How Chatbots Help in Lead Generation – A Detailed Study

Whatever is your business type, lead generation is vital for it because a business can't grow without leads. Undoubtedly, lead generation is not an easy task; it is time-consuming; however, with modern technologies, it can become convenient.

The usage of chatbots and other forms of automation is spreading across a wide range of industries, taking over multiple tasks that a human would otherwise perform. But, how can chatbots be used to generate leads? What is lead generation? Why is it important? What are lead generation chatbots? How can a chatbot generate leads? To discover it all out, let's get started.

What Are Lead Generation Chatbots?

Lead generation chatbots are employed to automate interactions between businesses and customers. A chatbot for lead generation uses a conversational method to collect consumer data, help customers through the purchasing process, and qualify leads. In addition, they let website users explore various options and enable enterprises to actively connect with prospects, preventing them from leaving their website without converting.

With the support of chatbots, businesses can create stronger relationships with consumers by interacting with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This round the clock support is a huge advantage as 64% of business owners believe that it is chatbot’s best functionality. With a round the clock support, chatbot for lead generation guarantee that you never lose a lead by serving web traffic outside of business hours while your sales staff or live chat operators are unavailable.

Types of Lead Generation Chatbots

There are multiple types of lead generation chatbots. Each one of them generates leads in different ways. Let’s have a look at them one by one.

1. Qualification Chatbots

These chatbots qualify prospects into leads by asking qualifying questions based on certain criteria. With these chatbots, businesses can prioritize their sales efforts by knowing which leads are more likely to convert.

2. Appointment Booking Chatbots

As the name suggests, these chatbots help in scheduling appointments with potential leads. They do this by providing real-time visibility into the calendar and allowing customers to book meetings as per their preferences.

3. FAQ Chatbots

FAQ chatbots guide visitors to the right content based on their needs and interests. They build trust and nurture leads toward a sale by providing useful information.

4. Survey Chatbots

Survey chatbots conduct surveys to collect opinions and feedback from their targeted audience. These critical data help businesses to gain actionable insights to improve their marketing strategy.

5. Sales Chatbots

These chatbots are known for guiding customers through the sales process, right from the first contact to the final purchase. They answer questions and offer personalized recommendations that help businesses to increase conversion rates and improve customer satisfaction.

Benefits Of Lead Generation Chatbots

1. Personalized Experience

You may have spotted a generic-looking form that asks for information such as your name, email address, and other personal information. Almost every website has something similar. It is no wonder that customers find these common forms boring and frustrating.

The old-fashioned way of doing things isn't just inconvenient; it's simply ridiculous. It is because the customers already have ten tabs open where they are browsing and comparing each offering. If your company doesn’t offer anything new or compelling even if it is just a form, you are likely to lose customers.

Also Read: Forms Are Dead and Chatbots Have Killed Them!

However, a chatbot can avoid this. If you want to increase your website's lead generation, try implementing a chatbot to greet your visitors by their names. Having someone available to answer immediately and provide the visitor with all the information they want, along with making all these interactions personalized. Isn't that interesting?

Without even searching for hours, users can acquire anything they want. A lead generation chatbot quickly provides answers and ensures that the user has a pleasant experience.

It will help you stand out from the competition by demonstrating your commitment to providing a unique service to your clients. Chatbot for lead generation allows you to tailor each lead's experience to their specific needs.

2. Customer Segmentation

To provide relevant material to the audience, you can use segmentation to characterize your audience base as accurately as possible. It also makes it simple to develop useful audience groups based on consumer data. The primary goal of customer segmentation is to send relevant marketing messages to the users. There are many ways to segment your audience, including demographics, hobbies, and even age and gender.

A lead generation chatbot is useful in a wide range of situations because it can quickly segment an audience based on the information gathered and generate more qualified leads. You can nurture your sales pipeline by using AI chatbots to segment your audience.

For example, if your customer celebrates Christmas, the chatbot might recommend the perfect gifts for clients. Using the fragmented results over time, you may develop specific responses that you can then provide to your consumers when they ask for them.

3. Increased Conversions

Many firms make the blunder of trying to sell to an audience they don't understand. You must first know your target audience and interests to identify them as possible leads for your business.

