Your business needs good-quality leads to thrive and grow, and they don’t come easily. You are probably already using several lead generation tactics, everything from advertising, to a referral program, to deploying SEO to create quality content. 

Those tactics may or may not work well for you and you are always looking for ways to boost those tactics or find new methods to bring in qualified leads. One method many businesses are now using is integrating a chatbot for lead generation. With 73% of people expecting a website to use chatbots, is it time you looked at trying this tactic too?

What are Chatbots?

If you look at how chatbots are used across businesses, you will find them in multiple areas being utilized for everything from customer support to sales and marketing. As they can – to an extent – mimic human conversation, they can be useful in supporting their human counterparts in those areas. As with other tactics, your goal is to boost conversions. 

You can integrate chatbots into several areas of your interactions with customers. Call centers use them to guide customers and route them to the correct team or department. E-commerce businesses, including restaurants, use them on their websites to offer interactive menus, reservation tools, and other essential restaurant website features. 

Furthermore, chatbots facilitate restaurant staff hiring by automating the initial stages of the recruitment process, such as answering frequently asked questions and scheduling interviews, thereby improving the efficiency of bringing new employees on board.

Additionally, broader AI tools for e-commerce enhance operations by optimizing inventory management and personalizing marketing efforts based on consumer behavior analysis. They also appear on apps and social media platforms to answer basic questions or to give product recommendations. 

So, how can you use them for lead generation? 

A qualified lead needs the contact details of someone interested in your product or service. Chatbots can gather such information, including name, email address, and phone number, as well as other relevant information that may aid your sales teams later. They can also catch potential customers that may be overlooked by other tactics such as lead generation forms. 

The Role of Chatbots in Lead Generation 

Not all lead generation chatbots are created equal. That means you need to identify which one (or combination of different ones) best suits your business needs. The similarities between B2B and B2C lead generation means that most benefits will be the same. 

1. 1. Appointment making

While your chatbot may not be able to make the actual sale (yet), it can make appointments with people who can. They can offer potential buyers an appointment with one of your sales team thanks to real-time integration with your calendar. 

2. Qualifying 

Your sales teams may be very busy. That means they need to be able to prioritize appointments in order to speak to the most likely targets. This type of chatbot can ask the customer questions based on criteria you decided on. For example, if a customer called about an enterprise architecture framework, your chatbot could ask questions on the customer’s needs, type of framework, etc. 

3. Surveying 

Surveys are another effective way of collecting customer data. As well as that type of data, you can also use surveys to gauge customer perception on different areas of your business such as marketing or customer support. 

4. Sales 

Though they can’t yet replace your sales team, a chatbot can guide a customer through the sales process, particularly if you have a lot of automated and/or intuitive processes. They can offer customers recommendations based on their preferences and can guide them all the way to the checkout stage. 

5. FAQs 

As your leads move through your sales pipeline, they will often have questions that need answered. An FAQ chatbot can signpost them to the information they need as well as other relevant content. This can help build trust in your brand. 

How Chatbots Boost Customer Engagement

As well as knowing the type(s) of chatbot you want to use, it can also help to understand how your chatbot will help generate leads.

1. Ensures instant responses to customer inquiries

Because your chatbots are available 24/7, many website users prefer them to human agents. They provide instant responses to any customer questions, thus reducing the chance of that customer looking elsewhere. Your chatbot can even be programmed to transfer quality leads directly to your CRM (customer relationship management) system, thus giving your team more data to work from. 

2. Offers tailored recommendations and solutions

By accessing customer information, either from your CRM or from responses given by the customer, your chatbot can offer personal and tailored recommendations and solutions or can nurture them as leads before handing off to your sales teams. 

3. Drives retention and repeat business through proactive engagement

With 77% of business leaders acknowledging that personalization leads to better customer retention rates, chatbots have an important role to play. They can boost customer satisfaction levels and make the customer journey smoother. 

