Conversational marketing is certainly a game-changing strategy for businesses looking to communicate with customers in real-time, foster stronger relationships and deliver personalized experiences. Unlike traditional marketing methods, which can often feel impersonal and static, conversational marketing allows companies to communicate directly with consumers, creating a two-way dialogue that fosters trust and builds loyalty.
Whether through chatbots or live customer service agents, these conversations provide companies with valuable insights into consumer behavior while allowing customers to get timely answers to their questions. In today’s fast-paced, digital world, this personalized interaction is crucial for companies looking to differentiate themselves and meet the changing needs of their audiences.
Furthermore, mobile messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram are ideal channels for executing conversational marketing strategies. These platforms not only make it easy for brands to connect with their customers where they already spend a significant amount of time, but also provide a seamless way to promote deals, product launches and other marketing initiatives.
This trend was further highlighted in the recently concluded ‘Mastering conversational marketing in the age of mobile messaging‘ webinar, which delved into the nuances of conversational marketing and demonstrated how real-time interactions can help brands build deeper, more personalized relationships with their customers.
Respond to changing customer needs using click-to-chat advertising
The kick-off of the webinar was a keynote presentation by Cecile Perez Tizon, Sales Director for Asia Pacific at Infobipwhich highlighted the use of click-to-chat advertising in both Feed and Stories on Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Facebook Marketplace. In the presentation, she highlighted how this strategy works, as 93% of social media marketers use paid Facebook ads and 57% of businesses found that including Facebook Stories to promote their products and services is crucial to their success.
While click-to-chat advertising varies from platform to platform, Cecile highlights how the seamless integration and flow of this feature allows brands to guide potential customers through the process of converting and give them easy access, whether it’s questions or special offers. Moreover, she also highlights how new technologies, such as generative AI, have helped brands optimize their messaging channels to deliver personalized cues to users.
“Chat has evolved so much [that] we even have generative AI that helps deliver content that is useful, efficient and gives us answers to our curiosity, so if there are any questions [such as] color, size, shape or any options, it can be supplied [easily] on the chat,” she said.
Furthermore, in addition to the AI-powered responses, she also highlighted how click-to-chat also simplifies offering customers an easy catalog of products and services, and supports payment options such as those offered by WhatsApp Payments.
Later in the presentation, Cecile also highlighted that one of the key benefits of click-to-chat advertising for businesses is that it helps them improve the value of their digital investments. This means brands need to combine advertising and messaging to enable better marketing results. For her, brands always consider an investment that is optimal for results.
“In the past, companies knew they had a budget for communications, so they set aside a budget for broadcast marketing campaigns and things like that. But today, after you implement all those campaigns, you use the same amount of budget to achieve results that are used to optimize your next set of campaigns,” she explains.
In Infobip’s case, it has a built-in dashboard that tracks real-time data on the performance of their click-to-chat campaigns and helps brands track the performance of their active chatbots and fine-tune them for the best results.
“The main goal is to be able to track the performance of the communication so that you can see all the users you have: all the unique users you have acquired, the new ones and the old ones who are not yet engaged. When planning, you can think about ‘how can we shape better content, a different kind of call’ to ensure that [the] marketing or advertising entices these disengaged metrics to become part of the engaged and converting metrics [them,” she added.
How industry leaders should transform CX through conversational marketing
Next up on the webinar was a panel discussion featuring industry leaders Greg Anonas, international wine and food marketing director at Emperador Distillers, Inc.; Rosebel Garcia, head of marketing & commercial at Hertz, Thrifty, and Dollar; and Dara Deng, head of OTT partnerships for APAC at Infobip as they discussed how to build stronger customer relationships and loyalty, as well as seamless customer journey through personalised strategies and effective communication. The discussion was moderated by Katherine Sy, regional head of content at MARKETECH APAC.
When asked about one word that defines conversational marketing, Greg said ‘precision’ referring to how these new solutions allow brands to specifically target specific consumers and make them feel they are getting interacted by the brands personally; while Rosebel shared ‘digital’ referring to how digital platforms have become hubs for brand personalisation and interactions; and Dara sharing ‘interactive’ referring to how brands are actively brainstorming ways to bring customers closer through meaningful and personalised conversations.
Greg opened up the conversation by sharing an example of their conversational marketing about how their partner, liquor delivery service Boozy.ph, keeps the brand updated with a link to sales after a digital conversation with a customer; as well as their ‘digital sommelier’ service, which gives users a chance to ask questions about the perfect alcoholic beverage to pair with their food. In short, these strategies are their way to also generate sales through genuine connections.
“When you think of the sales funnel, you think of where people come in and where you eventually want to lead them. So the goal really is to make a sale,” he said.
He also highlighted the importance of how engaging customer journeys will spell the future of conversational marketing, stating, “User journey is the future of conversational marketing that we are seeking for. After you make the sales you can also measure the consumer sentiment and how reassured they are that they made the right choice.”
Meanwhile, Dara commented that the ultimate goal for a technological provider like Infobip is to make sure their solutions fit to the demands of one industry compared to another–from finance to F&B, retail and consumer brands.
“When we talk about conversational experience, we are talking about how to build personalised and right chats to be interactive with the brands. This is kind of very difficult and this is a question that we keep in mind for the business to think about: ‘how do I view that’ and ‘do I have the tools and platforms to view that,” she said.
Dara also added the three key layers of an ideal SAS system: marketing automation, chatbot level, and customer support platform.
For Rosebel, she shared that ultimately, conversational marketing strategies play around the company’s goal of expanding its customer base and market visibility. In their case as a car rental company, as the company lost a huge customer base during the pandemic, they opened a new subsidiary offering cheaper rental options for customers.
“We measure customer success by addressing our customer pain points and eventually launching a new product and improving our brands through these conversations that we have made [with customers]she said.
Greg also emphasized that the simplest measure of a brand’s customer success story is sales – and in their own case, because they own a digital platform, they can see how often they repeat purchases. He notes that selling for the first time is always considered a trial period, but ultimately brands should want to encourage customers to make repeat purchases.
“After awareness, you should be able to stimulate trial and conversion. Once they convert, you need to keep them coming back to you. For us, marketing people – it’s not rocket science – we want people to not only try our product, but also continue to consume or return to our services,” he explained.
As for the type of data brands should collect, Dara explained that it all depends on what specific analytics a brand wants amid a sea of data.
“We can think about how we can reuse this data we’ve collected and then redeploy it to drive better conversion toward better sales and results, as well as better ROI. Furthermore, this data can be used to make existing customers more loyal or use it to redesign my next campaign, which will be more pattern-focused,” she says.
The webinar was attended by 144 participants representing brands such as 2GO Express Inc, AIA, Doctor Anywhere, HSBC, Lazada, Love Bonito, Prudential Assurance Company, Trip.com, Tyro Payments, Watsons and more.
If you missed the meeting, you can access the webinar on-demand, where brands will explore strategies to increase customer engagement and loyalty. Register for free HERE.