When it comes to generating leads, a chatbot is a boon since it not only helps you better understand your prospects but also assists you in categorizing them. So, let's take a look at how a lead generation chatbot can be used to gain a deeper understanding of your audience:

• Using bots, you may learn more about your customers' preferences and get them more involved, which will lead to increased sales.

• You may use a chatbot to conduct customer feedback surveys to understand which goods are doing well and which ones aren't.

• A lead generation chatbot may segment your audience depending on their responses, allowing marketers to deploy the proper resources at the right time to advance leads through the sales funnel.

4. Improve B2B Customer Experience

Instant messaging has been more popular with customers in recent years. Think about it from your point of view: You spend more time communicating with your coworkers via Slack than you do in person. For communication with other individuals, you choose to use iMessenger or WhatsApp. It is thus not unexpected that this practice has spread to businesses connecting with other firms. According to a recent Twilio poll, 9 out of 10 clients prefer texting when contacting a company.

Many companies have realized that using a chatbot for lead generation by enabling companies to connect with consumers in a conversational manner is a more efficient method. That is why there has been a wide scale adoption of chatbots across industry verticals. This adoption is reflected by the fact that the market for chatbots is expected to reach $1.25 billion by 2025. The bots will become less artificial and more human like in their design as they evolve.

5. Real-time Responses

Bots aren't here to take our jobs; they're here to assist us. When utilized in conjunction with the customer journey, chatbots perform at their best. They assist the team and enhance customer communication. According to the Oracle poll, 80% of marketers are already using chatbots since 2020.

Using a chatbot to generate leads is a great way to save time and money as it eliminates the need to fill out lengthy forms. Each step along the way, the chatbot asks for more information about the visitor.

It eases the burden and speeds up the process of acquiring information. In other words, it helps your lead generation efforts when customers don't have to fill out their information.

As a result, customers are less frustrated and can decide right away. Visitors may rapidly choose the option that is most relevant to them.

6. Building a Chatbot Is Simple and Inexpensive

The only expense involved to create a chatbot with a bot builder is your time. No-code platforms have allowed organizations of all sizes and backgrounds to benefit from these sophisticated digital solutions. If we have a look at the stats, by 2022, Juniper Research predicts that businesses will save $8 billion a year through bots.

You don't have to spend a lot of money or time to create a chatbot for lead generation for WhatsApp, Facebook, or your website. Depending on the level of sophistication, marketers may quickly and easily create bots using no-code platforms.

How Do Chatbots Qualify Lead?

Websites have to employ various marketing techniques to communicate with potential customers and identify them as a lead. Imagine conversing with several prospects and attempting to keep track of all of your chats. It is unquestionably a challenging task.

However, a chatbot for lead generation simplifies this process for websites and creates leads by swiftly obtaining the required information about a prospect and forwarding it to the appropriate salesperson.

Around the course of the previous year, 67% of customers worldwide engaged in conversation with a chatbot. As a result, customers may learn more about a product or service by interacting with chatbots and helpful AI agents assisting them.

In addition, websites employ lead generation chatbots to produce considerably more leads using unique strategies. Here are a few techniques that AI chatbots may use to qualify potential customers for business websites:

1. Insights From Conversations

AI chatbots gather customers' preferences and want by asking them pertinent questions. Aside from qualifying prospects into leads, a chatbot for lead generation gives business owners a better understanding of what their customers are like. Customer service chatbots on corporate websites use customer replies to make further suggestions and recommendations.

Chatbots assist websites in analyzing prior chats better to grasp the decision-making tendencies of a potential customer. This technique helps firms better connect with their customers and potential customers. A chatbot for lead generation might use visual cues such as pictures and charts in communications to keep the clients' interest. Conversations with chatbots mimic human-to-human interactions, resulting in increased business opportunities.

2. Availability and Accessibility

As AI chatbots are always available, website users prefer them to human operators. A lead generation chatbot converses seamlessly with clients and provides suitable responses to each of their questions. A lack of promptness in responding to customer inquiries is a common reason customers look elsewhere.

With fast replies, chatbots keep customers on the site longer and prevent them from leaving. In addition, conversations with chatbots may be used by online businesses to learn more about their customers. Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots simplify this process by studying their interactions with each visitor.

