9 MIN READ

Before we begin talking about how to build a chatbot that reflects your business and brand, let’s first look at what small businesses should be doing in the digital space. The online world offers a fantastic opportunity for small businesses to promote themselves, reach out to customers, and leverage all the benefits of being eyeballs on screens. This is why more and more small businesses are creating websites, blogs, social media pages and engaging with customers online. However, even if you make all these digital assets for your business, it wouldn’t matter much unless you use them strategically to achieve your marketing goals.

Unfortunately, most small businesses lack a comprehensive digital strategy that can be used to market their business. In their haste to create digital assets, they fail to understand how it can be used as a business-building tool. That’s where the need for creating chatbots comes in. Chatbots are no longer just tools that help consumers get simple information like flight details or weather forecasts. Today, there is a growing interest in creating chatbots that help small businesses build their brands, promote products and automate business processes.

Suppose you wonder how chatbots can help achieve these goals. In that case, the answer is simple: chatbots cut marketing expenses for small businesses by replacing costly human resources with automated bots that can be programmed to perform customer service tasks. With a Clepher chatbot at the helm of your virtual workforce, you can expect it to perform tasks like scheduling appointments, responding to queries, managing customer feedback, and even run marketing campaigns.

But how can you set up a chatbot that it’s acting as an extension of your brand? That’s what we’re going to dive into right now.

How to Create Your Chatbot with your Brand in Mind?

What is it that the most successful businesses (such as Apple, Google, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Facebook) worldwide have in common? Every company has a distinct but easily identifiable brand. It’s clear and precise, and it applies to all channels. Your business should behave the same way. It would help if you did the same—all of your touchpoints—including social, website, emails, and of course, your chatbot.

Designing a bot that reflects your company’s voice is essential since each client has a unique, one-on-one experience chatting with a bot. It not only helps establish rapport and trust but also builds authority. These are but of the essentials when it comes to good branding. It set you apart from your competition, and therefore it makes attracting ideal clients and selling to your preferred audience a breeze.

But, how do you create a brand identity that pulls in prospects and customers to your chatbot on Messenger? Let’s dive in. Grab a pen and piece of paper, or open up a Google Doc, and let’s do the exercise together while you read through this article. Do this right, and I’ll promise you that at the end, you know exactly what your brand stands for and how to define it in your chatbot. Doing to work upfront makes building your chatbot an even more delightful experience, simply because you get in with the right reasons… And once you do, your bot is covered in authenticity sauce!

The Right HeadSpace Warm-up Exercise

To get you in the right frame of mind, start by answering these 3 questions about your company and brand. Write down all the words and feelings that come to mind. Then use these answers to guide you through responding to the themes laid out after this little exercise.

• What are the values of your company?
• Are there any adjectives you use to identify your company?
• What wording do you want people to associate with your company? 

The Mission & Vision of your Brand

The vision and mission of your business are the “reason why” your brand exists. It’s a description, or a goal, if you will, of the future you’re striving to achieve every day as a company. Now that you have a handle on the kind of character your company exudes, it’s time to define exactly what that mission and vision are.

What does the future look like for your brand? What do you hope to become known for? How would you want people to talk about your company when you’re not around? Let’s look at a couple of examples first.

For an excellent example, check out Elon Musk’s brand vision statement for Tesla: 

“To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.”

This is a BIG goal, but it’s clear, precise, and accurate to the Tesla brand. And that’s the case with companies; the most effective, memorable vision statements are concise. Yet, on the other hand, they communicate exactly what the brand is about and what they aim to achieve.

Let’s look at another example, restaurant Sweetgreen: 

“To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.”

Again, super simple yet inspiring. Sweetgreen’s brand statement is listed on their website and social media profiles and is reflected even in the images they post.

To get laser-precise on your vision and mission statement, you might try thinking of how it could fit into an elevator pitch. You know, how can you explain to someone who has never heard about your company in 1-2 minutes what you do.

Try this formula: I’m (your name and job title). And I help (your ideal customers) do (what you help them with) so they can (what results customers achieve).

For example, this could become: I am a Messenger marketing agency founder. I help businesses qualify leads and automate their sales calls with chatbot marketing, making more profits and cutting their admin time in half.

Your Brand and Business’s Benefits

The goal of messaging in marketing is to show your customers the benefits your product or service can give them. And this is especially important in chatbots, where the whole experience is designed to get your customers closer to using your product.

Brand benefits are divided into 2 types: 

• Functional Benefits – These are to the point and something you can measure. These are trusted benefits (get this from high-profile clients) or 10+ years of experience for service-based businesses, and stuff like certified organic or rated five stars by over 10,000 customers for products.
• Emotional Benefits – These have to do with how your product or service can make people feel or transform them. Remember, emotions play a prominent role in the buying behaviors of your customers. Your prospects don’t buy your products and services; they buy status and a better version of themselves.

The Position of Your Brand

What makes you different from your competitors? What do you stand for that they don’t? Or, what do you stand for that’s the same as them but communicated more compellingly?

For example, Sweetgreen’s positioning is “healthy fast food,” focusing on organic and local produce. “Healthy fast food” is a Unique Mechanism that ‘clicks’ in the prospect’s mind. You want to draw this out from your product or service, and the following questions can help you do it.

To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions: 

• What makes your company different from your competition?
• In what way is your company better equipped to solve pain points?
• Why should people trust you over other competing brands?

