In the age of social media and more online connectedness than ever before, people expect to be able to chat with business’s directly, or rather— with their chatbot. Whether accessible on Facebook Messenger or right on the company website, building chatbots and HubSpot chatbots are one of the most underutilized ways to reach leads that might not otherwise engage with you.
While it’s always nice to have a human touch for responses on social media and more in-depth questions, a well-designed bot can help make sure that visitors can get their most basic questions answered, without wasting the time you need to actually run your business (or sales team).
Beyond engaging website and social visitors, HubSpot chatbots can help you qualify leads and gather necessary customer information— making them an indispensable part of any business’s inbound marketing toolbox.
Interested in how you can use HubSpot bots in your strategy? Take a look at this quick overview on the bot system and how it qualifies leads.
While HubSpot has chatbots, there are certainly a variety of systems that create bots for websites all over the web. On the social end, Facebook even has a tool for creating a bot and automated responses. So why choose HubSpot?
That answer is simple: qualifying leads.
When you create a bot with HubSpot, all of the leads you get from the bot and all of your other inbound marketing strategies are all in one place. Having a chatbot fully integrated with all the other tools on your website allows you deeper insight into how leads are interacting with every facet of your website.
The big question is, however… how does it work?
HubSpot’s official answer to how chatbots qualify leads is (if you happen to be taking an exam):
Simple right? The actual answer is a little broader and is within the context of your ideal customer experience. The way to understand how chatbots create leads is really looking at the structure of what these bots do and why you should use them.
Again, let’s point out the obvious here: chatbots won’t completely replace human interaction. The best designed chatbot, at least in HubSpot, won’t replace even the worst customer experience interaction.
Instead, chatbots can been seen as a stopgap towards a customer experience rooted in automation, and most importantly, they do it at scale. Chatbots answer the questions that are too tedious to waste you and your workers’ time on, while gathering important data.
Another appropriate take away from chatbots is to think of them as long-form forms. After all, forms are a way to capture interactions and data—chatbots can effectively do the same thing in a conversational style, while boosting the engagement of visitors on your site.
For one reason or another, some people just don’t want to fill out forms.
It doesn’t matter what type of freebie they will get or what kind or newsletter they’ll be put on— they just don’t want to take the time to do it.
Conversational chatbots can engage these hard-to-reach site visitors by asking direct questions that seem to take no time at all. Then, the answer can be translated to specific fields for contact records.
Instead of a daunting wall of form inputs, they can give answers about their name, email address, and other information just as simply as responding to a text prompt. This chat feature can then help direct users around the site and answer their most basic questions.
Whether fielding questions yourself or hiring a team member, no one likes answering the same question over and over again. You certainly don’t want to waste the time you could be spending running your business on sending messages about basic questions like hours, the phone number, basic services, or anything in between. That’s where the power of automation can come in.
By setting up a flow of answers about your company’s basic contact information, business hours, and even the ability to set up a call— you can automate website visitor’s most basic questions.
Answering these questions will keep them on your site longer and you can even refer them to your latest blogs or other resources on your site, all while accumulating necessary data on them as a lead.
In the age of social media, people are interacting with brands and building a customer relationship before ever entering their website. Because HubSpot can make chatbots on Facebook Messenger as well, it’s a great way to connect with leads. With chatbots built in, whenever a user sees a post and has a question, they can slide right into your DM’s and get those basic questions addressed. You can lead those users to your site and get key insights in both your HubSpot dashboard and Facebook Business.
If there’s information your sales team needs to know, building a chatbot is an excellent way to identify potential customers. Lead qualification is the name of the game here.
Asking qualifying questions about budget, industry, job title and more can help you determine whether leads are ready to buy, or are simply wasting your time.
Chatbots can tell you who is ready to buy (and who isn’t).
Features that help engage users on your site and all the data you can use in qualifying leads, make chatbots another great HubSpot tool to use in your inbound marketing strategy. For a guide on making your own bot, I recommend checking out this primer from the HubSpot Knowledge Base on making your own. Whether you make one from scratch, make a qualifying leads bot, or simply a concierge, it’ll be a great presence on the your website and social to engage your customers even more.
If you need help through the process or require inbound marketing assistance with HubSpot, my team would be happy to help. We love helping organizations optimize their HubSpot and all of their marketing efforts. As a Gold Partner, we’re dedicated to helping businesses find the Inbound solutions that can help their businesses grow.
We can help you generate actionable leads by ensuring your HubSpot strategy is tailored to your audience. Our iterative approach to digital marketing is transparent and measurable. Learn how we can develop a bespoke plan designed around key metrics and your vision here.