Monthly Archives: December 2019

Using Story to Win on Social Media

Using Story to Win on Social Media written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Claire Diaz-Ortiz
Podcast Transcript

Today on the podcast, I sit down with Claire Diaz-Ortiz. She was an early employee at Twitter and is an author, speaker, angel investor, and innovation advisor.

Diaz-Ortiz is a leading voice in digital media. She speaks regularly on innovation and digital media, and has shared her expertise with various organizations including The United Nations, South by Southwest, TEDx, Toyota, and Verizon.

She is the award-winning author of eight books, including Social Media Success for Every Brand. On today’s episode, we dive into the five StoryBrand pillars that can help any brand connect with followers online and build an audience for their business.

Questions I ask Claire Diaz-Ortiz:

  • You’ve been called “the woman who got the Pope on Twitter.” Can you tell us the story behind that?
  • What are the five StoryBrand pillars?
  • Does your model work beyond just the bounds of social media, and in all marketing channels?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why you should think of social media as a cocktail party.
  • Why you shouldn’t forget about your existing customers when it comes to social media.
  • How to increase your reach on social media.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Claire Diaz-Ortiz:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

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Transcript of Using Story to Win on Social Media

Transcript of Using Story to Win on Social Media written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

ManyChat logo

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by ManyChat.com. 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger every day, ManyChat is how you reach them.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape marketing podcast. This is John Jansen. My guest today is Claire Diaz-Ortiz.

John Jantsch: She is an author, speaker and former early employee of Twitter. She’s also got a new book called Social Media Success for Every Brand: the five StoryBrand Pillars That Turn Posts Into Profits. So Claire, thanks for joining me.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

John Jantsch: So this is part of your brand. I’m sure you’re tired of telling this story, but I have to throw it out there for our listeners. You have been called the woman who got the Pope on Twitter, so you want to tell that story just one more time?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Sure, sure. Yeah. So I mean I basically ended up as an early employee at Twitter after becoming an early user of the platform back in 2006. At the time, I had a blog that became popular about traveling around the world and living in this orphanage out in Africa. And the folks who started twitter.com were actually the people who had started blogger.com. And if you had a blog back in 2005 2006 you probably were blogging on blogger.com on Blogspot.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And so when they started promoting the blog, when they found it and thought it was great and I started promoting it, then they said, “Hey, we’re actually incubating this little company and we think it’s a cool new tool. Why don’t you start tweeting, you know about the same kind of stuff you’ve been blogging about.” So for me, early on, Twitter was just a fun way to kind of tell the world what I was doing.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And ultimately it was becoming, it was the starting as a user that ended me as an employee of the company. I spent about five and a half years there and in the last few years I was really spending a lot of time basically tracking down high profile people and getting them to tweet. And for a while I was working on the vertical of religion. So looking at what kind of religious content and religious influencers we could get on the platform and get using the platform well to kind of encourage their own niches to come on board as well.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And so I ended up spending about a year with the Vatican getting Pope Benedict at the time, but then the account transferred over to Pope Francis on the platform and it was a really incredible experience. The thing I always say is that the Vatican and during that entire process of, of working with them and flying out there a few times and really being in this bunker mentality with them of getting this big thing launched, they were so much more fast moving and innovative than people give them credit for.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: So I really had a fantastic experience working with the communications team there all the way up until the moment where I got to just stand next to Pope Benedict as he sent his first tweet. That’s the long short of it.

John Jantsch: Oh, that’s a good career story.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: I know, I know.

John Jantsch: I actually started my blog in 2003 if we can reminisce, and I was actually using a software, I don’t think it’s around anymore, it was called Publishing Machine. And it turned into Expression Engine. And then I also had a few I started about 10 blogs for…I was kind of like you. I was trying to get all my friends who are in marketing to say, “This blogging thing is, you know, you need take this seriously.”

John Jantsch: So I set up about 25 Typepad blogs for friends as well. So I have a very long history of this and I think I got on Twitter at South by Southwest in, what was that? March of 2006 or seven. Was it seven? Yeah. Okay. So that was about six months into Twitter’s existence I suppose. Right?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Wow. Yeah. That’s really awesome. That’s very, very cool. Yeah. Twitter launched in the fall of 2006 but it was, I would say most of the first year it was kind of a small little experiment still.

John Jantsch: Yeah. My business is called Duct Tape marketing and all my other social media handles are Duct Tape Marketing. But at the time Twitter launched you couldn’t have a handle that long. And so my-

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Oh really?

John Jantsch: Yeah, so my Twitter name is duct tape. So that’s another little known trivia fact. But let’s talk about social media in general. And I want to ask you this question directly because it is the heading of your introduction. What do most people get wrong about social media?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Sure. So I think that the big, big thing that people really get wrong about social media, and this is the real impetus behind why I created this book is that people mistake… They think that social media is a tool for what we call direct marketing and not really for brand marketing. So if you think about the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing, direct marketing is I show you an advertisement and you immediately buy it. So I think of direct sales.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Whereas brand marketing is the type of marketing that helps you create awareness around a brand or create engagement around a brand. So one of the biggest problems I see out there with businesses or with individual personal brands who use social media is they get on, they think, “Hey this is like having a tiny little billboard” and they just kind of push market out sales messaging all day and then they wonder why people don’t buy.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And the reality is that most of social media marketing, most of the time is about brand marketing. And so in this book I give you a plan for taking that awareness that you are going to garner about your and then moving people up, what I call an engagement ladder to get them increasingly engaged with your brand to the point where they will then take action to buy.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: So for me, that’s kind of the big idea behind this book and the big plan I give you is about really getting people to understand that social media is a place to make potential customers interested in you and then to get them increasingly engaged over time.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I think one of the mistakes some people make some times, excuse me, is that when they hear people say you can’t sell on social media. And I’m not saying you’re saying that, but that’s the message that a lot of people here and I think my view is you can sell anywhere you earn the right to sell. And that’s kind of what you’re saying in the engagement ladder. I mean the people that you see it all the time. People that do sell directly on Facebook or in social media, in organic situations, not, not in paid situations even. And I think it’s because they have built that know, like, and trust.

