THE NEW WEAPON : CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING

BY ROBIN GHOSH

( FORMER CHIEF  ECONOMIST, BENGAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY)

KOLKATA, 7 OCTOBER 2022

You are a startup. You have created the product. You have uploaded the website with an Enquiry Form. Customers are filling up the form. Now, how to go about it ?

Conversational Marketing is the weapon. It is the new age marketing tool.

What is Conversational Marketing?

It is a dialogue driven  marketing . It uses real time conversations to engage site visitors and push them to buy your products.

It is a kind of replacement. Instead of compelling the people to go through the lead capture forms and wait days for a response , this is a fast response platform  that enables targeted messaging and intelligent chatbots to engage with people when they are on your website.

You must have observed that buyers and sellers now look for instant solutions. The old school business of filling forms, email messaging is not working any more.

Customers want instant engagement.  Business has again become a case for personal relationships. It is, and demands a human experience.

Does it mean that we throw off everything that we have been practicing?

No. The new Conversational Marketing Framework is an add on, a supplement. A new marketing weapon.

The framework for conversational  marketing consists of

* Engage

* Understand

* Recommend

What are the steps?

1. Engage more leads with chats instead  of forms.

2 . Understand leads and connect instantly instead of days.

3.  Suggest the right next steps to convert leads to business transactions.

Before you take up Conversational Marketing as one of your key marketing instruments, once again internalize the benefits of this unique marketing game plan.

1. Enables customers a human experience

2 . Learn many dimensions of buyers’ mental models.

3 . Helps  you to convert half-hearted  leads into qualifying leads.

4. Send personalized recommendations to site visitors.

5 . Personalized  engagement  shortens sales cycle

6 . Helps the sales team to  close the deal efficiently.

Conversational Marketing is a dynamic concept. A moving concept. A creative and a human concept. No doubt chatbot and such other addons provide support but human interface and interaction still remain supreme and powerful.