What Is Conversational Marketing? 5 Statistics You Need To Know

Much has been said about conversational marketing in recent years and its ability to grow a brand. 

In fact, anyone involved in digital marketing who’s had experience using conversational marketing tools can vouch for its effectiveness in creating seamless interactions with customers.

Since you’re reading this, we’re guessing it must be because it’s piqued your interest and you’re keen to learn everything there is about the art of conversational marketing.

In this post, we’ll give you its definition, provide you with a top example, as well as some key conversational marketing statistics you need to know before launching your own strategy.

Let’s dive straight in.

What Is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational Marketing Definition

First things first, let’s break it down and look at what it means and entails.

The term “conversational marketing” was first coined by US-based marketing and sales company Drift. 

Here’s their original definition:

Conversational marketing or conversation marketing is a one-to-one approach to marketing that companies use to shorten their sales cycle, learn about their customers, and create a more human buying experience.

Note the keywords in bold. What these translate into is essentially a more customer-centric and genuine way of engaging and communicating with prospects. 

Most conversational marketing is carried out digitally via live chat tools like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, chatbots on a company’s website, and so on.

Compared to other more traditional forms of digital marketing like social media, content, or email, conversational marketing is considered to be relatively new.

That’s because it only started with the advent of chatbots, which came about fairly recently. 

Another characteristic of conversational marketing that sets it apart from other forms of digital marketing is that it’s carried out in real-time.

Brands using conversational marketing to engage with their customers are doing so live, which ensures prompt responses and quick problem resolution. 

Examples of Conversational Marketing-

Now that you know what conversational marketing is, here’s a look at it in action.

A few years ago, Casper, a US-based company selling sleep products, launched Insomnobot-3000, an interactive experience with a chatbot aimed at keeping insomniacs company during late-night hours.

Anyone who had trouble falling asleep could send it a text to start a chat. The bot was also advertised as being more “chatty” during the hours of 11 pm to 5 am.

All this takes place in real-time and was a great way for the company to score leads, as they would immediately have the phone numbers of those who texted the chatbot.

These leads can then be followed up with and guided down the buyer’s journey.

The best part about this initiative was that it wasn’t just regular leads that the company was receiving – these were qualified leads. People who were texting Insomnobot-3000 were those who had difficulties falling asleep, which meant they could use improved sleep solutions (read: Casper’s products) in their lives. 

No doubt, this was a very creative way to use conversational marketing to engage with customers. 

If you’re thinking about jumping on board, in the next section, we present to you some statistics that can guide your strategy.

5 Conversational Marketing Statistics You Need To Know

1. Conversational Marketing Helps 50.7% Of Companies Respond Quicker

According to the 2021 report by Drift themselves, more than half (50.7%) of companies engaging with conversational marketing say it allows them to reply faster to questions posed by visitors (Drift, 2021).

That’s not all, more than one-third of them (36.2 percent) also say that they’re able to give more human and genuine responses for a more authentic experience.

2. Users’ Expectation of Immediate Responses Is on the Rise

The same report also shows that just over the past two years alone, more and more customers have started to expect brands to provide an immediate response to their queries (Drift, 2021).

Be it with chatbots or online live chat tools, the percentage of users expecting prompt replies has increased since 2019.

This means that not only is having chat options available to users important to creating a better customer experience, so is being able to respond to them immediately. 

This can be done via automated chatbots with pre-determined message templates or having live agents attend to users’ questions or both.

3. Live Chat Support Boosts Repeat Purchases

Not only does conversational marketing facilitate interaction and enhance a buyer’s experience with the brand, but it also helps a business drive sales.

The numbers here are powerful. 

Conversational marketing statistics from Kayako show that nearly 8 in 10 businesses (79%) say they’ve experienced positive growth in sales, revenue, and customer loyalty as a result of their live chat services (Kayako, 2021).

In fact, as many as 38% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase from a brand with live chat support than one without.

Purchases from repeat customers are also a big contributing factor – 51% of consumers say they would return and purchase from a brand if they had live chat support.

4. Consumers Are Most Frustrated by Poor User Experience on Live Chat Tools

Whether it’s Facebook Messenger, chat support via the WhatsApp live chat widget on your website, or other conversational marketing tools, it’s one thing to offer live chat support, and another to do it right.

If you’re serious about conversational marketing, this is one statistic you need to pay extra attention to.

38% of consumers with experience with live chat tools have been left frustrated by a bad user experience (Kayako, 2021).

Though that’s not the majority, it’s still significant enough for brands to start working on offering a better solution.

Some of the top complaints from users include unavailability of live chat support even though indications show that it’s available, getting disconnected in the middle of a chat, and the big barriers involved in initiating a chat (such as having to fill in pre-chat forms).

5. Chatbots Can Help Save Time

If you’re using chatbots as part of your conversational marketing strategy, you’re basically helping your agents save a bunch of time.

Whether you’re offering live chat by use of an AI chatbot your IT team has designed or the WhatsApp Business API, automated messages can be set up to save time and provide faster responses.

If you’re keen to learn more, feel free to check out our post on How To Build A WhatsApp Chatbot?

Thanks to the advancements in natural language AI, chatbots are able to understand and respond to up to 80% of routine questions from users (Invesp, 2021).

This frees up your agents a lot of time to attend to more complex cases that require human intervention.

If you’re interested in building a conversational marketing strategy for your brand using WhatsApp, the world’s most popular chat app, our team at WATI will be happy to assist you.

We’re an official WhatsApp Business Service Provider (BSP) and can help you get access to the WhatsApp API and also set up your chatbot.

Join A Free Demo with us for more.