What if you could cut your lead costs in half? What if you could shorten your sales cycle from several weeks to just a few hours? What if you could leverage organic and paid traffic for better connections, delightful customer interactions, and more sales?
That is what Chatbots can create for you.
I heard Natasha Willis speak at Blue Ribbon Miami a few months ago, and I loved her presentation so much that I invited her to be on the show!
In this episode, we unpack her $30 million Instagram DM funnel.
Here’s a look at what we cover:
- How to use IG DMs to run quiz funnels.
- How to combine bots and human creativity for outstanding results.
- How Natasha helped cut lead costs in half for companies like Foundr.
- Top mistakes people make with Chat marketing.
- Misconceptions about Chat marketing.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Natasha Willis
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today, we're doing something new. We're doing something we've never done on this show before. We're sliding into your DMs, if I said that correctly. But we're actually looking at Instagram direct messages. And not just that, but we're going to unpack a $30 million Instagram direct message funnel or DM funnel here. Everybody just says DM, not direct message. But, can't wait to dive into this topic. And, my guest today is someone that I met through our mutual friend, Ezra Firestone. We both spoke at a recent blue ribbon event. I heard Natasha speak and I thought, got to get her on the the podcast. We got to go through that talk on air. And so here we are today. But my guest today is Natasha Willis. She's the co-founder of School of Bots and she's wicked smart and super fun and very talented. And so with that, Natasha, welcome to the show. How you doing and thanks for coming on.
Natasha Willis:
Thank you so much, Brett. I'm so excited to be here, that we connected at blue ribbon recently, and we're going to get into a lot of amazing stuff that everyone will be able to take some tangible advice from and implement literally as soon as today, if they want to test it out. So, excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Brett:
Absolutely. And you're hailing from what has kind of become now the digital marketing city. I used to never go to Miami.
Natasha Willis:
The new Silicon Valley.
Brett:
It is, yeah. Now, I've been to Miami three or four times this year. I was actually just there last week. I forgot that you lived there. We could have chatted or hung out.
Natasha Willis:
Next time.
Brett:
Yeah, you're in Miami. And it's just a happening spot for digital marketing and all things tech it seems.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah, it's been really interesting.
Brett:
Do we know where that is, by the way?
Natasha Willis:
It seems like, well, A, a lot of people are wanting to move out of California and New York.
Brett:
No taxes in Florida baby. No state taxes.
Natasha Willis:
And so, Austin, Nashville and Miami are the three spots that seem to be receiving those floodgate of people. So, I've definitely noticed that. And everyone I've talked to in tech here, more from the VC and startup world, is saying that, everything here feels exactly like Silicon Valley did in the 90s, which is interesting. So, I'm like, "Okay."
Brett:
It's super interesting and super fun. And there's a tech energy that is going around.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. So, it definitely feels like the beginning of something's brewing here.
Brett:
Yeah. Kind of fun. So, we're going to dive in, we're going to get tactical. We're going to get practical. We're going to get strategic as well. But before we do, can you explain to the listeners, what is School of Bots? Fabulous name by the way. Love the name of your company. And then, give us the overview of Instagram DM marketing and what that is. But first, what is School of Bots?
Natasha Willis:
Absolutely. So, School of Bots... At School of Bots, our mission is to help marketers and businesses evolve with chat marketing. And we'll get into what that means. But long story short, chat marketing is just using messaging apps, which are the new evolution of communication between not only people to people, but therefore also businesses to people. So over the last five years, we've served over 150 clients as an agency and made over $30 million in revenue for our clients. Such as, ClickFunnels, DigitalMarketer, Founder, Mindvalley, just to name a few of them. So, these are industry leading brands that we work...
Brett:
That's a good who's who list right there. That's impressive.
Natasha Willis:
It is.
Brett:
I like it.
Natasha Willis:
It was really interesting because, these brands had never tried this. And so, we were able to come in and really create some phenomenal results and we'll dive into what people can expect with this. But over the years, that led us to sending over 20 million messages on messaging apps and gathering a ton of data, seeing what really was working. And a lot of agencies would come to us in businesses saying, "Hey, we want to do this in house. How do we make this happen?" So, that led to the creation of School of Bots, which now we've brought our agency under the name as well to keep it under one brand. And, we also have a done with you option now. So, we've trained over 14,000 marketing professionals, how to use messaging apps like Facebook messenger, Instagram DM and WhatsApp to grow revenue most importantly, but also to provide these delightful experiences that you really can't get with any other communication method. So, that's been the journey.
Brett:
That's awesome. Yeah. I love it. And I think, that's what's really at the core of this, is creating these delightful experiences that really can't be had in other platforms, that just assist in your marketing efforts and in your growth. And so, this is definitely outside of my realm. I'm a Google and YouTube and Amazon guy and of course Dabble and email and other things. But, Instagram DMS are new to me, but I love it. And I love how this fits into the overall marketing strategy. So, kind of give the overarching explanation to people. What is chat marketing, and specifically Instagram DM marketing?
