Lead generation is a major goal in any inbound strategy, and many marketing teams spend countless hours and energy developing exhaustive content to make it happen. You’ve likely embraced blogs, eBooks, infographics, and other valuable resources as part of your marketing strategy for good reason, but have you considered the role that chatbot marketing could play?
Admittedly, there are many reasons to use chatbots. This video provides a quick snapshot of how to generate leads with chatbots and how they can be another tool in your inbound marketing arsenal, along with chatbot tips and best practices.
Video Transcript
Chatbots. You either love them for their convenience or you hate them because they’re annoying.
If you’re responsible for creating chatbots for your company’s website, you’ve probably struggled to create chat workflows that are truly helpful and generate quality leads.
It’s time we change that.
What is a lead generation chatbot?
A lead generation chatbot, similar to a customer service chatbot, is there 24/7, ready to interact and answer questions AND qualify visitors as leads. The chatbot might suggest gated content with a form, or ask casual lead-qualifying questions related to a blog they’re reading. Like any good inbound tactic, the goal is to be helpful, which hopefully leads to a conversion.
Define your chatbot strategy
When developing your chatbot strategy, you need to keep three things in mind…
1. Define who you want to reach
Do you want to target prospects for a new product launch? Are you looking for those who are ready to book a meeting? Trying to re-engage existing contacts who’ve gone dark? Just like you create content that speaks to specific target personas, you want your chatbots to do the same.
2. Know how and where users want to interact
Work with your sales team to help determine the most frequently asked questions from prospects, and identify where to include a chatbot. Is it your homepage, your most popular blog article, a video demo? The page where it’s featured will inform the conversation your chatbot should have with visitors.
3. Make it user friendly
User experience will determine how effective your chatbot is. You might ask good questions, but if users become frustrated with how the chatbot interacts with them, they’ll probably shut it down.
How Do I Get started?
After you’ve outlined your strategy, the next step is to create a workflow, or chatflow. This is a sequence of steps or questions you want to guide your prospects through. Each response triggers a new action that guides them toward a solution. You can use an online diagram tool or simply draw it on a piece of paper.
Start the conversation with a polite greeting and relevant questions. Asking too much too early could cut the conversation short.
And don’t pretend that your chatbot is a real human. Prospects know when they’re interacting with a chatbot versus a real person.
Consider having clickable options within your chatbot to provide suggestions for users who might not be sure what they’re looking for.
Work in functionality that lets them go back to a previous question, change topics, or chat with a human. Let them be in the driver’s seat.
There’s a lot more that could be shared, but I’ll end with this. Make sure you use the right technology and that it has the capabilities to meet your goals. If your website is built using HubSpot, you’ve already got all the tools you need. HubSpot has templates and step-by-step guides to help you build your chatbot right in the platform. Simply navigate to the “Conversations” tab and click on “Create Chatflow.” Once you’ve done that, you’ll be on your way.
In the end, don’t let the virtual nature of chatbots scare you or keep you from implementing this tool on your website. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see just how effective chatbots can be as a lead generation tool.
