The vast majority of marketing motions are one-way – you send an email or run an ad. Your audience consumes it passively, if at all.
Conversational marketing (a form of chatbot marketing) flips the idea of typical marketing on its head.
It’s engaging, it’s personalized, it’s fast.
Let’s dive into everything you need to know about getting started with conversational marketing.
What is conversational marketing?
Conversational marketing is a customer engagement strategy that uses real-time, personalized conversations to move prospects through the buying journey.
Instead of forms, emails or static content, conversational marketing usually takes place via AI chatbots, messaging apps, or voice assistants.
It’s similar to a sales conversation with a human – except it’s scalable, thanks to technology like AI and LLM agents.
How Conversational Marketing Works
Conversational marketing works the way human conversations do — by creating a back-and-forth dialogue that helps people get the information they need.
Let’s say you’re shopping for a new laptop.
You visit a website and instead of seeing a long product page or a “Contact Us” form, a chatbot pops up with: “Looking for a work laptop, a gaming laptop, or something else?”
You click “Work Laptop” and boom — you’re in a conversation. The bot asks a few more questions:
- What’s your budget?
- Do you prefer Mac or Windows?
- Will you need extra accessories?
By the time you’ve answered, the bot has personalized suggestions for you. If you’re ready to buy, it’ll direct you to the checkout. And if you still have questions? It can connect you to a live agent.
Key Elements of Conversational Marketing
Real-time conversations
The golden rule of conversational marketing is that conversations happen instantaneously. Your prospect asks a question and they’re immediately assisted.
This can be accomplished through employees via live chat, or automated and scaled using chatbots.
Scalable outcomes
When choosing automated solutions, the beauty of conversational marketing is its impeccable ability to scale.
The old days of real-time customer engagement may have been one employee for one customer – but chatbots allow companies to expand their marketing and customer support with minimal extra costs.
Personalized service
The old chatbot of yesteryear were awful – and it’s because they couldn’t personalize outcomes.
But with the advent and democratization of LLMs, every customer can receive personalized assistance. No matter their need or preferences, a chatbot can show them which product is best for them, or book a meeting with a sales representative.
Best Practices for Conversational Marketing
Write dialogue, not a sales pitch
Your chatbot script should emulate the best sales conversations: they shouldn’t sound like they’re trying to sell something.
The success rate of your chatbot will depend on its script – frame your conversation with open, leading questions to identify where your prospect is at.
Deploy to where your customers are
Most people envision a chatbot as a website widget – but the most-used chatbots are deployed to messaging channels.
A WhatsApp chatbot or Facebook Messenger bot can meet your clients wherever they are. And as a bonus, they encourage more follow-up interactions.
Choose an AI agent over an AI chatbot
They sound similar, but an AI agent will give your users a far more useful experience than a chatbot. Agentic AI allows your bot to take actions on behalf of your organization or users — like resetting a password or analyzing data.
Most AI agents are LLM-powered agents, using the latest LLMs as a source of artificial intelligence. Though it might sound like a complex option, it's easier than you might think to build an AI agent, even if you're less experienced in coding. You can start by checking out our top AI agent frameworks.
Analyze and optimize as you get more data points
The best chatbots are iterated on – sometimes hundreds of times.
Every interaction generates valuable data that can reveal gaps in your bot’s responses, confusing flows, or missed opportunities.
Regularly review conversation logs to identify where users drop off, what questions go unanswered, and which paths convert best. Use this data to tweak and refine your bot’s scripts, flows, and functionality.
Prioritize clarity over cleverness
People don’t want a cute tagline. People want information. Ditch any cutesy marketing gimmicks you might be tempted to infuse into your bot.
Keep your structure and script clean, informative, and crystal clear. What your customers really want from CX is efficiency and convenience.
Balance automation with human handoff
Sometimes you gotta speak to a human. Don’t leave your prospects hanging if they need an employee – maybe they’re looking to make a big purchase, or maybe they have a specific edge case.
Add in human-in-the-loop options for an easy hand-off to employees when needed.
Examples of Conversational Marketing
Waiver Group’s Waiverlyn
Filling in forms isn’t just high-stakes – it’s also boring.
