Instant availability is now a non-negotiable expectation for businesses, yet it's often sidelined, citing resource constraints even in this age of advancing artificial intelligence.
Is it a loss for them? Yes, especially for marketers, as their prime goal is lead generation. CallPage's 2019 experiment validates this, "Contacting your leads in 30 seconds or less improves the conversion rate by 90%1." As you delay, it results in lead decay. Specifically, a five-minute delay reduces your chances of qualifying a lead by 80%2.
Instant availability can help you generate more leads. If this were common knowledge, you'd think every business would be doing this. However, only 37% of companies respond to generated leads within an hour3. You can imagine the rest. Marketers can bridge this significant gap between market expectations and practice by leveraging chatbots to engage and generate better quality leads.
What are lead generation chatbots?
To OpenAI's credit, once described as dumb bots and usually used as an option to buy time for human agents, it has become a household name and the preferred method of contact for a majority of people.
Used for many scenarios for visiting prospects and customers alike, when used to collect prospects' information to pass on to the sales team for conversions, it's called a lead generation chatbot.
Related resources:
Top chatbot use cases for 16 departments and industries in 2024
Why you should use chatbots for lead generation
We can classify buyers into two categories: independent explorers and guided shoppers. The former would like to do everything themselves and seek assistance only when needed, while the latter would expect assistance when they enter the scene.
It applies to your website visitors as well. Independent explorers evaluating your product or service would go through your site to understand what you offer, compare you against the other choices, do a SWOT analysis, and look for assistance only when they have any inquiries or want to talk about making a purchase. Guided shoppers, on the other hand, would directly reach out to your team to understand the value you offer.
Both buyers would expect representatives to be there when needed, but where they'd need them varies. When they reach out, they'd expect responses and resolutions instantly. Chatbots take on this burden to help businesses support both kinds of buyers.
Available 24/7
As pointed out in the previous section, instant availability is one of the most significant advantages of using lead generation bots. Not only is it instant, but it'll always be available, as they can be deployed outside business operating hours. Even when reached off hours, chatbots will converse with prospects, learn their needs, share relevant information, and collect their data for further follow-ups.
Cheaper and scalable
Despite the size of your business and the volume of prospects, chatbots can be deployed to handle lead generation. They can handle any number of inquiries simultaneously and are much cheaper than human alternatives; any business can afford and deploy them.
Increased engagement and higher conversion
Chatbots, though intended to engage, satisfy, and capture leads, were used as glorified web forms. They weren't used for conversation until AI was integrated with them. Now, with the advancements in NLP (natural language processing) and ML (machine learning), chatbots have truly evolved to engage prospects.
With conversational chatbots, businesses can enable two-way communication with prospects, learn their requirements, and share personalized solutions at scale. Improved and increased engagement increases the chances of conversion.
Improved customer engagement and experience
Increased engagement enhances customers' overall engagement with the conversational chatbots and leaves a good note in the prospects' minds for a lasting experience.
How to use chatbots for lead generation
Chatbots are great for generating leads for businesses of all sizes and types. To clear up any questions you have about using them, revisit the two kinds of buyers discussed above: independent explorers and guided shoppers.
Identify potentials
Concerning guided shoppers, chatbots can converse with them to learn their requirements and analyze whether they're ideal prospects based on their interactions. If they're independent explorers, chatbots merely have to clear up inquiries, and in the process, analyze whether they're happy with the product or service.
Collect contact information
After identifying the possible potentials, sharing collaterals to show the product or service's value within the chat interface will help guided shoppers decide faster. Once they express interest, their contact information can be collected instantly and pushed to the CRM without delay.
Likewise, independent explorers can be marked as leads or not after the chatbot analyzes how they engage. When they're ready to proceed to the next step, a chatbot can collect their information for sales follow-ups.
Nudge prospects to engage
With chatbots, businesses, especially marketers, can first identify their leads among the visitors, filter them based on their inquiries and requirements, and score them based on how they engage with the bot to analyze the quality of leads. After qualifying, their contact information can be collected to generate leads.
On occasions when visitors don't engage with the chatbot, trigger rules can be set to pop the widget and nudge them to engage in generating more and better-quality leads.