Natasha Willis:
The best way to think about chat marketing and to be more specific, so people can visualize it. When you are on Instagram DM and you reach out to a business, because you want to know more about a product or you want to sign up for something, maybe they're LinkedIn bio didn't work, or literally anything that you want to chat with them about. Typically what happens is, now the business has to come in and manually respond to that. And then further than that, most companies don't have sales teams, especially eCommerce brands. They rely on these automated funnels now, or Ad traffic straight to their website and hoping people buy without someone guiding the actual buying conversation. And so what DM automation and chat marketing allows you to do is, create these automated one to one experiences, that can do literally anything you want them to. It's just about understanding the framework that it's a back and forth conversation.
You can follow up, you can capture information like emails and phone numbers. There's so much you can do, which we'll unpack here during our time together. But the long story short of it is that, doing this allows you to not only recover oftentimes what we find 50% of lost sales in just from Instagram, but also from other channels, because people aren't buying as quickly as they could be, if you were guiding that experience. And we also boost ...dramatically, sometimes up to 800%, just from organic content that brands are already putting out there. And these conversations are automated. So that means that, we're able to automate 80% of all over the DMs that they're having from pay traffic, organic traffic.
Brett:
So, they're automating what percent of DMs?
Natasha Willis:
80% of those conversations.
Brett:
80%?
Natasha Willis:
Yes.
Brett:
Wow.
Natasha Willis:
So, that's a big relief for teams that get a lot of incoming. But then as you implement this, you will be increasing the number of conversations you have. So the great thing is that, this will scale with you to where you don't have to worry about, "Oh no, all of a sudden I'm going to become a glorified sales person and have to be in there 24x7. Instead, you know that, that's all going to be handled by the bot that will get smarter and smarter over time.
Brett:
I've now transitioned from being CEO of my brand to just chatting with people on DMs. This is exactly what I wanted to do. So, the bots take care of that. So give me an example of, what could some of these conversations look like? What are the specific questions being asked? What do the dialogues look like? So, kind of paint that picture a little bit.
Natasha Willis:
Yes. So let me share an example that, a common, your typical eCom store might do a product launch each month. So let's say that, you sell a consumable collagen protein supplement. And so each month, you release a new flavor. So this month, what you would typically do is that, when you guys have your launch during, let's say a one week period, you're going to be posting on your Instagram stories and add a link on the story. You're going to say, "Hey, click this link. We just drop this new product. And in fact, we'll even give you 10% off, because it's a brand new product just for this week." And you're expecting people to look at this story and then click the link and go and buy immediately, which almost never happens. Then, you've got the link in your bio, which you're going to put the link maybe to that product page and even change your bio, say, "Hey, check out the link. We are having this product launch."
And then, you'll also maybe put out posts and reels as well, and even run Ads to the product launch, because you want people to go to the website and check it out. Now, the challenge with all of that is, you're sending people from, let's start with the organic side. You're expecting people to stop everything they're doing and dive straight into the buying opportunity. And sure, maybe your most loyal people will, because they're excited about it. But the majority of people, which we find is one to 5% of the people who actually saw your post, are going to go to that link in bio or go to that link in your story. And then from there, even a smaller percentage is even going to give you their information to follow up from there. And, you don't have a sales team, like stereotypical eCom store.
And so, there's no one who's actually going to follow up with maybe 100s, maybe 1000s of leads that have come in and are interested in that, but just didn't take the final step. Because maybe, if they didn't have their card information or they're like, "I'll check it out later. I won't forget before the product launch ends", et cetera. Now, we flip that on its head. And instead, now what happens is that, when you have the product launch happen in your stories and your posts and your reels, let's start with your stories, you have people reply to it. Which by the way, is the most natural action that someone can take from your Instagram stories, is to reply. Because it says at the bottom, send a message. Reply to this.
Brett:
Because that's what people do. You're watching a story of a friend and they're on vacation. You're like, "Oh, that looks like fire. That looks amazing. I wish I was with you", or whatever. That's what people do with stories.
Natasha Willis:
Exactly. It's supposed to be that interaction. And that starts a conversation, regardless of how short or long it might be. A quick reaction or a, "Oh, that's dope. I want to go there too." Now you start back and forth. So in the same way for the business, what we do with stories is that, we want people to just interact a little bit. Maybe sometimes that is a direct, "Hey, if you want this discount code, then drop the word collagen", or something maybe a little more simple, "And we'll send you an automated message." And then from there, they'll receive an automated message from you that says, "Hey, looks like you're interested in the new product we just dropped, the flavor's chocolate, tastes amazing. Just reply to this. Let me know if you want it and I'll send over some information." That's the level one. The simplest version of this. Now, just to blow people's minds a little bit without melting their brains too much is that, you want to be able to take that...
Brett:
A little bit of brain melting is good. Too much brain melting, we have to watch people are driving right now. But, I like some melting of brains. It's good.
Natasha Willis:
But we won't make it too dangerous y'all. But the idea here is that, you can start to get more advanced with it. So now, let's say somebody received that message and didn't reply after 10 minutes. Okay. Now we're going to shoot them a little follow up. Be like, "Hey, are you still interested in this?" And now from there, we can also even go further and say, "Hey, seems like you're interested in our products, but you want to make sure that this is the best product for you right now? And not maybe something else like our matcha flavor or whatever the heck we have? Then let me ask you a few questions and see what would be the best for you because, maybe your priority is stronger nails and skin", or maybe it's whatever their benefit or their goal, their desire is. You can really hammer that in and sell personalized to them. So, those are just a few examples of the things you can do. Answer FAQs, et cetera. Really decrease the amount of time someone needs to make their buying decision.
