Conversational Marketing: the importance of building a dialogue

Conversational Marketing is definitely an important trend that brands and companies need to look towards. Let's see how!

Have you ever wondered why human beings are constantly talking to each other? Whether in written or oral form or with gestures ? The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined man as a “ social animal ” to explain his tendency towards sociability . For this reason it's no wonder that one of the 2021 trends to implement an effective strategy is conversational marketing , meaning conversation- based marketing .

Dialogue was, in fact, right from the start one of the means of communication that allowed man to cooperate , transmit his culture and survive compared to other species. Therefore, giving up the communicative exchange would mean extinction for the human being. The pandemic itself has shown us how reducing sociality has generated many psychological, economic and social problems.

The word is practically the basis of most of the things that surround us, which is why it is essential to cultivate relationships between people through healthy dialogue even in marketing .

What is Conversational Marketing?

It is a conversational marketing approach between the customer and the company. Something that could have been guessed even just by reading the term, but the definition is not so obvious. Aiming for a marketing approach based on speech, in this specific case on conversation, allows us to build deep relationships with our target compared to other strategies that can hardly achieve this result.

Why is conversational marketing able to generate such a result? The power of the word that lies behind every communication allows the company, organization or enterprise to know and resolve the needs of its target in real time . For example, if a citizen or customer needs to solve an administrative procedure or requires assistance for a product, the real-time conversation with one of the employees of the institution or company will allow him to quickly resolve the problem and personalize the his message. On the other hand, the company or institution will be able to acquire valuable data at no cost to improve their strategy.

Let's start by focusing on a few keywords: real time.

The benefits of conversational marketing

Why build a dialogue ? Answering this question allows us to understand the difference between conversational marketing and other marketing approaches . For a brand, focusing its strategy on personalized dialogue with the customer would mean generating empathy, eliminating the imaginary distance that often arises between the brand and the customer. Answering a user's question, giving advice , helping and following him in times of difficulty will humanize the brand, showing the customer that behind that brand there are actually people and not just profit and buildings.

Nimisha Jain, CEO of the Boston Consulting Group in New Delhi in her speech for TED explained how "Consumers who engage in conversational commerce spend 40% more with greater satisfaction " . The famous saying " pampering the customer " is actually not that far from reality. When the person feels comfortable with a brand, they are happy to shop in the reference store and will certainly come back to buy.

For this reason, we no longer speak of pure and direct sales, but what generates more sales is marketing that creates emotion and makes the customer live an experience . This may also apply to the Public Administration: citizens who have a pleasant experience in their local municipality, for example to change their identity card, will be more inclined to return without feeling frustrated. Similarly: if he receives friendly assistance via chat, he will be led to arrive at the physical counter with greater kindness and with the right documents to resolve his case. This also generates an increase in trust in institutions and brands.

Building a dialogue is, therefore, essential to personalize people's experience as much as possible and leave them with a positive experience .

Keyword: customization.

The characteristics of conversational marketing

But after seeing what conversational marketing is and what its benefits are, it's time to understand what its characteristics are in concrete terms. The process of this approach is based on three key points:

• Involvement
• Comprehension
• Advice

Involvement

Involving your target means making them part of something : a context or perhaps a community. Using this approach allows you to transform the customer from number to person . If he feels he belongs to something, if he embraces the brand's philosophy, for consistency (one of Robert Cialdini's weapons of persuasion), he will be more inclined not to buy just a product but to completely follow the brand's work to continue his experience and cultivate its status symbol through the same brand (eg. Is Apple kind and efficient? I will always continue to buy Apple products).

Comprehension

Understanding customer needs is the fundamental step of conversational marketing. If the person feels understood through a personalized response , in real time , he will perceive a different attention towards him and he will feel he has to reciprocate the courtesy . Furthermore, if the personalized response is also pleasant because it is not standardized, the person will be more inclined to return (Robert Cialdini's Principles of Sympathy and Reciprocity).

Advice

Finally, if the personalized conversation does not stop at just a simple answer to a customer's question, but goes further, perhaps recommending the best outfit for his daily life, or a trick to solve the case more easily, everything will be recognized by the person . In particular, the most useful thing for this purpose is to channel the customer or citizen towards the purchase or termination of a practice by advising him on the next step to carry out.

With these three key points you will have understood that conversational marketing is not simply a live conversation or a response, but it is much more: it is listening, understanding, courtesy. We will now see for greater completeness what are the tools of this approach.

Keyword: listening.

The tools of conversational marketing

By tools we mean the means that allow the brand or organization to implement this approach and integrate it into a broader marketing strategy. The tools that can be useful in this case are:

• Live chats;
• Social media, websites and messaging apps;
• Chat bots and virtual assistants.

As you can imagine, to manage these tools it is possible to implement automatic systems or foresee the work of a customer care team . How to choose whether to delegate everything to a virtual assistant or budget people dedicated to answering them? It depends on resources and time available.

Choosing to promote a 24/7 assistance service requires an effective strategy : the first thing you will have to do is ask yourself what type of service you want to offer your target , based on objectives and resources.

There are two possible modes of delivery of this service: automatic or manual .

1. In the first case, using tools such as chatbots or virtual assistants which, after being programmed with certain contents, would automatically respond in the name of the brand;
2. In the second case, however, by activating a virtual counter through chats and video calls where a natural person and not an automation would answer behind the screen.

It is up to you to decide based on your needs and resources, the type of service you want to offer .

Keyword: efficiency.

Examples of conversational marketing

Finally, the time has come to make everything more concrete through practical examples that have tried to apply the conversational marketing strategy.

One of the first examples I want to tell you about is Virtual Monty, the Virtual Assistant who has the look, feel and voice of Italy's most famous business influencer. The technologies at the base of Virtual Monty allow Marco Montemagno 's videos to be viewed in a few moments and to answer the various questions of its users by fishing them directly from Wikipedia. It was developed by the Sienese company QuestIT , through Algho, a system that uses natural language processing.

Another example is that of Domino's Pizza, the brand allows its customers to order pizza via chat by simply sending the pizza emoji . The only thing required of the customer is the activation, on first access, of an "easy order" to allow the company to start the order as soon as the pizza emoji is received. A nice and smart system to simplify the customer's shopping experience as much as possible.

Sephora, on the other hand, through a chatbot offers the customer to carry out a survey to learn more about his profile and be able to give personalized advice based on the data entered. For example, one of the main customer-facing messages is “ Get makeup tips and reviews by chatting with us “.

If, on the other hand, you live in Siena and need to renew your identity card, get in touch with Caterina , the virtual assistant of the Municipality , to get all the necessary information and book an appointment. A must-try virtual experience always developed by the aforementioned QuestIT .