Chris Lynton Talks With Drew Slater About Messenger Strategies For Client Generation

 - Hey guys, Chris Lynton here from TribeFit and today we've got a very special guest with us, Drew Slater. How're you doing, buddy? 
 
 - Hey Chris, how are you bro?
 
 - Yeah, good, good, man. I think normally you're further north in Australia than I am but for this weekend I think we're both in Sydney, is that correct? 
  
 - Yeah, you're spot on man. I'm down in Bondi today. Bit of a view happening. Yeah, I normally live up in Byron Bay so we're just down here for the week checking it out. 
 
 - Beautiful, man. I appreciate your time today. As per usual, guys, it's just kind of, I guess, a value ad. Drew's awesome, does some awesome things and I asked if he'd be keen to do a bit of an interview and a talk about, there's many things we could've talked about, but to try and zone in on one, probably pretty topical at the moment is Facebook bots, chat bots, all that sort of stuff. And I know Drew, you've done a fair bit in that space at the moment, so I thought... 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - We'd invite you in and pick your brain? 
 
 - Dude, thanks for having me. I'm pumped. 
 
 - Not a problem, cool man. Well, I guess first and foremost, most people are gonna know what you're talking about when you say Facebook bot, but let's just say there's 10% out there that don't, so what are we actually talking about and referring to when someone talks about Facebook chat bots? 
 
 - Yeah, really good question. So a lot of the guys on the call today have probably heard and seen some of it, but basically in very simple terms, it's pretty much like AI technology that allows you to use a piece of software that will have an automated conversation with someone in a very human way. So they guys might know, you might have seen some Facebook posts lurking around where's someone's commented a certain word below and it'll say page required privately, that's pretty typical for a bot ad, for a Messenger ad. So if you look at the different channels of advertising, the Messenger platform is one of the fastest growing new channels that you can use in your marketing platform. 
 
 - Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good, man. I guess the majority of, like, most of us have probably used, personally, Facebook messaging, Facebook chat. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - It's pretty much, I guess, just trying to automate that process and the more and more that email, you know GDPR's just happened, for those of you in the UK, in Europe. And emails more and more, you know, a couple of years ago email marketing rocked. But people's inbox just gets smashed with this email, spam mail, that sort of stuff so kind of the readership don't open, rates of email are dropping while it seemed as though this new way to cut through and to communicate with people, would you agree with that? 
 
 - Yeah, it's an interesting one. So we still find our email marketing platforms do really well, as well. And I think everything works. The things that I love about the bots is there's so many more applications, so one of the things that is funny enough about bots is what they're doing for us and for a lot of our clients is they're actually helping to slowly bring more people in and acquire clients but actually communicate with the clients that we have already because I think people open a lot of emails and get a lot of emails like you said. And one of the things, if you wanna keep clients around, is having good client interaction. And we've been finding that having that one to one direct channel with our, with clients' environment since the platform is way cooler. And if you think about this, if you looked at your phone right now and I'll do it to mine, I've got, what is it? I've got 32,927 emails unread. I've got three messages on the Messenger platform unread. And I think texts I've got six text messages. It kinda goes to show, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that you know a lot of us aren't really prolifically checking our email the way that we do with our messages. It's just more direct. 
 
 - Yeah, good call. And like you said, email, a lot of people say email's dead and Facebook is hot or whatever. We're the same, email works, everything works. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - But like you said, kinda like a different avenue, a different platform for coms. You know the majority of us these days have got this thing in your hand everywhere you go, versus you're not walking around with your laptop under your arm. 
 
 - So true, yeah. 
 
 - Cool, alright man, well I guess for those who haven't used Messenger bots or whatever it might be. What would you suggest that they check out first? And what sort of, why would they be doing these things? 
 
 - Yeah, awesome question. If you've never used bots before, I guess you wanna understand what the key benefits are. We spoke a little bit about you've got a better open rate, you're gonna be an early adopter on a channel before it becomes another mainstream thing, so you probably get some added benefit of being early, and that's definitely what we're seeing. I guess the other piece of the puzzle that I like to talk about is you can't do fake bot details. Chris if I opt into your TribeFit bot, I can't funnel hack you in that way because it's gonna get my personal Facebook profile. I think it adds some level of connection and authenticity there as well. If someone was listening and they're like alright, I'm sold on the idea of trying it. I suppose the first thing that you'd wanna do is think about the deeper reason as to what you wanna use them for because everyone's got different needs. Someone might need to get more clients, someone might need to add more automation into their funnel, their process. And for a lot of the guys, I'm thinking it's probably gonna be in that client acquisition phase. So if I was you guys, I'd go to ManyChat, which is the software that we recommend, and set yourself up with a ManyChat pro account. I reckon it's, it's not expensive, it's $8 a month to get started with that. I know they get, they've got some free training that comes out with that piece of software, and I believe they've got a Facebook group and stuff like that you can go on. Have a bit of a play and start to fiddle with the bot. And then also I would integrate it to your Facebook page and maybe your website as well. That'd be my first pointers. 
 