Because that's all you're doing, is just guiding their buying decision and then being able to interact with them as well in fun and delightful ways too, which we can dive into some examples for. Is all that making sense so far? I know we don't have a visual, but...
Brett:
Totally making sense. Yeah. I do have a few questions about, what are the limitations of the bot and when does the conversation maybe get too advanced for the bot to handle? When maybe human has to step in? Or I don't know. I know there's lots more to unpack maybe ahead of that, but anything you want to reference related to that initially? Do some of these conversations quickly lead into territory or questions that the bot's not equipped to answer?
Natasha Willis:
Definitely. So, that was the 20% of conversations that I kind of implied to earlier. Which means that, the bot will be able to handle about 80%. Once you're optimizing. When you first launch, you shouldn't expect it to answer everything. You should be checking the DM conversations, making sure everything's firing properly. And for us, because we approach these DM systems, really, it's not just about one funnel, but we want to have FAQ built in, which is the support pillar. Then we have the marketing pillar, just like ... And then we have the sales pillar. So, these three are really important to us at the level that we operate when we come in. But if you're just going to start your first thing, then you should expect that the bot's not going to answer every single question that comes in. But once you optimize about 20% of those conversations now, we'll go to support people or whoever's answering the DMs.
Brett:
Got it. And so, to impact those pillars just a little bit, and then I want to get into some of the stuff you talked about in Miami. So you got the support pillar, marketing pillar, sales pillar. Is that right? Those are three pillars you are talking about?
Natasha Willis:
Correct. Yes.
Brett:
So, it's on the support side. That's where someone's looking for like, "Where's my order? When will it ship?" That type of thing?
Natasha Willis:
Yes, but also bridging the gap between them being generated as a lead, so the marketing and the sales. Because, really the correct order and I should have kind of preface with this, but through it out there, just to start that conversation is that, we have the marketing pillar, then the support pillar, then sales. And sometimes support after that too. Like you just said, "Where's my order?" But most of the time, the support questions that you get in the DMs, have to do with someone buying. So they're like, "Hey, is this the right thing for me?" Or, "Hey, the checkout page isn't working", or whatever it might be.
Brett:
It's fitment, it's use cases. It's feature benefit. Will this work for me, type of thing.
Natasha Willis:
Exactly.
Brett:
Got it. Okay.
Natasha Willis:
And, what was your first question? I think I'm forgetting that one. Or maybe we already...
Brett:
Oh, the first question was, when do conversations evolve into where the bot can handle it, which you answered that perfectly. And then looking at those pillars then I guess, what should we be thinking about with those pillars? So, you got the marketing pillar first, support, then sales. Can you walk through what those look like? And I know, it's always harder with a podcast, because we've got to explain everything and you got to just paint a mental picture. So, we may have to dial it down a little bit or whatever. But, what do each of those pillars kind of look like?
Natasha Willis:
Yeah, totally. So going back to my example, when somebody opts in, so AKA, they send you a reply to your story or some of the other examples we didn't get into, but are really powerful would be, from an Ad, someone coming straight into your DMs, instead of going to your website. And also, when someone comments on an Instagram post or an Instagram reel...
Brett:
So you'd run an Instagram Ad for the new protein launch, the new chocolate launch, which by the way, if you're just now launching chocolate, if chocolate wasn't your first flavor, maybe we didn't think about your product strategy. But anyway. So, you're running an Ad on Instagram for the new chocolate flavor. And when they click on that Ad, they go to the DMs. Is that what you're saying on that?
Natasha Willis:
Correct. Yes. So, they would totally bypass or just at least skip initially going to your website, because you end up losing most of the traffic there. Whereas, when you take that into the DMs, you've now captured them on your DM list and now you can follow up with them. So, we can dive into that fun stuff. But that's the first pillar, just generating that person as a lead, as a DM subscriber. Then the second pillar of support, that's going to come where, during the lead gen process, they're obviously opting in for something, whether it's a free offer or it's something more direct like, "Hey, we just launched this new product come by this." So whatever that offer is, someone's going to have some questions. Like we talked about earlier, "Features and benefits, is this right for me?" Just all the different FAQs they might have.
And so, that's going to be the second pillar is the bot being able to walk someone through that, either through something like a quiz format, which we can go into some specific strategies on how we do this. So that, then by the end of a quiz, the way it's positioned, they're like, "Cool. I understand how this works. I'm educated on the product. I'm educated on why I need to buy this. I'm going to go buy it immediately." And then also, being able to answer user inputted questions like, "Hey, do you guys ship to Canada?" Or whatever. So, that's going to be the second pillar. And the third will finally be the purchase. Now, right now with the way that Instagram shop works, there are ways to start to integrate actually buying inside of the DMs. But, it's still a fairly new feature and not everybody can access all the features right now.