In addition to collecting lead information, a lead generation chatbot may also qualify leads and transfer them directly to the CRM system, easing the sales team's task.

3. Error-free Personalization

Robotic conversational interfaces automate the process of personalizing recommendations and resolving issues. AI chatbots can function as human agents 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and never grow weary or worn out.

Website visitors are drawn to chatbots because they provide them with additional information about the company and pique their curiosity, which helps prospects better comprehend the brand's products or services.

4. Interact to Gather Lead Information

Chatbots do not collect prospects' personal information, but how consumers engage with the bot and their questions is documented. The bot only gathers prospect information when a customer fills out a form and submits it to the sales team.

A chatbot uses the following interactions for lead generation to identify the demands of potential customers:

• By adequately classifying each prospect, chatbots decrease the time spent on leads that are not close to converting.

• A human-in-the-loop system may be used to train AI chatbots for future sales cycles.

 5. Schedules Meetings

During qualifying leads for the company, chatbots plan meetings with clients to improve their experience. However, it takes a lot of time and effort for online businesses to gather data about prospective new consumers. An AI chatbot for lead generation can do this work while quickly generating new leads for businesses. When a person has to go through numerous steps to plan an appointment, it might be exhausting, but AI chatbots can schedule appointments quickly by asking questions intuitively. AI chatbots that converse with prospects in a human-like manner can build a conversational tone and swiftly invite prospects to meetings.

6. Marketing to a Specific Audience

Chatbots for lead generation can detect customers who are close to making a purchase or who are interested in learning more about the product or service. Targeted marketing removes the time-intensive analysis of each website visitor. Instead, prospects are immediately added to a company's "hot" list using chatbots.

How to Set up a Lead Generation Chatbot?

1. Choose the Right Chatbot Platform

Before you implement a chatbot for lead generation, you must choose the right chatbot platform. You must go after a chatbot platform that offers you the right chatbot features and capabilities and aligns with your specific lead generation goals.

Here are some factors that you can consider to choose a chatbot platform:

• Ease of use

• Rich customization options

• Multiple integrations with existing software

• Analytics dashboard and reporting feature

• High scalability 

There are plenty of chatbot platforms available. To save you time, we have curated a list of the top 14 most powerful chatbot platforms.

2. Build a Chatbot for Lead Generation

Once you have chosen a chatbot platform, next you have to create a chatbot for lead generation. You can refer to the video below to see how you can build a chatbot for lead generation on WotNot.

3. Integrating Chatbots Into Existing Lead Generation Strategies

Once you have created the chatbot, now it’s time to integrate it into your existing lead generation strategies. First, you need to identify the areas where chatbots can be leveraged to complement and boost lead gen efforts.

Here are some of the ways you can integrate your chatbot for lead generation into the existing strategies:

• Convert every webpage into a landing page by adding a chatbot

• Address inquiries instantly and qualify leads by integrating chatbots into the customer service channels

• Take followups and nurture leads with a chatbot

Chatbot for Lead Generation — 7 Best Practices

1. Attract and Establish a Relationship With Your Target Audience

Building a lead generation funnel involves attracting and interacting with your ideal customers. The chatbot for lead generation will be able to perform this step for you.

If you want to get your audience's attention, you need to provide something distinctive. There is a good chance that they will find this interesting. When it comes to digital marketing, this strategy is known as "lead magnets."

2. Determine What Constitutes a Lead

Consider what information your sales team needs to qualify a lead when crafting questions that your chatbot will ask. What topics should your chatbot be able to cover?

Depending on your goals and marketing funnel, you should alter this accordingly. You may want to gather email addresses at the top of the funnel.

3. Engage the Lead

Following the acquisition of a lead, you must engage them to increase their likelihood of becoming a customer. Furthermore, simply having contact information is the tip of the iceberg regarding the possibilities.

Before you can do anything with a lead, you have to qualify it. It is anticipated that chatbots will be able to answer between 75% and 90% of healthcare and financial inquiries by the year 2022.

4. Set Your Chatbot's Tone of Speech

Your chatbot for lead generation may have a tailored voice and language to suit your target audience better if you clearly understand who they are.

