Various techniques and methods are employed for generating leads. The most preferred of them is chatbots. This is because of the unmatchable customer experience in the form of quick support, interactive sessions, round-the-clock availability, and more. And the best part is that they help your firm acquire leads without investing big!

In recent years, chatbots have enormously transformed the way businesses and their customers interact with each other. Read on to find how AI chatbots can help your brand in lead generation. 

What are lead generation chatbots?

Lead generation chatbots are those chatbots employed to collect customer information, qualify leads, and/or escort customers during the purchasing process. Just like all other chatbots, these are built on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and automate conversations between brands and their customers. 

Lead generation chatbots help users interactively navigate through different available options, and thus, engage them on your site and prevent them from leaving it unconverted.

What are the benefits of lead generation chatbots?

Now let’s get a glimpse of the major benefits of lead generation chatbots. 

1. Round-the-clock availability

64% of website visitors say that the thing they best like chatbots for is its 24×7 availability (Source: Drift). You can access customer support from a lead generation chatbot even outside the working hours of a business. 

2. Immediate support

Unlike human staff support which takes some time for connecting you with the right resource person and giving you the solution you’re looking for, chatbots provide instant support. You can get quick answers to your questions. 

3. Money-saving

Employing a chatbot helps you save money on hiring a customer support professional. Besides, this leaves your human staff to focus on core business activities. 

4. Easy communication

Often, people are happy to communicate their concerns and issues they’re facing to a bot than to human staff. This is because the latter isn’t judgemental. 

5. Quick complaint resolution

Availing the support of human staff or going through a knowledge base to find solutions to their problems can be time-consuming for your users. On the other hand, chatbots can facilitate the quick resolution of complaints. 

6. Increased ROI

Implementing an AI chatbot for rendering customer service can help your business enjoy a tangible ROI into your chatbot. This is because it can improve customer retention greatly. No wonder businesses use it as one of their customer retention strategies. 

Thus, employing chatbots can enhance the customer experience in many ways and help your business substantially gain from it.

4 Ways to Use Chatbots for Lead Generation

Businesses can employ chatbots to bring them a lot of high intent leads. There are several ways you can improve customer experience and increase conversions using chatbots. 

1. Understand your target audience better

The better you know your target audience; the better would be your chances of converting them. So, you need to understand them and know their interests before targeting them with your pitch.  Employ a lead qualification bot to help you in this regard. It can not only help you understand your leads but also segment them, which is essential for better lead generation. 

Here are some ways in which employing these bots can help understand your audience better. 

• Identifying the demographics, likes, dislikes, geographic location, interests, preferences, profession, etc. of visitors to create buyer personas. This way, you can engage them better and thereby generate more leads. 
• Running interactive chatbot surveys to gain a better comprehension of the best and least performing products. 
• Moving leads into sales funnel stages by delivering the right content at the right time to the right people. 
• Targeting leads with appealing messaging around your offering.

2. Educate your audience

You need to educate your consumers about how your products can help solve the specific issues they’re facing. This will help your leads to convert successfully. Automating the process of educating them would save resources and bring good results. Renowned firms like Spotify, Sephora, etc. have set up lead generation chatbots for this purpose.

Educating your audience helps them to make well-informed purchasing decisions. Here are some techniques to help you in accomplishing this-

• Employ a bot to let your audience know of educational and promotional info such as e-books, discounts, upcoming webinars, offers, etc. 
• Make your lead management seamless by integrating your bot with your Customer Relationship Management software. 

3. Qualify more leads

You can use chatbots to collect specific info from leads and use it to determine where exactly leads are in their buyer journey or how qualified they’re for sales. You simply need to set your bot with specific qualifying questions related to your business’ sales process, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). 

For instance, your lead generation chatbot can initiate an interaction with your prospect by asking him/her his budget range, and based on his/her response can display products or services relevant to him/her, continue the conversation by asking more qualifying questions, or direct him/her to the sales team. 

4. Build trust and relationships

Chatbots can interact with your consumers employing a human touch by using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. This will help improve customer experience and gain their trust. For, when customers feel that they’re getting apt answers to their queries, their confidence in your firm builds up and leads to brand affinity.

By providing a personalized human touch to your business and responding quickly and promptly, chatbots can delight your audience. Consequently, they start feeling that they can rely on your brand. Furthermore, chatbots can help them know your current announcements, offers, and updates that they might be interested in. Thus, these can add value to them and help them make informed buying decisions. 

Other Ways to Generate Leads Using Chatbots

Apart from the above-mentioned methods of generating and qualifying leads, you can also use chatbots to book appointments, make reservations, schedule demos, promote products, answer FAQs, and more. These can prevent visitors from leaving your website unconverted.

Wrapping Up

The benefits of chatbots are manifold. When employed in automating lead generation, they can help understand your audience, educate them, enhance their customer experience, build their trust on your brand, and increase conversions. 

Author Bio:

Shivani is a content writer at NotifyVisitors and InviteReferrals. She writes SEO articles, blogs, and guest posts for businesses to improve website ranking on SERP. She follows a balanced approach to the quality of content and its marketing.