John Jantsch: They moved people kind of along the journey to where they now want to get that direct message. That’s the mistake. I think a lot of people make because they just look, “Oh it’s free, there’s millions of people here, blast my message out and I’ll maybe catch some of them.”

John Jantsch: But I do think that that this idea of the customer journey has become even more and more important. Because we have all these new platforms but the buyers kind of in charge of them now and I think that’s the thing that’s changed the most is that, that, you know, people can tune us out, they can turn us off, they can decide to ignore us very, very easily if we’re just blasting out buy messages.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Well, I was just going to add that. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the big ways you can kind of think about this more easily as if you start to think of social media as a cocktail party. I like to think of sort of what’s your goal in an average cocktail party? It probably or it should be two to get into that cocktail party to make a potential connection with someone, to get along with someone. And then to create enough interest on both ends that you might want to exchange business cards and then follow-up at a later date. Right?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: So the goal of you in a cocktail party should not be rushing up to your bosses ex-wife’s husband’s former roommate, and immediately trying to sell him your favorite healing essential oil. Right? And in the same way you need to think about social media. So the goal on social media is not to immediately get in there and start blasting a sales message with the idea that that’s going to get you any results.

John Jantsch: So let’s unpack the model. I’m a huge system person. I think people really like structure and process and find it very effective. So I guess we kind of have to go back to the title. So your model is built on the five pillars. So not everybody is familiar with those. So maybe maybe kind of unpack the model globally and then we can kind of jump into a few things.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Sure. So the way it works is my model is called the share model, which is five pillars, but it is based on the StoryBrand framework. So the way we did this is that my model is called the share model, S-H-A-R-E and the first step in that model is all about story. And this is really about digging into the StoryBrand framework. And essentially if you’re not familiar with StoryBrand, this book will give you a 25-page intro that will help you kind of get grounded.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: But if you really want to dig in Don Miller’s book, Building a StoryBrand is pretty much a marketing Bible. I highly, highly recommended. I love it. And basically what it will tell you is it will give you a way to tell a really clear story about your brand that shows your brand in a positive light, but really makes sure that your brand tells a story that connects with your customer and your customer is the hero. This is kind of one of the big ideas in StoryBrand.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: So in the first step of this share model that I share in the book, Social Media Success for Every Brand, you’re really just getting a handle on your story. I want brands to understand what they’re really clear story is. And then once you have that story, then you know in this step of the model it’s about understanding the thing I said earlier that brand marketing and direct marketing are different things and that social media most of the time is brand marketing.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And then learning about that engagement ladder, which I mentioned. So the idea that social media is about getting people on the first rung of your engagement ladder. So peaking their interest to getting someone to turn into a potential follower and then slowly moving them up that engagement ladder. So the first rung is getting them to follow you. The second rung, these may vary somewhat, but the second rung may be getting them to like a comment you make on social media. The next rung might be engaging with you on social media, talking at you.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: The next rung might be clicking on a link to your website. The next rung up on that engagement ladder might be signing up for your email newsletter. As you get higher and higher up that engagement ladder, you’re getting towards the point where you’re actually getting that direct sale, right? So you’re getting someone to actually purchase and then to actually hopefully share their excitement for your brand with a friend. So this is really the concept in the first step of the share model.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: The second step is all about how and in how probably the most important thing that I walk you through in the book is that make sure that you take the social media evaluation I have. So one of the big things I hear often from the startups I advise, they’ll come to me, they’ll say, “Hey, we just launched a new campaign on Twitter I and it’s not seeing any sales and we are totally bombed.” And I say, “Okay, well tell me a little bit about your business.”

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: They share with me, “Well, actually we’re recruiters and we place top HR executives in great corporations.” And if I hear something like that, I immediately think, “Hey, I bet you’re on the wrong platform, because you’re a recruiter. LinkedIn is really going to be your home. So this social media evaluation is going to take you through some simple questions that are going to direct you to understand what your priority social media platform is. Most of us don’t have endless time in this world. And so I want you to know which of the top four social media platforms. So LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook should be your priority.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And then you want to really focus in on that priority platform. And then as time allows, get get going on some of the other platforms. And I also in the book teach you some ways to kind of tweak that so that you can streamline things a bit and automate things a bit when it comes to that. So in this audience step, it’s really about figuring out your party platform and then coming up with a social media editorial calendar and then schedule that work.

John Jantsch: Let’s face it, it’s getting harder and harder to reach our prospects and customers, so we have to be a lot of places. We have to communicate using the tools that they want to use. Did you know that 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger every day? Would you like to know how you could reach them? Get a free one month pro trial by going to manychat.com and click get started. Enter the code duct tape. That’s D-U-C-T-T-A-P-E for your free one month pro trial.

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John Jantsch: One thing that I find a lot of people really miss is that there’s such a focus on the thought of using social media to connect with new people. I find it actually one of the best ways to build deeper relationships and deeper engagement with your existing customers. And I think a lot of people really underestimate the power of that. Because those are probably going to end up becoming your best source of lead generation is your existing customers.

