As technology advances, the ways businesses can reach out to their customers also develop. Chatbots have become one of the most popular methods of customer service and communication, helping businesses to provide automated, personalized customer service more quickly and easily. However, simply having a chatbot isn’t enough to guarantee success. The chatbot does not look for its customers itself! To use this technology at its full potential, it is not only important to plan and design your chatbot well, but also to promote your chatbot – to ensure that customers are aware of its existence, know how to use it, and use it frequently. Here you’ll find some useful tips and tricks to maximize your chatbot’s potential and start seeing results. So, let’s dive right in – it’s time to get your AI chatbot up and properly running with style!
Step 1: Research and define your target audience and competition
Step 2: Create a comprehensive marketing strategy
Step 3: Establish a presence online to reach the chatbot users
Step 4: Establish a presence offline-to-online
Step 5: Monitoring and measuring the success of your chatbot promotion campaign
Creating an effective chatbot is part of the story of being successful. By following these tips you can make sure that your chatbot becomes a valuable tool for engaging its users and driving conversions.
Step 1: Research and define your target audience and competition
When developing a chatbot for your business, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of what it will do and how will its users know about it. First, consider the chatbot audience – what will it be? Will it be your all customers, partners, employees, or specific target groups? What is their preferred way to receive information? Where do they hang out? What media do they read? What is the content you will need to have in the chatbot for them and how you will share it to reach them? The specific target groups could be directed to the chatbot via direct links or QR codes to an exact element in the chatbot (information section, form, or else) that opens on a concrete webpage or landing page with a CTA (call to action), created for the purpose to meet the business goals and to promote the chatbot usage. Therefore, those chatbot elements that will attract customers to the chatbot and motivate them to use it shall be planned and built into the chatbot from the beginning.
Once you have chosen the chatbot’s users and created the chatbot according to their needs and interests and your business goals, you can show the chatbot to the world. You’ll need to create an effective marketing campaign that promotes successful user-to-chatbot interaction in addition to adding the chatbot to your regular campaigns. Knowing the competition and its ways of communicating with users would also help in positioning your chatbot correctly among your users. A good chatbot should be easy-to-use while still providing top-notch functionality – the simpler the better!
Step 2: Create a comprehensive marketing strategy
A business and marketing strategy is needed to use, promote, and popularize the chatbot effectively. The general purpose of the strategy shall be to direct the potential users to the chatbot, to create a habit of using it along with a promotion and sales of your business products and services, and customer support. You must decide what ways of promotion you will use according to the chatbot target group – on social media, e-mail marketing, through groups in messengers, via pop-ups on the website, with fliers or other ways online and offline, and how and when you will start with the campaign. Well-designed user experiences have been shown to have significant impacts on chatbot adoption rates and overall satisfaction levels. Ensure your chatbot elements are tailored towards guiding the user through the available functionalities by creating helpful tips, infographics and valuable information through marketing and sales funnels for the best user experience.
A good marketing strategy answers these questions: what the target group is, when, where, and how the campaign will be executed, what will be the budget and resources used for the campaign, what KPIs will be tracked, and the desired outcomes so as to plan everything before start. Creating a video chatbot story with how-to-use tutorials and tips will better help its acceptance by its users. Directing customers to the chatbot on the website from Facebook and other online accounts and messengers or enhancing it with a live chat would also help for smooth 24/7 all day long online communication. The added value of such chatbot-included funnels is the traffic to the website of the business – the focal point of the business’s online communication. One more tip is to introduce it to the employees in advance and have them test it, use it and promote it to customers, which is also part of the business strategy for effective chatbot usage and positive feedback receiving. Don’t forget to motivate your loyal customers to share about their positive experiences with your chatbot through posts, videos, or other formats.
Step 3: Establish a presence online to reach the chatbot users
Social media campaigns: social media is one of the best ways to promote a new chatbot. You can launch targeted campaigns on various social networks (Facebook, Instagram (interesting reels), LinkedIn, Youtube (video tutorials), TikTok (funny videos), Pinterest, etc.) that create awareness about your products or services and use the chatbot to promote them, educate users about its features or showcase customer testimonials to drive engagement and conversions via organic posts or paid ads. Directing the target group from social media posts to the chatbot on your site with personalized links and QR codes could optimize and automate online communication – all customers would be directed to one place to be assisted and receive answers to their questions instantly at any time of the day.