So the safest thing to do is, send people still to your eCommerce site or to Amazon, wherever you sell. And then just following up with people, like you would with an email cart abandonment sequence, but never assuming anything, unless you have that data flowing in, there is a way to do that. But, just being able to be like, "Hey, what'd you think about it? Did you already buy it? Awesome. Here's a bonus or here's an instruction manual", or whatever your product is. So, that's kind of how the three pillars will play out in this example. And then, a lot more can happen underneath them. But, that should be the approach that I recommend any eCommerce brand go into this thinking of is, that's the experience that you're trying to design, to make the most ...
Brett:
Love it. And, I do want to look at maybe some specific examples of how you run the quiz and maybe where that fits. I know it fits in the support pillar, but what does that look like and stuff. I think what would be kind of fun to do though is, "Hey, we're all entrepreneurs. We want you to show us the money a little bit. Why should I do this? So, let's pause for just a beat before we get back to the tactics." What kind of lift could we or should we be expecting? And maybe you can throw out a case study or something like that of, "Hey, when we run this type of Ad and get chat bots involved, what kind of lift can we see? What kind of results can we expect?"
Natasha Willis:
Yes. So in terms of Ads, and then we can talk about organic, because there's a huge unlock for organic, regardless of how many followers you have. If you literally have five people looking at your stories, let's say 30, then you can at least be capturing some of them as sales, for sure. Because, most people are just lurkers, but this turns those lurkers into buyers.
Brett:
Nice. Turning lurkers into buyers. I like that.
Natasha Willis:
In terms of Ads and what can happen here. Typically, we're able to half a lead cost. So, I'll give you a webinar example, just because usually lead costs, they're always rising. But especially for webinars, they've been fairly expensive. So, there's a lead cost for one of our clients at $25, that we're able to bring down to $5. And that's quite a decrease. But the idea there is, at least with the first campaign that we run for both eCommerce and info commerce, we're able to at least drop by 50%. The reason why is that, you're not only converting where people on the front end. So for example, going with the webinar, we also increase the number of people that register in the DMs, versus on a landing page. For one of our clients founder, they run webinars for millions of watchers every single year. And, one of their highest converting pages gets a 23% conversion rate.
Now in the DMs, we're able to get a 70% conversion rate on that. Because of the environment, but then also because we're able to follow up with people after they've initially opted in and maybe they didn't complete their sign up or they had a question before they sign up. So, you're not only getting that lift. So it's kind of like a double whammy there. But then, on top of that, let's say someone's like, "You know what? I'm a busy entrepreneur. I don't have time to watch this 60 minute webinar." So in one of our follow ups we might be like, "Hey, you busy?" And you just want to get a quick PDF report or be able to share something with them that's less commitment, if it's going to be a free thing. That'll take less time from them. Or, if you're selling a product directly, then something that's a little bit less expensive or again, less of a commitment, less of a thoughtful investment.
So, that will now become where your bot turns into this online sales person that's there 24x7 and can now pivot the conversation. And so, that allows us to make just a lot more sales, because we end up converting a much higher percentage of everyone who came into the funnel, instead of just of shoving one offer down someone's throat when they go to a landing page. And then in the email sequence and in the retargeting Ads, just not personalized to that person's needs.
Brett:
Awesome. So basically, you are building and we even said so in the title, you're building... This is a $30 million Instagram DM funnel, but you're building a funnel of, "Hey, you connected us with us through DM. You either complete a quiz or you don't, either show up to the webinar, you don't, or you download this, you don't", or whatever. And now you've got responses and follow ups to each of those actions, all built in through the chat bot through Instagram DMs.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. Right on. And, one keyword that you mentioned there is, kind of getting feedback or just a response. One of the most valuable things is, apart from all the revenue growth that you're going to see and the lead gen growth, being able to gather feedback on why someone didn't want to buy, or why didn't they like your free webinar offer? Or anything else that you offer them, we can easily capture that before we let them go and say, "Cool, have a great day." But then, we can present that to a client on a silver platter or in a Google sheet and say, "Hey, here's all the reasons why maybe people aren't opting in or want this", and then they can improve their marketing message as well.
Brett:
That is brilliant. The feedback alone is valuable. And then when you're talking about-
Natasha Willis:
So tough to ...
Brett:
... cutting lead calls in half or 70% conversion rate on leads, it's crazy. Yeah.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. It is. It's definitely a magic bullet in some regards, because it's just so easy to turn on and be able to see results pretty instantly. So yeah, I feel like we've shared a good amount of examples so far in terms of how you can do that. But, there's definitely just some simple unlocks that people can do, even if you just do one auto responder. You will get way more clicks to your product page, than if you were to use the link in bio or the link click story.
Brett:
Totally makes sense. And I think I may have cut you off. Were you about to share something about feedback and getting this feedback loop you're getting from clients? And I may have just misheard there.
Natasha Willis:
No, you're totally good. I think actually we covered everything I wanted to there. So, all good.
Brett:
Okay, cool. So, let's dive into several more specific questions. But on the quizzes, what do those often look like and how are you deploying those? How are you using those?