4. Creates a more interactive and engaging experience

Chatbots can be ideal for classifying your prospects into different categories of qualified leads. Some prospects may just be entering your marketing funnel, while others are coming to the final stages of your sales funnel. As chatbots are conversational, the experience is more engaging than just clicking options and buttons. 

5. Enables engagement across multiple communication channels

Ideally, you want to offer customers an omnichannel experience. Your chatbots are not only for your website, you can also integrate them into your social media messaging options as well as on your app. With CRM integration, this means customers can move seamlessly between the channels they prefer and can take up a previous conversation where it left off. 

Best Practices on Integrating Chatbots for Effective Engagement

So, you can see how useful a chatbot can be for boosting engagement and nurturing leads. But how do you actually start integrating chatbots into your existing system?  

1. Define your chatbot’s goals and target audience

What is your chatbot’s objective? If you have only one goal, then choose the type of chatbot you need. If more than one goal, then prioritize them before choosing. What your goals are will decide the features and functionalities you need to meet those goals and that will boost engagement while generating quality leads. You also need to decide on your target audience(s) as this will inform what your chatbot does. 

2. Choose a platform that aligns with your needs

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You can choose from multiple chatbot platforms, each of which offers different features and comes with pros and cons. Spend some time looking at the options and choose one that best meets your needs and integrates with existing tools and systems you use. You also want a platform that provides a high level of analytics and reporting. 

You also need to think about what existing lead generation tools you are utilizing. You’ll probably be using CRM and email marketing platforms at the very least. You want to be able to integrate your chatbot platform with all existing tools to avoid duplication and to ensure that collected information is stored across your systems. Chatbots can also improve your email deliverability rates. 

3. Design natural conversations for a seamless user experience

If your chatbot system is going to interact with customers effectively, you need to design a conversational flow to achieve that. While every chatbot will look to gather contact details, you also want a flow that will guide the prospect through your system so that they become a qualified lead. 

4. Be transparent about limitations to manage expectations

Your customers should not expect a conversation with a chatbot to be exactly the same as a human agent. Nor should you expect your chatbot to perform beyond its limitations. Being realistic about what a chatbot can do – on both sides of the equation – means you can focus on what it can achieve. 

5. Test thoroughly before deployment to ensure functionality

As far as possible, test your chatbot’s functionality before you deploy it. This can ensure that major features and functionality such as conversation flow are working as expected. You also want to be sure that the chatbot’s data collection is working properly.  

6. Provide clear instructions on how to interact with the chatbot

You need to be aware that your customers may not have used a chatbot before. Rather than having them dive straight into the deep end, it can be helpful to provide a how-to guide that will tell them how to interact with the chatbot and will advise them on what to expect from their interactions and what the chatbot can and cannot do. 

7. Leverage visuals to enhance clarity and user engagement

There will be times when your chatbot is providing information that won’t necessarily make sense to the customer. By utilizing visual content where relevant, you can make complex information more understandable and subsequently boost engagement.

8. Track data and gather feedback for continuous improvement

As with any new process, you may not get it right the first time. Just as you would carry out A/B testing on your content, you need to be sure that your chatbot is doing its job correctly once deployed. One major source in identifying effectiveness is user feedback, and another is the bot’s performance data. If needed, make any changes needed to improve your chatbot’s performance. 

Your ultimate goal with lead generation chatbots is to boost conversion rates. That should – hopefully – be a natural progression from your lead generation efforts. Your chatbot can identify and qualify potential leads by asking them relevant questions and collecting contact details and other information. Seamless integration with tools such as your CRM can give you an effective overview of every customer. 
Your lead generation strategy is a crucial component of your sales strategy, whether you’re undergoing a business transformation or tweaking a system that already works. Ideally, your marketing strategy first attracts a potential customer’s attention and moves them into your sales pipeline. Business owners looking to boost lead generation rates would do well to look to chatbots as the ideal solution.