Traditionally, organizations have generated leads by capturing website visitor data via contact forms, content download requests, and other website-related activities. However, the majority of website visitors — as many as 96 percent according to one source — aren’t ready to make a purchase. Usually, leads need time before they can make a buying decision.
Now, conversational marketing is changing the game.
Combining conversational marketing with traditional lead generation activities is an excellent way for organizations to make their lead generation efforts more fruitful. Used together, these tactics help develop authentic relationships with consumers and build trust, improving the chances of conversion.
In this article, we’ll look at what conversational lead generation is and why it’s advantageous for businesses. We’ll also explain how you can implement it in your organization, and we’ll introduce you to an excellent tool — Jotform — that can support your conversational lead generation efforts.
Conversational marketing’s role in lead generation
Conversational marketing is a strategy that involves conducting highly personalized interactions with consumers in real time — conversations that consumers usually initiate themselves.
For example, a customer who visits a website might see a chatbot widget integrated into the homepage, asking if the customer has any questions. The customer engages with the chatbot to ask about specific product offerings. The chatbot can direct the customer to what they’re looking for and also gather specific information about that customer’s preferences, which the business can then use to nurture the lead.
Conversational lead generation can help businesses quickly qualify leads, capture their contact information, and guide them toward a conversion — all through the power of conversation.
The key elements of conversational marketing are real-time conversation, scalability, and data collection. These elements directly correlate with how lead generation works: Consumers want personalized interactions, and they want immediate responses.
If a business can give them that, consumers are more willing to provide their contact information and other details to businesses, such as their needs, likes, and dislikes.
“Because it engages potential leads during the crucial time when they are researching your website, conversational marketing is effective for generating leads,” says Amelia Munday, social media marketing manager for Custom Neon, a global retailer and manufacturer of custom-designed LED neon lights. “It increases the likelihood of turning infrequent visitors into leads by striking up a direct conversation and promptly answering their questions.”
Benefits of conversational lead generation
Why should you incorporate conversational marketing into your lead generation activities? Here are some important reasons.
1. Conversational lead generation builds consumer relationships from the first interaction
Whether a consumer reaches out to your business through a website chatbot or over social media, you have an opportunity to form a true connection with conversational marketing tactics.
“Conversational marketing is great for lead generation because it allows for immediate, personalized interactions that make potential customers feel valued,” says Ira Prevalova, growth marketing director at Adverity, a platform that specializes in data integration to drive impactful marketing strategies.
2. Conversational lead generation prequalifies leads
With traditional lead generation, it can be difficult to know the quality of a lead before you begin nurturing it. With conversational lead generation, however, your business has the ability to learn more about the lead from the very first engagement, including what they want from the business and what their priorities are.
“For instance, a chatbot can greet website visitors, ask qualifying questions, and offer to schedule a demo or provide additional information,” says Burak Özdemir, founder of Character Calculator, a set of online text tools that help simplify tasks and enhance productivity. “This immediate interaction can capture leads who might otherwise leave without engaging.”
3. Conversational lead generation increases conversion rates
Conversion actions — filling out forms, downloading ebooks, or making purchases, for example — are all about trust. If a consumer values the business and feels they can trust it, they’re more likely to make the effort of completing a conversion action.
With conversational marketing, businesses have ample opportunities to create trust with their target audience. By responding with personalized messages and addressing consumer inquiries with care, they build not only trust but relationships.
4. Conversational lead generation offers valuable consumer insights
In any conversation, you gather information about the person you’re talking to. Apply that at scale in a business, and you can collect valuable data from thousands of consumers — their concerns, preferences, and behaviors.
What can businesses do with this information? They can apply the insights to personalize marketing outreach to specific consumers and to improve their products, customer services, pricing, sales process, and more, ensuring they tailor their offerings and customer experience to their target audience.
5. Conversational lead generation shortens sales cycles
In a traditional lead generation sales cycle, the lead is added to an email marketing list and nurtured over weeks or months — sometimes even years. With conversational lead generation, the business has an opportunity to make a sale much more quickly, depending on the engagement.
For example, if a consumer reaches out to ask the business a question through a chatbot regarding a specific product, the chatbot can provide the details the consumer is looking for and immediately connect the lead with a sales rep who can close the sale.
“Personalization in social media messaging can pull potential leads into a very good conversation indicative of what they are looking for and how to guide them toward conversion,” says Lucas Botzen, CEO and human resources expert at Rivermate, a global HR and employer of record platform.
Ways to use conversational marketing in lead generation
Ready to apply conversational lead generation to your business? Consider these examples for inspiration:
- Website chatbots: Website chatbots enable businesses to have personalized engagements with website visitors at scale. “At Adverity, we use chatbots on our website to engage visitors and qualify leads in real time,” says Prevalova. “These chatbots can ask targeted questions to gather information about the visitor’s needs and interests, helping us segment and prioritize leads.”
- Social media chatbots: Similar to website chatbots, social media chatbots can have conversations with consumers who send direct messages to the business’s social media accounts. “Personalized messaging on social media platforms helps nurture relationships and drive interest,” says Prevalova. “This approach ensures we capture and engage leads effectively right from their first interaction.”
- Conversational forms: Conversational forms ask respondents one question at a time, producing follow-up questions based on respondents’ answers. This approach to data gathering mimics a real-time dialogue rather than a one-sided inquiry. It’s an excellent way to capture website visitors’ attention and encourage them to fill out lead generation forms, such as contact forms or download forms.
- Email surveys: Businesses can turn regular email marketing efforts into conversational marketing efforts by including surveys and forms within emails to encourage a back-and-forth conversation with consumers. This is a great way to turn what’s traditionally been a one-way communication method into a two-way dialogue, increasing the number of leads for your business.
How to use conversational forms for lead generation with Jotform
“What makes conversational marketing so effective in lead generation is that it allows businesses to talk with potential leads in real time and get their interest and information on the spot, when they are most interested,” says Botzen.
Conversational forms — user-friendly forms that ask respondents a single question at a time in a card layout — are a great way to integrate conversational lead generation into your marketing strategy. Just embed a conversational form into your website to start gathering visitor information.
Jotform is a powerful form-building tool that lets you easily create and share conversational marketing forms. With conditional logic functionality, you can ensure your forms present customized, highly relevant questions to respondents to increase your response rates. You can personalize follow-up emails with email logic as well.
You can also build trust with leads and capture their information on your website through conversational lead generation surveys. Jotform offers over 300 templates for lead generation forms. You can also share conversational surveys on social media or through email marketing campaigns.
Jotform allows you to easily add Messenger and WhatsApp buttons to your forms. Customers can simply click these buttons to start a live chat with you using these messaging platforms. This way, you can integrate conversational lead generation forms with live customer support.
With Jotform, you’ll be able to see form responses come through in real time so your business can respond to consumers right away with personalized messages and achieve your conversational lead generation goals.
Photo by Mikhail Nilov
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