 - Cool, cool. So I guess, kind of to backtrack like you said before, and just to kind of second on it. First and foremost guys if you are listening to this, there's probably my biggest bug bear about people trying to grow their business is this is a shiny new toy syndrome, so don't... 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - Don't jump from one thing to the next thing. Obviously the new thing isn't gonna revolution my business. Like Drew mentioned before, everything works, but nothing will work if you don't approach it in the right way and actually have a reason to be doing it. If you've got something that's working, this is an extension of I guess the communication of what you're doing, but if your messaging's off, if your ad's off, you don't know really how to convert, or what you're gonna sell or whatever, it's not gonna be a saviour for you. It's more of an optimization tool. I guess in terms of that Drew, so if someone goes to ManyChat, signs up, and they add it to their Facebook page or whatever it might be. I've spoken with a lot of people who go, what's this new thing? And they go away, cave for a month, and build out all of these automated sequences that respond this and do that. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - And then lo and behold they pop up and they've wasted a month doing busy work. What are the key baby steps to getting started and getting some results? 
 
 - Yeah, well first I love what you just said. Like you're spot on, and this is the same stuff that I talk about a lot as well. Don't get distracted by this stuff. Either find someone who can implement it for you, or just do what you need to do to get by. My first case would be, instead of dropping everything you've got that's working, I'm just saying where you could optimise what you've already got by maybe adding bots in. A really good example of how we did this, some of our funnels, was learn how to integrate a growth tool, which is what the system that you're gonna use. Integrate that into a landing page. Maybe you've got your landing page, you've got your ad, your landing page, and then on your thank you page, you could have a ManyChat subscription. You could say hey look, I know you just downloaded my pdf or you booked into whatever. If you wanna have it sent straight to your inbox on Messenger just click here. What you're doing there is you're actually getting them on email and you're also getting them on the, you're growing all this, you're adding to your subscriber base. If you think about it, the middle funnel, you're just bolstering that up a bit without having to do too much extra hard work, which is always nice. 
 
 - Cool, cool man, and I guess in terms of, let's just say someone does an ad as you were talking about. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - And it's a Messenger ad and it's like click here to chat, click here to get my ebook or whatever it might be. Should they go and build an automated sequence? I've seen some people and I know with a couple of the stuff that I've seen from yourself that literally it just pings yourself and then that opens up a communication, more of a manual process rather than a super automated format and some options, so what's your... 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - I guess reasoning for this, yeah. 
 
 - Yeah that's awesome, so let's talk about the different ways you can apply it to pay traffic for a split. Facebook is pretty pro you keeping people on its platform. It wants to increase its own site, all that stuff, as we all do. If you, I'll talk about two different types of ads that the guys could easily go and set up and what levels of automation you'd wanna have for each. Probably the more advanced way of doing it to start off would be to create what's called a bot funnel ad. You'd put out an offer to a group of people, and you'd ask them, easy way to explain it, comment below. And so say you know they comment TribeFit or whatever. That would need an automation set up and you'd probably want between anywhere from three to six steps in that sequence to qualify them and to get them on the phone to you. Because really the goal is you wanna get them to their next stage, and you wanna help increase conversion. That's really easy to set up, I've seen people go all the way deep into it, I think at that point you're probably wasting a little bit of time. Unless you've got massive traffic and volume you probably don't need to worry about that stuff. The only thing that I'm gonna say around those types of ads which is something we've learned from literally running hundreds of them for a lot of the gyms that we help, and coaching people and how to use bots in their Facebook marketing. This is something that we learned, if you put out an ad, let's say a lot of your tribe is online personal trainers, right? To a landing page you can say to someone I'm gonna go over the top here so you guys get a handle on what I'm trying to say. If you say to someone hey, are you miserable, bloated, hate your life and wanna lose weight? To some extent, if someone engages with that ad and goes to the landing page, clicks in, and opts in for whatever, they're doing that in their own privacy so no one knows. The one thing that we worked out is we ran heaps of bot campaigns and we were like why do some work really well and why do some not work so well? 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - And I guess the thing to think about is if you're asking people to interact with your message online in a public way, it's gonna have to be a status uplift. For example instead of saying are you broke and miserable, you could be like a little bit more, for example if I comment on the TribeFit ad, all my mates are gonna see that I commented on that. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - I'm highly unlikely to wanna leave my name under are you sluggish, broke, and miserable. Versus are you trying to optimise your performance and take everything to another level. That would be the first thing that I would say. That's the more advanced way to go, and it's not that hard to set up. The second way which I recommend everyone give a try because it's super easy. And I often do this to test marketing messages before I go and build out full set ups is there's now a campaign objective called send to party, it's called Messenger I believe. When you go down and set your campaign objective in Facebook you can do it as Messenger. And basically what that allows you to do on your ad level, your third level, is get someone to click a button. And you guys might've seen this, it just says send message. What that will do is that will open a conversation straight up with you in your phone. And if you're any good at having a conversation with people which most trainers should be, you can just have a conversation with someone and see if you can help them. And if you can then you hop on a call and if you can't then no love lost. 
 