John Jantsch: And we really have a lot of success getting that point across so that, that people are sharing their stories, their culture, their behind the scenes and social media in a way that’s actually keeping their existing customers engaged and thinking about them.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Well, so this is absolutely one of the steps. So I’ve just been through the first two steps in this model. And step number four is all about that. So first let me talk about step number three, which is audience. And this is all about understanding that your social marketing should be about your audience, not about your brand, which is again that StoryBrand tenant. And so here it’s all about increasing engagement so that you increase that feeling of empathy between you and your followers. But when we get to the fourth step, which is reach, it’s exactly what you’re saying. Reach and expanding and reach on social media is not about getting new followers.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: It’s actually about doubling down on the ones you already have. And what I like to say is I don’t know what Mark Zuckerberg is going to do tomorrow with some new terrible tweak on the Facebook algorithm. But I can tell you for sure that the social media platforms are always, no matter how many times the algorithms change, they’re always going to favor more engaged accounts. If you have more engagement, you will get more reach, right? More people will see your content. And so that’s why thinking about reach and how to expand your reach is actually about engagement and about getting your current followers to really care. And so that’s exactly what you’re saying.

John Jantsch: So, so then let’s follow-up with the final part of the puzzle, which I think is excellence. Yeah.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Yeah. So the final step in this share model is excellence, which is about fine tuning your social media marketing efforts. And one of the things that I think is probably critical to remember here is that social media started as a real-time platform. And sometimes we forget that, especially as brands because we do so much scheduling and editorial calendaring and marketing planning and relation to our social media. But at its heart, it’s a real-time platform, which whichever platform you use is a real-time platform.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And so you need to be able to be agile and to be able to respond both to unhappy customers or global crises or to things going wrong. And you need to make sure that your accounts are appropriately responsive to those things. And so I share some of my favorite social media disasters in my book, but most of them always come down to a brand ignoring what’s going on in real life and then not responding well when kind of something blows up in their face. Right?

John Jantsch: So, so it’s interesting of course we’re talking about the context of social media, but when I look at your model, I mean it’s really the model for marketing in general. I mean, it is what you need to do on your website with your content and your advertising campaigns. I think it applies not just to social media. Would you agree with that idea?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Yeah. I mean I think that’s… I actually have not thought of it like that. I think I’ve been so focused on social media. I think I also am so focused on loving the StoryBrand model that the reason that this model developed at all was that StoryBrand is this great kind of marketing framework. But what they really focus on is your website and your email newsletter and I believe that there’s basically three pillars to digital marketing, right? Your website, your email newsletter and social media.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: And so this model came out of seeing that need and saying to Don, “Hey Don, I think you need to create a plug and play solution for social media.” So I really like what you’re saying and I honestly have not thought about it in that light before.

John Jantsch: So we have a framework we call the marketing hourglass that I’ve been for about two decades preaching this idea of the customer journey and there’s seven stages, know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. We apply that to the website, we apply that to content, we apply that to social media, we apply that to paid campaigns. Because it essentially suggests that we’re trying to organize behavior and guide people and that their objectives and their goals change at each one of these stages. So I really think it is a framework that that definitely could be applied across all of this.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: I love that.

John Jantsch: So let’s talk about how paid social fits into this. How do you blend… I mean a lot of what you’re writing about is, is more on the organic front, but we all know that a lot of the reach acquired in social media platforms has increasingly become paid reach. So how do you blend that aspect into this?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Sure. So I think you blend it really fluidly. I think if you want to increase your reach on social media, as we mentioned about before, they’re two real ways to do that. One is to create great content and two is to use influencer marketing. But then there’s this third way, which I don’t talk about, which is basically pay for advertising to boost either of those two strategies.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: So I see paid advertising as potentially super effective. As long as you’ve got your engagement ladder in place and your regular, your standard of marketing and message down in a way such that it is having an effect. I think the biggest mistake you see people use with paid advertising is they don’t have anything organic that’s working. And so then they go in and think that paid will work and that’s not actually how it works.

John Jantsch: Right. if you write a great ad to send somebody to a crappy website, you’re probably not going to get any more conversions are you? These platforms and social media come and go. You talked about the big four that are pretty established now, but are there some that you see or that you’re starting to pay more attention to particularly for certain types of businesses?

John Jantsch: I mean, it’s challenging I think because a lot of these you think, “Oh, this is the next new thing” and then it’s gone tomorrow. But people talked about Twitter that way. At a certain point, it was really stupid. It was going away. It was not going to exist. So are there some that you think are kind of coming that people should be paying attention to?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Well, I think it’s interesting because I think probably my, you know, I think those are the big four. But I would say the other two most important platforms are definitely not new platforms, but I would say they’re more niche platforms and one of them being Pinterest, which is really effective for companies that have stunning visuals somehow connected to their business mission. Right? But then the other other one is YouTube, which is by no means a new platform. YouTube’s been around for 20 years now and yet it is really just doing well and it rocks what it does. And so I think those are the next two ones that are most interesting.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Obviously there’s new stuff like TikTok, but we don’t have a lot of data yet on what that will look like for businesses. And also if it will stick around. Right? I think a few years ago, obviously we could have had the same discussion about Snapchat say or Vine or Periscope Periscope. Remember how big Periscope was? These things that it’s great to take advantage of them while they are there, but don’t build your house on someone else’s land kind of thing.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s probably gotten harder for some, social network to come out of left field and, be this huge thing. Speaking of Snapchat, I mean, Instagram, which is a big giant, how can go, “Oh, I like that feature they’re doing, we’ll just do it.” And it kind of squashes them. Whereas 2005, 2006 it was kind of like all of this was new.