That’s what healthcare consulting company Waiver Group wanted to improve. They wanted a conversational marketing chatbot that would service prospects 24/7 and book sales appointments. They contracted a Botpress partner to build Waiverlyn – a bot that could:
- Streamline lead management
- Book consultations
- Reinforce brand focus
Waiverlyn quickly filled up calendars with pre-qualified leads. By interacting with website visitors, it could identify each person’s unique needs and next steps – and then action them.
The result? Waiver Group saw a 25% increase in consultations booked, a 9x jump in visitor engagement, and higher quality leads.
hostifAI’s Virtual Butlers
With their multilingual, 24/7 service, hotel chatbots are on the rise.
They do more than book rooms – they can also suggest add-ons (like tours), suggest dining experiences, or provide upgrades.
hostifAI, a chatbot agency specializing in hotels, has found that 7 out of 10 guests interact with a hotel chatbot before arriving (and 2 out of 10 purchase extra services, even before setting foot on the property).
Conversational marketing applied to hotels means more upselling and a better, more convenient guest experience.
Benefits of Conversational Marketing
Faster lead qualification
Chatbots ask smart questions to qualify leads instantly, skipping long forms.
Personalized customer experiences
Conversations feel more human – it’s a proven strategy for engagement. And heck, sometimes it’s even a little fun.
Reduces friction in the buying process
Customers get instant answers, reducing drop-off points in the funnel. Instead of searching for answers, they’re smoothly guided through every step of the journey.
Captures more data without feeling pushy
Conversational marketing chatbot can collect useful customer insights naturally during conversations. The more data your team has, the better.
Works 24/7
Prospects visit your website at all hours of the day. It only makes sense to offer support 24/7.
How to Implement Conversational Marketing in 5 Steps
Step 1: Map your customer journey
Here’s a cheat sheet of questions to figure out where your conversational marketing tool can add the most value:
- Where do customers tend to drop off?
- What questions do they ask before they convert?
- Which parts of your website or funnel are confusing or high-friction?
- When do customers usually contact support?
Identifying a clean and concise use case is paramount to building a useful chatbot. The clearer your purpose, the higher ROI your conversational marketing will be.
Step 2: Pick your tool of choice
There are a few conversational marketing tool options at your disposal – the broad options are chatbots, AI agents, and live chat.
Choose an AI agent if you want your conversational marketing to go a step further and take actions – like processing payments, changing passwords, or updating customer details in a CRM.
Choose a chatbot if your main goal is to handle FAQs and qualify leads – high value actions, but keeping it conversational.
Choose live chat if you have a team of customer service reps at your disposal. They can message in real-time, instead of just providing customers with assistance via the phone.
Step 3: Script your conversation flows (or offload to an LLM)
While an LLM can handle most of the words your conversational AI tool will spit out, you’ll need to script the base flow of your bot’s conversation.
Focus on defining key steps: how the conversation starts, what paths users can take, and when the AI should escalate to a human or take an action. Give your AI agent enough structure to stay on track while letting the LLM handle the natural language.
Step 4: Integrate with your tools
Your conversational marketing tool should be hooked up to:
- CRM
- Any relevant Knowledge Bases (e.g. inventory sheets, product descriptions, company website, etc.)
- Email marketing platform
- Any sales automation tools
- Payment system
The better-integrated your chatbot is, the better its service will be. When customers can receive accurate and up-to-date information about products, it circumvents the need to interact with an employee.
Step 5: Test and optimize (regularly!)
Your conversational marketing tool will have plenty of room for improvement. A major mistake companies make when deploying AI is neglecting to iterate on their original design.
As more people use your chatbot, you’ll be able to better understand its weaknesses. And once you identify the value from a chatbot, you can extend its use to other areas of your business – maybe your conversational marketing tool can also troubleshoot customer support, or help your IT or HR departments with common questions.
Start Conversational Marketing This Month
The future of marketing is AI. Conversational marketing is low-hanging fruit.
Botpress is an endlessly extensible bot-building platform built for enterprises. Our stack allows developers to build chatbots and AI agents with any capabilities you could need.
Our enhanced security suite ensures that customer data is always protected, and fully controlled by your team.
Start building today. It's free.
Or contact our sales team to learn more.
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