Gamification is the practice of integrating game-like elements into non-game applications, products, and services. Gamification could motivate participation, and increase engagement and customers’ interest in your AI chatbot. By integrating a game in your chatbot, products, and services, you can create an interactive experience that will keep users coming back for more. Promo codes, discounts, and prizes accessible in your AI chatbot on your site can be used to encourage customers to complete certain tasks or goals, creating a fun and rewarding experience without spending a lot of money on advertising. This can also be valuable for collecting first and zero-party customer data and feedback, such as through questionnaires, quizzes, and competitions. Gamification can include creating games or challenges, such as collecting letters or clues that can be accessed through links on social media posts or by scanning QR codes on product packages, leading users to the chatbot to win prizes or discounts.
Google Ads: Advertising using a chatbot can be part of a comprehensive marketing strategy because it’s visible on searches in Google related to the products or services being shown off by the chatbot through personalized links as part of the ad. You can create an optimized with keywords Google ad with CTA that directs to the chatbot on your site on a specific page to promote it and drive conversions.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Making sure your site is optimized for SEO will further help increase visibility. SEO is a good way for increasing the visibility of any website or product on search engines like Google or others. Make sure you optimize key phrases related to your chatbot, so an option to get to it shows up whenever someone searches relevant keywords related to the chatbot of your company. This will help in driving more organic traffic towards it, improving the awareness of the chatbot across the Internet.
Influencer marketing: Partnering with an influential figure that has impacted your target group and shares the same values as your business on their social media accounts is a great way to build trust among your target audience and generate messaging around your chatbot quickly and effectively. An influencer could help to create viral word-of-mouth stories about your chatbot to make it popular. Think about your customers as influencers – have them share their stories about how easy, helpful, and cool is to use your chatbot.
Content marketing: Creating content around your chatbot helps increase visibility and awareness by providing useful information to potential customers while also highlighting features of your products or services at the same time. This type of content should be designed specifically with SEO in mind since it can go viral easily on social media if properly optimized for search engines like Google or other. Create valuable blog posts, guides, and e-books with personalized links to your chatbot and for example on the topics of what it is, what are its functionalities, how to use it, etc.
Email Campaigns: Use email campaigns with catchy subject lines that capture users’ attention and invite them to try out your chatbot for engaging conversations and better customer service experience and more. Create email sequences that direct to the chatbot, where users do a certain action – this is an opportunity to introduce it to your target groups and create an effective email marketing campaign for selling products and services with the help of a new AI digital assistant.
TV, radio, podcast, case study: Another way of advertising your new AI chatbot is via TV shows and ads, radio broadcasts, a podcast conversation, or writing a case study with its amazing results after 3 months or 6 months of its usage. Podcasts are very popular now, so if you already have one, introduce your listeners to your chatbot, share an interesting story about it or invite an influential figure to talk about your chatbot and its benefits. Using TV or radio ads could spread to a more general audience if you want everyone to learn about how innovative your company is using an AI chatbot, but keep in mind that this way of advertising could be more expensive than others. Use the fact that you have an AI chatbot to visit TV and radio shows and share your expertise and good practices as well as the results – showcase your company as a leader in your industry in the adoption of AI technology by implementing an AI chatbot. The AI topic is popular – look for interesting conversations or curious customer experiences in the chatbot that could spark the conversation for the media.
Step 4: Establish a presence offline-to-online
Events/conferences: Organizing or participating in events or conferences is an effective way for gaining exposure for your new chatbot through conversations about it that focus on the introduction of the new digital employee, introduction to the trend-setting technology, demo, and other ways! It is an opportunity also to have participants or visitors use the chatbot by signing up forms in it for meetings, product or service requests, or for a company newsletter. QR codes could be placed somewhere in the hall of the event, on TV screens, on banners, flyers, or posters so the invited people can scan them to be directed to the chatbot to receive an answer to their questions or learn more about the event, sign-up, or something useful to them.
QR codes: Adding a QR code on the packaging of products, labels on products, price tags, flyers, billboards, t-shirts, mugs, keychains, business cards or other that lead the potential users to the chatbot could help with its promotion and popularity, too. Placing the QR code somewhere in your offline stores or other facilities, for example, so customers won’t need to wait for an employee to receive an answer to their questions would be the new way of assisting your customers and they would be satisfied with your brand for sure. Lead all customers and partners to your chatbot – both they and your business would benefit from it!
