Any industry that wants to stay ahead of the curve needs to keep up with the latest tech developments. This is especially true for the real estate industry.
As the internet becomes more widespread and technology advances, it is increasingly important to be able to use technology effectively.
It can be difficult to keep up with the latest technology in the real estate industry, but it can also be beneficial.
Technology is becoming increasingly user-friendly and can help improve your business in ways that were not previously possible.
While real estate might not be the most technologically advanced industry, it does rely on technology.
This is true not just for technologies such as MLS and IDX, but also for marketing, customer relationship management, and measuring the efficiency of your marketing efforts.
More and more businesses, including real estate agencies, are implementing chatbots, which is one of the hottest technologies.
Are social media management programs just a fad, or are they worth investing in for your marketing efforts?
What are Chatbots?
Chatbots are software robots that simulate a conversation with a real person. They do so by means of scripting, artificial intelligence, or a combination of both methods.
There are some chatbots that are very simple and only have basic scripts that respond to questions such as “What can I help you with today?” or “Do you need assistance?”.
Some people use artificial intelligence that is very sophisticated and can understand human language. This can make it difficult to tell if you are talking to a real person or not.
Bots can also act as a bridge between a customer and an agent by switching between a bot or a human on-demand.
They are very popular, and you’ve probably seen them by now. They are placed on one of the corners of a webpage, and notify you that if you have any questions, it can help you find it or get you in touch with a real person.
There are chatbots available for a variety of communication programs, including Facebook, Slack, Discord, Twitter, and SMS.
Why Should You Care About Chatbots In Real Estate
The real estate industry is one that depends a lot on communication. You always have to be proving your worth to new and old clients. If you had all the time in the world, you would be able to get in touch with every single potential client and handle each conversation yourself. However, that’s not always possible.
Real estate agents can only do so much in a day, and their time is very valuable. This is true no matter where the agent is in their career.
You’re so busy with your daily tasks that it’s easy to neglect getting new customers and following up with the people who visit your website.
Leads are often lost because it is difficult to keep up with the inquiries from potential customers.
Chatbots are computer programs that can help website visitors by providing direction, scheduling consultations, and collecting information.
The benefits of chatbots:
1. They Offer Live 24-Hour Support
You can always have someone answering simple questions your clients and prospects may have by using chatbots.
Chatbots are often used because they are available to talk to visitors and clients at any time. They can usually answer questions quickly and direct the person to the right place.
Queries from customers can be addressed even when customer support is closed. This would also save on customer support costs.
2. They Can Help You Qualify Leads
Even if your real estate catering is very specific, every client has different needs.
People’s home-buying needs vary greatly. Some people look for condos, while others look for detached homes. Some people can buy a home in cash, while others need financing. Some people need to buy a home ASAP, while others have a more lenient timeframe.
It’s important to collect all of that information. Chatbots can help by asking qualifying questions, saving the answers to your CRM, and using them to immediately provide properties that the client might be interested in.
Some Chatbots can also automatically send out property alerts to those clients as soon as a listing that meets their specific criteria gets listed.
3. Chatbots Assist In Managing Client Relationships
It’s difficult for real estate agents to stay in touch with all their contacts regularly, especially since they typically have at least a thousand collected for their CRM.
Chatbots can help you manage your client relationships by taking care of common tasks, like tracking and recalling client activity, sending email notifications for open houses, and even reminding you of important dates like birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
Responses can be sent by email, social media, SMS, or any messenger.
You can also customize these messages to include more information, or call your recipients to take a specific action, such as scheduling a live consultation with you.
4. Chatbots Can Help Schedule Property Tours
If a chatbot sees that a website visitor is interested in a certain property, it might invite the visitor to a property tour or schedule it for them.
5. Chatbots Can Help Log Conversation
Chatbots can keep track of interactions with customers, which can be useful for customer service agents.
You will be able to understand what the client is searching for by having access to the interaction they had with the chatbot. This will allow you to have everything prepared for them before even talking to them.
How to Use Chatbots for Lead Generation?
1. Understand the target audience better
Some businesses try to attract customers that they do not really understand.
Don’t ever follow that path as it’s full of mistakes!
It is important for businesses to understand their target audience, know their interests, and use that information to generate leads.
Lead qualification bots help in finding and categorizing potential customers, which is necessary for any lead generation campaign.
This can be seen as a way for marketers to create content that will appeal to their target audience.
How to use lead generation bots to understand the audience better?
- Bots help you identify the interests, likes, dislikes and create more engagement, resulting in more leads.
- You can run chatbots surveys to engage customers by asking questions to get a better view of the best and least performing products.
- Marketers use the right content at the right time to move the leads into the funnel as a chatbot can segment your audience based on the answers they provide.
2. Segment your customers
Accurate audience segmentation is a strategic practice that ensures relevant content and makes it easy to use customer data to create meaningful audience segments.
The main reason for segmenting customers is so that businesses can deliver marketing messages that are more relevant to the users. Segmentation can be based on various factors, such as demographics, interests, age, gender, etc.
Chatbots that are used to qualify leads can be very helpful in segmenting the audience based on the data provided and generating more qualified leads. When the audience is segmented using AI chatbots, it helps you to better nurture the leads.
