How to monetize your Chatbots?
Chatbots are now a hot topic in the sector of technology and business. According to research, the chatbot market will reach a whopping $9.4 billion by the end of 2024 [1]. Many companies have already shifted towards conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for their growth. The reason? Well, of course, chatbots provide automation support to employees and customers, enhances user experience, drives organic traffic, reduces operational cost, keeps your business updated with the market technology, and provides better customer satisfaction. But very few know that one can even earn money with chatbots. Chatbot offers excellent ways for gaining monetary return through affiliate marketing, lead generation, conversational landing page for customer conversion, ad placement, and many more. Let’s delve into some techniques of how you can make money with chatbots.
Affiliate marketing
Using chatbots as a monetization scheme to earn affiliate income has been gaining motion among affiliate marketers. In a nutshell, affiliate marketing can be described as the process by which an affiliate (conglomerate) makes a commission for marketing another company’s products. Through this tactic, one can use their chatbot to earn a fair amount of money for driving traffic and sales to another company. According to research in 2016, affiliate marketing had an average of more than 21% on order values than other marketing channels [2]. Since then, many businesses are giving commissions to others for marketing their products. When the visitors interact and request information about some specific product, chatbots could suggest and provide actionable information to the users, thereby referring the affiliate links to direct them to the landing page of your associate. When the user makes a successful purchase, you will get an affiliate commission from your affiliate (associate).
Lead generation
Chatbots can generate quality leads not only for your business but for your associates as well. With the help of a chatbot, a business can start the communication with the customer instantaneously rather than mailing your clients and waiting for a reply to start the business conversation. For qualifying good leads, your chatbot must be an expert in delivering actionable insights to the online visitors demanding some information or any questions regarding your business’s product or service.
As for an example, suppose there is a company making software applications for the client. It can deploy a chatbot to its official website, which can provide information about the different products it has developed and guide the users about the particular software they are enquiring about. The instantaneous replies by the chatbot will make the customer pleased and will qualify leads for their business.
You can use the chatbot for generating leads for your associates as well. Your chatbot can take the information from the user and resale it to its associate at an excellent income. For example, suppose a customer is enquiring about good vacation places with the chatbot. You can sell this information to your associates which provide vacation packages, to earn some revenue.
Conversational landing page
A conversational landing page provides a chatbot-driven interaction to the users. The chatbot will welcome the incoming visitors while they’re still live on the page. The interactive chatbot would ask some strategic questions to the users, which will guide them to take a specific action. These conversational landing pages take up the entire screen and are the best way to optimize your conversion rate. These chatbots can give befitting answers to the general queries and educate the visitor about the demanded product or service. These chatbots increase the conversion rate of your website, providing more profits and benefits to the organization.
Monetization for e-commerce
Well, we all must have purchased some products from an e-commerce store by searching for the same online. How about if the user can buy products without the hassle of searching and filtering them? Yes, some chatbots are exclusively designed for e-commerce which will book your order in just a few conversations! It will entice more and more users to purchase your products, which will increase your return over investment ratio. Businesses can also apply their chatbot to their Facebook messenger. As a result, the user does not have to switch to another site to order products. He/she can book his/her order right from your chatbot on Facebook. It will not only generate higher revenue but will also decrease the bounce rate of your Facebook page.
Monetization from surveys
Surveys are becoming a crucial part of every business cycle. Conducting surveys helps businesses to analyze where they are standing from the customer’s perspective, what are the shortcomings, on which area they should focus more as per the public demand, and much more. But conducting a survey is a cumbersome task requiring a lot of time, money, and manual power. Chatbots could be used for such schemes, where automation provides better and quick results. Chatbots can survey without much trouble and will give accurate and proper output. You can use your chatbot to conduct your business survey, or you can make money by surveying for other businesses. Not only this, but you can sell the data about financial behaviors to some financial firms in exchange for cash. So, it’s a win-win situation!
Integrating payments in chatbots
Well, of course, who does not like hassle-free payment while ordering online? It is frequently observed that a user is likely to change his decision any second with a surplus of choices. Hence, it has become of utmost importance that you convert the user to a customer the very moment they are convinced.
Technologies have advanced very much, and now the business can accept payment through the chatbot without any trouble. Companies are using the chatbot to receive the payment effortlessly, decreasing the bounce rate. As for an example, suppose you have built a fantastic chatbot for your online electronics business. A potential buyer is having a conversation with your company via chatbot; as soon as he/she gets convinced with the product, the chatbot shall offer them an option to pay by sending them a payment link. By doing this, businesses will ensure that the customer stays with them and can complete the transaction smoothly.