John Jantsch: But now these, these kind of giant established players probably make it much harder for somebody to come in and innovate, I would think.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Absolutely.

John Jantsch: So you talked about the social media brand evaluation. Is that only in the book or is that something that somebody could actually take and get some insight from your website?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: The brand evaluation is only in the book, but we do have a free video series at socialmediamadesimple.com and that gives you five videos and one of the videos talks a little bit about it and gives you some examples of some of the questions. But the actual social media brand evaluation is indeed just in the book.

John Jantsch: Well, tell people where they can find the book and find out more about you. We’ll actually have Social Media Made Simple in the show notes as well.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Awesome. So the book is Social Media Success for Every Brand. You can find it on Amazon. You can’t get a free video series about the book at socialmediamadesimple.com and you can find me at clairediazortiz.com.

John Jantsch: Well Claire, thanks for dropping by the show. And next time I’m in Argentina, hopefully we can grab a cup of coffee.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.

How Mapping Your Customer Journey Can Improve the Customer Experience

How Mapping Your Customer Journey Can Improve the Customer Experience written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

When you’re driving to an unfamiliar location, you pull up directions on Google Maps. When you’re hiking a new path in your favorite state park, you stop at the trailhead to check the posted map. You never go into a physical journey without taking stock of where you’re headed. So why wouldn’t you do the same for the customer journey?

Understanding where your customers go when they’re interacting with your business can help transform your marketing efforts. Here, I’ll walk you through the steps of customer journey mapping—everything from what it is to why it matters so much.

What is Mapping the Customer Journey?

Let’s start with the basics. Mapping the customer journey requires you to create a visual representation of every interaction a customer has with your business that leads them to a certain conversion. This might be the path they carve from discovery of your brand, at the very top of the marketing hourglass, to signing up for your email newsletter. Or perhaps it’s a look at the steps they take between clicking on your social ad for a given product and purchasing the item.

In order to create a map, you should conduct interviews with real customers. Ask them how they discovered your brand. Find out about their experience interacting with your website. Take stock of where else they found you on the web (social media or local listings sites, perhaps?). And collect feedback on their ease of making a purchase and getting support from your team, if they needed it.

You should also take the time to do your own research. Pretend you’re a customer searching for a solution that you offer, and go onto the web. Google yourself or a related search term, and walk through the process of navigating your website. Check out your social profiles, and see where they lead you. Sometimes you’ll discover something new and interesting about your own online presence when you experience it through the lens of a customer’s journey.

By creating customer journey maps for the steps that lead to those important conversion moments along the broader journey, you can gain a deeper understanding of the people who love your brand. When you can wrap your head around how your customers behave and why they do it, you can refine your marketing tactics and messaging to best complement those behaviors.

Understand the Complexities of the Journey

Today’s customer journeys are incredibly complex. In the olden days, someone would read a print ad, catch your commercial on the television or radio, or maybe simply see the sign out in front of your store and stop on by. Now, with dozens of digital channels to consider, it’s hard to know exactly when and where someone encountered your brand.

And even if you’re aware of some of their interactions with your business—because they happened online and you’re able to track them—it’s hard to know which point of contact is the one that ultimately pushed them towards the conversion.

Mapping the customer journey helps you to understand all that. Perhaps in customer interviews, you keep hearing about a blog post from a local influencer that mentions your business and drives a lot of traffic your way. That’s valuable information! Consider reaching out to that blogger to see if they’d like to become a part of your strategic partner network.

Or maybe you take your own website out for a spin. You have an online booking portal for folks who want to make appointments, but you discover that for first-time users, there’s a lengthy registration process. It requires lots of clicks and form-filling, and can be a source of frustration. Now that you’ve experienced that hurdle first-hand, you understand your booking system could be driving customers away, and you can take steps to change it!

Learn What Matters to Your Customers

What you think matters to your customers and what actually matters to your customers are sometimes two different things. Sure, there’s something to be said for generic best practices; they can be a great starting-point for any brand looking to establish a solid web presence.

But what’s right for a competitor or someone in another industry isn’t always right for you. Perhaps you’ve heard that Yelp is the best local listings site for your industry. So you spent countless hours building out your Yelp profile and driving all of your customers to review you there. But then, you discover that most of your customers are searching for solutions on Google Maps. That means they’re coming across your much sparser Google My Business profile.

As you discover more about the customer journey from your conversations with actual customers and your own experience navigating test journeys, you’ll want to make tweaks to your approach. Maybe that’s changing wording on your social media’s homepage that makes it easier for customers to understand what you do. Maybe it’s rearranging your website’s navigation bar to remove some of the steps it currently takes for prospects to request a demo.

Whatever modification to the journey you want to try, it’s a good idea to implement A/B testing in your process. Display the new element to half of your audience, and keep things the same for the other half. Then measure conversions for each group. If things improve with your adjustment, you know you’re on the right track. If things remain the same (or conversions decrease), it’s best to test another new approach.

Find New Customer Segments (or Redefine Existing Ones)

The way in which you market your business and the shape of the customer journey are inextricably linked. By that I mean, you need to market your business in a way that suits the typical trajectory for the customer journey. But the way that you market your business can also have an influence on the shape of the journey.

Sometimes, your marketing efforts might have you missing out on specific segments of the population who could be interested in your product. Or, there might be a way for you to optimize your current marketing to get your existing customers to return or make larger purchases.

Let’s say you run a yoga studio. You already have some clearly defined personas for your business: young professionals focused on wellness, people looking to reduce stress and anxiety, and pregnant women and new moms.

