forgetting the overwhelming process of going to a face-to-face store to be attended by a seller reluctantly.
It is important to understand the context that surrounds your communities , considering that users are now managed between dozens of different stimuli at any given time.
It has become normal for users to check their email, reply to an Instagram comment, and text a friend in seconds. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense, from a commercial perspective, to adapt to that type of lifestyle and present it according to your clients.
