Conversational Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

The field of marketing is changing to meet consumer demands. Conversational marketing emerged as a result of consumers wanting more personalized interactions with businesses.

In fact, a 2021 McKinsey report showed that 71 percent of consumers expect their customer experiences to be personalized, and 76 percent get frustrated when they don’t get a level of personalization.

Customers are no longer satisfied with generic business messaging.

“[Conversational marketing] is important because it meets the growing demand for instant communication and personalized experiences,” says Burak Özdemir, founder of Character Calculator, a set of online text tools that help simplify tasks and enhance productivity. 

“By facilitating immediate, two-way interactions, businesses can build stronger customer relationships, resolve issues faster, and guide potential buyers through the sales funnel more effectively,” Özdemir continues.

This chapter will explain how conversational marketing is different from traditional marketing tactics, how to define your goals, the importance of understanding your target audience, and the role customer feedback loops play in conversational marketing.

Characteristics of conversational marketing

So how can you tell conversational marketing apart from other marketing strategies? There are a few characteristics that set it apart.

Conversational marketing happens in real time

Instead of happening on a preplanned schedule, conversational marketing happens when customers want it to. In fact, conversational marketing is most often initiated by the customer rather than the business. As a result, conversational marketing can happen 24-7.

However, this doesn’t mean your business has to be available 24-7. There are tools that can help you achieve this round-the-clock availability, like chatbots.

“Real-time communication is crucial because it allows us to address customer inquiries and concerns immediately,” says Ira Prevalova, growth marketing director at data-integration platform Adverity.

Conversational marketing is personalized

Conversational marketing uses data to add context to interactions. Without data about what the customer needs and wants, conversational marketing can’t take place.

“Personalization involves creating messages based on customer data and previous interactions, which makes the engagement more relevant,” says Prevalova.

Conversational marketing is highly scalable

Trying to conduct numerous personalized conversations in real time is highly labor-intensive. However, for conversational marketing to be successful, it must be scalable.

That’s why businesses pursuing this strategy use tools that are specifically designed to help.

For instance, “AI-powered chatbots can handle common queries and streamline interactions,” says Özdemir. In addition, there needs to be a seamless human handoff, “ensuring a smooth transition from automated chatbots to human agents for complex issues.”

Conversational marketing takes a multichannel approach

While other marketing tactics favor specific channels, conversational marketing takes place on multiple channels at the same time.

For example, conversations can happen on websites, social media, and messaging apps, says Mary Zhang, head of marketing and finance at Dgtl Infra, a knowledge hub for digital infrastructure industry professionals.

“These elements ensure that interactions are immediate, tailored to the individual, consistent across platforms, powered by smart technology, and informed by comprehensive data,” says Zach Jalbert, fractional CMO of TekEnterprise, a fractional CMO agency.

Conversational marketing goals

Before you can implement conversational marketing in your business, you need to define the goals you want to achieve with this marketing strategy. For example, conversational marketing can help you

• Build trust with customers
• Enhance customer experiences
• Generate more leads
• Streamline the sales process
• Improve online reviews
• Increase revenue

Like with any marketing strategy, the actions you take with conversational marketing will differ based on the goals you want to achieve.

For example, if your goal is to generate more leads for your business, you could add a chatbot on your website that helps prospects book a call with a sales rep. The chatbot could also point prospects to specific resources on your website with more information about your products and services.

Or, if your main goal is to enhance the customer experience, you could use social media as a conversational marketing channel to field customer inquiries and concerns. That way, customers can reach your business on a channel where they already spend a lot of time, which enhances their experience interacting with you.

How to succeed in your conversational marketing efforts

To create an effective conversational marketing strategy, there are two key actions you need to take. First, learn as much as you can about your target audience. Second, develop a feedback loop for your customers.

These actions will ensure your conversational marketing efforts are perfectly matched to your audience’s needs.

Gain deep knowledge of your target audience

One of the most important aspects of conversational marketing is personalization. To successfully personalize communications, you have to know your target audience well.