Step 5: Monitoring and Measuring the Success of Your Chatbot Promotion Campaign
In order to measure the success of your chatbot, it is important to create a plan that outlines key metrics as well as specific objectives. This will make it easier to track how your strategy of promoting your new chatbot is performing and also make sure that any adjustments or changes you make are effective.
The following are some key metrics you should consider when measuring the success of your chatbot:
Number of Customers Engaged During the Campaign: This can indicate the overall reach of the ads or organic posts that promote your chatbot. When tracking this metric, consider whether the people who are engaging with your chatbot are interacting with multiple actions, questions, or conversations and if they become repeat customers over time. This metric measures how often users are clicking on your ads and interacting with your posts about your chatbot. There are a few different statistics to watch in the chatbot with regard to engagement. One is to track desktop and mobile users. This would give you a view of what your users mostly use and help you create content that is optimized for your webpage and your chatbot based on the statistics. For example, if your customers mostly access your content on their mobile phones, you shall focus on creating marketing materials for your AI chatbot as a leading instrument because it opens on the whole screen of the phone instead of focusing on your landing pages, and vice versa. Here are a few other statistics to watch: how many interactions happened on mobile and how many on desktop, at what time of the day the users are more active and have more interactions with the chatbot, what posts or activities direct more customers to the chatbot, which forms are used in the chatbot and from where are the users?
Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who complete the wanted action, such as making an order of a product, signing up for a service or a newsletter, filling out a form, downloading valuable material, or something else through the chatbot.
To calculate the conversion rate, you shall track the number of people who clicked on a link or scanned a QR code (online and offline) that lead to your digital assistant and how many of them completed the wanted action for the period of time you are running the marketing campaign to promote your chatbot. This way, you will know the success of your marketing campaign and you will be able to assess what happens outside the chatbot – what motivates users to enter the chatbot to perform the desired action, leave their data, and how easy it is for them. Track statistics after each change in the campaign outside of the chatbot and/or inside the chatbot to discover the most successful variation.
Click Through Rate: How often users are clicking on links that direct to your chatbot. A higher click-through rate means that your chatbot marketing campaign is effective at driving users to your website and your chatbot. You can use trackable links and QR codes to track the numbers.
Social media engagement: How often users are interacting with your chatbot by accessing it via links on social media posts and paid ads. A higher social media engagement rate in your social media accounts will benefit the chatbot usage and create a habit of self-servicing in your customers.
ROI: The overall return on investment of your chatbot marketing campaign. A higher ROI means that your chatbot is delivering a good return on your investment. To calculate it with the simplest formula you can see the example below (consider that it gives round numbers, and it is only approximately). You have to take the sales growth from the marketing campaign, subtract the marketing costs, and then divide it by the marketing cost.
(Growth of Sales – Cost of Marketing) / Cost of Marketing = ROI
So, if sales grew by $1,000 and the marketing campaign cost $200, then the simple ROI is 800%.
Measuring the overall performance metrics of your chatbot marketing campaign will provide you with valuable insights into your customers’ behavior while giving key insights on how well the chatbot is performing day-to-day operations – enabling improvements over time and ultimately optimizing its usage accordingly. It is good to do A/B testing of the campaigns that involve the chatbot to find out what are the most beneficial flows for your customers and your business.
The ability to measure vital performance metrics such as those mentioned above will ensure increased satisfaction levels while helping optimize the overall marketing strategy and chatbot performance!
Optimizing Your AI Chatbot for Success
Developing a successful chatbot is not simply a matter of building and launching it. In order to ensure that your chatbot is widely adopted and utilized, you will need to have a comprehensive marketing strategy in place to be introduced well to its users. By following the steps, you can help promote your chatbot to reach its full potential. Also make sure that the chatbot is updated and further developed as content and functionalities based on the results, customer behavior, statistics, and feedback you receive. Also note, even if you have put in significant effort for promoting your chatbot, it may take time for the users to adopt this new way of communicating with your business. The more beneficial and easier to use is for them, the faster it will happen.
Therefore, it is important that you remain patient with your marketing efforts and continue striving towards popularizing your new AI chatbot. Sufficient hard work and dedication combined with such an innovative way of online communication with your brand as the AI chatbot will ensure success!