Guide on How to Use Chatbots in Marketing

Customer service used to have a monopoly on the application of chatbots, especially in the early days. However, as the tech behind virtual assistants has become more and more accessible and consumer adoption has not stopped growing from year to year, the application of conversational assistants also grows in diversity. Bots started to prove they can stand their ground on every step of the customer journey. There are many chatbot marketing use cases to back up this claim.‍

Using chatbots for marketing seems to be taking on a life of its own, especially in the post-pandemic landscape. Hence, we have put together a list of key marketing chatbot use cases you can leverage in any industry.

What is Chatbot Marketing?

Chatbot marketing is a marketing tactic that leverages conversational automation to achieve common marketing goals such as lead generation, qualification, conversion, customer engagement, and, of course, support. Chatbots in marketing can be deployed on the web, on messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, or as part of native brand apps. You can leverage them as part of your organic efforts or paid campaigns.

Benefits of Using Chatbots in Marketing

The conversational approach comes with several benefits unlikely to achieve with any other marketing strategies, including:

• Real-time responsiveness and reactions
• On-the-Spot Customer Experience Personalization
• Interactive Engagement
• Instant Data Collection and Processing

Just to give you an example of some of the chatbot marketing benefits in action, image a conversational landing page campaign that captures your potential customers in an interactive conversation from the very first touch-point. In this scenario, the bot can ask questions to instantly determine customer profile, interest, or level of qualification. Unqualified leads can be sent on a nurture path that reflects the preferences gathered during the chatbot conversations. Qualified leads can proceed to book a demo. The hottest ones can jump straight from the bot to talk to your human agents.

How Can You Use Chatbots in Marketing?

All in all, there's a lot of unexplored potential in chatbot marketing. The use cases below will help you imagine different scenarios when a bot spins your next campaign around. 

1. Chatbot Marketing for Lead Generation

When talking about marketing, lead generation cannot miss from the list. In fact, it quite deserves the first mention, as it is one of the most popular chatbot use cases in marketing overall. Very likely, it'll continue to be one of the leading bot applications in 2022.

Of all the possible uses, why is lead generation, well, in the lead?

Firstly, they are a friendly-face substitute for the dreadful online forms everyone hates. Secondly, they are the easiest and most straightforward type of a chatbot for website to put into practice.

So, for many businesses, a lead generation bot is the first stepping stone into the world of conversational marketing. It's a particularly ideal tool for a client-based business whose leads are to be followed up by a salesperson.

As mentioned above, building a dialog for this kind of bot is usually a quick task of putting together and simple conversational exchange of 2 to 4 questions. Further, most good chatbot service providers offer lead generation bot templates to get you started even quicker.

Here is how such a template appears in the builder:

And on the front end:

In 2022, we expect more and more businesses to switch the online form for something more conversational in search of higher conversion rates. If you need to see bots in action, check out Arora Project, a Miami-based growth marketing agency that used a chatbot marketing strategy to triple their leads from Google Ads while slashing their CPL by 30%.

2. Chatbot Marketing for Lead Qualification

For many businesses, simply generating leads is not quite enough.

To streamline their customer acquisition process, they need to assess the leads' quality and likeliness of conversion automatically. A well-constructed chatbot can assess the interest of the potential client and his or her stage in the customer journey.

In many cases, creating a qualification bot requires nothing more than extending the shorter lead-generating conversation using case-specific qualification questions.

As chatbot technology is becoming more and more accessible through the availability of no-code tools and builders, brands and companies have the chance to collect a wealth of qualifying information without negatively affecting user experience.

3. Chatbots for Quote Generation

Does your business depend on issuing quotes for potential clients? Do you know how many clients you lose because they can't be bothered to call? Or how many you lose to bigger competitors who provide their quotes immediately online at any time of day?

Any business that relies on personalized quotes knows that every potential customer who is coming in with queries and questions counts. You never know how big that account might end up being. Speed and accuracy are of the essence. 

A 24/7 chatbot present on your website, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp account can provide immediate service and quotes based on customer responses instantly.