“Personalization allows for relevant communication in keeping with a customer’s needs and preferences, making them feel important,” says Botzen.

How can you get to know your target audience? There are several layers of data you have to uncover.

Start by creating a target audience persona, which includes demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics of your ideal market. For some marketing strategies, this amount of target audience research is enough. However, for conversational marketing, it’s only the baseline.

Remember that conversational marketing requires context for each interaction you have with the customer, which means you usually need more details, such as

• Their preferred communication method
• Their history with your business (are they a new customer, for example, or have they been loyal to you for years?)
• The specific reason they’re initiating a conversation with you at this time
• Whether they’ve initiated a conversation with you before for the same reason
• Their level of satisfaction with your business

Conversational marketing tools, many of which use AI, are a great way to gather this type of data and support your conversational marketing efforts. These tools include messaging applications, chatbots, and conversational forms.

Once organizations collect the data, they must integrate it with other business solutions so they can glean intelligence and apply it to future conversations.

“Data integration will, therefore, allow businesses to track and derive meaning from such interactions, continually improve, and understand their customers better,” says Botzen.

Incorporate a customer feedback loop

A key element of conversational marketing is creating a feedback loop with customers. Knowing what your customers think about your business and the products and services you sell is a crucial aspect of customer retention and lead generation.

However, while some customers love providing both positive and negative feedback to businesses, others don’t want to make the effort.

What does the customer feedback loop look like? Here’s an example:

• A customer provides feedback to your business.
• You collect the feedback and apply it to your business.
• The customer sees their feedback has been implemented and is pleased with your response.
• The customer provides positive feedback to your business.

To make the feedback process easy and seamless for customers, consider implementing customer feedback forms and conversational forms on your website.

Customer feedback forms offer a familiar way for customers to send both positive and negative thoughts to your business, while conversational forms capture those customers who require extra support with personalized information. These forms present one question per page, so they make the feedback process easy and captivating.

With both types of forms, you can collect feedback to complete the feedback loop — and learn more about your target audience at the same time.

Plus, with the information you collect from these forms, your business can gain more context about the specific reasons customers want to engage in conversation. This allows you to better personalize your conversational marketing interactions going forward.

Now that we’ve covered the key elements of conversational marketing, it’s time to look at what makes this marketing strategy so beneficial for businesses and customers.

More and more businesses plan to invest in conversational marketing in the coming years. As noted in the last chapter, this marketing strategy can help you accomplish a number of different goals, all of which support business growth.

But the benefits aren’t limited to achieving a single objective. Using conversational marketing has other advantages too. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Valuable customer insights

Through the process of conversational marketing, you can learn more about your customers’ needs, wants, pain points, ideas, and feedback. This is key information your business might not have otherwise.

“Conversations with customers give us insights into their preferences and behaviors,” says Prevalova. “This data is invaluable for refining our marketing strategies and creating more targeted campaigns.”

With this information in hand, you can fine-tune your products and services to appeal to the needs of your customers. You can pivot your marketing and sales strategy messaging to resonate with customer interests. You can even adjust the price point based on customer feedback.

All of this information is fodder for optimizing your business and more effectively meeting the needs of your customers.

Lead generation

If your organization is looking to increase the number and quality of leads, conversational marketing can help.

Say a potential customer visits your website for the first time. If you have a chatbot or a conversational form in place, you have the opportunity to immediately engage them in conversation and capture their contact information, letting you begin to nurture them through your sales process.

Conversational lead generation can produce exceptional results for businesses. “We saw a 35 percent increase in qualified leads after implementing a chatbot,” says Zhang.

Not only does conversational marketing increase the number of leads, but it also affects the quality of leads.

According to Botzen, conversational marketing allows businesses to qualify leads in real time, thus improving conversion rates for the right types of leads. Through chatbots and conversational forms, for example, you can ask potential leads qualifying questions that let you categorize them.

