
Communication is the core part of marketing. Companies worldwide invest heavily in diverse mediums to promote their messages. However, when it comes to hitting the right chord with customers, along with optimizing demand generation apparatus, nothing comes close to the scintillating aura of Chatbots.
Thanks to technological advancement, Chatbots, once termed and bullied as robotic communication, are now counted amongst the top channels to run personalized, effective, and result-driven communication.
Moreover, B2B enterprises are now embracing it faster and using it as a core part of their lead generation strategy to gain more customers. Want to know why and how? This blog will help you know everything about Chatbots. It will also help you understand why chatbots are essential to run an effective communication & demand generation strategy. That too in great detail.
What is a Chatbot?
A chatbot is a conversational marketing tool that is primarily used to promote products/services in an indirect way. It is used to engage users by offering quick answers for their queries. After offering the immediate response and based on the engagement, it allows you to pitch product/service at the right moment to help you sell more.
It is embedded on the website to provide answers to the most important questions in real-time. This tool by serving the web visitors at the front end helps save precious time of the sales and marketing team. In the B2B world, chatbots are also seen as a great medium to generate leads through customized communication, data capturing, and lead nurturing capabilities.
Interesting Research Findings about Chatbots
According to one prominent research, it is found that chatbots are the most preferred brand communication channel amongst all. Its popularity and acceptance is soaring with each passing year which can be easily understood by looking at these optimistic findings.
- Chatbots generate 35-40% response rate
- The average satisfaction rate of chatbots related communication is 87.58%
- 68% of customers love chatbots because they provide immediate answers to their queries
- 55% of businesses trust chatbots to generate more leads
- Chatbots are estimated to save 2.5 billion business hours by 2023
- 41% of users prefer conversational marketing tools for a purchase (Chatbot is one of the most popular amongst this segment)
Chatbot Benefits
In B2B marketing, nothing is accepted as easily and promptly until that thing is proved immensely beneficial for business. There are numerous benefits that chatbots offer to a B2B company. Let’s check them out.
- It offers users a faster access to customer care services.
- Its 24/7 support nature makes it available to serve customers all the time.
- Customers get immediate responses to their queries.
- It possesses the ability to solve recurring technical issues using a simple script.
- Great way to engage, educate, and nurture leads by providing them relevant information.
- Chatbots act as lead generation machines as they allow you to collect user data in a non-intrusive way.
- In B2B marketing, content distribution is one of the most important things to engage prospects. It is recognized as an essential medium to distribute White Papers, Case Studies, Blogs, Brochures, etc.
- Chatbots enable you to ask qualifying questions. Great way to score leads and prevent unqualified leads from entering into the sales funnel. Their ability to perform lead scoring makes it a must-have tool in the demand generation process.
- Chatbots boost website engagement, help increase web browsing time, and assist develop greater interest in a product/service by smartly serving information that a customer desires to see on a particular web page.
- In B2B marketing, chatbots act as a great medium to connect to the sales or marketing team after building a significant level of brand awareness.
- Easy integration with platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams helps run backend communication smoothly.
- Customized chat as per user history using business intelligence tools helps B2B companies to run account-based marketing more efficiently.
What are Lead Generation Chatbots?
It is a bot that helps enterprises to identify potential customers, develop interest in product/service, capture data, and nurture leads.
Types of Lead Generation Chatbots
- FAQ Chatbots: Help visitors to get answers to some of the most common questions without calling or mailing anywhere. Save visitors time and help them clear their doubts promptly.
- Appointment Booking Chatbots: Used to schedule an initial meeting, book a demo, or deal closure discussion.
- Newsletter Chatbots: Used to broaden the base of subscribers. You can ask for users’ info here. It is a popular B2B data gathering and brand awareness mechanism.
- Lead Magnet Chatbots: Here also, you can collect visitors’ information by providing them valuable pieces of content in exchange for their data. It is considered as the best chatbot for lead generation. Used while distributing case studies, blogs, whitepapers, e-books, etc.
- Promotional Chatbots: Used to advertise a specific product/service at the time of special offer to boost sales. Smartly present unique key features and benefits by comparing with peers’ offerings.
Why to Use Chatbots for Lead Generation?
Chatbots if used properly can help you turn your website into a lead generation machine. It can efficiently make your sales funnel up and running all the time with high-qualified leads. Curious to know how? Let’s check by diving deeper into these four crucial aspects.