 - Beautiful, beautiful, that's super simple, super easy. And as you said it's, I guess, an automated way of getting conversations with people who are resonating with your message, your ad. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - If you're calling them out on that ad, then totally hear you loud and clear in regards to an ad. If you've got an ad saying hey, tag yourself below if you're hating life and life sucks. You're not gonna get that many people putting their hand up versus more of a positive message. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - I hear you loud and clear on those two. Cool, alright man, well I guess top level. Is there anything else that you would say, you know, someone that's fresh, wanting to do these types of, or use this technology or whatever, what would you say to them would be kind of the first step that you'd recommend? 
 
 - Yeah so I think like I said before, we just wanna make sure that you go with a decent provider. And that would be ManyChat. 
 
  - Yeah. 
 
 - And get that stuff set up. And literally just set up the total basics, have one go at setting up a simple automation for yourself. Create a growth tool and a key word and sequence, and you can test it, so super easy to test, and have a play with the software yourself. Because the first time I heard about the software and whatever I was a little bit sceptical, and I was like, oh bots, here's the next thing, whatever, and I get it. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - So I was probably a little bit like a lot of the people are on the call. But hey look my job is always to test stuff for our Tribe and make sure that it's gonna get some winds. What we found straight away is we've run split tests with a lot of landing page campaigns, and we're getting generally a higher sales volume and increased conversions when we add the bots in. It's been a win for us, so if that doesn't excite you guys, then we're lost but hey I reckon follow whatever Chris is telling you to do and see if you can add in a little bit of this stuff and add some flare into your marketing funnels. 
 
 - Smart man, smart, super smart. One question I do have for you which just came to top of mind, so are you for being very clear if you have a bot that it is a bot communication versus a personal communication? 
 
 - Bloody amazing question. That's something that I actually thought to myself I'd better bring that up, so here's the thing, I definitely have tested this and 100% you have to let everyone know it's a bot. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - In our process if someone opts into the Alchemy Institute bot and says hey Chris, this is Alchemy Institute's bot Stan Drew's busy right now but he thinks that you might be looking for this, or we reckon that you might be really interested in this thing, is that correct, yes. When we started doing that we had a higher follow through in all the steps in our funnel versus when we were just pretending to be human. I think you gotta be really clear that it's a bot, and that will get you a way better result. 
 
 - Agree man, agree, and it's like if you're lying to them that early on, you're gonna lose the credibility, you're gonna lose the I guess the benefit you're gonna get from it, and you can kind of just to second what you've said there Drew, that's pretty much what we do 100%. For example have some fun with it as well, what we found... 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - It someone clicks on our bot, it has a gif of me waving and then it says straight up actually this is, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but this is Bill, the bot version of Chris that never sleeps, never eats, and is heaps more funnier. Ha ha ha, be clear, don't, if you can make a bit of fun out of it, people laugh and go, cool, I get it, I understand why there's a bot, and why, the dude's gotta sleep. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - Fair enough, so as long as you be upfront about it, you don't lose that credibility and then people understand okay cool, I've heard so many people, other businesses try and hide that and it's like... 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - You're just shooting yourself in the foot. 
 
 - And like, yeah, I don't think you'd ever wanna hide it. I just reckon, like what you've said and we've tested the same stuff, we have gifs in our sequences, videos, and I mean the great thing about the software is you can chuck a video, you can chuck an audio file. And I think one thing that we should mention as well, a lot of people get disheartened that sometimes when they launch their first bot campaigns, they might get a higher volume of leads, but for however many steps you have in your funnel, like any funnel, there's gonna be a level of drop off. One of the things that I really like about the bots is you can hop in a manually follow people up if you really needed to, if you're someone that was getting started and maybe you were just really trying to acquire some clients. You've already got a dialogue with someone, there's some trust, a rapport, and you can have a chat. Whereas sometimes with other platforms, it can be a little bit more clunky and difficult to do that. 
 
 - Yeah, spot on, that's cool man, cool. Alright man well I think the topic... 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - We've probably covered off pretty well in terms of that. In terms of yourself, I guess if people were interested in finding out more about yourself and who you help and all that sort of stuff Drew, where would they go to check out more about yourself? 
 
 - Yeah, great question. If people wanna find out more about who we are and what we do, I suppose the easiest way to do that would be to go to our old website, which is, we're kind of in the process of getting a new one. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - And that is, the url is just alchemy.institute. So www.alchemy.institute, no dot com, dot AU. Or you can just look up my name on Facebook and strike up a convo there. 
 
 - Awesome, awesome, well I appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy Drew. 
 
 - I loved the chat. 
 
 - Good to have you down in Sydney. 
 
 - Yeah. 
 
 - But, man I appreciate your time and I think anyone that is interested in bots and understanding the reasoning behind it, the strategy behind it, and not getting caught up in the shiny new toy syndrome, I think they'll take heaps from this interview buddy. So I appreciate your time mate, and guys if you do have any questions for Drew, feel free to reach out to him, and I'm sure you got a lot out of it. 
 
 - Dude, thanks for having me, it's good to chat. 
 
 - No problems mate, we'll speak soon, bye. 
 
 - See you around, bye bye.