Perhaps in speaking with those moms in your postpartum segment, you realize that what they appreciate about your studio isn’t the ability to move a little. And it’s not about getting out of the house and away from the newborn for an hour or two on Wednesday mornings. What they love is the community of other new moms, with whom they can share their struggles and successes.

Once you understand that the problem you’re solving for these moms is really about community, not fitness, you can refine your marketing approach. Create a Facebook group that’s a place for yoga moms to come together. They can share tips, commiserate about the horrors of sleep-regression, and even organize playdates for their little ones! Suddenly, you’ve become the architect of this impactful community. New moms who otherwise might not have tried yoga—but who love your Facebook group—might feel compelled to stop in for a class.

By better understanding your existing customers, you can create additional stops along the customer journey to address their needs and attract similar prospects.

Meet Customers Where They Are

Rather than directing your outbound marketing efforts to anyone under the sun, when you understand the customer journey you can develop stronger inbound tactics in the places where your fans are already congregating.

Let’s say you run a catering company. You’ve been advertising heavily on Instagram. Because it’s a visually-based social network, it’s a great place for you to show off your beautifully-plated food.

However, your typical client is more established—it’s not cheap to throw a lavish, catered soiree, after all! For the most part, they’re in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. Statistically, Instagram is not the place to go to interact with people above the age of 30. Less than 40 precent of those in their 30s are on the platform; only 16 percent of the 50-and-over set are on Instagram.

So stop wasting money on Instagram ads. Instead, invest in inbound tactics elsewhere where you’re more likely to bump into your actual customers. Get on Facebook, the social network of choice for most people 40 and older. Work on building out your referral network and case studies, since word-of-mouth matters a lot in the local catering business.

When you’re able to find your prospects and greet them on their turf, you build trust and reduce ad spend. You can certainly still advertise! In fact, when it’s focused on those spaces where your clientele actually gather online, you get a much greater ROI.

The customer journey is only going to get more complex. Digital marketing continues to grow, and new channels for reaching customers develop. When you understand where your customers are and where they want to go, you can create a smoother customer journey—one that guides them right to your desired conversion.

John Jantsch on 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

John Jantsch on 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch stops by 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel to discuss his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

Schawbel asks each of his guests five questions, and for Jantsch, those questions center around the entrepreneurial journey. Jantsch has been an entrepreneur himself for 30 years, and his latest book is about helping entrepreneurs discover their own self-reliance and bring together the mind, body, and spirit to fuel the entrepreneurial journey.

Listen: John Jantsch on 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel

Weekend Favs December 14

Weekend Favs December 14 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • Madecraft – Create customized learning content that’s tailored to the needs of your audience.
  • Works For All – Find a meeting space that’s convenient and equidistant for all attendees.
  • Hyperise – Create and send personalized images in emails.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

How to Integrate Chat Into Your Marketing

How to Integrate Chat Into Your Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Mike Yan
Podcast Transcript

Mike Yan headshotToday’s guest on the podcast is Mike Yan, CEO of chat marketing platform ManyChat.

ManyChat is a platform that allows you to automate chat and bring together Facebook Messenger and SMS to reach your customers on their terms. Their simple templates allow you to build a chatbot in minutes, where you can do everything from managing appointment booking to selling products to capturing contact information.

Yan sits down with me to discuss where chatbots have been, where they’re going, and what any business owner can do (even those who aren’t familiar with the technology) to get started harnessing the technology today.

Questions I ask Mike Yan:

  • How has the chat and bot landscape changed since you founded ManyChat?
  • What’s the best way to use messenger bots?
  • How can less digitally-savvy business owners get started with chat?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • How to strike the balance between live chat and automated bots.
  • The role that AI plays in messenger bots.
  • The risks to ignoring chat as part of your marketing efforts.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Mike Yan:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

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Transcript of How to Integrate Chat Into Your Marketing

Transcript of How to Integrate Chat Into Your Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

John Jantsch: This episode is a Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and is brought to you by pixelz.com. You’ve got to make those images look great. If you want them to pop, if you want them to represent your products, this is a retouching service to make your images look great.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Mike Yan. He is the CEO and co founder of the messenger marketing platform known as ManyChat. So Mike, thanks for joining me.

Mike Yan: Thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: I wonder if you could give me a little bit about your origin story, how you…I do a little research obviously for these, and your work history on LinkedIn is a little brief. I’m almost guessing this is one of your first kind of big ventures?

Mike Yan: We actually have been doing startups for over… Close to 10 years. So for the nine years we’ve been doing different projects and it’s anywhere from eCommerce to entertainment, consumer websites, to kind of like a mix between the messaging apps and a almost entertainment app. And then went into messenger marketing.

Mike Yan: And the reason we started on messenger is because in 2015, Telegram Insta messaging app, similar to Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, just popular in different countries, opened up their API in 2015, and we saw an opportunity to help 65 million monthly active users, be connected with businesses they want to be talking to and help those businesses achieve better business results by using this new channel.

Mike Yan: Because, at that point, it was 2016, nobody was talking about bots. There was… Like nobody had any idea about how big this was going to get. So we started with that. And yeah, in 2016, transitioned to Facebook messenger because Facebook messenger opened up your API, and now very honored to be the number one platform on Facebook messenger. You know, we power over 800 thousand Facebook pages in over 190 countries around the world. So…

John Jantsch: So the growth has been pretty astronomical, then, from… I actually followed ManyChat from the very beginning, and tinkered around with it because I tinker around with everything, as part of doing this. Not only has the platform changed, but certainly the landscape has changed, hasn’t it, in terms of how people are using chat and bots?