- Provide Immediate Response: One of the best qualities of lead generation chatbots is to deliver an instant response to a query. Customers want to address their concerns in a quick time. Delay can turn them off from your website. Therefore, engage them efficiently with faster response and create a positive appeal towards your brand. During office hours, you can take help from your agents. After office hours, you can integrate your chat with an AI-based algorithm to serve your customers uninterruptedly 24/7. Providing answers to their immediate questions in real-time can help you develop their interest in your services.
- Lead Nurturing: In any lead generation strategy, educating leads with quality information is vital for business success. Without nurturing leads, they are less likely to become customers. Chatbots are great tools to serve this purpose. You should use chatbots to distribute valuable pieces of information to boost their interest further towards your brand. By asking the right questions, analyzing past browsing history, and segmenting each lead, you can provide collaterals like blogs, whitepapers, case studies, e-books, and much more to nurture your leads.
- Capture Data: Any lead generation work starts and ends with good quality data. Without data, you cannot achieve anything in lead generation. Chatbots are used to capture user data. When you engage a visitor and help them develop a significant interest in your services, then you can smartly allure them to get something valuable for free but just by providing their basic information. Enterprises often ask for their first name, last name, and contact information to distribute high-value marketing collateral. That data, you can use to boost your lead generation strategy and drive better sales results.
- Qualify Leads: You can qualify your leads with an effective lead scoring model, asking the right questions, analyzing customers’ responses, and past behavior. Leads with a good score can be further segmented into various categories. Like, which leads need to be pushed for a demo, which ones are ready to be sent to the sales and marketing team for direct sales approach, etc. It helps save sales team time and assists them to invest their valuable time in working on leads that are likely to convert.
How to Use Chatbots for Lead Generation?
A lead generation chatbot not just helps in strengthening customer relationships but also acts as a tool to gather data, nurture leads, qualify leads, and boost conversions. A carefully crafted and smartly implemented lead generation chatbot can impressively elevate customer engagement and make your marketing strategy more effective.
Steps to make your chatbots more beneficial.
Top of the Funnel: Create awareness by understanding the needs of prospects and delivering short, precise answers to their immediate queries. You can create customized chats for better engagement on each page using advanced technologies and an account-based marketing approach.
Middle of the Funnel: Generate interest by presenting them with valuable information like feature comparison, price comparison charts, white papers, blogs, newsletters, case studies, and much more. Pitch for a free demo. This stage is considered as the best to collect user data.
Bottom of the Funnel: Evaluate each prospect’s interest level by analyzing past behavior, buying journey, and using business intelligence tools. Based on the lead score, send valuable leads to the sales and marketing team. Re-strategize leads that have low scores with newer marketing approaches.
Step by Step Guide to Implement Chatbots in Demand Generation
- Define your business goals for launching a lead generation chatbot. What exactly, you want to achieve?
- Decide what qualifies a lead. Prepare answers and must have data that you need to qualify a lead. Curate the Q/A part of your chatbots accordingly.
- Clearly define the messaging style and tone as per your brand guidelines. Your words must be carefully chosen that can relate to the world of your core services and help you connect with your prospects easily.
- Decide the conditions when a chatbot must pop up. Which chatbot will pop-up on which page and at what time? You should define this as per your business goals.
- Use A/B testing to check the effectiveness of your chatbots and implement necessary changes as per their results. It will help you optimize the response rate of chatbots.
- Once a lead gets qualified, define where you need to send those qualified leads. To your sales team, marketing team, product team for a live demo, or any other department for nurturing.
- Select the tools that you want to integrate with chatbots for better engagement and easy maintenance.
Based on the above mentioned 7 points, you can finally design your chatbots to get best results.
The advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbots’ powerful integration capabilities have increased its effectiveness to a whole new level. Now, it is not just used for client communication but also for generating demand. It has thus become a must-have tool to run an effective lead generation program. This is the reason, enterprises are increasingly preferring to embed chatbots in their websites.
If you are serious about your lead generation game, then you must also leverage its potential to gain better business results. Chatbots are the future for demand generation. Embrace it to move along with time and reap impressive business benefits.
VSynergize is a trusted name in the field of demand generation. We can help you boost your demand generation outcomes with proven marketing techniques and advanced technology. Contact us today at info@vsynergize.com to know more about our services.
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