Modern consumers shop 24 hours a day. Most businesses don’t have the capability to be available every hour of every day to answer questions and provide information. Chatbots are a popular method of responding to your audience. Although chatbots have been around since 1966, today’s chatbots are becoming incredibly more useful and responsive. They’ve gone way beyond the telephone message system of the 1980s and 1990s. With a rise in Artificial Intelligence (AI), you can utilize this technology to benefit your own business. May content marketing work for you – in real-time!
What Is a Chatbot?
A bot is a program that automates tasks. You might assume that a chatbot is a computer program that chats with a customer. That is mostly true, but the value in a chatbot program is the ability to solve a problem and interact with the customer. Chatbots provide quick answers or connect people to a service. Chatbots are not designed to be conversational, but informational. Chatbots improve customer service. Content Marketing Institute calls chatbots an “underrated” marketing tool. Consider this—the average Facebook Messenger open rate is 80%, compared to the average email open rate of 21.33%.
How a Chatbot Helps You
Chatbots can fit almost any type of business. In fact, we’ll go so far as to say, this content tool works for any business that wants to boost audience engagement. We can’t imagine there may be some businesses that do not have this goal in mind. A chatbot can save you time and money by tracking orders or scheduling appointments. Most businesses use chatbots for customer service, but a few companies are stretching out in innovative ways. MedWhat is a medical diagnosis chatbot, or an advanced WebMD. Unicef’s U-Report is a chatbot connecting people around the world to speak out about problems. Chatbots can help you stay in touch with your audience without having to do the work yourself.
Strategies to Maximize Your Chatbot Sessions
Building a chatbot is easier when you use a service, such as Chatfuel or Botsify. You provide the content. The software provides the structure. You’ve probably already engaged with a chatbot if you’ve made travel reservations or placed a restaurant order in the past few months. Siri and Alexa are advanced chatbots. Sometimes, it can be difficult to know whether you’re dealing with a real person or a chatbot on some platforms—and that’s the beauty of it!
Creating content for a chatbot isn’t only about providing standard answers. After all, there aren’t only standard questions. You must also think about how your customer engages with you. In most cases, customers are engaging with chatbots to get answers and/or solutions. To be effective with a chatbot, you need to understand your customer’s problems when they reach out to you.
- Know the FAQs of your business to build the conversations within your chatbot.
- Give your chatbot a name and make sure the conversation lines up with your brand image. Lawyers or doctors may want a more formal style of conversation while restaurants can be more informal.
- Identify to the consumer that they are speaking with a bot. Always give them the option to opt out or get connected with a real person.
- Be personal with your messages.
- Interact with your chatbot to understand it from the consumer’s side. Test it out to find ways to improve.
- Use the analytical data from the chatbot to improve engagement and to test its effectiveness.
Provide Value to Your Chat Audience
Using chatbots can help you drive your content marketing results further, but you should have goals and objectives in mind when you set out to reach readers. MintCopy can help you set up your chatbot scripts and provide content to grow your business. Our team of SEO writers has many talents. Contact us today for more information.
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Resources:
- https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2020/11/chat-marketing-experts-examples/
- https://buffer.com/resources/chatbot-marketing/
- https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/10/04/chatbots
- https://sendpulse.com/support/glossary/chatbot-marketing#:~:text=Chatbot%20marketing%20is%20a%20way,with%20the%20help%20of%20AI
Sheetal Pinto is the founder of MintCopy, a content agency that has been helping businesses communicate effectively since 2008. With a passion for words and a knack for SEO, she’s worked with companies around the world to craft copy that not only engages but ranks. Whether it’s blog posts, website content, or social media updates, Sheetal has a talent for turning complex ideas into compelling stories. When she’s not optimizing content or editing for clarity, she’s probably daydreaming about the perfect headline or debating the Oxford comma. With over 16 years in the business, she’s seen the digital marketing and SEO content landscape evolve and grow. Sheetal’s mantra? Fresh copy, refreshing results!
