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You’re sure to have heard the word “chatbot.” You may also understand what a chatbot is – perhaps you know it has something to do with AI or machine learning. Or you may know it’s a way for businesses to engage directly with millions of customers without their physical presence.

So, what exactly is a chatbot? What do they do? How can they benefit your business? When should you use a chatbot, and when shouldn’t you?

We’ll answer all these questions and more in this comprehensive guide to chatbots. By the end of this guide, we aim to provide you with an understanding of what chatbots are, what they do, how they can benefit your business, and why and how to measure their performance.
What Are Chatbots and What Do They Do?

A bot is software that performs automatic tasks. It’s a computer program that communicates with people through the internet.

A chatbot is a developed program that can have a “conversation” or a “discussion” with humans. For instance, any user can ask the chatbot a question, and the chatbot will respond or perform the appropriate activity.

Chatbots are programmed to answer certain questions in specific ways. However, they aren’t limited to this functionality, because chatbots can access and use all of a company’s resources to answer dynamic questions. Also, chatbots can use many systems and files simultaneously to find answers.

Chatbots interact in a format similar to chat platforms such as SMS text, website chat window and social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to receive and respond to messages.

The simplest way to think of chatbots is as a virtual assistant on messaging channels like Facebook Messenger. By leveraging the power of AI, chatbots help businesses to engage with customers, build loyalty, automate routine tasks, and provide excellent customer service.

The work of a chatbot is to interact with website visitors like a human would and answer any questions they may have.

Thus, chatbots are typically used to automate customer service interactions for brands with a high volume of online inquiries. Also, you can use them to make it easier for prospective customers to get timely answers to their queries.

To scale your business, you need to leverage chatbots to streamline customer communications, marketing, and sales.

How Chatbots Benefit Businesses

Running a successful business requires you to be as productive as possible so expenses are lower and profits are higher. This is an obvious, basic fact of doing business.

However, many business owners don’t use the tools needed to make this happen. One new tool that’s gaining popularity but is not adequately used by all businesses, is the chatbot.

Chatbots’ simulation of human language and behavior offers many benefits to brands, including:

Save Time

One of the primary benefits of using chatbots in your company is that they save time.

When you use chatbots on your website, they can deliver fast, automated answers to most queries. Using chatbots reduces the waiting time so that customers don’t have to wait a day to get responses.

This way, you can serve many customers while boosting productivity and reducing operating costs.

Save Money

Chatbots are cheaper than hiring many customer support agents to offer fast customer communication, because hiring more support agents means additional costs and time. The costs are in terms of:

Salaries
Training
Infrastructure

By investing in chatbots, you can lower these costs.

According to reports, every year there are 265 billion customer requests and companies spend over $1.3 trillion to serve these requests. However, leveraging chatbots can help you save up to 30%. This is because chatbots speed up response times and can answer up to 80% of routine questions.

Offer 24/7 Automated Customer Support

No one likes waiting and neither do your customers. In fact, 91% of customers who are unhappy with a brand leave without complaining. Chatbots can help engage customers 24/7 with immediate answers to all the frequently asked questions. Offering excellent customer service round the clock will naturally have a positive impact on your customer satisfaction and retention.

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When it comes to getting the word out about your solutions, you have a lot of options for content publishing, from white papers to case studies to eBooks. Each has its benefits and drawbacks, and each can work to deliver your goals and objectives if you take the time to understand them.

White Papers

Businesses use white papers to engage with their audience and industries by teaching new information using a lot of facts and figures to influence the audience. White papers are valuable educational materials that can be used internally and externally and work in both businesses to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) situations. White papers drive top of the funnel needs by quickly improving awareness of the problem and the solution you offer.

Case Studies

Case studies prove your assertions by using facts, figures, and visuals to drive home what has worked for a given customer. Case studies show through storytelling, moving from problem to solution that gives the background and the results in a compelling way. Case studies are very effective because they easily illustrate the effectiveness of a solution using hard data.

eBooks

eBooks aren’t hard-selling documents. They usually take a short time to create, can be marketed easily, and are valuable to most audiences, whether they are B2B or B2C. They are cost-effective and easy to compile. For example, you can sassily create an eBook from previously written blog posts that tie together and deliver a message. You can include URLs and encourage your audience to get on your list, join your communities, and buy your products and use your services – all through eBooks.