Furthermore, it can double-act as a qualification bot and notify sales agents when a high-value lead completes the conversation and possibly even trigger chatbot to human handoff.

Such a bot is better than a form because it can provide the user with additional information while collecting the necessary data. Especially so if the bot has natural language processing functions.

4. Chatbots Marketing for Appointment Booking & Reservations

Some businesses depend unequivocally on bookings and reservations. Others use them as a dedicated marketing strategy to provide customers with demos of their service or product.

Either way, making reservations and booking appointments is probably one of the best ways of using bots for marketing - especially for traditionally offline businesses.

One of the most famous examples of this use case is Sephora's Facebook Messenger bot. The cosmetics company deployed a bot that allowed customers to book an appointment for an in-store takeover using their bot, which resulted in an impressive 11% higher conversion rate than any of their other booking channels.

Whether you provide online services or run a more traditional business, taking part in conversational commerce, even through something as simple as reservations, can make a huge difference.

You can let our potential and existing clients book appointments, consultations, tables, seats, etc.

5. Chatbot Marketing for Loyalty Programs

Did you know that most loyalty programs go unused?

People simply forget about their loyalty programs or are unaware of the benefits they have collected… According to Capgemini's research study, an incredible 54% of loyalty accounts are inactive, and nearly one-third of registered members quit the programs without ever using any of the advantages.

Many people don't even know how many points or advantages they earned.

A chatbot on your website, app, reminder email, or - best of all - widely used messaging app like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger can:

• Remind the members about their point balance in a friendly way
• Gamify the loyalty program experience (e.g., letting users earn points by solving puzzles, submitting selfies with products, offering customer feedback, taking personalization quizzes. etc.)
• Encourage members to redeem their points and rewards
• Send reward reminders

6. Chatbot Marketing for On-Site Services

The best thing about chatbots and messaging apps teaming up?

They have the potential to make digital marketing truly practical as well as translate its effects and benefits into tangible reality.

Some of the on-site, real-world services you can provide with mobile-friendly chatbot marketing include:

• Providing business location and opening times information and answering other common questions
• Sending virtual receipts to save the environment and collect data (which you can use to associate purchase information with specific clients, observe purchase habits, and ultimately personalize offers and shopping experiences)
• Providing WiFi password
• Sharing the list of menu items of services
• Providing a timetable and room information about events/classes/meetings

Imagine asking a bot to find you the location of your favorite coffee chain in a new neighborhood, checking the menu and offers before you even arrive on the spot, receiving the receipt on WhatsApp, and then having the bot offer you the local WiFi password.

Today, this kind of service is not only possible but also genuinely accessible to businesses of all sizes and brings customer service, engagement and interaction to a whole new level. 

7. Chatbot Marketing for Contests

Contests have always been a potent marketing technique. Today, chatbots give them the means to become even more so.

Bots are pretty successful as it is, but trust me when I tell you, there is nothing that'll start a conversation faster than a whiff of a lucrative prize.

‍Plus, this chatbot marketing use case works on any channel, including your website, landing page, app, messaging app, or social media. It can also handle the whole process from start to finish:

• Attracting attention
• Collecting contestants
• Answering contest-related questions
• Sharing the results when the time comes!

You can either organize a simple giveaway (sign up & hope to win); a user-generated content competition, or comments/social shares competition.

For instance, it's been a few years since Absolute Vodka's famous WhatsApp Bot contest, and people still talk about it (like me, for instance, right now 😅). They created a virtual bouncer named Sven, and people interested in winning tickets to their VIP launch party had to try to convince him why they are the ones who should get in. The campaign saw huge engagement and produced loads of fun user-generated content!

It's a fast and furious way to build your contact list, increase brand awareness, and engage potential customers interactively and entertainingly.

8. Chatbot Marketing for Reviews

Reviews and recommendations are an integral part of marketing. To be able to show off your success, you have to collect customer feedback — something, most don't offer so readily.

Your marketing chatbot can not only provide your potential customers with trusted reviews (or links to trusted reviews) but also be the friendly face that prompts existing customers to share their opinions.