Satisfied customers

Providing personalized customer service with conversational marketing leads to satisfied and loyal customers.

“It provides insight from the data collected during the interaction — a refinement of the business strategies in line with a better understanding of the needs of the customers,” says Botzen. “This is the case at Rivermate, where we have witnessed significantly more engagement and higher conversion rates with very high customer loyalty after adopting conversational marketing.”

Customers will take notice if your business makes an effort to learn more about their needs and applies that knowledge to better serve them.

Because conversational marketing requires speaking with customers, it’s also a great way to build relationships with your target audience. Instead of speaking at them, conversational marketing creates a dialogue. You can listen to what customers are saying. “When customers feel heard and valued, they’re more likely to be satisfied and loyal,” says Prevalova.

Keep in mind that conversational marketing doesn’t automatically equal satisfied customers. The interactions have to be authentic, personalized, and initiated by the customers themselves. If you force a customer into a conversation, they probably won’t be pleased.

Higher conversion rates

A conversion means different things to different businesses: It could mean booking a call, making a sale, receiving a form submission, or something else. Regardless of how your business defines conversions, it’s likely that conversational marketing can improve your conversion rate.

“Immediate responses reduce bounce rates and increase conversions,” says Jalbert. The real-time nature of conversational marketing grabs customers’ attention and keeps them engaged for longer.

Many businesses measure the conversion rates of customers filling out online forms. On websites, forms and surveys can be indispensable for collecting contact information or completing an online sale, for example.

Conversational marketing can help increase the conversion rates of many different types of forms, such as membership registration forms, product survey templates, and more.

A popular conversational marketing trend is the one-question survey. Although the name suggests the surveys only have one question, these surveys actually present one question at a time, using conditional logic to offer questions based on customer responses.

A sample one-question survey from the Customer Satisfaction Survey Form.

Conditional logic allows these forms to present highly relevant questions to the respondent, increasing the likelihood of them completing the form. 

It’s easy to embed a conversational form in WordPress or another content management system, enabling your business to capture more valuable data from your customers.

Cost efficiency

Conversational marketing may seem like a labor-intensive strategy, but with the right tools on hand, it can actually save your organization money.

“Automating customer interactions with chatbots can save time and reduce the need for a large support team, lowering operational costs,” says Özdemir.

Chatbots and messaging applications on websites can take care of routine customer inquiries, book meetings with sales reps, obtain basic contact information, and more.

These tools can also prioritize conversations for customer service representatives so they know which ones to handle first. Many conversational marketing tools can also provide summaries of prior customer conversations so reps can quickly glean the most relevant information before engaging.

Increased engagement

Conversational marketing enhances the customer experience, keeping prospects and customers in contact with your business. For example, organizations can engage customers in conversation using chatbots and messaging apps.

“Customers stay on your platform longer when they are more engaged,” says Munday. The longer they stay, the more opportunities you have to collect data and persuade them to complete a conversion action, such as filling out a form or making a sale.

And remember, engagement opportunities aren’t limited to your own platforms. Take social media, for example.

Many businesses use social media as a conversational marketing channel, entering into conversations with their followers to answer questions, field inquiries, and deal with issues.

This can lead to increased follower counts on social media as well as more comments, likes, shares, and other engagement actions — which leads to higher visibility on the social platform.

Higher sales

What do these many benefits have in common? They all lead to higher sales.

When you have valuable insights about your customers, improved lead generation, happy customers, higher conversion rates, highly efficient operations, and lots of engagement, customers will buy more products and services from your business.

Because of conversational marketing’s focus on personalization, customers are also more likely to be satisfied with their purchases — and come back for more.

For example, if a prospect is confused about which product to buy, they can use the website chatbot to ask for product comparisons. The chatbot can then suggest the right product based on the visitor’s needs.

Similarly, if a customer purchases a product and has questions about how to use it properly, they can reach out to your company on social media. Your business can respond quickly with the information the customer needs.

