Consumers today are not only used to immediate gratification; they have come to anticipate it. There is a common misconception that brand loyalty means more than it does when customer behaviour and expectations are primarily governed by convenience in fact.
According to one Salesforce survey, 45% of consumers declared that they would switch brands if a company didn’t actively anticipate their needs. Fortunately, technology like conversational marketing and chatbots has made this possible. Now, a customer or prospect can get questions answered at 2 a.m. or book a meeting while you’re doing something else.
But, conversational marketing, such as the solutions offered by Drift marketing, also benefit your brand’s SEO efforts. And, who doesn’t want to optimize their search engine marketing strategy at every opportunity?
If you’re thinking about it, both of them go hand in hand. You have a superior user experience if you’re helping clients get what they want when they want it. And Google needs to see top brands and websites doing just this. So, here’s how to work together with conversational marketing and SEO to help you optimise your online marketing efforts.
What is Conversational Marketing?
Only take a look at the origin of the word to understand what conversational marketing is: conversation. In essence, instead of the conventional method of telling a customer what you want them to hear, it’s marketing that has a one-on-one emphasis.
There are several organisations that continue to function as if they were in pre-internet days, with their key marketing strategy being to “scream” a specific marketing message and hope that something would stick-but we would not suggest it.
With conversational marketing, the idea is that your brand is having a casual conversation with a visitor to help them solve an issue or answer a question. It might be something as simple as your business hours, or something more complex, like a feature explanation or help with a bug after the sale.
How Conversational Marketing Works With SEO
Many people hop online because they’re searching for an answer to a problem or a way to fix it. It’s going to improve the brand if the conversational marketing platform will help them do this more efficiently and effectively. Here are some of the top ways that SEO fits well for conversational marketing.
Provide 24/7 Customer Support
One of the things we mentioned first was the consumer’s desire for convenience. Salesforce also reports that 89% of consumers have switched brands following a poor customer experience. And “poor” can be subjective, so being available 24/7 through conversational marketing can help your brand provide the highest level of support with things like:
- Answering basic functionality questions
- Assisting with shipping issues
- Troubleshooting products after the sale
- Handling return requests
Although most websites provide some content related to customer service, it does not provide a customer with any solution in their time of need. Having a conversational marketing tool on your platform will provide consumers with the support they need as well as map some of the most commonly asked questions you will solve in other content and SEO types.
Adds Value to Products and Services
The product and service pages on your website are generally the ones that drive your business. But, they’re also where you’re likely to get the most questions.
By supplementing it with a conversational marketing solution, you can add value to these pages and promote the content you have created. Since a page that addresses every possible question can be a little dense, having a chatbot on hand that can fill those holes makes more sense.
Improves Time Spent on Your Website
One of the biggest benefits of conversational marketing to SEO is that it keeps visitors on your website longer. Google doesn’t specifically disclose its ranking factors, but the longer a person stays on your website, the more the search engine giant “likes” you and gives you favor.
In the other hand, if a visitor shows up to your site, doesn’t find what they’re looking for, and quickly “bounces,” your rankings will be affected by this. In addition, for your guests who can’t find answers to their issues, this is stressful.
With Drift Marketing, if they have any concerns, the chatbot solution will let the client know they are standing by to give them a hand. This keeps them on the same page of your website when a customer interacts with a chatbot, and will help improve your rankings.
Boosts Customer Engagement
Another potential SEO ranking factor is a visitor’s engagement with your website. More specifically, this refers to multiple page views and time on your site, which we just discussed.
By having visitors to click on various parts of your web, a conversational marketing tool will improve your dedication to the former. It can do this by offering the website an interactive tour, providing links to other articles and services to a visitor, and using an efficient call to action that gets a visitor to purchase a product or sign up for a list.
Delivers Valuable User Data
Finally, you can improve your SEO strategy by collecting as much information as possible about your typical visitor’s wants and needs. A conversational marketing solution is the perfect tool to tell you what is working with your brand and which areas you need to focus on to improve.
If you have this information, you can double down on your attempts to post more content to customers in areas of interest and generate additional content that fills the holes that are missing. Input from these one-on-one sessions will also inform you if your website has any surfing or technological problems that might affect SEO and the customer experience.
How to Adopt Conversational Marketing
Creating meaningful conversations with visitors is easier than it sounds when you use the right tools. Drift marketing allows you to create a personalized experience at any point in the customer journey using what is called “conversational paths” and “conversational logic.”
Contact us to learn more about how our results-based strategies will help drive the digital marketing to the next level as a top Drift agency partner.