With the rise of technology, conversational commerce has become a major player in the e-commerce market. It involves using chatbots, messaging apps, or voice-based virtual assistants to provide customers with a more personalized and interactive shopping experience.
As a result, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that sell products they create or manufacture need to understand the benefits and incorporate conversational commerce into their marketing strategy to stay ahead of the game in 2023.
Why is Conversational Commerce Important?
Conversational commerce offers numerous benefits for both businesses and customers. For businesses, it provides real-time customer interactions, brand expertise, and the ability to reach customers through messaging platforms. This can result in increased customer loyalty and higher conversion rates.
For customers, conversational commerce offers a personalized shopping experience, the ability to get quick answers to questions and make purchases easily, and the opportunity for post-purchase feedback.
The Benefits of Conversational Commerce for Brands
Conversational commerce can drive sales, enhance the customer experience, and provide cost-effective solutions for businesses.
Brands can use conversational marketing to personalize their message. This allows them to speedily move customers towards conversion, and gather feedback to continually improve their strategy.
Top Tips for Conversational Marketing Success
Let’s start with being human.
When it comes to conversational commerce, the goal is to create a personalized and human experience for customers. To achieve this, brands should use communication methods that are personable and relatable, such as videos, GIFs, emojis, and memes.
This will help to build a strong connection with customers and increase the chances of making a sale.
Following Up
Next, following up on customer queries is crucial for success with conversational commerce. Customers may have questions or concerns that need to be addressed. You should be prepared to assist them in a timely and helpful manner.
For example, if a customer has left items in their shopping cart, send the customer reminders or cross-sells to encourage them to complete the purchase.
Keep Track of Activity
Measuring the success of conversational marketing is also important for continuous improvement. Brands can use real-time metrics and tracking tools, such as Botanalytics and Dashbot, to monitor the performance of their chatbots and chat-based marketing efforts.
Set Specific Goals
Finally, it’s important to set specific goals for conversational marketing. Brands should determine what they want to achieve with their chat-based marketing efforts. Whether it’s increased sales, customer satisfaction, or brand awareness. By setting clear goals, you can focus their efforts and track their progress over time.
Sephora has successful implemented this Strategy
Sephora, a beauty retailer, is a prime example of leveraging conversational commerce. They implemented a chatbot that provides customers with an interactive and personalized shopping experience. This allows customers to find and purchase products, ask questions, and even book appointments in real-time.
It has made it seamless for customers to engage with Sephora and make purchases without having to leave the messaging platform they are using.
The chatbot uses natural language processing and deep learning to understand and respond to customer inquiries. This creates a personalized and human-like experience for customers, as the chatbot is able to understand the customer’s needs and provide quick and accurate answers. Naturally Sephora has been able to build an even stronger connection with their customers with this automation.
This technology has impacted Sephora in a number of ways. From driving sales to providing a cost-effective solution for customer service.
According to a Medium article by Aubrey Wang, the average wait time for customer service is down by 50% and has increased the number of appointments booked through the chatbot by 10%. Therefore, Sephora can reach more customers all while reducing costs associated with traditional customer service methods.
Although Sephora is quite a large brand, conversational commerce is able to be scaled by SMB eCommerce businesses. It serves as a great example of how to capitalize on these opportunities and the impact a business can experience.
Final Thoughts
Conversational commerce is quickly becoming the preferred customer service channel and is crucial for the success and revenue growth of SMB e-commerce businesses. Brands that incorporate conversational commerce into their marketing strategy will benefit from increased customer satisfaction and higher conversion rates.
As technology continues to advance, it is important for businesses to stay ahead of the curve and prepare for the future of e-commerce.
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