These three content types are well-known yet subtle marketing tools that you need to use to ensure that your content marketing strategy will be successful. Plus, every single piece of marketing collateral you create can be reused, repurposed, and reformatted to increase the return on investment exponentially for all three types of long-form content marketing, while grabbing your audience’s attention and keeping it due to the design and information inside.

What Is Included in a White Paper?

A white paper is a datacentric multipage document that is written in a formal way, helping the reader understand the issue, solve their problems, or make the right choices. A white paper (sometimes written “whitepaper”) uses a lot of research and data to persuade the readers on behalf of a specific recommendation or solution.

A white paper is a great way to showcase your expertise and to market yourself to your audience without being in high pressured sales mode. Instead, you provide information that highlights the expertise, knowledge, and value of the solutions you are recommending.

Choosing Your Topic

When you decide that you want to create a white paper for marketing purposes and educational purposes for your business, it’s imperative that you first choose a good topic. Like anything else, when choosing a topic, you want to consider your audience and your expertise, and you want to create a white paper that is focused on the solution for the one specific problem that you’re highlighting within the white paper.

Preparing Your White Paper

A white paper needs to include a lot of data and research to make it a true white paper. Therefore, to prepare you need to conduct comprehensive research that includes references from internal documentation as well as industry resources that are authoritative in nature as well as reliable and credible. It will help to create a thorough outline or mind map (depending upon your preference) to ensure that you include all the information needed.

Formatting Your White Paper

The format of a white paper is consistent with most business reports and documentation, with the addition of a conclusion that is more of a recommendation at the end to guide readers toward making a purchase.

White papers take a considerable amount of time to research, develop, and complete. However, a good white paper can increase opportunities for your business and makes for great evergreen content that you can use throughout your content marketing efforts. This makes the hard work totally worth it in terms of your return on investment.

Sometimes the conclusion for a business report is written at the beginning of the document, but in the case of a white paper, the conclusion or thoughts and opinions of the writers are placed at the end. The final section is supposed to be the deciding moment for the reader, and the white paper takes the reader on a journey through awareness, consideration, and decision right in one report.

The main point is that you need to make your white paper persuasive and easy to understand for the reader. For this reason, you’ll need to format the document in an orderly way by choosing an accurate title, including an abstract or brief overview of the white paper’s main points, and so forth, which allows the reader to understand that this is the right document for them to read.

Then you need to state the problem and provide background information; all the original research, secondary research, and information should be communicated here. Finally, you’ll want to offer up the solution at the point of decision making, along with the major findings repeated in the conclusion. Of course, always provide a list of references. It helps to follow industry guidelines on formatting, using either MLA or APA citation formats.

White papers take a lot of understanding and knowledge of research methods, data collection, and subject matter expertise. Investing in creating white papers will pay off, though, in many ways (as mentioned before), because its content that can be reused, repurposed, and reformatted for use all throughout your marketing funnel. You can see an example of a white paper here, called The High Cost of Doing Nothing.

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Voice search is a big trend today. It has significantly crossed the threshold of early adopters. This is because it’s more convenient for users to speak with an assistant than to type. And the results of voice queries are faster.

Let’s look at the recent statistics…

Over 41% of adults and 55% of teens use voice search daily.

Nearly 20% of all Google mobile searches are voice queries. Also, voice search has grown 35 times since 2008.

The statistics show that voice search isn’t “the next big thing.” It’s already here. So, when and where are these users using voice search?

They use it on the go, with friends, family, and even in the bathroom. With the increasing use of digital assistants, optimizing for voice search is crucial to SEO success.

In this report, we’ll look at how to optimize your website and content for this search trend.

Voice Search Technology and Trends

The rapid innovations in the digital world seem to change how we all use the internet. And as voice search technology continues to grow, it’s changing the way most of us search online.

Voice search accounts for nearly 25% of searches on the Windows 10 taskbar. Apple HomePod answered 52.3% of queries correctly. And Siri also falls in the same place by answering 52.3% of queries correctly. By 2020, 50% of all web searches will be voice-based. And 30% of these searches will be done using devices without a screen.

