How many times did it happen to you that you felt lost when visiting a golf club website or when you visited their social media page/profile you had the impression that they don’t care about your response?
I see many such cases when I am auditing my golf club clients’ online communication.
In this real-time, on-demand world we now live in, where access to millions of services and experiences are just a few clicks away, we simply cannot afford that luxury not to utilize conversational marketing.
When you are preparing your marketing budget for 2020, give priority to conversational marketing. It will help you to spend less on ads too.
Those will win who owns the demand!
In those cases, when golf clubs and resorts are continuing to communicate in a ‘broadcasting’ style (aka one-way communication) they are actually disregarding a major consumer trend, but the most important thing, to engage with their prospects and existing guests and golf club members.
To clarify the benefits of conversational marketing and communication, let me explain to you what can you gain from conversations:
- To know who your prospects and guests and members are really (e.g. what do they hate or love, preferences, needs, expectations, etc.). Today it is not enough to know what they are!!
- Able to offer them personalized services, offers, and solutions to suit their specific needs.
- When you conversate and engage with people on a one-on-one level and customize your story this way you make them feel special and appreciated.
- It will also make you more likable and human and foster affinity to your golf club/resort.
Conversational marketing is about taking advantage of the power of one-on-one conversation.
For these reasons I launched my live chat service (using Drift’s solution…the free version) on my blog to help you to have a personalized conversation about your needs and golf business questions.
Real-time interactions have become the default. Just look at the messaging app usage statistics:
- WhatsApp – 1.6 billion users,
- Facebook Messenger – 1.3 billion users,
- WeChat – 1.1 billion users.
Only Facebook (2.3 billion users) and YouTube (2 billion users) were more popular in July 2019.
Gartner says artificial intelligence will be a mainstream customer experience investment in the next couple of years. They are expecting that 47% of organizations will use chatbots for customer care.
Already in 2018, there were more than 300,000 chatbots on Facebook Messenger.
The global chatbot market is expected to reach USD $1.25 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24.3%, according to a report by Grand View Research, Inc.
Salesforce has just published its annual State of Service report (2019). It found that
- 55% of service organizations are using messenger apps for customer service purposes.
- 52% of them are using online chat/live support.
Conversational marketing – My advice
- Provide a real-time, on-demand buying experience for prospects come to your website and show interest in your golf club’s / resort’s services.
- Help them to buy when it is convenient for THEM.
- Change from broadcasting style to conversational style in your social media communication to facilitate conversations.
If you don’t know where and how to start implementing conversational marketing, then drop me an email: mikibreitner@gmail.com or simply use my live chat service.