How often do you talk with your audience? No, not share a post you think is useful and expect your audience to affirm your beliefs. I mean, really talk to them, hear about their challenges, and evaluate ways to help them overcome those challenges?
Though we all genuinely interact with our audience fairly regularly, often, we also spend a lot of time “broadcasting”—talking about how our brand can serve them and promoting our content, events, and activities. While promotion has a time and place in social media marketing, sincere conversations have a far greater place and worth. To chat about how much value conversational marketing brings to a brand, we invited B2B marketer and #TwitterSmarter chat veteran, Shruti Deshpande. Here’s a summary of our chat.
Guest: Shruti Deshpande
Topic: Conversational marketing on Twitter
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.
Conversational marketing is about engaging in one-on-one interactions with prospects, customers, and your audience. Unlike an announcement, conversational marketing prioritizes dialogues and information sharing.
It’s an ideal way for businesses to interact with their audience, know their preferences while spreading the word about their offering at the same time.
A1.b. It allows businesses to gain unique customer insights while also providing value about their products and services, but in a more customized manner. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
As Joana pointed out, conversational marketing directly addresses people’s need to share opinions, stories, and experiences.
a1
❤️🧠 it's human to human marketing.
people love to chat, share experiences, ask questions, help others. #twittersmarter— joana rita sousa 🦄 💩💎 (@JoanaRSSousa) January 27, 2022
This is why, as our guest explained, conversational marketing is an effective means of communication for brands. It’s also highly responsive, meaning your audience will respond to you earnestly.
A1.c. Conversational marketing practices allow brands to have a more effective means of engaging and hence convert customer faster. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Any brand that intends to leverage positive customer experiences as a strategy to promote their business and encourage customers to return, should use conversational marketing.
A2.a. Conversational marketing is great for brands that want to use personal experience strategy to capture more information about their customers and use it to make their customers repeat purchase. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
As Alyx added, conversational marketing can be a powerful tool for brands to build a strong community organically. Whether it’s online or in real life, participating in genuine conversations is always a win for businesses.
A2 All of them
Conversational marketing is a fantastic tool to build an organic community anywhere – IRL, online, in and out of your local community, etc – because it focuses on what the customer needs/wants and building & nurturing relationships
-Alyx#TwitterSmarter https://t.co/QpqWvdCk9I— Charlie & Alyx – Charlie Appel Agency (@ColfaxInsurance) January 27, 2022
Our guest also gave us a few examples of popular brands that use conversational marketing effectively. While Domino’s uses emoji to encourage people to buy again, the skincare brand, Sephora, makes it easier for customers to book appointments at stores nearest to them.
A2.c. Sephora – a makeup and skin care company automatically books appointments through Facebook messenger using geolocation to encourage people to come to the storefront. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
The rideshare brand, Lyft, uses chatbots across social channels to help their customers book rides easily.
and finally,
A2.d.Lyft, the second-largest ridesharing company in the US after Uber, have been using chatbots on various platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, and Amazon Echo to make it easy for customers to request rides. #TwitterSmarter— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Conversational marketing builds on traditional marketing. It means that you use materials and content you created in your traditional marketing activities to start conversations and build up relationships with your audience.
For example, assessing website visitors and categorizing them based on their chances of converting is traditional marketing. Adding a chatbot to engage with those visitors is conversational marketing.
A3.b. In other words it’s automated conversation with your website visitors. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Lance put it nicely. Traditional marketing follows a rigid plan and structure. You run a campaign, you target certain groups with a specific message, and you have prepared responses for your leads.
Conversational marketing, on the other hand, is more pliable. There’s no one correct way of doing it, and your approach will (and should) evolve with every person you engage with. It varies by season, by the customers’ needs, by their current economic and social situations, and by their nature. It’s more like offering one-on-one customer support, rather than shooting out an email to a list in bulk.
#TwitterSmarter A3: Traditional #Marketing is usually set around a specific schedule, a formulated plan. Whereas, conversational marketing can revolve around the current needs and interests of customers/prospects/customer service. Conversational marketing about providing answers.
— Lance A Schart (@LanceASchart) January 27, 2022
There are heaps of ways to implement conversational marketing. As our guest listed out, live chats, automated chatbots, voice assistants, product tours, conversational AI-based guides are all simple ways to be more conversational with your audience.
A4. Live chat, chat bots, voice assistants and other forms of conversational AI like a virtual product advisor. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Madalyn told us about how Gary Vaynerchuck connects with his audience using text messages. With consistent tips, motivational messages, and reminders, he actively encourages interaction.
A4: Many brands have begun using a text app as a way to connect with their audience. @garyvee is one example. He provides motivational messages, tips, and reminders of upcoming events. It invites your audience to respond, kickstarting a great conversation. #TwitterSmarter https://t.co/w1Irv0Pm8B
— MadalynSklar.eth NFT Enthusiast (@MadalynSklar) January 27, 2022
And of course, Twitter chats and Spaces are also forms of conversational marketing, as Jennifer reminded us.
A4: This very chat #TwitterSmarter could be considered conversational marketing. Hosting regular Twitter Spaces could be another.
— 🟣 Jennifer Navarrete (@epodcaster) January 27, 2022
Apart from getting to know your audience and their preferences, apart from making great connections and building lifelong relationships, conversational marketing is also a good way to hone your messaging and increase customer satisfaction. The more targeted your message is to your ideal audience, the more credible you seem.
If you’re a business with multiple offerings and various groups of audiences, conversational marketing can help you categorize your interactions and give your customers hyper-targeted information that they can instantly relate to.
A5.b In short -There are often a large variety of product traits, benefits, costs, customizations that the customers cannot choose the best one for themselves. But when they interact with a brand, they are given best-in-class context about the choices they have. #TwitterSmarter
— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Perhaps the biggest advantage of conversational marketing is that it’s natural, as Jim pointed out. It allows you to market your business without being overly salesy or fake. True discussions are the way to go.
A5. It allows you to educate, engage, entertain, and empower the people and brands you are having a conversation with in a natural manner.
This builds trust and can lead to more later.#TwitterSmarter
— Jim Fuhs #DealcastersLive #DigitalMarketing (@FuhsionMktg) January 27, 2022
First off, actively engage with your audience. One way to do that is to set up AI-powered chatbots on your website to respond to visitor questions instantly. You can set up default responses to a handful of frequently-asked questions, and then transfer the interaction over to a real human.
A6.b. Step 2 Understand;
Based on responses from step 1, and their behavior on your website you can create customer segments while focusing on qualified leads. #TwitterSmarter— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Next, based on the response you get on your first step, evaluate your strategy and understand what your audience really expects from you.
A6.d. Step 4 Convert;
At this stage your sales reps know far more about these leads and can hold more personalized conversations with these qualified leads, making it easier to convert them. #TwitterSmarter— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
It’s also important to know which channels to pursue, as Cassandra mentioned. Listen to your audience across various channels—social media, website, real-life community meetups—to know where they are most active. Then, start planning your strategy from there.
A6. Start by listening and understanding what channels the majority of your customers are talking to/about you on. Start there. #TwitterSmarter
— Cassandra Zink (@iamcassandra) January 27, 2022
Conversational marketing intends to improve how your audience engages with you. Therefore, to measure the success of your activities, look at stats like loyalty levels, customer satisfaction rates, reviews, and lead engagement time at each stage of the funnel.
A7. Metrics to measure success of conversational marketing are;
👉Increased lead engagement
👉Improved customer loyalty, NPS scores, reviews & feedback
👉More engaged leads at each step of sales funnel
👉Lower acquisition cost, close more deals, faster. #TwitterSmarter— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Eventually, you also want to see those sales numbers creeping up, as Christine noted.
A7:
Direct: How much engagement is happening? Are people returning & are you also getting new people?
Indirect but crucial: are sales improving?#TwitterSmarter— Christine Gritmon❤️ #ChatAboutBrand (@cgritmon) January 27, 2022
There’re so many tools you can use. Our guest’s list included Facebook and Instagram chatbots, Google Business Messages, WhatsApp business, Hubspot Live Chatbot, Apple Business Chat, Drift, and Telegram Bots.
A8. Some of the conversational tools and platforms are;
👉Facebook messenger chatbot
👉Instagram messenger chatbot
👉Google Business Messages
👉WhatsApp business App
👉Hubspot Live Chatbot
👉Apple Business Chat
👉Drift
👉Telegram Bots and more #TwitterSmarter— Shruti Deshpande (@shruti12d) January 27, 2022
Once you know what they really want from you, give them the information they need. Recommend solutions that are relevant to their requirements and build a relationship with them. Gradually, you’ll have learned a lot about your leads and how you can best serve them. Converting them into customers would be a natural step up from there.
Our friends from GiveWP also recommended Talkwalker alerts and Brandwatch for measuring audience sentiment.
A8) Talkwalker or Brandwatch are great tools to measure social sentiment 🙂 #TwitterSmarter
— GiveWP (@GiveWP) January 27, 2022
Well, that’s all from me, folks. Thanks for reading through, and for more insights from our chat with Shruti, browse through this Twitter thread.
If you think this summary is pretty good, you’ll love the real-time chat. Join us every Thursday at 1pm ET on #TwitterSmarter. Afterward, we also hang out on Twitter Spaces at 5pm ET to continue our chat. Catch you there!
About me, Narmadhaa:
I write all the things—marketing stuff for the bills; haiku and short stories for the soul. A social media enthusiast, I hang out with the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and am always happy to take on writing gigs.
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