Mike Yan: True. That’s true. People started… People thought about chat bots at first as this shiny new thing, as this, kind of like a toy, that’s interesting, but not very valuable. And when everybody… When every other company was building chat bots for the sake of building chat bots, we were actually… We came up with this term “messenger marketing” and now it seems like everybody’s using it. But if you go to messenger marketing.com you will actually reach our blogs.

Mike Yan: We believe that messenger is a great way to actually drive business outcomes and to help you with marketing, with sales, with support, to help you convert better, and not just, “Hey this as something fun, that has this novelty, but doesn’t have any value.” And that’s why I think… I think that’s the part of the ManyChat success.

John Jantsch: Well, so my first experience with the bot at all was… I don’t even remember the company… But I ordered something and they communicated through Facebook messenger with me about the… When it was going to get there. So really a service kind of a function. And this is a few years ago.

Mike Yan: Yeah.

John Jantsch: How are people using it? You mentioned some of these things, that you can use it for marketing purposes. I also see a lot of really bad uses of it, I mean, that I think are kind of annoying. You know, unfortunately marketers ruin everything. Right? But, what are some great uses of… If you were talking to businesses in different industries, how would you tell them to use messenger bots? Cause I think it’s pretty easy to abuse them too.

Mike Yan: Yeah, it’s true. I think the marketers will abuse any channel that they get their hands on. I think this is a bit of a generalization. I would say bad marketers will abuse any kind of that they get their hands on. If you think about a marketer’s job, and a marketer that has good intention, their job is to understand customer needs, and to match the customer needs with the products that the business has, if there is any match, and to create that value, that transaction where somebody wants something and they get it and they feel empowered and they feel like they’ve achieved, they moved closer to their goal, with the help of the product or service that the business provides. I think it’s all about that communication.

Mike Yan: So when you think about good marketing, it’s based on… It actually follows similar… People think that marketing is this… Like some really esoteric type of discipline that you have to learn, that is really complex. It’s really not. He just wants to be helpful to the people that you’re talking to. You have to figure out what are their needs, and you have to present your products and services in a way that actually speaks to that. And actually given the fact that your products and services can address those. So you should… I think that chat marketing, specifically, creates this… It just becomes a more intimate and personalized channel, where businesses start to understand, that actually it’s more like friends talking to each other. And it’s more… Marketing is much more about understanding what the customers like.

Mike Yan: You’re, for example… Let me give you an example. You’re talking about the best uses of marketing. Usually when people think about the bad use of marketing, they think about spammy deals, for example, things that people don’t want. But actually, turns out, there is a cohort of people that actually really, really want those daily deals.

Mike Yan: So the question is, not about the content itself. The question is always about the match between what the person wants, and what the marketer and what the business does, in terms of their communication. And those people who really, really want one of those deals, they will be actually angry if one day they did not receive their daily deal message.

Mike Yan: So it’s more, much more about segmentation and it’s much more about being smart about who you message, what that message is, what the channel is, what the timing of the channel is. And I think that’s why ManyChat is so powerful, is because we, in comp… Like we started with messenger, but right now, just a few months, like one and a half months ago, we’ve announced that we actually going beyond messenger, we’ve just added SMS. So text marketing. And we also added email, because those are the two of the biggest channels, marketing channels that’s we see in the world right now. And people are… Our users are… A lot of them are using email in this mass marketing, and we under… We saw that it’s actually becoming… It’s actually really hard to merge those systems, and to make sure that they are working together as an orchestra. Like playing their notes at the right time, if you have different platforms.

Mike Yan: So we decided to build a omnichannel platform, that allows you to seamlessly go from one channel to the other. But the fact like… Our origin from messenger allow… Like, we’ve been born into the interactive world. So when we went into, for example, SMS marketing, we instantly were much more capable than even the best of breed solutions. Because the best… When people thought about this mass marketing, usually it’s a one way communication. So you have a message, you send it out. Maybe there is segmentation, maybe there is something that allows you to send us a message at the right time. So maybe there’s some triggers, but that’s like the furthest that you’re going to get. But what about inter activities? How about actually having a conversation with a person, and not only a manual conversation but also an automated conversation? And yeah, that’s something that wasn’t done there before. And then, but the more important part is how do you actually also triangulate between these channels?

Mike Yan: So say for example, you have something to say to your people. You can start with an email. Email is usually noninvasive, because usually people do not check their email at the point of receiving it. People expect that you can check your email, not that often as messenger. Messaging apps and text messaging are much more invasive because people usually respond to those notifications faster. So if it’s an irrelevant notification, then actually, let’s say, it creates more frustration for the customer.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Cause we feel like we have to respond to that.

Mike Yan: Exactly. Exactly. So how do we decrease that? How can we, for example, communicate with people who want to be communicated through email, and communicate with people who want to be communicated with a text messaging, and the ones who want to be communicated with through Facebook messenger, differently? And how do we make it easy for the business to do that?

Mike Yan: And given the fact that there is many more channels that are coming up. So WhatsApp is coming up, Instagram is coming up, iMessage is coming up, Google RCFs and also the cross carrier messaging initiative that’s coming up. It used to be that you could be doing only one channel, only one digital channel, that has direct marketing, which is email.