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. So as you know, quiz funnels have exploded, especially for digital product businesses I've noticed, but also eCom, I feel like I've seen 50-50, where everyone's trying to use a quiz. The problem with digital or digital website quizzes is that, you don't capture someone's information until either the end or if you do it at the beginning, then you lose a bit of the opt-ins that you could have gotten. So, what we have found is, inside of the DMs, what we can do is, instead of sending them to a website page, we can send people into a quiz, which in terms of the framing of the quiz, that's the most important thing. Because, no one really cares unless they're really hot, warm traffic about what product they should buy from you. They just want to know what solution they should get or they want to learn something that they don't know.
So, let's say that you are a beauty company that uses the marketing angle, that you guys are all organic and vegan and totally eco-friendly, sustainable, et cetera. So, those are the angles you guys go off of. So then perhaps, you create a knowledge quiz where you're like, did you know that 90% of beauty products contain toxic chemicals that mess up your hormones. Or, then you go into being able to teach people about that, and then you're leading them to your products or explaining what ingredients are important in these new products that science has found are better for you. And then at the end, you're able to sell your product. And the thing with quizzes too is, you don't need to have more than one product to do a quiz. You could do a knowledge quiz like that. And then at the end be like, "Hey, so we have this subscription. We have one magical serum that we send to our customers every single month. So you can sign up for a trial of that, test it out. And then if you like it, then you subscribe."
So, it really works for any kind of business model, because again, it's not about recommending a product as much as it is just framing the product, being the right solution for the user's desired outcome.
Brett:
Yeah. It's super interesting. I think they're natural use cases where a quiz makes a ton of sense. We used to work with an online company that sold at home hair coloring. And so the quiz was, find the perfect tent. So what tent do you want for hair? Are you covering gray? Are you not covering gray? Is this your base color or not your base color? So this whole quiz, but that makes sense. I've got a million different... Maybe not a million, but different color options. I need help in guiding that. I've definitely seen some quizzes where I'm like, "Why did you just ask me a quiz? You had one product to offer me the whole time." But you can't to your point, you can't do that, but then you've got to get creative. And then it's more like a knowledge quiz, not just about one product.
Natasha Willis:
Exactly. Right on. And one example I'll give of that is, because DMs, like the way that everything works and there is super easy, where you can save every single thing someone says to you in a field to get a little bit tactical at the end, you could take all the responses that they gave you or any of the relevant ones. And you could say, "Hey, since you are a female that's age 25 to 30, and you're looking to decrease wrinkles or whatever", maybe that's not the best example for them, "But prevent wrinkles. Then I believe that this product would be the best one for you", et cetera, et cetera. So, that even if you do only have one product at the end, at least you have framed it in such a personalized way that they're like, "Okay. This completely makes sense." I'm not even doubting the fact that they try to scheme me and think that they only have one product and try to make me recommend a product for me, et cetera.
Brett:
So, still personalizing it at the end of the day, which is interesting and which can feel good for sure. Cool. Okay. Awesome. So, kind of going high level for a minute. I know one of the things you talked about in your presentation in Miami was that, one of the driving forces here is that, people expect convenient experiences. That's what we want. We expect convenience, whether we're shopping in store or online or hybrid or whatever. So, how does that desire for convenient experiences that all consumers have? How does that tie into Instagram DMs? Which happens.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. Well the interesting thing is that, now more and more, there's two aspects to this. Firstly, when it comes to communication, people don't want to email anymore. They don't want to have to call businesses. They want to just... On the social media platforms that they're spending most of their days on, they want to be able to go on and just ask businesses questions there. Because they're just so used to hanging out on there and they're familiar with the platform, et cetera. That's where they talk to all their friends.
Brett:
One interesting quick story that I think you'll find fascinating, Natasha, just really quickly is, I was at an event recently, speaking at an event and I got to meet the CMO of Circuit City. Now I don't know about you, Natasha. I didn't realize that Circuit City still existed. I thought they were completely gone. It turns out, Circuit City still exists online, and wait for it. I hear stores are coming back. They're planning on doing that. What the CMO said and this was interesting is, they're actually leaning into phone support. They want to be available to answer your questions. Because for some people, buying a laptop for a college student or upgrading your router at home or whatever's complex. And so, they want to call somebody and talk to somebody. And someone as this guy was talking, someone the crowd was like, "What about millennials and younger? They don't make phone calls."
He was like, you're right. It's all chat based. But the point of the story was, "Hey, this could be a differentiator, where of course Amazon's faster shipping and faster everything and cheaper potentially, but can you get someone to actually help you?" That's pretty difficult. So, leaning into this as a differentiator of either personalized support and I know bots are going to be powering a lot of this, but still getting support either through chat or in the case of Circuit City phone calls for that older crowd, can be a real differentiator. And, I know your whole point is it closes more sales. But yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. We can't out convenience, Amazon or out deliver faster than Amazon, but we can be more helpful with our conversations and our support than Amazon.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. Completely. And it's an interesting point you make because, without going too deep into it, being able to free up your support team to answer the most intimate or the hottest leads or the most critical, terrible situations that have unfortunately occurred and you're on the brink of losing customers or they want to sue you or who knows. Craziness is ensuing.
