As a marketing agency, we get many inquiries about search engine optimization (SEO) and Google advertising (SEM).
We get much fewer asking about chatbots, which we thought is because chatbots are a newer product, and not many people understand the potential of it.
However, we believe if customers truly understand the potential of chatbots, they can quickly see how this can be the best marketing investment for their business.
What is Chatbot, and how does it work?
A chatbot is a set of predefined conversational flows that gives a logical response based on the user’s interaction, and it will qualify and ask for the user’s information.
It is the same as training your sales representative to serve your customers that visit your shop. The only difference is that it works 24/7, can handle multiple users simultaneously and costs much less than hiring a real person.
You can have your chatbot ask for contact information when a user visits your website, qualify them to see if they are your ideal target customers or even just answering them simple FAQs.
For most of our clients, the purpose of the chatbot is simple, to qualify and acquire visitors’ contact information which can be follow-up on and potentially converted into customers.
Still not sure about it? Feel free to visit our home page and interact with our chatbot, so you can better understand how it works on the front end.
How is it effective? Does it increase conversion rate?
To understand its effectiveness, we must understand what the conversion rate is. In simple terms, conversion rate means for every 100 unique visitors to your website, how many of them convert into leads? (Leads = contactable potential client.)
We also noticed some of our clients even achieved a massive increase in terms of conversion rate. For example, a B2B company of ours got a 356% of increase in conversion rate, which is 3 times their original conversion rate, where they only used a web form and WhatsApp button.
We believe chatbots are so effective because of 2 main reasons:
- Users can get instant responses. On this fast-moving web, nobody likes to fill your form or send you a message without knowing when you will reply to them. Instead, everyone like an instant response.
- Chatbot engages with the user first. Compared to forms and WhatsApp buttons where users have to take steps to engage with you first, engaging with them is much more effective and more likely to get their replies.
Comparing it to the WhatsApp button
If your website already uses some sort of WhatsApp button that lets visitors click to initiate a chat with you, that’s great, but not everyone like that.
For example, if they are not using mobile, your WhatsApp link forces them to take out their phone, scan a QR code, and log in to the web-based WhatsApp just to chat with you while not sure if they would get a quick reply.
Second, if they are staff and contacting you on behalf of their company, they may not want to involve their personal contact number in their work life, which you’re now leaving them with the option to either fill a form or to send you a manual email.
Comparing it to traditional web forms
Ask yourself, when was the last time you filled out a long boring form on someone else website?
How many times you did not get any response after you filled out the form? Do you expect to get any fast response from it?
I believe everyone understands how annoying it can be to fill out web forms, especially not knowing whether I would get a reply fast or slow, or even get a reply at all.
Using chatbot with other contact methods
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use them in conjunction. Having a few options to contact give users more option. In that way, it boosts your conversion rate.
This is also the strategy we implement on our website. We use a chatbot, but we keep forms on some pages and our WhatsApp available for people who prefer it, and we notice it gives the best conversion rate compared to just using a single option.
How is it the best marketing investment for my site?
If you do not understand how an increase in conversion rate can hugely benefit your business, don’t worry, we will show you some examples.
Let’s say your website has a conversion rate of 1%, which means that for every 100 visitors that come to your website, 1 of them contact you and become your leads.
Depends on your business but let’s say every 10 people who contacted you, one of them eventually becomes your customer. For every 1,000 website visitors, you get 10 leads and 1 customer.
Now, most businesses overlook the importance of improving the 1% conversion rate. Instead, they only focus on increasing website visits, so they look for SEO or Google Ads, which can be much more expensive and longer term to get a return on the investment cost.
However, increasing your conversion rate to 2% means you would double your customer from the above example. For every 1,000 website visitors, you get 20 leads and 2 customers.
Best of all, a chatbot is only a fraction of the cost of SEO or Google Ads services, and you can immediately deploy a chatbot into your website and get the results.
More and more businesses in recent years have already realized this, and from the below chart, we can see more of them are using chatbots in 2020 compared to 2018.
How much do chatbots cost?
We already know chatbots can effectively increase your leads and grow your business, but how much does it cost?
At Seenlyst, our chatbot service starts as low as RM 125 per month, which is almost less than the phone bill of one of your staff, but with massive potential and ultra cost-effective compared to other marketing services.
If you’re interested in knowing if your business can benefit from chatbots, please consider looking at our chatbot development service.