Benefits of chatbots for lead generation
Besides the overall benefit of helping with lead generation, chatbots offer more specific benefits for your business's lead generation process.
Never miss out on leads
Since chatbots are available 24/7, it's similar to having a salesperson on your website 24/7. You never miss out on visitors who'd like to inquire about your product or service and never miss out on the chances of generating leads.
Even if it's after your business hours or if you're catering to global audiences operating without time zone restrictions, chatbots will generate leads for you.
More quality leads
Marketers will nod their heads to this. More than the struggle of generating leads, they're concerned with the quality of the leads. Right from the visitors' first interaction with chatbots, businesses will be able to analyze the quality of the leads and push only those who satisfy their criteria for sales follow-ups. This drastically increases the chances of conversion.
Save time
This benefit will apply to all the teams involved in handling the lead pipeline. Qualifying and generating leads simultaneously saves time and effort during post-lead-gen follow-up and even decreases customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Better prospecting experience
Providing a better, more engaging experience right from the prospects' first interaction greatly impacts their trust in your product or service. Similar to the post-purchase customer experience, the prospect experience is vital to decreasing the decision-making time, especially if your product has a long buying cycle.
What makes a chatbot good for lead generation
If chatbots have a plethora of benefits, why doesn't everyone have them on their website? It's not about just having it but also personalizing the configuration and refining it periodically to provide a better experience to the prospects. So, what characteristics should be monitored and what changes made?
Should be conversational
The days of traditional rule-based chatbots, where the conversation is one-dimensional and doesn't offer any value to prospects, are over. Now, people, especially those looking for a solution for their businesses, want to converse and get quick answers. They also want to avoid going through a list of articles in the knowledge base to get what they're looking for. Additionally, the answers they get should be personalized depending on the need.
This can be achieved only if your chatbot has conversational capabilities along with generative and contextual intelligence. Otherwise, the prospects will ask to connect to your human operators, increasing their load, or they will simply choose a solution that is instantly attentive. Conversational chatbots convince prospects that someone on the other end is listening to their issues and wants to resolve them in a personalized way. That increases the trust they have in your business and improves the chances of generating leads.
Integrate with existing systems
Chatbots don't operate individually. They should have sufficient resources to make them conversational and relevant to your business; only then can they be personalized and provide contextual solutions. Chatbots need to be well-integrated with your existing systems to do that and for further follow-ups.
A human operator can refer to collaterals or get help from someone else to respond to the prospects. If you want the chatbot to work like that, integrating with your existing system ensures it has sufficient information to resolve their inquiries and generate leads.
Scalable
As businesses grow, chatbots should be scalable to generate leads, handle the increasing volume of inquiries, and manage growing complex tasks. It's critical to choose a solution you can work regardless of the size of your business. In this way, when you grow, you don't have to worry about its capabilities to generate leads.
If you feel the information is overwhelming and you'd like suggestions on how to choose the best conversational chatbot to generate leads, we suggest checking out Zoho SalesIQ.
Zoho SalesIQ: The best platform to build chatbots for lead generation
Zoho SalesIQ, a 360-degree customer engagement platform, is the best software for building your chatbot for lead generation. It offers two kinds of bots: Guided bots and FAQ bots.
Guided bots are step-by-step bots that collect and record information from visitors. They can be built in two different ways: code or no-code chatbots. You can choose which one you want to develop based on your expertise.
If your business will receive a lot of inquiries that need to be answered or if you are required to share relevant resources with prospects, SalesIQ's FAQ bot, Answer Bot, would be the way to go. It's powered by Zoho's NLP model, Zia.
If you don't want to choose and need the benefits of both, you can connect them using the Answer Bot card within the codeless builder.
SalesIQ also integrates with OpenAI's ChatGPT if your business and visitors require it.
Ready to build a chatbot for generating leads? Sign up for a 15-day free trial and see it in action.
Related resources:
References:
1. https://www.callpage.io/blog/posts/verified-lead-generation-statistics
2. https://imagebuildingmedia.com/marketing-edu/lead-generation/lead-response/respond-to-leads-immediately-or-conversions-drop-sharply
3. https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads
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