5 Benefits of Chatbots for Lead Generation in Marketing
Customers have come to expect near-immediate response times. That’s unfortunate news for small businesses and brands that rely on more traditional methods of communication with their consumers. Not everyone can reply 24/7. Constantly answering phones, reading DMs and checking inboxes—frankly—sucks. If an interested B2C customer or a warm B2B lead reaches out and doesn’t hear back soon, they’re moving on to the next business. Bye-bye, potential revenue!
Enter the Marketing Power of Chatbots
But that was before the widespread prevalence of chatbots. Complimentary or low-cost options exist for startups and small brands, but most marketing chatbots today come with impressive, robust customizations and personalizations. If you choose the right chatbot for your business and set it up properly, you can interface with a near-infinite number of clients or customers while you focus on what you do best.
Smart marketers everywhere now use chatbot strategies to optimize customer experience and improve lead generation online. These computer programs are designed to simulate conversations with human users by using algorithms and natural language processing.
As a digital marketing agency that focuses on building brand-consumer relationships, we’ve seen five main benefits of using chatbots for lead generation.
1. Chatbots Gather Data and Contact Information
No one likes to fill out long, time-consuming forms online. Static forms have a reputation for high abandonment rates, but chatbots can fix all of that. When websites require visitors to complete a form to opt into email communication or complete a purchase, a lot of people walk away. Chatbots, on the other hand, can break long forms into shorter segments and multiple views to gather data in more digestible ways. This multi-step conversion makes collecting lead information much easier, providing marketing teams with improved lead quality and conversion rates. According to the platform giosg, chatbots can generate 4x more leads than static forms.
2. Chatbots Provide 24/7 Lead Gen and Support
Marketers are taught to "strike while the iron is hot." Well, in a 21st-century global marketplace, the iron is always hot. Knowing that leaving the office after a long day to have dinner with the kids could cause your company to lose out on tons of qualified after-hours leads is, well, not great for the psyche. With chatbots, this isn't a problem. They provide support to website visitors around the clock, even converting traffic into qualified contacts when you’re off the clock. This means you can also reach out to leads personally to continue the conversation whenever you’re ready and at your best.
3. Chatbots Increase Conversion Rates
In a perfect world, every lead would convert into a customer. However, we don't live in a perfect world. If we did, it wouldn’t have taken Beyoncé until 2025 to win Album of the Year. The truth is that while even chatbots won't be able to convert each and every lead, they significantly increase conversion rates. Bots can analyze user behavior and preferences, tailor responses and product suggestions to each customer, immediately address customer concerns, and create a more interactive and positive customer experience through conversational language and humor.
4. Chatbots Effectively Qualify Leads
Chatbots can converse with potential customers and ask targeted questions to gather information like needs, budget, timeline and pain points—weeding out the unqualified clients or consumers before you ever have to think about it. They’re great for identifying which prospects are most likely to convert based on their answers. Human marketers can then use that data to prioritize high-quality leads to reach out to with a personal touch. Plus, because bots are digital programs with access to lots of data, they often can personalize messages in ways that real people can’t.
5. Chatbots Personalize the Customer Experience
Evolving technology is bringing us into the era of hyper-personalized experiences, allowing businesses to provide strategic solutions to each customer. Most people would probably agree that nothing’s worse than waiting on hold for hours or sending multiple messages only to receive the same generic response as thousands of others. With chatbots, customers get instant, personalized responses. The bots can even help customers navigate through products and services, provide custom recommendations and anticipate consumers’ needs based on previous interactions—almost like a friend who knows exactly what they need.
Chat With Your Next Marketing Agency
Clearly, chatbots are powerful marketing tools that most businesses should implement to improve their funnel. But it’s not a “push one button and it’s done” situation. A chatbot takes time and thoughtfulness to select, set up, optimize and manage. Until there’s a bot that sets up bots in the same way you would, you can rely on marketing agencies like Elevate My Brand to have your bot—we mean back.
Contact our digital marketing experts for more information about how chatbots can work for your brand today!