The customer journey has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, and the experience is likely to evolve even faster in the future.
This means that old marketing tactics aren’t as reliable as they used to be, and modern businesses have to adapt to stay on top.
One adaptation that holds a lot of promise is conversational marketing. It involves communicating with customers on their own terms with less sales language and formality. It utilizes modern communication resources, like text messages and social media. Leveraged properly, it can transform your marketing results.
Here are a few ways that conversational marketing changes your interactions with customers.
The Power of Personalization
Conversational language lends itself nicely to personalized communication. It’s natural to use a customer’s name in a friendly manner when speaking in this way. It’s also normal to mention details about the client that are appropriate for the conversation.
As an example, a shopping cart reminder email informs the prospective buyer that they have a pending transaction. Why not mention some products by name or discuss common uses for the items? It personalizes the message and creates a friendly, welcoming dialogue that makes customers feel valued. It also builds direct engagement, which can lead to a long, happy relationship with the customer.
The Importance of Social Proof
On a completely different note, social proof is something else that stems from conversational messaging. Many of the platforms that cater to text marketing make it easy for customers to share their experiences with others, using tools like social media networks and Google reviews.
Any company regularly engaging in this type of communication is going to build up reviews. Provided that the company conducts itself well, the ratings will be largely positive. Few things generate trust with new users faster than a very high review score.
The Role of Emotions
While exploring text marketing, it’s essential to dig into the role of emotions in the client experience. Many products are purchased to solve a frustrating problem. Acknowledging and relating to that frustration helps to establish a relationship with a customer (or prospective customer) that matures into something long-lasting.
Of course, other emotions can be involved as well. Certain things are exciting. Others are sad. Some are engaging. Pay attention to the gamut of emotions and relate to those feelings in conversational messaging. This adds a level of personalization that names and facts alone can’t achieve.
The Impact of Scarcity
Another emotion that matters in a customer experience is urgency. In marketing, it’s possible to portray a sense of scarcity or urgency. This is a powerful motivator that can help convert site visits into sales.
An entire campaign cannot be built on scarcity, lest your customers grow weary of pushy sales tactics. But, strategic scarcity is known to help generate revenue. This is the motivation behind limited sales, special offers, limited-time goods, and everything else in that vein of marketing.
The Psychology of Color
On top of everything else, there’s an entire field of research that looks at how people typically react to seeing different colors. If you want to portray a specific tone or emotion, then learn more about the psychology of color.
Paired with everything above, picking the appropriate colors in the right representations to accompany your conversational SMS campaigns can really take your content to the next level. You can emphasize ideas or feelings with color, and that only helps to develop the bond you want between your business and its customers.
Give Conversational Messaging a Try
When you’re ready to explore this avenue of marketing, there are many resources that can help, including plenty from companies like Mitto. You can try making small changes to see how customers respond and build from there, or you could dive right in with a major campaign across all of your omnichannel messaging. That will remain up to you, but regardless of your approach, you don’t have to figure this out from scratch.
