Chatbots are known to be one of the best marketing tools for engaging potential customers with your brand. Chatbots are now deemed necessary in conversion pages of sites to help customers in decision-making. Here’s a comprehensive guide on why chatbot marketing and integration is an essential part of the digital marketing strategy of your brand. 

Since the progress of the internet to a stage where videos and multiple sites were supported, there has been a steady rise in the uploading of educational or knowledge-based content on websites and general knowledge banks like Wikipedia. Ed-tech has been on the rise throughout the world, especially after 2020. 

A Simple Guide to Creating an Effective Marketing Strategy for EdTech Startups

There are about 4,450+ EdTech startups around the world with 300 million schools that are taking care of the educational requirements of children, adults, graduates, and nearly anyone who is after knowledge. 

The marketing strategy of Ed-Tech startups is greatly dependent on the audience that they are targeting to sell a particular collection of educational content. The pre-requirements for this marketing strategy include a website/landing page, and relevant social media pages of the brand.

To explain the marketing strategy for Ed-tech startups in the simplest way possible, here’s a quick guide that is common throughout all startups:

1. Finalize 2-3 ideal customers or personas
2. Map out your customer journey
3. Study and segregate the omnichannel marketing approach
4. Leverage content marketing 
5. Get started on email marketing
6. Harness the power of social media marketing and trend marketing
7. Give freemiums to rope in your customers
8. Initiate CSR activities to harness customer loyalty
9. Integrate your website with chatbot marketing
10. Go the extra mile with individually branded podcasts

Among all the points related to creating a marketing strategy for your educational startup brand, the first three are the most important since it defines the objective behind building your brand in the right direction and attracting customers.

What is the need for Chatbot Marketing on an EdTech Website?

Understanding why chatbots are important as a marketing strategy is the first step to getting started with integrating them with your brand. Essentially, a chatbot is meant to keep customers who land on your website or any of its action pages engaged by providing relevant and unique information to assist them in their decision-making process. When it comes to the actual integrating part of it with an EdTech website, it can either be done through an external third-party provider, or coding.

Chatbots, primarily meant to only interact with customers and provide information are also the perfect means to collect on-page leads organically and set off the email marketing strategy for your brand depending on the type of inputs that are given by a customer. A customer may/may not go through the entire customer journey for the particular product you are selling through their interaction with this conversational window. 

Statistically, and logically, a chatbot is meant to be on the first or the homepage of a website, but some brands take it a notch ahead and make sure that there are dedicated chatbots on all the action pages that they have. Chatbot transferring integration from one site to another is a common chatbot marketing strategy for Edtech companies.

The Intricate Chatbot Communication System

The customer journey, programming, using action words, and accurately mapping out the way that a customer may interact with a chatbot are all the basics needed to create an intricate chatbot marketing strategy.

The best way to make a chatbot communicate is to first visualize the conversation patterns with potential “ifs/buts” and then take it forward as per the response from the customer. A flow chart with a list of statements and options is the best way to move ahead with the creation of a chatbot flow.

Unless your website chatbot is integrated with high-understanding artificial intelligence that can segregate and match input data from customers, it’s advisable to restrict the interaction to closed-ended questions.  

A small example of what your flow chart should look like:

The most noticeable factor about chatbot marketing is the ability of the chatbot to associate replies with potential customer journeys and trigger email marketing campaigns. For example, image a situation where your customer wants to know about a particular coding course that you are providing, then through further interaction or the action that the customer takes on the website, emails related to coding will be sent to him/her to convince them to convert into a potential customer. 

Segregation of Chatbots as per Action Pages

Before we dive into the types of action pages that your EdTech startup should have, let’s take a closer look at the types of chatbots that exist for websites around the world. Chatbot marketing harnesses the following three types of chatbots to get maximum customer engagement:

1. Rule-based bots or click bots are the more traditional form of the chatbot which are integrated with websites. These bots talk to customers based on a set of pre-determined questions and answers that have been fed into it and then track the customer throughout the journey with the brand. The drawback of this type of bot is that – if there is any question or text that is asked beyond the set of chats that are already a part of it, then the chatbot cannot answer or restarts.

2. AI-integrated chatbots, also known as smart bots are not only based on the natural prefilled programming that is added to the bot. It comes integrated with something known as Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NPL) to make conversations with customers more genuine. These bots can predict the type of conversation to have with a potential customer based on all the inputs that are placed into them. Also, the bot decides the type of customer journey to select, and the type of email marketing campaign that should be triggered for the lead to turn into a customer. 

3. Hybrid bots are a mix of pre-fed chatbot inputs of text and artificial intelligence. These are based on rules and are mostly integrated to get the desired outcome or an action from a customer’s interaction. Also known as application-oriented chatbots.

As per the type of chatbot on your website, either of the three chatbots is alright for an Ed-tech platform. The AI-integrated chatbot or hybrid bots are the ones that are most preferred since they come with integrated Machine Learning for more humanized and meaningful conversations. 

For action pages where customers get information on a product that they are interested in, it is important to make sure that the customer is invested in the page and gets pushed toward the purchase decision. This is the reason why, chatbots on action pages need specific planning, and understanding of customer behavior, and should be integrated with AI.

Our Expertise

At Digikore Digital, we take care of all your digital marketing needs and requirements from building a brand and helping it grow, all the way to generating attractive campaigns to boost your sales. As a digital marketing agency, we also provide website design and optimization solutions, which include chatbot marketing. Check out our website or contact us today to get customized solutions for your brand!