All in all, conversational marketing keeps your customers happy — which keeps your business growing.

Now that we’ve covered why conversational marketing is good for your business, let’s look at some examples of conversational marketing to give you some ideas about how to best implement it in your business.

“Conversational marketing can be seen in various successful implementations across different industries,” says Munday.

It’s a highly versatile marketing strategy that works in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries because customers of all types tend to value personalized, timely interactions when it comes to purchasing.

Because of its scalable nature, conversational marketing is effective regardless of the size of the business — it can help whether you have 100 customers or 100,000.

Not all conversational marketing tactics work to further all types of business goals, however. That’s why you have to carefully establish the objective you want to achieve and then select the appropriate conversational marketing tactic.

Let’s look at some different conversational marketing examples and discuss the best ways to implement them for a successful result.

Chatbots 

Ideal for lead generation and customer support

Chatbots are one of the most popular tools used to conduct customer conversations. Often powered by artificial intelligence, a chatbot is a software application that allows website visitors to message a business and receive an immediate response in return.

While chatbots are most commonly used on company websites, they can also be used on social media platforms to respond to direct message (DM) inquiries.

One of the biggest benefits of chatbots is they offer 24-7 support. No matter what time of day a customer reaches out, the chatbot is available to respond. As a result, the company can provide 24-7 service without having to hire additional employees to cover night shifts.

From a customer perspective, chatbots are easy to use: You simply type into them like a regular messaging platform and receive responses in return. Plus, chatbots offer responses in real time, even when the business is closed.

“At Adverity, we’ve seen great success with conversational marketing, especially in our lead-generation efforts,” says Prevalova. “For instance, we use chatbots on our website to engage visitors, answer their questions in real time, and guide them through the sales funnel. This has not only increased our lead conversion rates but also improved the overall user experience on our site.”

Conversational website forms

Ideal for lead generation and personalization

Conversational forms are similar to regular website forms. The key difference is that conversational forms display one question at a time instead of presenting all the questions on one page, making the interaction more like a conversation than a one-sided inquiry and keeping respondents engaged.

Conversational forms use conditional logic to personalize questions, using the answers respondents provide to customize subsequent questions.

Wondering how to use conditional logic for forms? It’s easy to set up a logic structure and determine which questions to show or hide based on previous responses. These types of forms have high completion rates because they pose highly relevant questions.

“We’ve recently integrated Jotform into our conversational marketing strategy and it’s been a transformative addition,” says Zhang. “We use Jotform to create dynamic, conversational forms that guide potential clients through the process of specifying their digital infrastructure needs. These forms are embedded in our chatbots and on our website, allowing us to collect detailed information in a user-friendly way.”

Zhang continues, “For us, conversational marketing isn’t just a tool — it’s a vital bridge between our cutting-edge tech solutions and the human element of our business, driving growth in our ever-evolving industry.”

Live chat

Ideal for personalization

Conversational marketing tools can be integrated with live chat approaches for a holistic customer experience.

Live chat can refer to messaging via an application or talking on the phone. It may even include talking in person. Live chat can essentially include any form of communication in which a human representative of the business communicates with the customer in real time.

This people-driven method is fully conversational and allows businesses to provide customers with the information they need, with context, right away.

You may be thinking that live chat isn’t a very scalable strategy. While it’s true that live chat isn’t scalable on its own, it can be made scalable with assistive technology and tools.

For example, businesses can use conversational marketing tools to categorize customers and triage customer inquiries to determine which customers require live chat support.

Conversational marketing tools can also summarize customer histories to provide reps with all the details they need to complete conversations quickly and succinctly.

Email marketing

Ideal for customer support and lead nurturing 

Email marketing is a strategy of its own. However, it can also be a conversational marketing method.

Typically, email marketing is a one-way method of communication, where a business sends marketing emails to the customer, such as emails about special deals and discounts or new products.

When used as part of a conversational marketing strategy, email turns into a two-way method of communication. Customers initiate conversations and businesses respond with personalized messages.