Mike Yan: And now you’re entering into this world where 2.5 billion people around the world use messaging apps and is the defacto standard, of how people talk to each other. How does a business and SMB thrive in this environment where there is all this complexity? And we believe that our mission is to simplify that by bringing all those channels into one place, and by helping the SMB just by saying, “Hey, you don’t need any other marketing automation platforms or direct marketing platforms. Or all your customers are inside ManyChat, no matter what the channel is. And you can create beautiful orchestrated campaigns, where it actually respects the choice of the channel with a customer, but is easy for the people to not get swamped by messages and also it reduces your costs and increases our line.” So yeah, that’s, that’s how we’re thinking about this.

John Jantsch: If you’ve got a website, if you’re selling products online today, you know that the images are crucial to how people make opinions about your products and services. Pixelz.com that’s pixel with a z.com is an image retouching service that can take all of your images, they can retouch them, add shape and symmetry, smooth out bumps, align shoulders, things like that. They can reduce wrinkles, they can reduce and remove lint, tags, everything that just doesn’t really seem to fit. Get somebody to do it for you. Accelerate your time to market because they’ll give you your images retouched the next morning. Go to Pixelz.com. That’s P I X E L Z.com and find out about their retouching image services.

John Jantsch: So let’s talk a little bit about the conversational aspect. As you said, a lot of these are automated. We probably all have gone on and the little bubble pops up and says, what do you need today? And you tell it what you need and then you… And hopefully in a very fluid conversation. But I also see a lot of those that don’t end well, that they haven’t been written well, they haven’t been thought out, and it’s… So, where do you strike the balance between this idea of a bot, if you will, and a human being responding.

Mike Yan: So I think it’s up to the business to decide what they want to start with. Some people actually start with a full human agent, and some people start with a full automated solution, and depending on what their task at hand is… So if you’re, for example, if you’re doing lead generation, I would start with an automated solution because lead generation is something very, very repeatable. You can ask the same questions. Basically it’s filling out a form through a chat interface, which is more interactive and more engaging. Like the… Usually the convergence to actually filling out the form go higher, when you use a chat interface. But then when… If you are doing something that has a much more diverse in terms of what the customer intent is, then you can actually go out and start with live chat. And this is a really good point because, for example, what we do, we don’t believe ads in one way or the other.

Mike Yan: Like I think that the best customer experience is created with a mix of automation and human touch. And it has to be because automation is really, really helpful when it works, when it’s responsive, when it actually does what you want it to do, and it gets you to your desired results.

Mike Yan: A human agent is a great addition, when you have a certain question and you want somebody to talk to, that can understand your specific inquiry and can help you out, and for more complex queries or just sometimes you just need a person to talk about the thing that you have at hand. And so I wouldn’t say that there is a specific path that you should take as a business. I think there is… You should look at your task that you’re trying to solve, at your goal, and ask yourself “How is that… Like, what is the best way to solve that?”

Mike Yan: And, and again we are seeing in terms of our customers, we have both solutions on the platform. So we do have the automation part, obviously, and we do also have the live chat part. And we see that from our customers, is that, people usually automate the things that are easily automate able, and then they also go through the live chat, when somebody, for example, for some reason, somebody could fall out of the conversation flow. They started to type something, they ask a question or something. That’s actually, at ManyChat, that will open up a conversation and, as an admin, you’re going to be notified that somebody is outside the automation and you should pay attention or maybe respond to them and bring them back into the flow, or actually continue the flow manually. And so we tried to reduce those costs. We tried to make sure that things that could be automated are automated, but then also give you the option to do human manual responses.

John Jantsch: Well, I think you made a really good point that people need to really, I think, focus on. Automation, when it works, is a beautiful thing. When it doesn’t work, it’s really irritating. And so I think that that’s… I think people need to understand that. Tell me a little bit about AI’s function in this. I mean, are we in a world… Because a lot of the responses are, that are currently available are, it’s almost like a database. I mean they’re built in, pre-written, so they can only respond to a certain thing a certain way. How far are we away from a world where a chat bot for example, can understand the intent of a question, and make its own answers up.

Mike Yan: Yeah. So I don’t think that the chat bots will be able to… So first of all, the chat bot can already understand the intent, that just depends on the technology. So, ManyChat tends to [inaudible] dial workflow. So you could actually use something like Dial-A-Quote from Google, that understands the intent of the person and can be much more flexible in terms of how you set up those automations. So it’s not just like rigid keywords, where “Hey, this is… If this word is mentioned, then reply with this message.” It’s much more if the person’s intent is close to… Like asking about the working hours, then respond with this message. But you’re still responding with a message. What you’re talking… When you’re talking about actually responding with a message that is generated by the AI. So, that’s actually further… So there is already a artificial intelligence model that can generate… Like they can generate a picture, they can generate music, they can generate text.

Mike Yan: So there is already a lot of progress technologically in that. It just doesn’t feel like… There’s not a lot of use case for that, at this point, for types of FAQ questions, or let’s say for types of asking questions about a certain missing information. So for example, if you’re, if you have an AI model that gets reservations. So an AI model is just a really fancy way of saying like, if there’s a type of algorithm to, for example, take reservations, automatically, the person could say, “Hey, I want to book a table for two people.” Like okay, so we know that you need it for two people, but we don’t know the dates. We didn’t know the time. So now we need to ask for the missing info. So you have the intent, you need those two parameters to start asking, “Okay, what’s the date, what’s the time?” And also maybe for some other additional info, like an email or a phone number to reach out to the person.

Mike Yan: So, and for those types of things, you don’t really need a generative model that will actually… You can actually static program those texts. And staying with the FAQ, once we know what question you’re asking, it’s actually… You don’t need a different response every time somebody asks in a different way about the working hours. Are you open today? Are you open right now? You can actually respond with the same message of, Hey, we work from this to this, et cetera, et cetera. So you don’t need to generate that message. But I think in the future, in a few years, there are a lot of cases to make chat bots more natural in terms of what they can be talking about, and to make those conversations more unique, that will also listen to the context of the conversation. And in that regard, yes, those models will be very valuable, and I think it’s a matter of a few years to actually be implemented. So in terms of capturing intent, that’s available right now in terms of generating texts, I think we’re a few years out.

