Chat marketing – the next frontier for business growth

Commerce and conversations have been together from time immemorial and will stick together for years to come. What changed over the due course of time were the medium and the ways. The first paradigm shift in commerce and marketing came with the introduction of the internet and websites. Later came mobile applications with the launch of mobiles and smartphones, but the recent shift that started less than a decade ago has changed the complete scenario and pushed marketing exploration to new limits. Chat marketing has swept away the business world and taken marketing strategies ahead by leaps and bounds.

Truly, chat marketing has become the next frontier for business growth, from the smallest startups to the giants of industry. The idea behind the introduction of chat marketing was boredom and ennui caused by long-tailed emails and SMS, which started causing customer repulsion instead of gaining business grounds for the companies. The long-form formats for queries and feedbacks, context switching, and longer wait periods of conventional online marketing methods almost zeroed out the customers’ interest in buying products and services online. Chat marketing is an innovative approach to indulge the customer in a one-on-one conversation model, obtaining the required information and inputs for the desired products and services.

This further helps businesses deliver the exact outputs to their customers, and maintains better customer relationships.

With the technological advancements in IT and the latest innovations in Artificial Intelligence (AI), chat marketing has ably surpassed the human capabilities of servicing the customers’ needs on certain grounds like 24*7 prompt response, information collection, and customer behavioural cognition. Chat marketing can bring many advantages to businesses and boost their sales efficiently; still, some of the pros of the practice are worth mentioning.

A personalized conversation strikes deep into the customer’s mind and can magically convert the lead into an assured client. With cutting-edge technological methods and AI applications, the smart chatbots can engage the clients, understand their requirements, and respond in a natural way.

24*7 servicing in real time cannot be compared with anything else at all when it comes to a dedicated customer service system. Whether it is a feedback form or a query, chat marketing persuades the customer and succeeds in marketing and selling products and services.

The kickstart of lead generation begins with routing the ad traffic of a business to chat conversation systems where the potential customer gets into an interactive session looking for the desired products and services. It has been proven that such chat marketing tactics can increase the conversion rates by 40 percent to even 100 percent – almost double.

Better customer experience is the new decisive factor for marketing and sales of businesses. With increased purchasing power and competitive product qualities in the market, people have started looking for better experience and customer service. Chat marketing does the extravagant and delivers the best-in-class experience to the customers.

From notifications to newsletters, and new product launch to offers and promotional sales, the successful marketing strategies can be best deployed using chatbots. Emails and SMS have earlier failed with lower click-through rates and conversion rates, but interacting and engaging chat marketing has helped businesses grow and flourish.

Customer engagement and interaction altogether is a newly found segment in marketing and sales domain. The new generation of businesses targets making everything interesting for their customers and giving them a unique experience. The star players on the front lines for such businesses are again the chatbots.

Whether it is lead generation or content marketing, reaching the target audience through conversational marketing is the newfound Midas for companies. The growth of the business largely depends on marketing and sales strategies, and conversational commerce, a.k.a. chat marketing has come out with flying colours in proving itself the best tool.

Vipul Garg is the Co-founder and Head of Marketing at Morph.ai, a bot platform for building powerful marketing chatbots for business.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)