Your brand rules should be followed in the established voice to convey a consistent message and establish credibility with your target audience.

5. Carry Out A/B Testing and Inquire 

Qualifying inquiries might begin after you've established a connection with the lead. Then, instead of having the information fill out lengthy forms, chatbots may conversationally ask questions.

It doesn't matter whether you employ an AI-powered lead generation chatbot or standard ones; the goal should be to expedite the process. Adding buttons is one method of doing this.

6. Use a CRM to Store the Information

When your leads have been broken down, and their data has been obtained, it's time to enter them into your CRM or spreadsheet. When it comes to this, one time lead generation chatbot shine.

Integrations with common CRM, email, and Google Sheets are available for several lead generation chatbot systems. Automating this procedure may be done quickly using this method.‍

7. Create Human Takeover Scenarios

These corporate prospects may need additional attention from your side when you are segmenting your lead list. You should be able to step in and take control of the discussion if the lead starts to slip away.

You can do this by setting up human handover scenarios where the chatbot transfers the discussion to a human agent in certain conditions.

7 Best Ways to Use Chatbots for Lead Generation

1. Understanding the Target Audience

As a rule, relationships should be cultivated. You constantly try to understand your neighbor before you give them anything. A similar argument can be made for the way corporations facilitate connections with their clients.

They need to know who they're working with before they can sell their goods or services. Customers' purchasing patterns, hobbies, and other interests should be considered while making these assessments.

You can learn a lot about your clients by using a chatbot for lead generation. Among other things, you may find out what your consumers want and what they don't want. These details make it simple to meet the demands of your customers.

2. Auto Qualify Leads With Chatbots

Your sales may be automated with the aid of bots. Customers may be asked particular questions based on their needs, and the system can then direct them to the appropriate staff for more assistance.

This eliminates the need for your team to listen to each consumer individually. More time is devoted to satisfying the needs of the consumer.

3. Replace Forms With Lead Generation Bots

Customers despise having to fill out forms on websites. They dislike it because it's boring to them. So, if your company is still mainly relying on the conventional way of lead generation through form fill-ups, you're on the incorrect route.

A significant number of leads may be generated by combining chatbots with lead creation. The use of bots may minimize the amount of time and effort required to gather data, hence enhancing the lead generation strategy.

4. Schedule Appointments 24×7 With Lead Bots

Customers value your online presence round the clock. To keep your consumers coming back, you must be able to connect with them. If you don't have it, clients may go elsewhere, as you won't be accessible. It's critical to learn how to utilize chatbot for lead generation if you want to reap these rewards.

5. Train Your Customers

You can't expect customers to purchase from you until they know what you're offering and how it will benefit them. Your customers will rapidly exit their browsers and go to competing items if yours are judged irrelevant.

Customers benefit from chatbots from conversations because they supply product expertise. Customers can make better decisions if they have the correct information at their disposal. In the long run, this may lead to more sales.

6. Ensure That Complicated Sales Conversions Have Hybrid Assistance

Live chat and chatbot for lead generation have now supplanted each other as the primary means of interacting with customers. Each offers its own set of advantages that may be used to generate leads for your organization.

However, it is essential that you first grasp the advantages and disadvantages of both to make an informed choice about whether to use a chatbot or live chat. The best approach for your company is to determine the websites that need a live chat and lead-generating bots and then implement these solutions on those web pages.

Also Read: Chatbot vs Live Chat – The Winning Pick For Your Customer Support

7. Engage Visitors Who Intend to Bounce

Customers sometimes quit websites and go to rivals because they can't access up-to-date information in real-time. Chatbot for lead generation may be the most excellent way to keep customers from abandoning their shopping carts or keeping them engaged while they attempt to exit your website.

Conclusion

The quality of your company's communication is a deciding factor in its success. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a need in today's world because of advancements in technology. Customers want fast responses, easy interactions, and round-the-clock assistance.

Automating communication is a fantastic method to rethink how your organization communicates with clients. Chatbot for lead generation will increase customer engagement and increase sales. Using bots to automate chats with your prized prospects is a winning strategy.

WotNot offers you a platform where you can easily build your chatbot for lead generation. Or, you can also get it built with its done-for-you services. To know more, you can contact us or schedule a demo.