You need to know what category your audience belongs to if you want to target them with a fitting solution.
3. Auto qualify leads with chatbots
Chatbots are becoming a popular way for brands to communicate with their customers. By using an AI-based chatbot, businesses can provide prompt responses to queries and effectively engage with users.
The best part of using chatbots is that you can prequalify leads without involving your sales agents. In fact, a chatbot template for lead generation can help you reach out to a bigger audience without involving the customer success team.
You can use industry-specific questions to help qualify your sales prospects, which bots can ask. Lead bots can then take these leads and either direct them to the sales team or schedule an appointment for conversion.
4. Replace forms with lead generation bots
To be honest, customers don’t like having to fill out forms on websites. They find it tedious and not at all exciting or engaging.
Your business is not doing well if it is still using the traditional method of lead generation, which is filling out forms.
It doesn’t make sense to stick with a primary method that has such a low chance of generating leads.
If you pair chatbots with lead generation, you can bring in a decent number of leads.
Bots can make it easier to collect data and improve the lead generation strategy.
5. Schedule appointments 24×7 with lead bots
B2B firms, hospitals, and healthcare organizations often receive a lot of requests for appointments, which can be flood their systems.
It’s good for businesses that they don’t have to worry about booking appointments or hiring extra resources to handle the influx of appointments.
Rather than investing in chatbots, they can manage appointment booking at a fraction of the price.
When AI bots are used, customers can book slots for appointments easily on the website. The booking notification would go to the relevant team.
This is how the appointments can be easily booked to be beneficial for both customers and businesses.
6. Educate your audience with chatbots
People are more likely to buy products if they have a good understanding of what the products are and what they do.
You need to make sure that everyone who is interested can easily find out information about your product.
A successful conversational lead generation strategy always includes educating customers.
Bots that are powered by artificial intelligence are the best option for educating an audience, as they not only save resources, but also produce great results.
Adding chatbots to websites like Sephora and Spotify has helped educate customers about the products and services offered by the company. This has, in turn, helped customers to make more informed decisions.
Best practices in using bots to educate customers
- Use bots to send promotional and educational messages like upcoming webinars, offers, discounts or send books to educate about your business.
- Integrate your bots with CRM as it can help you amalgamate the data of every subscriber, thus making your lead management system more free-flowing.
7. Ensure hybrid support for complex sales conversations
Both live chat and chatbot customer engagement channels now dominate. Each has a unique set of benefits that your business can use for lead generation.
You will need to weigh the pros and cons of live chat vs chatbot in order to decide which is right for you.
The best way for your business to improve its website is to add live chat support and lead generation bots to specific pages.
Bots can be more effective than humans in engaging customers and collecting information at the outset of the customer relationship. Once the data has been collected, it can be transferred to a team of experts for further qualification.
You should maintain a balance of using both bots to manage simple queries and live support agents to handle complex queries.
Parameters to select the channel for conversational lead generation
- Response time – You can use a chatbot as a primary contact channel to deliver real-time responses for sales-related queries and ensure live chat for lead generation is leveraged for the complex queries that need human assistance.
- Customer experience – Bots can engage users instantly and provide the answers they are looking for. When you are able to understand and meet your customer needs, the rate of conversion increases along with delivering a great experience.
- 24×7 support – If your business demands to be ‘always active’, bots are the best option. They can engage when your sales team is away by acknowledging the issue and scheduling appointments.
- Cost factor – If you are a small start-up, the cost must be a concern. Bots prove to be worth investing in as they are easily scalable during peak hours with any additional costs of resources or infrastructure.
8. Build strong customer relationships
Chatbots are increasingly being used by companies as their primary customer support team. This is because they can handle customer questions easily and provide a suitable answer instantly. Amazon is one of the leading companies that uses chatbots in this way.
When your business is always available, it makes customers trust your brand more.
By providing quick and timely responses to customer queries, you can begin to build a strong and mutually beneficial relationship.
Round-the-clock engagement with lead generation bots can help instill trust between users and brands.
9. Engage visitors who intend to bounce
Lack of accurate information is often the main reason customers leave websites and switch to competitors.
Chatbots that generate leads can be a useful tool for reducing shopping cart abandonment or engaging users who are trying to leave your website.
The bot is designed for businesses that sell online products, including eCommerce stores. It will remind you gently that “your cart is empty” or “your favorite product is waiting in the cart.”
In addition to sending out reminders, chatbots also start conversations addressing customers’ concerns.
If a user starts to fill out a contact form but doesn’t submit it, a chatbot can engage them and encourage them to finish the form.
Lead bots are the best because they provide real-time sales assistance to customers.
Benefits of engaging visitors with lead bots
- Reduced bounce rate – Providing immediate assistance when customers are on your site helps them to make quick buying decisions, thus reducing the bounce rate significantly.
- Increased conversion rate – When bots engage customers with the right information at the right moment, they end up with a final purchase. Hence, it helps to increase sales conversion rates.
Boost Your Sales Funnel and Grow Your Business with Lead Qualification Bots
As customers’ expectations for communication from businesses have increased, companies are turning to automation via chatbots to help manage engagement and boost conversions.
By integrate chatbots onto your website, you can increase website engagement, convert visitors into leads, and boost sales revenue.
