Mikael da Costa, Founder of Leadoo MT said: “We have been seeing unprecedented interest in our chat bot service from businesses wanting to maximise their online business and engagement in the absence of face-to-face opportunities. This is a tough time for small and medium businesses, almost without exception they need more leads and more sales. They now need to make their websites work much harder for them to generate business and make these online improvements at speed.”

Leadoo MT focusses on chatbots for lead generation for SMEs, both B2B and B2C companies, enabling them to digitalise their business, sales and marketing by maximising conversions from website visitors.  To accompany the introduction of its new conversational lead generation platform, Leadoo MT released the results of a survey amongst UK SMEs which reveals:

• 54% of companies agreed that having been forced to be more virtual/online, it would change the way their company does business in the future with this peaking at 77% for those in business services
• 60% agreed that they thought the government had done enough to help their business survive although this dipped to just 36% for financial services and 51% for tech
• The construction industry lags behind others in having taken actions in digitalising due to Covid-19 with just 24% agreeing compared to 66% for business services, 62% for financial services, 60% for tech, 46% for retail, 33% for transport and logistics
• Tech companies led the way in increased investment in online sales and marketing due to the Covid-19 crisis at 59%
• In a regional comparison, only 31% of companies from the Midlands and 34% from East of England believed their company was ready to serve their customers in a world where online channels are the only way to do business
• The East of England lags behind with only 34% thinking they have taken sufficient action in digitalising their business due to the crisis
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• Companies operating in London and South East and the South West believed they were the most well prepared (both at 53%) to serve their clients in a world where online is the only channel to do business
• These regions, London and the South East and the South West also indicated a higher level of investment in online sales and marketing (33% and 34% respectively) and were more likely to see the Covid crisis as something that will change the way of doing business in the future at 64% and 59% respectively

Leadoo’s automated Inpage chatbots activate passive website visitors, who represent over 90% of all website traffic.  In the first week after lockdown began (23 March), Leadoo MT saw a 50% increase in online conversions among its 600+ clients’ websites across Europe. “People haven’t and won’t stop spending, but companies need to be ready to handle this online engagement. The UK market is particularly responsive to our conversational lead generation approach and we see increases of inbound leads of between 50-100% for UK companies” says da Costa. Leadoo MT therefore warns that those SMEs that continue to deprioritise digitalising their business will find this inactivity backfiring post COVID-19 as buyer behaviours have changed for good. 

Smaller SMEs have taken least action in adapting to the crisis, have not invested in digitalising their businesses in online sales and marketing, do not seem to view this crisis as changing the way they will operate in the future and are more unhappy with actions taken by the government to help.  Commenting on this research, da Costa says “We were surprised aswe thought perhaps smaller companies would have been more agile than the larger SMEs but it seems they are not adapting well.  Whilst we wouldn’t expect them to invest to the same extent as medium or large companies, we think this lack of action will harm their prospects going forward”.

The new conversational lead generation platform provides an easy to interpret dashboard that empowers SMEs, demystifying digital analytics and helping them understand their website visitors’ behaviour and learn what works best for their business.  The platform:

• Enables companies to move website visitors off the website into a chat channel of their choice such as Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp, text or phone. 
• Provides smart customer profiling – allowing clients to better understand their potential customers via unique and GDPR compliant technology, enabling SMEs to monitor and analyse individuals and their buyer journeys across the internet
• Offers, through a Bannerbot or Conversational chatbot, a way to target website visitors including potential prospects to start a conversation with people who have never even visited your website as well as the opportunity to retarget those people which increases your chances of keeping them engaged.