TOPICS: Chatbot for University   Chatbot for Lead Generation    Chatbot Ideas   

Lead Generation Chatbot - 5 Tips for Colleges and Universities

Lead Generation Chatbot are used by universities and colleges just as any other business to drive quality leads and recruit students.
This means that quality leads are essential for universities/colleges to function, fill their classes and earn money. These leads will eventually turn into candidates that will signup for a degree or a specific course.

It is common knowledge that in this highly competitive world, receiving a higher education is an important factor in landing your dream job. Choosing the right college/university is the first step for any student on his way to getting his degree and finding a job. These educational institutes prepare students for success; but to ensure a student chooses a certain institute, the institute itself should focus on finding the right candidates and use a Lead Generation Chatbot to get quality student leads.



Below are 5 tips for using a Lead Generation Chatbot to get student leads from a college or university website.

Adding Lead Generation Chatbot to the Right Pages

University and college websites have relatively few kinds of visitors, but each has their own reason for visiting. Whether it be new prospects that are interested in signing up for classes, graduates who have completed their course work, or current students, each has a different cause for visiting the website and you should consider this fact when adding a Lead Generation Chatbot to your website.

A prospective student who wishes to get information before signing for classes will look for content about the institution, pricing and information regarding various courses. On the other hand, a current student will want to login to his personal account and probably won't search the website for content and pricing.Furthermore, he is not a potential candidate for becoming a new student, therefore there is no point in getting his contact information again. Generating this kind of lead will cause your representatives to spend wasted time calling existing students.

For example: An institute's homepage will most likely get all kind of visitors, so you need to figure out if adding a Lead Generation Chatbot to your homepage is the right decision. If you are using a Lead Generation Chatbot, the chat will convert visitors into leads from every conversation and it will be unable to separate students from prospective candidates.

Therefore, not every page needs to have a Lead Generation Chatbot. The Chatbot should only be working on pages where it generates the desired results. You may start by adding the Lead Generation Chatbot to all of your website's pages, but should follow the chat's activity on the different pages to see where it is getting the best results for your institute’s needs. If needed, you can remove the Lead Generation Chatbot from under performing pages and let your Chatbot do its job on relevant pages only.

Make Content Available through the Chatbot for Your Candidates

Candidates who are searching for the right higher education institute have a lot of questions and doubts. Making a decision on where to study is a huge step that will affect their lives in the following years. Candidates are looking for information that will help them make the best decision. They will look for articles about the degree they're interested in, get syllabi for different courses, information about the lecturers, as well as information about the institute itself.

Make this content available to them within your Lead Generation Chatbot's answers. Use links to help them navigate the website to easily find the content they're looking for. Links can be directed to articles, graduate testimonials or any other information that may be relevant to prospective students. You should add the Lead Generation Chatbot to these content pages in order to generate leads after they've found the requested information.

Let the Chatbot point out the Benefits of your Institute

Candidates that are visiting your website are generally checking out lots of universities and colleges, searching for information and making some kind of 'market survey'.

Lead Generation Chatbot can help show them the advantages of your institute versus others. Point out key benefits in the chat's answers and use call-to-action sentences after providing an answer. When candidates are asking about pricing, specific courses, location or admissions – use answers that motivate them to make a decision and provide their contact information.

For example: When a candidate is asking about admissions you may say: "Admissions depends on your SAT score and personal interview. Click here to see an admissions list for each course." And then you may add a sentence saying: "Admissions may vary according to personal interviews. Please provide your phone number and one of our representatives will contact you to setup a personal interview."

Use the Chatbot to filter unqualified Leads during the conversation

Not all candidates are qualified to attend your institute. They may not have the requisite scores, financial resources, etc.Instead of wasting your representatives' time contacting unqualified leads, use your Lead Generation Chatbot to filter out these kinds of candidates during the chat.

By reading a candidate’s conversation with the Chatbot, you can get valuable information about the candidate. One way to filter them out is by providing detailed answers that will discourage unqualified candidates from leaving their contact information. Another way is to use your Chatbot to collect specific information, such as test scores, when asking for the candidate’s contact information.

For example: When a candidate gives his phone\email use follow-up questions to ask for their name, SAT score, residence, nationality etc. Once this information has been collected you will easily see which leads to disqualify. Make sure that you ask for their email address, to send an explanatory email to unqualified candidates; don't leave leads, even unqualified ones, without any answers.

Chatbot Optimization Based on Real Conversations

One of the greatest advantages of having a Chatbot to convert visitors into leads on your website is the ability to get valuable information about your candidates' behaviors. While reading their conversations with the chat you can see the questions they've asked, the pages they've visited, the answers provided, and the visitor's reaction at each stage of the conversation. Make sure you also read conversations that didn't end in a lead; these will help you understand what went wrong in the conversation. You can then change the answers you have to better motivate the candidates or change the chat's scripts as needed.

Lead Generation Chatbot, when optimized continuously, gets better with time and provides continuous insights about you sales process, just like checking your PPC performance, keywords, Google Analytics and landing pages does, allowing you to improve performance.