As the name suggests, Chatbot Marketing is all about making connections, and a lot of businesses are doing that right now. In this way, they can interact with their users and solve problems. In fact, Facebook recently launched their own chatbot initiative where it has partnered with three major companies to provide two billion conversations a day with more than a million consumers. The integration of chatbot technology into Facebook resulted in a remarkable achievement. It also marked Facebook’s entry into an ever-growing area of internet marketing known as e-commerce.
However, while chatbots could surely help you in your marketing efforts, it would be a mistake to think that these platforms are simply robots. In fact, the truth is that they are very intelligent systems, and their intelligence is capable of learning from their interactions with real people. Today, chat platforms such as Facebook’s Botox are capable of learning from their users, taking on additional tasks that were previously beyond its capabilities. In fact, these systems’ ability to learn from interactions means that these platforms’ users will be able to take on more functions through their chatbot, thereby enhancing Facebook’s existing capabilities.
In order to understand how these advanced conversational platforms work, it is essential to understand the ways in which companies use them today. Basically, they make use of these platforms to promote their products, create fan pages, and invite people to visit their online stores and buy products. In short, these platforms are being used for advertising campaigns that involve real people, and they do this in various ways. But although these are just online advertisements, the company’s interaction with the user, or the chatbot, goes further than just advertising. For example, one of the most common ways in which companies use chat bots to advertise is by allowing the bot to act as an online sales representative, answering questions that customers might have and seeking out people who want to buy their product.
But how does this work? Basically, a user goes into a platform, such as Facebook, and uses his or her Facebook login and his or her Facebook contacts to create a new chatbot. Once created, the bot promptly starts to interact with other members of the network. Each time a user goes to one of the many social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, this interaction starts off with a simple message that says something like, “Hi, I’m [redacted], looking for a place where I can buy [insert product name here], would you mind posting my link on your Facebook page?”
At this point, it is important to state that the bot has no memory of any prior interactions. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the user doesn’t include any information or links (such as payment methods) that could be traced back to them in their past interactions. This also means that they are not going to have to actively participate in the chatbot as they would in a live setting. In fact, it is possible that this interaction can completely take the form of a marketing strategy! For example, a chatbot might say something like, “Let’s see if we can hook up and see if Facebook will pay us $5 for every person who signs up for Facebook.” This might be an interesting fact that is not immediately obvious to someone not involved in the Facebook conversation.
However, what is immediately apparent is that this bot is there to provide useful service and is engaged with the customer in a way that a real person would be. Therefore, it is very likely that the bot engages the customer and asks them to sign up for a product or service, makes them answer some questions, and then uses those enquiries as the source of its database of potential customers. Therefore, it is easy to see why this type of marketing will be very successful. The chatbot is actually more of a human partner than a simple imageboard. This means that any customer enquiry made by the bot will be treated as an engagement rather than a spam, which will help to build the brand’s reputation online.