For an unprepared eye it may seem that chatbots are just a means of communication between a business and a client. In truth, they are so much more than that, assures Denis Lagutenko, founder of two internationally operating digital agencies AdsProfit and ADSbase and major influencer with about 500k followers on Instagram and Crunchbase.
Chatbots are a robust marketing tool that can boost conversions and improve performance of your marketing activities. Chatbots are programmed by highly customizable rules and algorithms, which makes them easily adaptable to any business needs. They can imitate human behavior and can seamlessly automate routine business processes.
So, how can a chatbot be of use to your business? Denis accords high priority to the fact that chatbots can maintain a dialogue with clients at scale, provide them with essential information, process purchase orders etc. Next, chatbots are available 24/7 which means your clients get the information at any time. Last but not least, chatbots can completely automate certain marketing tasks taking the workload off of your personnel.
Which chatbots are the most effective in automating marketing activities? Here’s a top 5 compilation from Denis Lagutenko.
1. Live Chat
Source: memberpress.com
When visitors come to your site or open your social profile, they are usually looking for answers to their questions. If the company fails to establish communication with synch users, they are likely to leave. Live Chat helps you solve this issue. This chatbot can process client requests, answer questions and provide all the necessary information. You can set up rules, provide the FAQ etc.
A chatbot created in Live Chat, can easily adapt to your needs: you can name it, provide an avatar, set up automated rules of engagement with the clients and track statistics.
2. GrowthBot
Source: square2marketing.com
If you publish lots of content on your blog, social media or messengers, one of the most time-consuming activities is researching the field and looking for topics. GrowthBot allows you to optimize even such a complicated process like this one. It can collect statistics based on user requests and provide relevant materials based on various parameters.
GrowthBot has robust functionality: not only does it automate topic search, but also helps you analyze your traffic. It can be integrated with such platforms as Facebook Messenger, Slack and Twitter. It won’t do wonders and create engaging content for you, but it will definitely help with the search for hot topics, tracking statistics and competitive analysis.
3. Driftbot
Source: producthunt.com
Marketers all around the globe struggle with qualifying leads, warming them up and helping them convert. Driftbot can significantly simplify this process taking over a big share of a marketer’s responsibility. In a nutshell, this bot allows you to automatically ask a potential client prequalifying questions to determine their stage of the customer journey. Driftbot is so good that not every client can tell they are not talking to a human operator.
All in all, Driftbot imitates a live chat with a real person motivating the client to engage in a conversation. How else can it be of use? The bot can help the client with the search for the right product or service and will answer the most common questions. All you’ll have to do is close the deal.
4. Standup Bot
Source: geekbot.com
Even if you don’t mention a big team, it can be hard to track their performance. Standup Bot can help you with that part. Its main goal is tracking the activity of your staff and make sure the team is on the same page. Establishing communication within the team can be a challenge, especially if there are more than ten of them. So why not automate this process with a chatbot?
If you have remote member on the team, this solution will be especially helpful. Standup Bot allows you to track your staff performance, maintain discipline and share important information with them.
5. Chatfuel
Source: softwareadvice.co.nz
This chatbot has the widest range of functionality which derives from the support platforms and complex conversation tree algorithms. The platform allows you to launch chatbots on your own site or in Facebook, as in a private group or on Messenger. With Chatfuel, you can program the chatbot to answer the questions according to the FAQ, and create a queue of messages that the bot will send at a particular time. With the help of this bot you can communicate with your clients and send them reminders on particular occasions. Chatfuel can be integrated with other social media and collect information about your target audience. The service can also analyze social media activity in the chats.
Conclusion
These days, statistics tell us that users are more eager to engage with the brand if the latter contacts them in messengers and chats. The majority of them prefer this method of communication over any other. The questions that your potential and current clients need answered are quite common. And it’s a good reason for any business to automate communication with clients without losing in quality, as Denis described in his recent article for Benzinga.
Denis would not presume to claim that chatbots can take up all of your marketing responsibilities. But he feels quite positive about their ability to save a great amount of time that you spend on routine tasks, which will make you more effective at what you do. According to Juniper Research, by 2024 bots can help brands earn over $22 billion. Hence, creating a bot is not that hard at all. Many platforms allow you to do it seamlessly and with minimal costs. These are the key reasons to start automating your business processes with chatbots right away.
