By Ritu Mittal

As marketers, we are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to engage with consumers. In recent years, we have seen a shift towards conversational marketing and AI-driven solutions that offer huge potential for deeper insights, personalized experiences, and more meaningful interactions with our consumers. At Bayer, we are committed to transforming everyday health for the 1.4 billion people in India. This is only possible by combining consumer-centricity and creativity with the power of data, technology including AI.

In this post, I explore how the use of data, analytics, and AI is key to building successful conversational marketing strategies and some of the challenges to be aware of.

Leveraging Data and Analytics for Deeper Insights

Data and analytics offer brands a huge potential to gain deeper insights into consumer preferences and behaviors. For example, social listening tools can help brands understand what consumers are saying about their products and identify opportunities for improvement. Analyzing ratings and reviews can also provide valuable feedback for improving product development. In recent years, at Bayer Consumer Health, we have consistently leveraged data and analytics to gain deeper consumer insights for many of our brands, including Saridon?, Supradyn?, and Canesten?. This has helped us identify sharper consumer cohorts based on their behaviors and preferences, and thereby deliver more targeted messaging, resulting in better relevancy and driving efficiency. For brands in nutrition and skin care, we have engaged in community conversations which are a goldmine of unbiased consumer insights for shaping future product and communication strategies. Our innovation, Supradyn? Immuno+, is an outcome of data-based understanding of consumer needs and preferences. We heard that consumers wanted a combination of natural ingredients with the power of proven micronutrients. Thereby, we created Supradyn? Immuno+ with the power of nature + science. Tulsi and Haldi are ingredients that consumers vouch for in all conversations. Combining these with Vit C, D and Zinc, we gave them 100% immunity confidence.

Revolutionizing Conversations in Healthcare

Healthcare brands are usually perceived as boring and mundane by consumers. They tend to have a transactional relationship with these brands driven by the problem-solution nature of these categories. We tried to change this through our social media conversations on Saridon?, touching 9 million+ consumers with our moment marketing campaigns. Through our award and heart-winning campaign, ?Sardard Chupao Nahi, Mitao,? we wanted to break the habit of hiding pain behind a smile. Ensuring a seamless experience for consumers, we took this campaign across touchpoints including social media. However, to break the clutter and to build conversations with consumers, we gave ?headache? a new point of view on social media that helped us see the fun, wit, and quirk in social headaches. Using data analytics, we identified everyday stress triggers to create contextual content like month-end finances, board exams, rainy season, school vacations, and much more. Leveraging real-time tracking, we rode the trending-format wave with great enthusiasm, giving us 3X engagement vs. regular posts. Capturing moments not only helped us with more engagement but also to have a unique voice in trends. The engagement of our consumers on social media gave us confidence so we took this campaign one step further, partnering with TTT (Terrible Tiny Tales) to co-curate unique engaging stories on ?Terribly Tiny Sardards? aiming to draw a beautiful synergy between the brand?s core values, creativity, and contemporary social media conversations. We engaged 3 million+ consumers through these stories. This work was recently recognized as one of the best in social media marketing in the Health & Wellness category.

The Role of AI in Conversational Marketing

AI is transforming the conversational marketing landscape, offering a more personalized and seamless experience for consumers. AI-driven conversational solutions can help healthcare brands engage with consumers more effectively, providing them with the information they need and tailoring messaging to their preferences.

Recently, leading with Saridon?, we launched an AI-powered voice-based self-care solution that provides solutions for stress and headache, not just with a pill but also beyond the pill. The voice bot is designed to help users identify and manage their stress and headaches. It uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand users' inputs and provide recommendations for treating headaches and/or solving common everyday stress situations. We have seen encouraging consumer engagement in the early days of this AI-powered solution. Besides, this platform has helped us gather valuable data and insights to create more personalized and engaging content, promising enhanced consumer experiences in the future. The power of AI when combined with human creativity inspired by life truths can create breakthroughs in self-care, making it simple, accessible, and memorable.

Key Challenges of Conversational Marketing

Despite its potential, conversational marketing also poses significant challenges for brands. One of such challenges is ensuring data privacy while rendering personalized solutions. It is critical to collect consumer data with openness and transparency while ensuring data security to build trust with consumers, which is of utmost importance.

Secondly, today's consumers are constantly evolving, and it is important to keep up with their preferences and needs. This requires constant consumer proximity besides monitoring and optimizing solutions to ensure they remain relevant and engaging, keeping pace with the technology advancements.

Besides this, brands must be vigilant in identifying and evaluating partners and technology solutions that can scale with the business.

Conclusion

In conclusion, conversational marketing and AI offer enormous potential for brands to connect with their consumers on a deeper, more personal level. At Bayer, we are committed to digital transformation and have implemented various digital technologies, such as data analytics and AI, to optimize our operations and enhance our products and services. By leveraging these technologies, brands can gain deeper insights into consumer preferences and behavior, offer more personalized experiences, and transform the way they activate campaigns. However, it is crucial to address key challenges, including data privacy and staying up to date with consumer and technological trends. By doing so, brands can build successful conversational marketing strategies and achieve greater success in the future.

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