Brett:
You haven't have any ... that they are going to refuse.
Natasha Willis:
You can actually jump on those, instead of being like, "Crap." Yeah. I've got to answer these 20 incoming messages. Instead you're like, "Cool. I can give my time and dedicate to this one and really make sure that it does well. I know the bot's handling those other 19."
Brett:
Yeah, love that. That's beautiful point.
Natasha Willis:
I really like that story. To just go back to your question and kind of close the loop there. So the two things, convenience, people want to talk where they're already spending all their time. Just the same way that apps honestly have become fairly obsolete over the years, that making sense as a channel for businesses to create what they could do inside of a bot. In my opinion, most apps are dead, because they can be doing the same thing inside of the DMs inside of messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, there's functionality for that now. So, it's only a matter of time until people know about it. But unfortunately, sometimes people still invest in doing an app and then everyone does it.
Brett:
And that's what consumers want. We'd rather live inside of our Instagram DMs, than we would in having a separate app for a 100 different retailers that we do business with. If you look at the way things are going down in China, everything is done in WhatsApp as an example. So, that's what consumers prefer.
Natasha Willis:
Or WeChat.
Brett:
Yeah. I don't know what I just said, but yeah, WeChat. Yeah.
Natasha Willis:
They sound similar and they're very similar logo. But, in regards to the other piece I wanted to mention, which might be interesting to you and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts is, a lot of people now don't even go to Google or other search engines as much as they do now, well the younger crowds to TikTok, to Instagram, to YouTube, they jump on there and they look up. Even my husband. We're in our 20s, but he used to look at blog articles on maybe how to grill a steak or whatever it's going to be. And now he's like, "I'd rather just go to TikTok, because I can learn in 15 seconds and I can see the visual, it just solves my need immediately. And the search engines really good on there." So, that's another interesting aspect too is like, 81% of people on Instagram use it to search for products and services, which is why Instagram's going so heavy with the commerce side.
But it's also that, that's keeping people there for so long and then they want to be able to message the businesses that they find products for to know, "Hey, I just found you. Is this for me?"
Brett:
Yeah. It's a really interesting concept. One, I'm super excited that there's an integration with Instagram shops. And I'm assuming, is that a direct integration with Shopify or is it going to be with other eCommerce platforms or do you know?
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. So, they'll probably open up for more over time. I don't know entirely if it does the full integration with Shopify right now, because it's still fairly early. But, the way that it worked for Messenger, which is how they're going to replicate it for this is that, it will be full integration with Shopify, with any of your other platforms. So that way, it can handle tracking and all of that information.
Brett:
Yeah. Super interesting. So in terms of how people's search behavior is changing, I don't know what percentages go to TikTok versus YouTube versus Google or how things are overall being impacted. I know as you look at overall Google search volume, the number of queries being submitted to Google, whether that's through typing it out or voice text or whatever, the number of queries continue to increase every year. So, people are using Google more and more for sure. But, I know just observing my kids and I've got a pretty good... I guess it's a limited case study in that. It's all in the same household, but I do have eight children, which is a lot. And as I observe my teens, who all have smartphones, they're definitely searching a lot on YouTube. So anytime they want to learn something, they are on YouTube. But in terms of the apps, they spend time with, it's for sure, Instagram number one, TikTok for those that we allow to have TikTok, Pinterest as well.
But I could totally see that, I could totally see them searching for, I want to know about this product and I'm just going to look on TikTok or look on Instagram, instead of going to Google. And so, it's a really fascinating thing, but also important to realize that, I think the younger generation and even myself, when I'm in my 40s, I go to YouTube if there's something that I know I need to see. I had to recently fix my gas cooktop, which if anybody's a long time listener, I'm not handy. I break things. I hire people to do almost everything. I couldn't find someone to fix my stove top. So, I watched a YouTube video and I fixed it two nights ago. The house was not burned down and is not blown up and we used it. So anyway, kudos to YouTube. But yeah, I think the younger generation totally leaning into those visual video experiences to find what they're looking for.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. A 100% and right on par with what we're seeing. So all that behavior, ultimately leading to just the increase in people wanting to chat on these platforms, because it's convenient.
Brett:
Yeah. Very cool. So, you said something during your talk that really just spoke to my marketer's soul. Like chicken soup for my marketer soul. Where you said that, companies that are really succeeding, whether it's Chapa, marketing, whatever, they've got a good mix of AI, plus creative humans. Plus creative humanity. And, that's where you really see things flourish. And we talk about that all the time. We can't just be dependent on the algorithm, because we know that things like iOS 14 and other shifts can really throw the algorithm off and you don't want to be an algorithm cripple anyway. But, how do we lean in and both leverage technology, but also apply our creativity to get really great results.
Natasha Willis:
Yes. And, this is such an important topic because, I think too often, and even at the highest levels. I've been in rooms and maybe this happened to you too, because you guys have a similar philosophy where you're talking to a very established, impressive business owner. And they're like, "But, I really just want my customers to have a human person to talk to at all times. And we're super against bots or automation or automating the experience." And so I think that, ultimately as you've already restated, being able to have a combination of it is not only much less stressful, but a lot more profitable and just better for both sides. Because I think, too often as happens with anything. And in fact, when I was doing an interview with Seth Godin a couple months ago, one of the most important things...