Emerging Trends in Voice Search Technology

The voice search trend is a top-notch searching pattern and it is set to take over the traditional search type. Thus, voice search technology is here to stay, and it’ll be challenging to adapt to the changes to remain in the market.

If you want to build a sustainable and successful business, you need to adopt these new voice search trends to face the competition in the market. Here are some popular voice search trends:

AI and Machine Learning

The increasing demand and dominance of AI devices and machine learning is causing changes to search algorithms to process machine learning. Changes in AI and machine learning are making a huge impact on the way we interact with smart devices and also the internet.

Google’s RankBrain is a perfect example. It’s designed to recognize words and phrases to learn and predict better outcomes. When RankBrain encounters a word or a phrase it has never heard before, it makes its best “guess” based on the searcher’s intent and meaning, and it delivers appropriate matching answers. The ability to “think” makes AI such as RankBrain more efficient in handling unexpected search queries.

Nearly 75% of voice search results will rank in the top 3 positions for a certain question on a desktop search.

The increasing dominance of AI-powered devices means search algorithms must evolve to accommodate machine learning and the unique ways we use these devices in our lives daily.

Smart Speakers Drive Voice Search Adoption

Smart speakers are becoming popular in households across the globe. Initially, devices such as Alexa and Siri were merely entertaining because it was fun to ask Siri silly questions just to see how “she” would answer.

However, voice technology has now significantly improved, and new hardware such as Google Home and Apple HomePod are venturing into the market.

Smart speaker usage is projected to rise to a compound annual growth rate of over 48% to include over 76 million users by 2020. And as more consumers become accustomed to interacting with voice-responsive devices, smart speaker sales will continue to grow, and the use of voice search technology will increase accordingly.

As a result, voice technology will only become better and better.

Voice Used for Local and Hyperlocal Searches

More Internet users are searching for local results. And within the last year, over 58% of consumers have found local businesses using voice search. Not only is the number of voice searches growing, but the frequency of voice searches for local results also continues to increase. In fact, 46% of users repeatedly use voice search to find local businesses daily.

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If you’re like most other business coaches, you’re an experienced entrepreneur who can not only talk the talk... but walk the walk when it comes to building and maintaining a successful business.

And like so many others with your level of expertise, you possess a genuine desire to help other business owners become successful and have their dreams fulfilled.
What gives what you have to offer a struggling business owner a great deal of value, is your willingness and practice of being hands on.

In other words, when someone seeks you out, and or secures your services, they are not tapping into an anonymous internet persona or a text book.

But rather, they are gaining access to a living breathing business professional who generously gives them your time, talents, advice and proven expertise.

A client is a recipient of all of your experience and business know-how. And if that isn’t enough, they also receive it in a customizable fashion, tailored to meet their specific needs and goals.

However, just like numerous other business owners, it’s not uncommon for many business consultants to have difficulty scaling their operation.

The good news is...in this special report you can discover the ways and means to do exactly that, and do it simply and easily.

The following detailed steps will guide you.

What is Your Niche?

Step number one is... decide what your niche is.

Are you a big-picture individual who wants to focus on all areas of your client’s company...?

Or do you want to be a specialist and zero in on a specific department of a business?

Maybe you’re a sales wizard. Or you could be brimming with expertise in the areas of finance or securing joint ventures. Perhaps like the president in his former life, you are an expert at ‘The art of the deal”.

Only you know the answer to this... so you will have to decide.

But let’s use the practice of law as an example.

An attorney who practices law as a generalist, earns considerably less than a lawyer who specializes in, let’s say...personal injury law.

There’s a considerable difference between a generalist and a specialist

By specializing, you are perceived as someone who has, and can delve deep into your well of knowledge and offer solutions to obstacles and pressing issues a generalist cannot.

This kind of expertise is looked upon as having greater value than what would normally be possessed or made available by a lawyer who dabbles in many areas of the law.
Next, you need to look inside yourself and ask the following two questions:

Ponder your skill sets, acquired knowledge, and hands-on-experience. Then ask and decide what is the number #1 problem you can solve for your clients?