Dig deep, and focus on what sets you apart. See to it when a customer is deciding between you and your direct competitor, and figure out what you want them to know about your business specifically? For example, is your product the healthiest, most robust, cheapest, fastest? Ask yourself what your business and brand offer that others don’t like. Do you have something unique?

When you’ve dug out your unique value proposition, you can highlight it in your marketing materials. For instance, look at how Chipotle differentiates itself. Chipotle takes a unique brand position stance by claiming to use fresher, healthier ingredients than its competition. ‍

Identify

To discover and identify who your target market is, it’s helpful to create a customer persona. Identify who you’re talking to. Where do they live? How old are they? Any likes and dislikes, what about their values? And what seems to be important to them? What are their dreams and pain points, and what can your brand do to help with those?

Pro Tip: Reading reviews is a great way to learn about your target market and its pain points. If you’re selling a service or product, start reading online reviews for your competitors’ products. Simply check out what other people say about why they chose that product and why they were (or weren’t) happy with it.

The Voice of your Company/Brand

Often referred to like the character of your business. The voice of your company and brand translates to your ideal clients. It’s how your ideal customers and clients perceive your brand. It’s about how you say something and what you say to make the impression you want it to make. For example, tone. Is your style funny, serious, or casual? What words will you choose? Will the chatbot make jokes? Or will it cut straight to the point? The last company I worked with wanted this:  

• Bold, without being pushy
• Authentic and Real, but not negative
• Nurturing, rather than patronizing

Consistency of tone and voice across channels is critical in building trust with your audience. To help you develop your brand voice, spend some time looking at style guides from big brands with strong, clear voices. Then, check out this FREE PDF the Clepher team put together to get more tips on crafting your chatbot with your brand’s voice.

Give your Chatbot a Soul

This PDF is here to help you “swing it out of the park” with every bot you create. A bot that ‘sticks’ and ‘clicks’ to help create a fantastic experience with your audience. Answer the questions you find in this FREE PDF and connect with the reasons that drive you and your company. 

Download this FREE PDF to help you create a bot with a soul.

Cool, with that, you should now have everything you need to compile your brand’s identity. And frankly, now is the time to translate it into the copy of your Messenger chatbot. But before I leave you to it, here are some bonuses tips.

Here are 3 bonus tips to help you in the process:

Create a Persona for your chatbot

Not to be mistaken by your Customer Persona or Customer Avatar. Also very important, as you need to know who to target in your business. But we’re talking chatbots here. And your chatbot must be an extension of your brand. And in some cases, it portrays you as the face of your brand. You’ll want to nail this. See, many businesses start with creating a unique name for their bot. And while that’s a start, it needs to go further. For example, I once made a chatbot for a cat-food subscription box company. The persona for their bot was a “robotic cat.” She had a name, a list of activities and foods she liked, and a list of approved slang terms and emojis for her tone of voice. Don’t forget to “humanize” your chatbot character (lol, even if it’s a cat!) because you don’t want it to sound robotic. Yup, the tone is fundamental. We also added to the robotic cat; human traits, emotions, and intentions.

Bottom line: Let users know that they’re chatting with a chatbot and not a human. However, your chatbot should still communicate in a standard, humanlike style. A humanlike manner that feels approachable and unintimidating to users.

Refer to the brand-identity notes often.

Refer back to all the notes you made during the previous exercise. Keep them handy when writing copy for your Messenger bot! Ideally, you want to make your chatbot subscribers forget that they’re chatting with a chatbot—all by making the conversation feel easy and regular. Plus, I also recommend using the Pavlov formula for chatbot copywriting. This means that next to just thanking a subscriber each time they perform the action you want them to take (like sharing their email or tapping a button), it makes them feel more empowered instead.

Here’s what I mean: Let’s pretend a subscriber has entered their phone number or email address in your chatbot. Them, instead of having the chatbot reply with a simple “Thank you,” have it say something like, “Superb, You’re awesome! I’ve got your phone number now, and I’m going to send you the goodies to your email address!” Of course, you need to do this within your brand identity and voice; it doesn’t make sense to go overjoyed when people are using a chatbot to check for different types of caskets they can put their grandmother in. Yup, a morbid example, but I’ve seen this happening.

Add Personalization Tags

Adding personalization in your bot helps tell your subscriber: you are a unique person; I see you for what you are. Personalization helps build an emotional bond between your audience and your brand. Next to that, personalization can boost loyalty and drive more sales for your business. The easiest way to add personalization to your Messenger chatbot is to use the user’s first name in messages! (In Clepher, you can do this with Personalization Tags.) Insert these Personalization Tags into your Bot’s Flow, and they’ll automatically populate with each subscriber’s individual information inside the chatbot conversation. You can even take it further if you want. You can also have your chatbot recommend the products and services that would perfectly fit them. In addition to increasing conversions, leads, and sales, this kind of personalization can set you apart from your competitors because it shows that you’re genuinely interested in your customers.

Final Thoughts on Building Chatbot That Reflects your Business’s Brand

Use this article and the FREE PDF to draw out the essence of your brand, then put that essence into your chatbot to give it a soul. You’ll quickly see that you’ll create an impressive and consistent experience, which leads to more trust, brand loyalty, and of course, more sales and success. Your company is like a living, breathing entity, so your brand identity can change with it over time, too. Good luck!

Start building your first bot! Sign up for a Clepher account today. 

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