Firstly, users are more likely to respond to a bot because it's natural. Especially, if a bot hangs out in their natural habitat like, for example,  WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger and doesn't force them to go out of their usual way.

In either case, replying to a bot in a chat is much better than having to click on a button in an email and filling out a form?

Normally, a customer would have to be really mad or dissatisfied to sacrifice the energy and time to offer feedback. And that's the point… unhappy customers don't care how user-unfriendly is your review system… the happy ones do!

9. Chatbot Marketing for Community Management

Marketing is getting all personal and small scale. It's all about creating relationships, listening. But only huge companies can afford to hire enough employees to tackle the task, and even then, it's not the most obviously profitable strategy.

Whether you run an online or in-person group or community, it doesn't really matter. For the sake and in pursuit of successful marketing, it's time to build a bot!

A chatbot overseeing a community or a specific user group can, for instance:

• Invite new members into the group;
• Share locations, times, and updates about offline or online meetings and events;
• Offer general community news and updates;
• Inform members about the rules and ensure they are followed (e.g., monitor foul language or self-promotion activities);
• Enable members to ask questions and receive prompt answers about relevant topics.

10. Chatbot Marketing for Content

With their engagement capacity, chatbots have developed into a channel in their own right, worthy of having their own content marketing strategy.

Whether you want to attract readers to your blog, listeners to your podcast, or viewers to your online video channel, a chatbot can help you grow your following and keep people in the loop about what's new.

You can send proactive (notification) or reactive (on request) messages regardless of whether you are working B2C or B2B. Sharing relevant content via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or on the web saves users precious time.

Thanks to a content marketing chatbot, your followers/customers can:

• Listen to podcast episodes, watch videos, read articles, check out case studies, etc. directly without leaving the bot
• Receive updates about new episodes or articles
• Look up topic-specific content on request

Moreover, once you know user preferences, you can tailor bot notifications based on user preferences. Not to mention, conversational setup makes responding to pop-culture marketing trends much easier and more relatable.

11. Marketing Chatbots for Surveys

Surveys are not just great for gathering feedback and rating customer service. They’re also a potent strategy to collect leads, grow your customer base, and raise awareness about your business. Hence, they are not going anywhere but staying strong on the 2022 marketing battlefield.

Chatbot surveys take this marketing strategy to a whole new level (without making you pay extra for single-use survey software). Also, turning a survey into a conversation creates a more interactive experience and allows for more personalization. Plus, a fun chatbot personality alone can increase survey completion.

Here are some of the features of automated conversational surveys:

• They are super simple to fill out and complete;
• They are mobile-friendly by default;
• Chatbot surveys have a higher engagement rate;
• They allow you to store user responses in real-time and even personalize some parts of inquiry (based on those responses);
• In the case of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or other messaging platforms, the conversational approach allows users to complete the survey on platforms with which they feel comfortable.

How to set up Marketing Chatbots with Landbot

As opposed to AI-powered chatbots, which require a lot of coding knowledge, no-code chatbots and chatbot platforms such as Landbot’s make the job very easy. 

Getting started on building a chatbot for marketing initiatives is as simple as signing up for Landbot, creating your bot and publishing it so that you can start using it immediately.

Depending on what you’ll use it for, you can build your chatbot from scratch by following a few straightforward steps, or you can choose from one of Landbot’s pre-built templates for lead generation, feedback collection, and more. For a full video course on how to build bots with Landbot, visit our Academy.

Not just that, but depending on your use case, you can also easily build and deploy a WhatsApp chatbot that will help you reach your marketing goals.

Next Steps?

Upcoming years of experiences and interactions will redefine the future of conversational marketing. Thanks to the growing consumer chatbot adoption as well as continual simplification of conversational technology, you can keep up with the trends without overshooting your resources.

Analyze your business needs, research which is the best chatbot platform for your business, and launch into building one of the chatbot marketing use cases from above. It's time to start answering customer queries and engaging with your potential and existing clients in an interactive, personable way on the web, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger!