Marketing Tips and Trends for 2020

It’s time for a conversation

The hype is real. Conversational marketing is finally here, but what is it? In a nutshell, it’s a form of marketing that’s feedback-focused, aimed at driving engagement and deepening customer loyalty. Similar to direct response marketing, conversational marketing is geared towards getting a customer to act immediately, not only to buy, but to participate, to engage, on a one-on-one level. Social media is a great example of this, but the most effective form is live chat for websites or instant messaging, as they are more direct, more discreet and personal. By engaging a customer on a more personal basis, their relationship with your brand would be stronger than with a company that’s impersonal and cold. Today, people value convenience and experience over price, so by focusing on fulfilling their needs, your competitive edge just got sharper.

Let’s try to be clear

After all the privacy breaches and the introduction of new data protection laws, customers are opting for companies that offer more transparency and less fine-print. Make sure your information is clear, concise and easy to understand. Avoid using complicated, technical language in marketing material and on your website, as customers prefer to be more informed and understand what they are paying for. Being responsive when a customer raises a concern or has a question helps with establishing trust and supports the transparency model. Create a community around your company brand that encourages people to give suggestions on improving your customer offering as this helps the customer feel involved and provides a clear, cost-effective method of product development research.

Lifecycle marketing

“The funnel is dead” is a phrase marketers have been hearing for over five years as best practices are moving away from non-linear customer journeys to more personalised ones with the progression of digital marketing. However, every business has a similar set of needs that are usually in a specific order: brand awareness, followed by leads and prospects, followed by retention and re-marketing.

The most effective way to achieve the “funnel” goals while providing a personalised customer experience is crossing over digital marketing with your existing practices. Social media is one of the few marketing tools that covers advertising for brand awareness, targeting for leads and prospects, and, groups and instant messaging for customer retention and re-marketing. Pairing this with live chat for websites, email marketing, and other forms of conversational and direct response marketing, will give you a much more comprehensive marketing strategy that supports a new type of lifecycle.

All you need is a voice

Voice search is becoming more popular with the rise of Siri, Alexa, and hundreds of other smart home devices. Voice assistants are searching for things online, making phone calls, reading texts, dictating text replies, and ordering products online, all to keep us connected and hands-free. Voice search has now become a focal point in every effective marketing strategy as it adds value to local SEO, is mobile-friendly, boosts the use for artificial intelligence and prioritises the wording of searches which Google loves.

Artificial Intelligence ChatBots

With the progression of artificial intelligence, chatbots will play a much larger role in the way we work in 2020. AI Chatbots specifically can be very beneficial to increasing sales, as they can answer simple questions from visitors and help convert visitors into warm leads. Having an agent online and available 24/7 to speak with an unlimited number of website visitors via your live chat is difficult and expensive, but AI Chatbots, like Artie, make that happen.

Artie communicates naturally and in real time, engaging users immediately rather than having them wait in a queue, and also acts as a buffer should an agent not be readily available to chat. There are so many benefits to AI chatbots, like helping website users find what they are looking for more easily, or engaging users on your behalf to make sure leads don’t disappear. They are also time saving, have an always-polite demeanour, and increases your customer satisfaction rates.

Experience is everything

In 2020 more than ever, customer experience will impact your top line. If your overall customer experience is negative, your sales will plummet, as customers are favouring companies that have a more enriched customer experience. Live chat for websites, social media integration, 24/7 AI ChatBots, mobile friendly websites, white papers and FAQs are among the many features a customer can favour over the competition. Just remember that customer experience should be consistent on every front, including your website, customer service, marketing, and every other customer touchpoint.

If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to level up your business for 2020, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our team experts will be with you right away.