Firstly, what the heck is ‘conversational marketing’?
You may be thinking that it’s just another buzzword – like inbound marketing or direct marketing.
And you’re kind of right.
It is a buzzword, but one that you should get used to hearing.
I’m a certified conversational marketing consultant, along with conversational sales and chatbot conversational design and all of us at AiRecruiter are on a mission to help recruiters use conversational automation, chatbots and conversational AI to help recruitment businesses grow.
So back to Conversational Marketing…. just what is it?
Well, you’ve succeeded with your inbound marketing campaigns. Your social media posts, your YouTube videos and your podcasts have got people visiting your website. Give yourself a pat on the back.
However, what happens when your target audience is visiting your website? Are they filling out contact forms? (hint: probably not) Are they applying for your roles? (hint: probably not many as a percentage of visitors)
So how do we move them from visitors to active leads?
Think of the start of that process as meeting and greeting them when they enter your shop-front – your website. They’ve made that decision to visit your shop, to take a look at what you are offering, so give them a smile on the way in.
Conversational marketing techniques would say you should have a chatbot pop up to greet visitors in a friendly way and it goes on from there.
In fact, the conversational marketing framework is broken down as follows:
- Engage
- Understand
- Recommend
So a good chatbot should not only engage with those visitors, but take time to understand what they are looking for and recommend next steps.
I think of it as akin to my first retail sales job at Dixons (remember them?) – greet the customer as they walk through the door, understand what they are looking for and take them to that specific are in the store and hand them over to the person that is the expert in that area.
So for a recruitment business, there should be a framework that looks like this:
- Greet the visitor
- Understand what they are there for (probably either looking for a job or looking to hire)
- Recommend next steps (submit CV/go to job search/submit role requirements etc.)
Sounds pretty simple, right?
So when are you going to start employing these techniques into your marketing strategy?
