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Let’s Talk E-Commerce: Instant Messaging And Your Sales Team | March 15, 2017 (0 comments)
Merrick, NY--In this series of e-commerce articles, we’re presenting smart advice from industry experts on growing your online presence and including e-commerce in your online offerings. Today we hear from Suereea Mathews of Luxury Brand Marketing. She’s offering insights on instant messaging and your social networks messages. Read on! —CS
Don't Forget to Check Your Messages! Instant Messaging and making sales through your online channels is going to be more frequently happening to jewelers, now that they are investing in ppc (pay per click) campaigns.
Instant Messaging is when you send a message to a business on Facebook, for example. You can also instant message on Linkedin and Instagram. There are also chat apps, which are gaining in popularity today. Currently the four most popular are WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, QQ Mobile and We Chat, (from this Statista page). More on messaging apps here.
Once you start driving consumers to your website and social network business pages, checking messages, answering questions and replying to your consumers in a timely manner is really going to matter. What is also going to matter is how you brand that message. Who is answering those messages, what are they saying to the consumer? This setup and branding strategy is going to make the difference in closing that jewelry sale.
Stores have to have someone within the store who is trained to handle the IM messaging platform. Each social network has a different messaging platform. Your sales personnel have to be trained to use instant messaging properly. If you use an Internet marketing company, you don't want them to answer questions about jewelry. This is why it is best to have sales personnel manage this Hot Lead Instant Messaging Sections of your website and social networks.
Along with sales personnel, there is now artificial intelligence (AI) for chatting. This is one of the big messaging trends to watch out for in 2017 in this article. From the article: “2016 was a significant year for the messaging industry. With the arrival of chatbots and AI, the shift towards the bot-centric future of communication already started. 2017 is set to change the way we message for good. We are closer than ever to having a human-like virtual assistant to guide our way in everything we need to do.”
More on automated AI assistants from this article, quoted below:
“Brands need to think about the personality of their automated assistant, and how that manifests itself as a bot, and how it behaves in Messenger—it’s surprising how few brands are even attempting to understand this,” said Ollerton. In other words, the bot strategy needs to be considered in the context of a company’s overall branding strategy, in the same way as any other marketing discipline.
That’s a lot to take in, especially if you or your staff are not already spending time messaging with your customers in their preferred format. Take the time to evaluate your messaging protocols and ensure that your customers can find you through multiple channels to best facilitate sales.
Miss some recent installments? The Centurion spoke with Shane O’Neill of Fruchtman Marketing on the Importance Building a Plan. More smart advice from O’Neill here in a related article. And recently, we heard from Jennifer Shaheen of Technology Therapy. She’s talking about selling and shopping.
Want more information on the 25 In 5 e-commerce conference? – here’s a short video that recaps Year One.