Brett:
Wait. You did an interview with Seth Godin?
Natasha Willis:
I did. I interviewed him...
Brett:
How did you do that?
Natasha Willis:
I interviewed him for Ad World Conference.
Brett:
Dang. That's awesome. Congrats. I love Seth Godin. Legend. He's like a godfather of marketing. Yeah, it's amazing.
Natasha Willis:
Indeed so. And one of the interesting things he brought up, which I think about, but I try not to think about that often is that, with each new platform, as in fact, we've actually seen with NFTs or any new tech is that, the spammers jump on it right away.
Brett:
Totally.
Natasha Willis:
And especially more recently, there have been so many fake Instagram accounts that have popped up, so many more unsolicited DMs coming into your message request saying, "Hey, do you want to buy this crypto from me or sign up for this NFT project", or just all kinds of crap. And so, I think that a lot of that behavior deters business owners to be like, "Oh, that's why we've got to do everything manual. And everything has to be QAed by a human", et cetera. And at the end of the day, that's just not how the largest companies are going to win. And it's also not the most authentic, because now you're leaving people hanging on the phone for hours. Anybody been on the phone with their Bank of America for three hours or instead being able...
Brett:
Yeah. That's a good way to ruin someone's day.
Natasha Willis:
Completely. And so, that's I think the point of that whole little point that I try to make there is that, it's important to consider both and just keep your mind open. Not be afraid of the technology and also not be afraid of what can happen with it, because it really can provide just such an amazing business unlock for people.
Brett:
When you automate the easy stuff and someone can now type in and figure out where their order is or what the status is or the answer to this easy question and they get it in a matter of a few seconds and you didn't have to lift the finger for that. That's way, way, way better for both parties, for sure.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. And your employees will appreciate it. They will be like, "Thank God I don't have to copy and paste this for the next 300th time."
Brett:
Yeah. And, we all know what it's like. It's hard to find good help. And it's hard to find help, especially at potentially the lower level entry level type support positions. And so, chat bots can assist there for sure. Cool. So, another point you made, which I absolutely love is, you said conversations are at the core of every buying decision. So, you can either be a part of that conversation or those conversations can be happening without you, or maybe it's even just with the buyer conversing with themselves. Just trying to figure it out in their head. So, unpack that a little bit and how do we interject ourselves into those conversations?
Natasha Willis:
Yes. And a tangible example to help people understand why this matters, especially to your bottom line is that, we have had agencies come in one specific example where the first DM funnel they implemented for a client, took that client's sales cycle from two weeks to five hours. And, I love that example.
Brett:
That's pretty good.
Natasha Willis:
It is. It's awesome. Their sales reps are like, "Dude, this is amazing." And not only that, but again, your employees will appreciate you. When you can actually be able to qualify people for them, help them, increase the quality of their conversations and not even just salespeople, but support people, et cetera. And so, being able to filter out your traffic and also guide those conversations, especially for, let's have the example of a product launch. And what I see very often is that, people will ramp up for this product launch regardless of what you're selling.
And then let's say, 10% or 20% buy. And then they ignore the remaining percentage that didn't buy. Don't really follow up with them. Don't do much with them. Well, the same thing happens with evergreen, where there's a big percentage of people who get ignored, because either they weren't quite ready for your product, but they will be soon or they just didn't get the questions answered that they needed or takes too long to hear from you. So, all those things combined. Being able to speed up the buyer's decision, that's serving them the best. Instead of saying, "Hey, we're going to force you to talk to a human. And that means you may have to wait two weeks to hear back from us." Instead, you're actually serving them right there and then, and that makes people a lot happier and a lot more likely to engage with you in the future, buy from you again. And even what we've seen more likely to give you a positive review or give you feedback and all the other things that are kind of hard for companies to get.
Brett:
Yeah. And when someone has raised their hand, when they've indicated, "Hey, I'm at least somewhat interested here", You got to strike while the hiring's hot. And if you can get those answers and get that conversation really going when someone's interested, it's so much better than saying, "No, no, no, no. I know you're interested now, but you get on my timetable." And that means, "Yeah, I'll talk to you in a couple weeks." My head is even turning now for my agency and how can we maybe implement some of this for us, which...
Natasha Willis:
Getting back to leads instantly, instead of a couple days where they have already moved on maybe.
Brett:
Starting to get some of those details right away and some of those things. Yeah. Super interesting. Okay, cool. So as people look at this, and I know people are listening and hopefully chopping at the bit and ready to implement this in their business or find out how to work with you. What are some of the top mistakes that companies make when implementing chat marketing, that we should be aware of so that we can avoid?
