3 Reasons Why Chatbots are the Future of Marketing

“Hi, my name is Olivia. I am here to help. So if you have any questions, just shoot!”

Sounds familiar, right? According to Forbes, 80% of marketers planning to launch a chatbot before the end of 2020, we can say that chatbots are here to stay.

Truth is, chatbots are a hot topic and have already proven themselves as a useful marketing and communication channel across various industries.

But what are chatbots? Why are they so important? And why does everyone see them as the future of marketing?

What are chatbots?

Chatbots can be described as computer programs using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simulate human conversations.

They can understand and respond to spoken or written language and can be deployed across websites, apps and social channels such as Facebook or WhatsApp.

Basic chatbots can reply simple keywords or conversations about specific topics, whereas the more sophisticated bots depend on machine learning.

3 reasons why chatbots are the future of marketing

1. They improve your (personalized) customer experience

Chatbots don’t get tired (or sick). They will work 24/7 which will reduce your live chat support bill. But the greatest winner is your customer and his experience. A chatbot can significantly improve your customer experience strategy.

At H&M for example, the chatbot takes over the role of a personal stylist. After an enjoying and interactive conversation, the chatbot recommends an outfit based on the conversation you just had. This personalized customer experience might just be your key differentiator.

2. They gather useful customer feedback

Chatbots are an easy and easily accessible way to interact with customers. They can very quickly collect feedback through simple questions.

The insights you gain by constantly analyzing this feedback, can help you make improvements on your products or services and can even help optimizing your website. Your chatbot can ask for example why customers are leaving a particular page or leaving their basket without buying.

3. They can support your lead generation strategy

Filling out lead generation forms can be an effective way to capture useful information of potential customers. But we can’t say it’s very refreshing, nor engaging.

Moreover, you risk boring your potential customer halfway through the form, leading him to drop out and leaving you without any information whatsoever.

Chatbots are the future

Today chatbots are mostly used as a customer service communication channel to answer customers’ questions. In most industries they are also used to help visitors navigating through a company’s website or an ecommerce buying process.

So while they are already proving their benefits today, it’s obvious that chatbots will become more advanced in the future.

As AI technology is getting stronger and more powerful every year, chatbots have fewer and fewer limits on what they can do. Let’s say, they are here to stay.