John Jantsch: So if you’re a small business, and I’m sure that a lot of small business owners are hearing a lot about this, and they’re thinking, is this for me? How would you tell somebody who maybe was… Maybe not as digitally savvy, who’s thinking, “How can I try this out?” Where would be the first place that you kind of say, “Hey, here’s a use that just about every business could use?”

Mike Yan: That’s a great question. I was wondering, if we went into this AI wormhole and I’m wondering, are the small businesses even interested in the technological details of this? I think all of this seems very complicated and very techie, et cetera. Like, the simple fact is, that 2.5 billion people are using messaging apps. Everybody is using text messaging. Every b… In the U S for example, 55% of people use iPhones, and iPhones have not only text messaging but also iMessage installs, which is a messaging app. If somebody was wondering what are… What is the difference between those green bubbles and blue bubbles. So, the blue bubble means that you’re sending this over data and not over the carrier. And basically, that’s a messaging app that’s just built into the messages application. And actually, what I’m trying to say is that, all your customers are using messaging apps and most… Probably you’re also using messaging apps when you’re talking to your friends and family, your children, and your colleagues.

Mike Yan: Slack is growing really fast. Microsoft Teams is growing really fast. Those are the two messaging apps for the work force. So, the number one thing that businesses have to realize is, messaging as a form of communication, is here to stay, and it’s growing rapidly. So that’s number one point. And now the question is, “How can my business benefit from adopting messaging apps and chat as the channel of customer communication?” Let’s say, I’ve been using email. Should I be starting to use SMS? Should I start using Facebook messenger? And what is going to be the benefit? And to be honest, for different businesses, it’s going to be a different use case. Most businesses actually, will have to start using messaging apps in the next three to five years, because all the consumers are going to expect that they can actually message the business on any platform.

Mike Yan: Like you know how everybody expects that you have a phone, and you have a website. It seems a bit strange to a lot of people, but it’s actually, for me, it’s not even a hypothesis, it’s a fact. In three to five years, everybody is going to expect every business to be able to text any business. You, as a consumer, you’re going to be pissed off, when a business will not have an option to text them, and to not have a phone conversation, because phone conversations are actually, in terms of their popularity as a customer communication channel, they’re dying. They’re very much declining. And the reason, if you look at the data, I can send over some links of the research, but if you look at the more senior people, their approval, like their preference for voice communication, is 60 something percent. It’s really high.

Mike Yan: But if you look at the people from 18 to 34, their preference for voice is 20%. So it’s three times lower. And the same goes… And the same transition happens for text, but other way around. The text communication for people 65 and older, is 20% preference. But for people… And this one actually covers two age groups, so it’s not from 18 to 35 it’s more… It’s from 18 to 44, and their preference for text communication is 61%.

Mike Yan: So as a person, you want to be able to chat with a business, but that business has to be responsive. That business has to be able to reply fast, automate some of this stuff, manually process the other stuff. And you’ll be doing all of this because you don’t want to live like… You don’t want to be wasting your time being on the line with a business that is scrambling to answer all the phone calls.

John Jantsch: And I think phone support is actually gotten worse too, maybe because of this. But, speaking with Mike Yan, he is the CEO of the messenger marketing platform ManyChat, and you heard it here; Three to five years, you better be in the text game, or you risk the… You run the risk of being obsolete. So Mike, tell people where they can find, and I know you’ve got lots of great resources and education there as well, but tell people where they can find out more about ManyChat.

Mike Yan: Sure. So if you go to ManyChat, M A N Y C H A T.com, you will find we have a free plan. We can start building out your messenger and SMS automations and chats. And we have a great beginner course on YouTube. It’s free for everybody to watch. It walks you through how to build this out, what is it for, et cetera.

Mike Yan: And if you’re somebody who is not like into the whole marketing thing though, that’s back to the question, “Why are you listening to this podcast?” But, maybe you just want to be… Stay on top of the technology stuff. Then we have a bunch of agencies who are really, really good at building out of these types of experiences, and you can also find a partner that will build this out for you. And we have a list of certified experts on the websites and you can talk to them, you can ask them all sorts of questions.

Mike Yan: So I would go to ManyChat, either find a partner or just register for a free account and go through the YouTube course. It’s all free. And once you’re convinced, then you can actually convert to a Pro account, and it’s going to be… We’re very aggressively priced, and because we want to build the most ubiquitous platform on the market, that’s why we start with… Even the Pro plan. We have all this stuff for free, but if you convert to the Pro plan, it’s like $10 a month.

John Jantsch: Awesome. So thanks for stopping by, Mike, and encourage people to check out ManyChat; We’ll have the links in the show notes. So hopefully we’ll catch up with you next time I’m out there on the road.

Mike Yan:  Thank you. Thank you.

John Jantsch on the Content Heroes Podcast – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

John Jantsch on the Content Heroes Podcast – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch stops by the Content Heroes podcast to share his entrepreneurial journey and how it led him to write his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

On this episode, Jantsch and host Josiah Goff talk about what it means to be an entrepreneur, how establishing habits of mindfulness and contemplation build a foundation that keeps creative energy flowing, and why that mindfulness is also a key to maintaining resilience and energy throughout your journey.

Listen: John Jantsch on the Content Heroes Podcast