Generating a steady flow of quality leads is essential for any business, be it big or small. But accomplishing it isn’t a simpler task. People change along with the rapidly evolving technological advancements.
People don’t walk to your online store straight away. They research about any specific brand or product before investing in it. Prospective leads often need a lot of details before giving away their personal information.
In a few cases, they urge for assistance in finding the right information on your website. And, you need to be prepared to help them anytime. Today, most of the companies address this essential requirement with chatbots.
Chatbots – the new kid on the block, has been a great help for businesses. Stats support this statement too. Companies saw a massive jump in the conversion rate after turning on a chatbot on their website.
“Chatbots are AI technology programmed to conduct a conversation with potential customers via auditory or textual methods.”
How Chatbots Help Lead Generation?
Chatbots are now a powerful tool in marketing. It replaces many means of the traditional lead generation process. It can:
- Run continuously 24/7/365
- Answer customer queries
- Set appointments
- Educate website visitors
- Auto qualify leads
- Reduce operating costs
Other predictive use cases of chatbots are shown in the chart below:
Image Source: Convince & Convert
How Can Small Businesses Use Chatbots to Generate Leads?
Artificial Intelligence solutions like Chatbots could look rocky to a small or medium business owner. But, when explored and incorporated appropriately, it could turn the business ROI high up with no qualms.
Keep reading to learn how to use Chatbots to grow your small business effectively.
1. Lead Generation Forms
Chatbots replace the traditional method of form filling. Now you can create a most simple yet conversational landing page form and integrate it into a sales workflow. When executed appropriately, it can drop new customers directly into your leads basket.
Image Source: Instabot
As per the Instabot report, clients saw a 33% increase in leads on their website by adding chatbots, as compared to other traditional web contact forms.
2. Customer Service Assistant
In today’s digital world, potential customers visit the website before buying a product. In fact, 53% of customers say they would prefer online chat before calling a company for customer support, according to ICMI. This figure is even higher among millennials.
So, use this opportunity to interact with such customers via a chatbot. Integrating a chatbot window will make it easy for people to clarify their doubts without any delay.
Consider this example of chatbot operated Messenger live chat used by a footwear retailer to help people with stock inquiries.
Image Source: Chatbots Magazine
This feature could save over 20 minutes of a customer and also save a retailer from losing them.
3. Replying to User Comments
Each Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media follower who comments on your page posts is a potential sales opportunity. However, manually replying one by one isn’t a feasible approach. The best way to benefit from this type of leads is to reach out to them via your chatbot.
It will instantly message the potential clients when they comment to access video, discount code, webinar reply, case study, etc.
Image Source: Chatbots Life [Chatbot name: QuizChatBot]
This robust automation tool replies in a more personalized way than ever before and helps you build the trust of commenters. It also enables you to grow your list of quality leads as users who comment on page posts are already interested in your product in some way.
4. Booking and Scheduling Tasks
Chatbots help you work smarter by letting your interested customers make instant reservations by themselves. This could free up your time to focus on other crucial tasks.
Take this example of Alfra.io built exclusively to help the salon industry.
Image Source: Chatbots Life [Chatbot name: Alfra]
It’s often stressful for beauty & hair salons to manage their customer bookings over the phone and social media. Alfra helps them automate lead generation, appointment bookings, customer service, and much more.
It starts by asking the visitor which service they would like to book, followed by their preferred date and time, as well as contact details.
The majority of leads will move onto a competitor if they don’t get an immediate response from you. With a Chatbot like this, you can add in your services, its price, and other details that a customer may request.
5. Promoting Lead Magnets
Use chatbots to send promotional and educational messages to your leads. For example, you can tell your leads about upcoming webinars, or send eBooks to educate more on a topic relevant to your business.
If you are leveraging chatbots to help promote your webinar and increase engagement, you will have to set up at least three separate message flows:
- Registration Message
- Reminder Message
- Follow-up Message
Also, after the live event, you can use bots to send the replay link and thank-you bonus gift such as free PDF, how-to guide, eBook, etc. You can even send a promotional offer to people who are recognized as warm leads.
Image Source: Social Media Examiner
Apart from this, you can send attendees a message to ask if they want to enroll in any of the free mini-course where you can provide more valuable content to further engage with them with your business.
How to Get Started with Chatbots?
If you are a small business owner and do not have sufficient resources with technical skills, worry not. You can still build a powerful chatbot customized for your business. Some companies develop chatbots both for the website and social media. Alternatively, you could also hire an experienced developer to build one specifically for your firm.
But before getting started, you need to determine what you’re automating. It could be:
- Answering Queries – Chatbots are the best option for answering common customer questions with the lightning-fast response rate.
- Sales Support – Using chatbots to recommend similar products, solve payment issues, answer questions regarding price, etc.
- Collecting Information – Chatbots can collect information like website forms while pre-qualifying, directing, or leaving a message for the right branch.
Once you know your need, replace your static forms with the chatbots.
So, there you go!
Don’t wait further. Build your customized chatbot today and start generating quality leads. I repeat – It is a perfect solution to boost your website’s lead generation prowess.