For example, a customer may reach out to a business with a question about a product or service, and the business can respond via email.

Another option is for businesses to solicit responses from their emails, for example by embedding a survey in an email.

Email can also be used to respond to other interactions that customers have with the business.

“We run personalized email campaigns that respond to user behavior, such as follow-ups after product demos or reminders for abandoned carts, to maintain ongoing dialogues with our prospects,” says Prevalova.

This is a great way to build relationships with customers and stay top of mind without including irrelevant communications.

Social media messaging

Ideal for lead generation, customer support, and personalization

Social media plays a massive role in the lives of consumers — people in the United States have an average of 7.1 social media accounts according to one estimate. 

For businesses that want to build authentic relationships with customers and improve the customer experience, having a social media presence is key. Some of the top social media platforms where businesses find success are LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Businesses can use conversational marketing on social media by proactively joining conversations where their brand is mentioned. For example, conversational marketing tools can aggregate social media posts where the business name is used.

Another option is for businesses to respond to direct messages and direct mentions. These conversations are initiated by prospects and customers who want to get in touch with the business about a specific issue. Chatbot technology used on websites can also be used on social media platforms to respond to these types of messages.

“At Rivermate, we have integrated conversational marketing through AI-powered chatbots on our website and social media sites,” says Botzen. “These [chatbots] talk with the visitors in real time by answering some general queries and navigating them through our services. . . . This has improved not only our lead generation but also the overall customer experience.”

Next, it’s time to explore conversational marketing tools and technologies. In the next chapter, you’ll learn what to look for in conversational marketing platforms and read about some of the top platforms in the industry.

Virtually any business can find success with conversational marketing, as long as it has the right tools to support this strategy.

There are plenty of conversational marketing tools available — certainly enough to make choosing one a bit of a challenge. In this chapter, we explore what to look for in conversational marketing software and show you some top options.

We’ll also explain how Jotform can be used as a conversational marketing tool in addition to providing support for your other business needs.

What to consider when selecting conversational marketing software

Back in Chapter 1, we said that a consideration of goals should precede any strategy planning. The same is true for choosing a conversational marketing tool.

It’s important to identify your conversational marketing goals before committing to any one product. What do you want to achieve, and how can a tool help you do it?

For example, if your goal is to increase engagement on social media, you may need software that helps manage, track, and prioritize social conversations so you can efficiently respond to each one. However, if your goal is to increase lead generation from your website, then perhaps a tool that offers conversational forms or a chatbot is the way to go.

Conversational marketing features vary widely, but there are some universal characteristics that should make your list, regardless of your specific requirements:

• Customization: Being able to tailor the tool to your needs is a must for organizations that value flexibility and adaptability. “The degree of customization that is possible must be considered, as this will affect the capacity to offer individualized experiences,” says Munday.
• Analytics and reporting: According to Jalbert, performance-tracking features are essential. Being able to monitor and track key performance indicators makes it possible to determine whether your conversational marketing strategy is working or not.
• Scalability: “Ensure the software can grow with your business and handle increasing traffic,” says Özdemir. Your organization will change over the years, and your tools need to be able to accommodate the ebb and flow of customer interactions.
• Multichannel support: Conversational marketing is a multichannel strategy, and the tool you buy should be able to support the channels you use. “The software should support various communication channels like websites, social media, and messaging apps,” says Özdemir.
• Integrations: Conversational marketing tools can’t exist in a vacuum. They must be able to share data with your other business tools in order to produce valuable insights. “It should provide seamless integration with other CRM and marketing tools for a single approach,” notes Botzen.

Another important feature is multilingual support, which is ideal for businesses that operate in many countries and regions. Artificial intelligence features can also provide more in-depth automated conversations and analysis.

Conversational marketing software options

Here are some leading conversational marketing software options that your organization might want to look into.

