How To Build a Chatbot for Marketing in 30 Minutes

With chatbots comes massive opportunities for growth. 2 out of every 3 people in the world have communicated with an AI agent in the past 12 months. All kinds of companies from Visible to State Farm have taken advantage of chatbots for many reasons — one of which is for marketing.

Voiceflow is a service where you can build your very own chatbot as you see fit for free. But before you get started, here’s a brief rundown of how chatbots work in the marketing space.

What is a Chatbot? 

Chatbots are computer programs that simulate text or voice conversations with humans, whether it be through a website, app, SMS system, or through email. Chatbots can either be rule-based or machine learning-based — the latter which is driven by AI.

Rule-Based Chatbots

Rule-based chatbots are what you consider to be “scripted” chatbots that follow pre-set rules and parameters. These chatbots have been around for decades, and while businesses have managed to make a lot of cash with them, they’re rather simple and aren’t capable of handling complex inquiries.

Machine Learning-Based Chatbots

Machine learning-based chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) to read, interpret, and respond to a user’s messages. AI allows the chatbot to learn and understand languages and makes it capable for chatbots to have human-like conversations.

What is Chatbot Marketing and How Does it Work?

Chatbot marketing is a means to utilize a chatbot to help potential customers through the sales funnel. Chatbots can make a big difference to customers when they want to sign up to your website, make a purchase, download an item, or schedule a meeting with you.

Here are three key facts to chatbots for marketing to take into account:

• Because chatbots can be connected to many different tools and APIs, customers can interact with chatbots to help find products, place orders, learn about sales and discounts, and more.
• Chatbots are capable of collecting data from every user it interacts with. As it does this, it’s capable of identifying customer pain points and spotting trends so you can find more ways to market to similar customers.
• Most impressive of all, chatbots never need to go on break. You can keep a marketing chatbot running 24/7 to address customers regardless of how many there are or the time of day.

How to Implement Chatbots in Your Marketing Strategy

To create a successful chatbot marketing strategy, it’s necessary to have a well-structured plan in place. This involves identifying your target audience, understanding how they perceive your brand, and determining your marketing goals.

Chatbots, such as ones made with Voiceflow, are extremely versatile, so you can also customize your chatbot for it to handle customer service, sales, and other roles in the voice and personality you desire.

How can Chatbots be Used for Social Media Marketing? 

It’s possible to implement chatbots for social media channels, text messages, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and other secondary lines of communication.

Chatbots for social media marketing can be used in these interesting ways:

• Assisting customers outside of your website
• Publishing scheduled posts
• Raising brand awareness
• Share website posts or videos
• Promoting upcoming events or sales
• Collecting data on potential customers who reply or comment

Needless to say, integrating a marketing chatbot with social media can do a lot more good than harm.

How do Chatbots Enhance the Customer Experience?

Chatbots service as middlemen between companies and their customers. Not only can chatbots work to serve customers by solving problems and minimizing the customer’s effort, but they can also be a vital part of a chatbot’s branding and mission statement, that can make your company seem professional, fun, or just plain positive in the eyes of others.

Building a Chatbot with Voiceflow: Step-by-Step Guide

Voiceflow lets you build an effective marketing chatbot without limits. Simply sign up for a free Voiceflow account and you’ll instantly have access to all of Voiceflow’s tools and features for a limited time. Here’s what you can do to build your own chatbot:

1. Click the Voiceflow icon on the upper-left corner of the screen to get to the dashboard.
2. Click on “New Assistant”.
3. Fill out the next form and click on the “Continue” button.
4. A test conversation will already be present in the chatbot editor. You can add steps to this conversation, make modifications, or start over with a blank slate.
5. To create a new dialog box, hover over “Talk”, then “Text”. Make a dialog box appear by clicking and dragging this box onto the grid.
6. Click on the white bubble on the dialog box and drag it to the box you want to branch it to. This creates the path you can guide users with.
7. Create an AI prompt box by hovering over “AI”, followed by “Response AI”.
8. Create a new button box by hovering over “Listen”, followed by “Buttons”. This feature lets users press a button instead of providing a text-based response.
9. To combine steps, you can drag boxes into one another. Doing this allows the chatbot to load multiple messages before the user can respond.
10. Once you’ve finished your chatbot’s conversation, press R or click on the play button in the upper right corner of the page to preview the chatbot.