Natasha Willis:
The biggest mistakes I see, which I think just comes from a lack of understanding. And hopefully, everyone here understands that it can be so much more of a fruitful conversation for both the business and the user, when you take it a few steps further than just one autoresponder. That's the biggest mistake I see is that, people think, "Oh cool. We're sending people to the DMs. So, I'm going to treat this just like email, where as soon as someone DMs me, I'll just send them a message back with a link. To the product page or to my help desk or whatever it's going to be." Or they say, "Hey, email us because we can't help you here." Which is the worst one. Because you're like, "Really? I just spent time typing on my whole message to you and I've got to go and email you guys." And then I'm just like, "All right. Screw it. I'm not going to do it." Whatever. So, that's definitely the biggest issue I see is just people not using the technology to its fullest capabilities. Even if it's just to take it a few steps further, keeping stuff native.
So, trying to keep stuff in the chat as much as possible instead of just being lazy and saying, "Okay, now go to my landing page." Instead of qualifying them, maybe even getting their email and then saying, "Hey, the offer is right for you. Go and check it out." Other mistakes that people make, come down to what I actually see quite often, it's the CTAs and their content or their Ads, not being super clear to say, "Hey, just DM me." Because once you get this information or once you get your first funnel in place, you don't really need to send people to your website pages, because your bot's going to do that for you.
That's not to say you should remove the link in your bio. But for example, all of your stories or all of your post CTAs, the worst ones when people put a not clickable link in their Instagram post and you're like, "I can't even click on this." So, being able to comment there or reply and then giving them those links only in the DMs, at first you're like, "Well, what if someone doesn't go through?" But I'll tell you, we see that 200 to 800% increase in leads. Simply because they were able to get it in a place that's more convenient for them. So, those are just a few of them. I could go on, but...
Brett:
Yeah. That's perfect. If they get the link in the DM after they've already requested it, what's the click through right there? It's got to be off the charts versus the link being readily accessible and viewable, the click through rate's going to be normal. It's going to be half a percent or 1% or whatever it is. So yeah, that makes a ton of sense for sure. Cool. What are some of the other things we need to be aware of? As we're looking at chat based marketing? Anything else we need to be aware of? Any kind of quick hit pointers or tips?
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. I think one thing that's a little more strategic, but just to think about, is that the way we implement chat marketing now on the different channels. Especially if you're running Facebook ads on both Facebook and Instagram or you're considering WhatsApp, because you've got an international audience or your customer base uses it is that, we like to use Instagram now in the first 90 days of implementing chat marketing. And then we'll add a messenger right after that. Usually takes about a month to two months to get a ton of funnels up and running there. And then we'll add in WhatsApp after that. SMS usually makes it at the beginning, along with Instagram. And the reason we do it that way is because, Instagram has the biggest unlock with your free or organic traffic. As long as you're posting a couple times a week on there, immediately, you could double to triple your legion from your organic Instagram, just by changing your call to actions, to comment on a post or a reel or to reply to your stories instead of that.
And then from there being able to use messenger with Ads primarily at this point in time, is really powerful too. So you can capture the people who are on Facebook as well. That's one big thing just in terms of how people are looking at implementing this.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. I love it. Natasha, this has been fantastic. We're essentially out of time, which is unfortunate, because we could keep going here. I've got more questions. This is a whole new world for me. And so, I'm excited to learn more, but as people are listen, and they're like, "Man, I need to just talk to Natasha either to learn from you more or to potentially hire your company. It's School of Bots, but how can people connect with you and then just walk us through what are the levels of service and or education that you provide people?
Natasha Willis:
Absolutely. So the easiest way to see a demo, if you guys want to see the visuals of everything we've talked about so far, is if you go to Instagram and look up School of Bots, you can just DM us the word, learn and you will see a demo.
Brett:
You mean, people can DM you on Instagram? So it's amazing. Yeah.
Natasha Willis:
Yes. So that'll be the easiest just so you guys can see a demo. You're also welcome to reach out to me personally on my Instagram, if you have any questions. But in terms of how we can best served. So if you're an eCommerce brand or an agency, then we have both done with you and done for you, full scope options. So if you're a brand you're like, "I just need an expert to handle this for me and help me double my sales ASAP. Then we can do that for you, if you just head to our website, schoolofbots.co. And in terms of done with you, we've got a ton of free education, which I strongly recommend you check out first, just so you can understand how this works on YouTube and Instagram. And then from there, we've got a done with you program where we'll come in and implement our whole system alongside your team.
Brett:
That is amazing. So, schoolofbots.co or School of Bots on Instagram will be linked to all of that in the show notes. So check it out. Natasha, this has been fantastic. You're delight to interview, very bright, very informative, good stuff. I'm impressed by what you do for sure. And now super impressed to know that you've interviewed Seth Godin, which is just something that you can talk about and remember forever.
Natasha Willis:
True that. It was very memorable. Well, this was a blast, Brett. I'm so happy we're able to do this together and bring this to your audience. And I'm excited for you to learn more and start to potentially use this too. So, I will resource to you.
Brett:
I want to talk to you in five minutes about how we can do this from deep. So anyway, yes. Thank you. We'll have to look for you and I doing round two on chat based marketing here in the, of not ...
Natasha Willis:
Yes.
Brett:
So thanks, Natasha. Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. I would love to hear more from you. So what would you like to hear more of on this show? Give us some feedback. If you haven't already, leave us that review on iTunes, it makes our day. It makes my producer, Jonathan, it makes him happy, warms his heart to see those reviews and me too. And with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.
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