Create Better Marketing in 2019
A recent study showed that 87% of marketing is funneled through customer telling other customers about a brand. This is completely different compared to the traditional way of marketing. In the past, big corporations had control over public opinion. But now, a customer can simply go online to a third party website and see real-time comments from other customers. When did this happen? Well, we’ve known about 87% since 2009. So for ten years, we’ve ignored the change in brand awareness and we’ve done nothing about it. With so much money invested in TV advertising and billboards, big companies have repeated the same mistakes forcing us to watch their messages. Again, this approach worked in the past. We would watch TV and boom, a commercial.
This is no longer effective. Customers are begging, even paying, for companies to respect their time and privacy. In 2018, the rate of consumers paying for ad-free subscriptions increased drastically. More recently, there have been debates on consumer privacy. It seems our decade-long marketing strategy is doomed. But I think it’s time we changed our approach. It’s time we listen to people and not numbers.
"Marketing is solely about people, and who tells the story is more important than the story."
Shift your marketing to a conversation with your audience. A very effective method. Absolutely, the business world has evolved in tune with technological developments and advancements in the world today. Communication technologies and advancements have especially affected the evolution of businesses and the way they are being done. For example, social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are part of the major facilitators of communication in recent times and even more, smart business people have capitalized on this and are exploiting it to develop strategies that are based on customer communications and will better advance the interests of their businesses. This approach to marketing is being referred to as conversational marketing, and you definitely should consider adopting it if you wish to survive the competition in the 21st-century business world.
Reasons Why You Should Adopt The Conversational Marketing Approach:
- Conversational Marketing Allows For Messages That Are Hyper Targeted
- Allows For Intent Based Conversations With Clients
- Helps To Qualify Leads By Getting Customers’ Specific Needs
- Makes The Process Of Feedback Faster And More Reliable
- Leads To Better Customer Satisfaction And Enhanced Brand Loyalty
Definitely, the conversational marketing strategy – which entails an approach to marketing that is feedback oriented and based on a one-on-one communication with existing and prospective customers – is not much of a new concept in the world of marketing as it has been in existence for some time now and some business people have made use of it in the form of email marketing, etc., to advance their business interests and generate more leads in the past. However, with the modern advancements in the communication industry, it has gotten even better and more effective. Now, with much more advanced business communication technologies such as chatbots and the likes, there are bound to be more marketing opportunities for the business people who are smart enough to adopt the approach. Here are some more convincing reasons why you should not miss out on these opportunities;
1. Conversational Marketing Allows For Messages That Are Hyper Targeted
Photo by Chase Chenevert
The fundamental principle of conversational marketing is a personalized communication with existing and prospective customers. Thus, it allows marketers to create messages that are specifically targeted at individual customers. This is definitely going to yield better results in terms of market conversions and driving customer royalty, seeing that your marketing efforts are more specifically tailored and as such is bound to be more effective.
2. Allows For Intent Based Conversations With Clients
Because conversational marketing thrives on optimized messages and conversations with clients, it allows marketers to create content based messages with specific intents for each customer. This helps to bring credibility to the messages and contributes to its convincing power, such that when your audience gets the message, the impact is high, tailored to the specific intents of the messages and thus, creates better chances for the information to be acted upon. Ultimately leading to better and higher market conversions.
3. Helps To Qualify Leads By Getting Customers’ Specific Needs
Conversational marketing, because of its specialized nature elicit specific responses from your audience. When these responses are gathered, it helps you as a marketer to specifically note the needs of each existing or prospective customers who these responses have been gotten from. Thus, making it easier for you to categorize these customers according to their needs and to design strategies that will specifically meet their needs, for better service experiences.
4. Makes The Process Of Feedback Faster And More Reliable
Photo by Adam Jang
The nature of conversational marketing is direct and allows you to have unhindered access to your existing or prospective customers. Because of this, its feedback process is more reliable, faster, and credible in comparison to most other marketing approaches. This allows you as a marketer to leverage the feedback that has been elicited from your audience to advance the interests of your deals with them and ultimately promote your business.
5. Leads To Better Customer Satisfaction And Enhanced Brand Loyalty
Photo by Brooke Cagle
It goes without saying that private conversations with your customers and follow up actions based on the responses elicited from them during these interactions is bound to excite them and make them more satisfied with your business. This is because the solutions you offer them seems optimized and tailored specifically to their individual needs. Definitely, this will increase their sense of relevance and make them more endeared to your business. Plus, you sure know there is no better way to increase customers loyalty to your brand than making them feel pleased with and relevant to your brand.
It’s clear that the world we live in and everything in it evolves every day, businesses inclusive. Every smart business person, especially in the 21st century must always be on the look-out for the most current and effective business strategies and approaches in their niches and adopt them if they must continue to be successful. Currently, conversational marketing seems to be the rave in the business world, for obvious reasons. You definitely should adopt it too.