• Freshchat: Freshchat is a customer messaging, live chat, and chatbot tool that’s ideal for organizations that want to enhance communication and interactions with their customers. It also offers AI-driven chat experiences for scalability across different channels.
• Intercom: Intercom is an AI customer service tool that provides customers with instant support. It’s a good option for organizations that want to deliver a best-in-class experience with speed and efficiency.
• Drift: Drift (now integrated with Salesloft) is an AI-powered buyer engagement platform that enables brands to conduct and learn from customer conversations. It helps organizations convert high-volume traffic and increase the account pipeline.
• HubSpot: HubSpot is an AI-powered customer platform with lots of marketing features. It gives organizations a unified view of the entire customer journey so they can manage each interaction with personalized care.

So will it be Drift vs HubSpot or HubSpot vs Intercom?

It can be difficult to decide with so many options available. Remember to keep your focus on the goals you want to achieve and then look at how a specific tool can support you in attaining those goals.

Jotform: For conversational marketing and beyond

If your organization wants to use conversational marketing to capture customer data that’s valuable for generating leads and enhancing the customer experience then Jotform is an excellent choice.

Here’s what you can do with Jotform:

• Create engaging one-question surveys. Quickly and easily create conversational forms and embed them on your website to capture leads and gather prospect data.
• Seamlessly integrate Jotform with your key business tools. Jotform integrates with over 240 platforms, including HubSpot, so you can share data to derive valuable insights.
• Create customizable mobile apps with conversational forms. House multiple conversational forms in a central location with Jotform’s no-code app builder, Jotform Apps. Create apps that serve as customer service hubs and repositories of important resources and information.
• Use premade templates to optimize your time. Jotform provides ready-to-use, customizable form and app templates that save time and effort. For example, use the Feedback app template to gather feedback from customers.

Organizations that use Jotform for conversational marketing can find success quickly.

“The data collected through Jotform seamlessly integrates with our CRM, enabling our sales team to follow up with highly targeted solutions,” says Zhang. “Since implementing Jotform, we’ve seen a 40 percent increase in the quality of leads generated, as the conversational nature of the forms encourages users to provide more comprehensive information about their requirements.”

While Jotform is great for conversational marketing, it also has several other business solutions. For example, Jotform Report Builder is ideal for automatically creating visual reports of the data you collect from your forms, and Jotform Tables lets you manage your data in a powerful database.

Ready to use conversational marketing in your business?

If your organization wants to build authentic relationships with your customers and make them feel valued, then conversational marketing is the way to go.

Not only can this strategy benefit your customer relationships, but it can also provide valuable insights, increase leads, and improve sales.

Whether you use chatbots, emails, website forms, social media messaging, or something else, make sure you choose the right tools to support your efforts so you can scale your strategy and be as efficient as possible.

Meet your conversational marketing guides

Amelia Munday

Amelia Munday is the social media marketing manager for Custom Neon, a global retailer and manufacturer of custom-designed LED neon lights and signs with teams in Los Angeles, London, and Geelong.

Burak Özdemir

Burak Özdemir is an indie entrepreneur, web developer, and SEO specialist, as well as the founder of Character Calculator, a set of online text tools designed to simplify tasks, such as determining the reading time of text.

Ira Prevalova

Ira Prevalova is the growth marketing director at Adverity, which specializes in data integration. With a focus on innovation and excellence, Prevalova leverages data to optimize marketing performance and achieve measurable growth. As the marketing director, Prevalova leads the marketing team, guiding them toward continuous improvement and success.

Lucas Botzen

Lucas Botzen is the CEO and human resources expert at Rivermate, a global HR and employer-of-record platform.

Mary Zhang

Mary Zhang is the head of marketing and finance at Dgtl Infra, a knowledge hub for digital infrastructure industry professionals. Zhang leads Dgtl Infra’s data center coverage, analyzing major players, like Equinix and Digital Realty.

Zach Jalbert

Zach Jalbert is a fractional CMO at TekEnterprise, a fractional CMO agency for marketing technology, marketing communications, and marketing procurement expertise.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev