Every business depends on its conversion funnel. The difference between making a healthy profit and barely breaking even is how well you go about its optimization. But what if you are optimizing and following the best practices but still haven’t figured out how to improve your conversion rates?

We know that this is even trickier, if possible, for those who work in a digital marketing agency because they will probably need to explain to their clients why the strategy they’re following is not producing the expected results. 

You need to rethink your plan and start treating and nurturing your leads as individuals.

And you might want to do so without skyrocketing your costs, staying cost-effective with all your campaigns.

That’s why we are here, to tell you more about how to tackle your conversion funnel optimization with a lead generation chatbot.

How Can Chatbots Help Optimize Your Conversion Funnel

Now that you know the theory, you might be wondering how to improve your conversion rates in a practical way without losing your mind and your entire budget. 

As we mentioned before, it’s not all about optimizing landing pages. Actually, according to WordStream, the average landing page conversion rate across all industries is around 2.35%, and, as pointed out by Unbounce, a good conversion rate would be considerably higher, around 12%. 

Mattia, Co-Founder of Conversational Design, an Italian Marketing Agency, was very familiar with this feeling of not knowing what to do to improve his clients’ results. 

Their customers were facing several pain points: lack of useful analytics, poor web engagement, weak competitive advantage, or high acquisition costs.

Mattia and the team started looking for ways to offer their clients an alternative to improve their conversion rates. That’s when they decided to test Landbot chatbots. 

Since then, Conversational Design has collected over 20,000 leads and increased customers’ conversion rates. The team has also reduced its own Cost per Lead (CPL) by 200%, and the chatbot lead conversion rate is over 40%. 

No wonder why chatbots are proving to be more effective when it comes to improving lead capturing, lead qualification, and the overall experience of the potential customer. Poor user experience because of long forms, delayed follow-up from businesses, and higher costs due to maintenance, content update, and manual lead management, push companies to try and test new channels to enhance conversation funnel optimization. 

Chatbot Implementation Process to Improve Conversion Rates

You’ve seen the potential benefits of conversion bots for improving your and your clients’ metrics, and now comes the big question: How should I implement them?

Let’s go step by step:

Set the Basis: Define Your Goals 

What do you want to achieve with your chatbots? Are you looking to improve conversion rates? Or maybe enhance your customer experience by providing 24/7 support? 

Analyze your client's setbacks and needs and, based on that, set clear goals. Knowing your main objectives will help you build a consistent strategy and an effective conversion bot. 

If, for example, your main purpose is to generate leads for your clients and improve the conversion rate, you will need to focus on creating a chatbot that engages with potential customers, qualify leads by asking targeted questions and capture essential information in a non-intrusive way. Also, if we want to build a conversion bot, we should design the bot to guide the lead through the funnel, answering questions and providing recommendations that can lead to a final conversion. 

Know Who You Want to Target: Define Your Audience

Once you have the first step clear, this question will come naturally to you: Who’s my audience? 

Let’s say your primary goal is to improve conversion rates. Then, you need to research and create your buyer persona and define all the characteristics, such as their pain points, motivations, and online behavior. All these insights will help you build a conversion bot that directly tackles your audience’s needs and preferences. 

It is also important to choose the right channels according to your audience preferences (e.g., website, social media, WhatsApp…) and ensure that the chatbot is available on those platforms. It should be accessible to make interactions as effective as possible. 

Let’s Get Creative: Build Effective and High-Performing Chatbots

The most important step because no chatbot, no party, right? 

Building a conversion bot requires more than simple logic and a basic chat interface. It requires thoughtful planning and design. 

In your creation process, you should ensure your chatbot’s conversation flows naturally, and it’s engaging from the prospect's perspective. Try to use language that aligns with your client’s brand personality. 

Implementing personalization points will make the experience more unique. The chatbot will be able to address the person by name and provide recommendations based on their behavior and interests.

And why don’t we add some icing on the cake? Incorporating AI into our conversion bot provides more accurate responses to queries, handles a wider range of questions, and gives more relevant answers in multiple languages. 

If you need some extra help and guidance on how to start your chatbot, watch the video below: 

Choose the Right Channels, Test, and Publish

There’s no better way to make sure you have the best version of your chatbot than testing it. 

‍Share it with at least three people, who can be your coworkers or maybe your clients, it doesn’t matter; someone who can start interacting with your bot to confirm everything works as it should. 

Once you are sure your flawless conversion bot is ready, you can start thinking about the channels you will use to reach your client’s audience effectively. 

These channels should include those where your potential customers are most active, whether on your client’s website, social media, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger. Selecting the right channels for your chatbot is crucial to reaching your audience effectively.

Explore Your Chatbot Potential With Integrations

Integrating your chatbot with your other regular tools is the way to maximize efficiency and ensure no data is lost at any point in the process! 

You can integrate your conversion bot with your own or your clients’ CRMs so that captured leads are automatically added to the database. 

If you are the one managing your bots for your client and you have no access to their CRM, you can also integrate the bot with Google Sheets to transfer all the information in an automated way without having to invest extra time on manual tasks, being able to focus on added value action.

Check the video below to learn more about the Landbot and Google Sheets integration process:

Track results and optimize performance

After deploying your chatbot, continuously monitor its performance to guarantee it’s working smoothly. It’ll also allow you to make data-driven decisions and optimizations.

Choose which metrics can demonstrate whether your conversion bot is performing properly. These can be final conversion rates (whatever these might be for your client), lead quality, engagement rates… etc. This will help you identify areas for improvement in your chatbot and overall campaign. 

And don’t forget that chatbots are not set in stone! You can definitely update them according to the feedback you receive and their performance, adding new blocks or even AI technologies. 

Now, let’s explore some of the best conversion bot use case examples.

Building a Chatbot for the Acquisition Stage: Lead Generation

Raising awareness and generating leads is the first step on any customer journey. At this stage, the typical strategies include paid advertising, organically positioned top-funnel resources, and, of course, forms.

Conversational assistants may already come in handy at this early stage in a great number of ways:

Conversational Landing Pages

Web chatbots can be used in place of the traditional landing page with a single CTA button. When a chatbot is the single focus of a landing page, it channels the attention towards the conversation enticing engagement.

Leads coming to the page are encouraged to partake in the chat from the start while given the opportunity to “choose their own journey”. Employing conversational landing pages, we have seen landing page conversion rates to triple or even quadruple.

Click-to-Chat Social Media Ads

Social media (SM) are one of the most effective marketing campaign channels of today. Since these networks are often accessed via mobile, advertisers found chat format to be quite compelling in combination with SM ads.

Facebook encourages this approach by enabling brands to customize their ad CTA to “Click-to-Messenger” or “Click-to-WhatsApp”. Hence, when a potential lead clicks on the ad, he or she is automatically redirected to an automated Messenger or WhatsApp chat where they can see the product offering or learn more through a natural conversation.

Smart Contact Forms

A lot of businesses rely on their contact forms to capture new leads, especially B2B models. However, contact forms are not the most popular as people usually associate them with long waiting times. In short, they are impersonal and fail to inspire trust.

Chatbots provide a smart and easy substitute for these forms. Even if they ask the exact same things, the natural turn-taking approach is friendlier and feels more immediate. However, the most significant advantage comes from the bot’s ability to assess the lead on the spot.

Using the contact-form questions, the bot can refer the waker prospects to relevant content while fast-tracking qualified leads to speak with your sales team instantly. Your sales reps won’t have to waste their time with prospects who are not ready to buy and serve those who are quickly and efficiently.

Chatbot Banner Ads

Banner ads might not be winning the “user favorite” awards, but they work. It’s as simple as that.

The usual concern with banner ads is trust and UX. Chatbot banners are nothing else than conversational assistants integrated into the standard digital banner.

They allow the lead to engage and interact with your brand without leaving the original site with which they feel comfortable. Hence, you can capture a lead right there and then without even having to invest in a landing page.

Booking Meetings

Another exciting bit of data from the same research from Invespcro shows thqat 42% of consumers would be encouraged to buy if the sales representative contacted them at an agreed-upon time.

Being able to switch from chatbot to live chat seamlessly is essential. However, not all qualified prospects are ready to talk to a sales rep immediately. They might need some time to clarify their goals, clearly define pain points, and prepare questions. Alternatively, your sales team might want to have greater control over their schedule.

The solution?

Chatbots that let you book meetings without having to exit the conversation. For instance, Landbot builder offers native one-click Calendly integrations, which enable potential customers to secure a meeting with sales reps based on an up-to-date calendar.

Thanks to this integration, you can still pre-qualify leads and thus still control the quality of leads offered to book a meeting with an agent. Since the booking is a seamless part of the conversation, it still carries the impact of instant satisfaction and diminishes the perception of waiting time.

In Summary

Building a conversion funnel is one of the most important things you will do for your business.

While chatbots are not omnipotent (at least not yet), they can play a significant role in helping you achieve the conversion rate your strive for.

The best way to start optimizing a conversion funnel is by testing new things.

Sign up for free and try to build your first no-code chatbot to complement your funnel today!

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