Chatbots are the future of marketing, collecting, and analyzing customer data and patterns in consumer behavior. Marketers can then utilize this information to refine their marketing strategy and deliver content, information, and website design that effectively meets the customer's needs. 

This article will discuss the key ways in which chatbots can help shape your content marketing strategy.

Chatbots: What's the Hype?

It's likely you already know what chatbots are. After all, they're everywhere, actively helping companies increase website's user engagement and sell their products.

Chatbots can take the shape of the little widget in the corner of a website, be embedded into website design, appear as a popup or even function as a stand alone landing page.

Contrary to the general belief, this simple yet effective interactive communication channel doesn't always rely on AI's natural language processing. While NLP is definitely desirable, many modern, effient bots use rule-based structure to guide users through conversations. Much like a choose-your-adventure approach.

Even without AI, bots can be incredibly powerful. The NLP kinds of bots are great when you are after a more human-like experience or if you wish to cover more eclectic topics with a single bot. Rule-based solutions are excellent for single purpose instances such as lead generation marketing, lead scoring, FAQs or product recommendation.

Their true power is not in appearing human, but in providing personalized experience in real-time.

Chatbot usage is increasing at an alarmingly fast rate, with the chatbot market expected to grow by $1.11 billion, almost 29%, during the 2020-2024 period.

Heads up! If you are a complete newbie when it comes to bots and wish to understand them better before building one to distribute your content, check out our complete guide to chatbots!

How Chatbots Link with Content Marketing

Chatbots can be leveraged in many creative ways to further business growth and success.

Designed to reflect a brand's values and develop content strategies, they are a personable, friendly, and time-efficient way to connect with online customers and cater to their needs quickly and efficiently.

While customer support and answering frequently asked questions is the most known chatbot use case, they are capable of much more.

As the title of this article suggest, they can also be a fantastic content marketing tool that increases customer engagement, social shares, and conversions.

But, how do they do this?

The most successful chatbots learn about customers from the real time interaction, and use that knowledge to personalize their customer journey and develop a reciprocal relationship.  

The best Chatbots always do the following:

• Learn: Good bots are always learning and improving (either by themselves or with continual updates from their human creators). The more they interact with website users, the more data you have to personalize, humanize and tailor.
• Personalize: Once you know who your users are and what they want, you can provide content that fits what they are looking for. Chatbots help you personalize your brand to your customers by collecting the relevant data in real-time and offering relevant content on demand. Alternatively, they also help you collect content ideas based on the most frequent inquiries.
• Offer Value in real-time: The main purpose of chatbots is to improve the customer experience, so they not only make a purchase but also come back next time. The secret of their success lies in instantaneous reciprocity. The user offer information and gets an answer or relevant content in return, instantly.
• Build Relationships: Most successful brands are those that have taken the time to get to know their customers and build lasting relationships. But it can take a lot of time, something not all businesses have. Chatbots relieve this pressure, connecting with customers on your behalf, so they feel heard and supported, and develop a lasting relationship with your brand.

Now let's take a look at the different ways you can use chatbots as one of your low-cost digital marketing strategies successfully!

Chatbots Collect Data & Personalize Experience in Real-Time

Perhaps one of the most popular things about chatbots is that they provide more personalized content than other online marketing methods such as generic ads or email campaigns.

Chatbots use features such as conditional logic or predictive analytics to create something called hyper-personalization. What this means is that throughout the conversation, the bot collects customer data and instantly uses it to provide answers and content tailor-made for a specific customer use case. Similarly, the bot can save and export user data to your CRM and put the new users on a personalized nurturing path.

It's technical, it's clever, yet, thanks to the conversational format, still human!

Don't forget!

More efficient content distribution also means freedom for your support and marketing teams, freeing time to spend on more complex issues.

Chatbots Create a Human User Experience

Today, you can easily humanize your virtual assistants by developing the personality of the bot to connect with customers on a more personal level.

You can endear your bot to your target group by, for example, using the same linguistic nuances. Better yet, you can use the personality to strengthen your brand values and image.

Design your bot to be knowledgeable and serious or to do fun things like send images and even GIFs as well as direct customers to where they want to go. Choose the personality that will best resonate with your audience.

Bot with a personality helps create an instant connection, increase brand engagement, and drive customers further into the website. The more pronounced the personality, the more memorable the experience.

Chatbots Increase On-Page Conversions

Often, customers need persuading to make a purchase or sign-up to a website.

Chatbots are a fantastic way to help customers find what they are looking for faster than before.

If a customer must spend a lot of time scouring your website for the right product, you are likely to lose them.

Chatbots solve this issue by talking directly with the individual and signposting them to where they need to go. This could be a blog post ,product or an informative landing page. It doesn't really matter – as long as the customer is being signposted to a page on your website that offers what they need.

Not only does this provide the all-important personalization/customer service aspect that we mentioned above, but it drives customers towards the sales funnel. If you want more conversions from your content, utilizing chatbots lets you achieve this.  

Chatbots Distribute Content in an Engaging Way

Customers are bored of seeing the same old marketing methods. Businesses that want to succeed need to stand out, and chatbots are a great way to do precisely that.

Chatbots help marketers capitalize on interactivity through a personal, one-to-one content delivery channel. As Thomas Husson stated in his Forbes article: "Messaging apps will introduce a paradigm shift for marketers where interactive and contextual conversations will replace ad broadcasting. New conversational interfaces will drive deeper relationships between consumers and brands."

Using chatbot for marketing lets you share content in an exciting new way.

Talking to customers directly, 24/7, chatbots can easily display your content, aid sales, and answer customer queries - this is where chatbots win over live chat.

Chatbots Generate Content Ideas

Every content creator knows that sometimes it can be difficult to come up with fresh, new ideas. Even keyword research doesn't always help...Especially, if you have already covered the high-volume topics.

With the help of chatbots, you can easily develop an effective long-term strategy that addresses customer concerns and increases engagement.

How?

By analyzing customer queries throughout their interaction with your chatbot.

Chatbots provide you an unfiltered insight into the minds of customers, revealing not only what they ask but at which point in their journey they ask it. By analyzing unanswered questions and common words used by customers, you have a new avenue for generating content ideas that answer these queries and provide what the customer is looking for. 

Hence, bots render generating and actioning content roadmaps easier than ever before.

It's time to ditch the broad content topics and instead delve deep into your customers' pain points so that you can provide valuable content they really need. This strategy won't just engage customers, it will convert them.  

Final Thoughts…

At the end of the day, the one thing that keeps customers returning to businesses is great customer service. Chatbots help automate a large chunk of the content marketing process, making the experience more personal, inviting, and helpful.  

As technology continues to develop and chatbots innovate creative ways to interact with humans, businesses using these tools are steaming ahead of the competition. So, if you haven't already, now is the time to invest in chatbots for your business.