LOCAL MARKET MONOPOLY EPISODE 03
Chatbot Marketing For Small Businesses with Arvell Craig
Podcast by Clarence Fisher
Chatbot marketing

About This Episode

“The competitive advantage of chatbot marketing [for small business] is SPEED!” – Arvell Craig

In this episode, Clarence interviews marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur Arvell Craig on effectively using chatbots in a local small business.

Since 2001 Arvell has been actively helping businesses with digital marketing. As an early adopter of chatbot technology, Arvell helps sales teams, marketing teams, and agencies create chatbot funnels that take leads on interactive journeys to become qualified opportunities.

During today's show, you'll learn how to boost sales, accelerate your buyer's journey, and reduce customer service costs using chatbots and Facebook Messenger.

We'll cover:

  • How to use chatbots to generate leads and shorten your sales cycle.
  • A little-known way to use chatbots to send cold emails and schedule appointments for you.
  • The best places to begin using chatbots at your business (even if you have no idea what we're talking about 🙂

So listen here to find out how Clarence’s (and probably your) expectations for chatbots are not even close to what they can do for your business if used correctly.

Arvell Craig: I realized that, wait a minute, this isn't just a shiny object, it's not just a trend. It's not just something that's going to come and go, but I noticed all types of communication when it comes to text and digital communication will begin to include artificial intelligence will begin to include automation. And so when I realized it wasn't just a trend, I decided to stop everything else I was doing and kind of double down into what I felt was going to be at least a good five, 10 year run for my business.

Clarence Fisher: Hey, what's up? Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher, your host. And this week we're speaking with Arvell Craig. He's a marketing consultant, a coach and an entrepreneur. And he used to, his family used to live here in Tulsa. He was actually a competitor of mine that we got to be really good friends after I got to know his heart and his desire to help his clients. And he became an early adopter of chatbot technology. And as an early adopter, he's been able to help tons of sales teams, marketing teams and agencies create chatbot funnels that take leads on an interactive journey to become qualified opportunities. And he speaks all over the country. So it took a little bit to get him on the show, but I'm so glad little strings, Hey man, remember me? So glad that he showed up because he drops a couple of bombs that you are going to be able to put to use in your business immediately and reap the rewards. Hang on, be right back with Mr. Arvell Craig.

Intro: You are listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher uncovering the tools, tactics and strategies, the most successful small businesses used to dominate their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: Arvell, welcome to the show!

Arvell Craig: Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me.

Clarence Fisher: Man. I've been looking forward to this.

Arvell Craig: Yeah, man. Should be good. Should be fun, man.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. So I've told everyone kind a little bit about, but I want to hear it from your mouth. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Arvell Craig: Okay, right now what I do, the company is called Chat Bot Funnels. And so we build marketing funnels, sales funnels, we speed up marketing funnels and sales funnels using chatbots, whether it's messenger bots, chatbots, s m s bots. Another way of phrasing it, there's this phrase called conversational marketing, and it's just like the new industry term like inbound marketing was, and direct response marketing can be seen. Now there's this conversational marketing, so we also consult businesses on how to even understand it. But that's how I describe what I do,

Clarence Fisher: Man. I remember it was some years ago, maybe a couple years ago, I was, it was Traffic and Convergence Summit. For those who don't know, it's a big marketing summit. They say it's the biggest one of its kind where every year all the digital marketers get together. And Ryan Deis, who is the c e O of that company, he said conversations are where it's going. We were so direct response, direct response, direct response. And I remember he said that. I thought, man, that's interesting. And so how did you get started? That was my first kind of introduction to it. How did you get started in this?

Arvell Craig: Yeah, I mean, similarly, I was at a conference maybe four years ago. It was inbound which is a big marketing conference, more of a B2B or different type of level, but it's like 30,000 people at Inbound. And they were talking about chatbots four years ago, and it sounded cool and it sounded, it's like something new. And my background, well, not my background, but technically I went to college for computer science back in the days. And so I've always said this part of me that liked geeky stuff, that likes automation, that likes to build and create something. So when I saw chatbots, it sounded cool. And at that point I was primarily a consultant and I was a speaker. And so I wanted a hot, shiny object topic that I knew could get me booked. I wanted to talk about something that was new, what was happening.
So I began to just study and play around with chatbots and four years ago, and I built some, and then I booked myself as a speaker at a couple conferences around the country and began to talk about two marketers, two agency owners to people like that, let 'em know the basics of what was happening when it comes to ai, artificial intelligence and chatbots. And that's how I started. And then eventually I realized that wait a minute, this isn't just a shiny object, it's not just a trend. It's not just something that's going to come and go, but I noticed all types of communication when it comes to text and digital communication will begin to include artificial intelligence will begin to include automation. And so when I realized it wasn't just a trend, I decided to stop everything else I was doing and kind of double down into what I felt was going to be at least a good five, 10 year run for my business.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, man, it's crazy. I remember when you brought it to me and I thought, man, this is cool. It is great to have somebody who was going down this road, but then I'm wondering how can I sell this? Who can I sell this to? And I remember I, I had to make a change in a reservation for another conference for some, oh, we were moving, signing on this house and the closing how you just never know when it's going to happen. So it was going to, going to happen this day. And I was supposed to be in San Diego and I had to change my hotel reservation. So I called Arbel. It was halfway through it that I realized that this was not a person and they just changed my whole reservation, asked if I needed to, wanted the confirmation sent, I said yes. And then at the very end I just thought, how do you say thank you to a robot? It was kind of awkward, but then that kind of just opened my mind to, okay, this chat thing is going to be kind of crazy. And as I'm talking with small business owners, one of the questions that they have is how do they gauge if chat bots, Facebook Messenger, all this stuff is going to be right for them? Mm-hmm.

Arvell Craig: Gotcha. Yeah, so I mean, you want my opinion, there's so many ways to look at it, but one of the biggest benefits that chat, live, chat chatbots, the competitive advantage it brings is speed. So this is how I would look at it. If your customers and their prospects and their pipeline, and if speed makes a difference when it comes to handling a response, getting back to people. Let's say if they're in a business, where do their typical prospects go to multiple websites and fill out forms? Do they want quotes from 1, 2, 3, 4 different companies? If speed makes a difference, to me, that's one. That's one of the simplest ways to answer that. If you can automate the interaction, it's not even automate. If you just, like you mentioned, using Drift, if you can quickly or have a faster way to respond to people, and if that's going to make a difference between them choosing you and choosing someone else, that is one of the easiest, quickest ways to find out if it's going to benefit them. Does that make sense?

Clarence Fisher: Yes. And that's great. I liked the way you said that in speed could be because speed in sales is everything, right?

Arvell Craig: Yeah, it's huge. I remember I'm in this one marketing group, but this one guy was saying he was looking for a certain type of company. Again, he went to three, or again, he's in a buying mode, he wants to buy something now. And he went to four or five different sites and had to fill out a whole long detailed contact form. And I think one of them had some kind of live chatter, chat, whatever, and that's the one that got his business. But again, he was in a buying mode and all the other companies, he had to go there and fill out a form and wait 10, 20, 30 minutes, an hour or two, whatever that turnaround time was for him to get back to him. And again, that is an one thing I want to just take one step back just to put some context with it.
If in most businesses in the world, from Amazon to Uber to whoever, speed is a hugely d, it's a differentiator when it comes to businesses. And so even small businesses, if you begin to be that nimble, fast responsive company, then you, you'll definitely win. Now, if you're not getting business, if you're not even getting traffic, if you're not even getting, some people come to me and say, Hey, I want to start using chatbots. I hear it's going to blow my business up. But if they're not even getting leads, if they're not even getting traffic, if they're not even getting anything, I know there's a lot of confusion like, oh, let me get this, put this messenger in there and then I'm going to automatically begin to turn all my Facebook likes. And there's a lot of confusion and how it works. But if you are getting something, and again, that's where speed will make a speed makes a difference, it'll hugely boost your sales process, your speed, your customers will be very much happier knowing they can get an answer from you quicker.

Clarence Fisher: That is hugely telling that you said if you get a call back 10, 30 minutes, an hour later, you're too slow. Yeah, that's crazy on how it is nowadays. I mean, you're right. If I go to websites if I can chat really quick and get my question answered, or at least figure out if I'm barking up the right tree, if I'm on the right path, I mean that makes all the difference. So you mentioned Drift and Drift is something that I've been referring my clients to. There's Drift and Facebook Messenger. What advice would you give someone who's brand new to the chatbot thing? The conversational marketing as you said?

Arvell Craig: Yeah, again, brand new kind. It really has to start with a diagnosis or an Audi, like you got to figure out the problem that the bot is going to solve. Again, if you're not, again, I get a lot of people come to me that want a bot, but they don't really have any, they're not spending any money on their traffic. They have no kind of, there's nothing going on. So again, last week I talked to a lady and she's in the farming industry and she told me that they, she described her problem was they get a lot of engagement on their Facebook page. They spend money on videos. Cause it's a real forward-leaning technology. There's a lot of engagement, but don't, when it's send people to the website, they don't get any formulas, they get no lead, they get nothing happening. It's like if invested in the Facebook, you might want to consider engaging in all those interactions, all those comments, all that conversation.
You can engage with them via Messenger. You can automate engagement on Messenger because you've already got activity. Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook and so when you have a Facebook ad or post or whatever commenting, you can engage everybody who comments, for example, on a post, you can bring them into Messenger and begin to automate some conversations or bring a live person. So if that is where the activity's happening and if there's a problem that a bot can fix or a chat can fix, we'll do it there. If you have a traditional website and you're spending money on Google Ads or sending people to your website and you've got a regular form, you know, got some regular stuff, if there's looking for more leads from your website and you are getting some leads, then that's a place to start. So it's really got to kind of again, take a step back and figure out where's the problem at, and then if the bot can fix it, the bot it can't do everything. It's not going to run your business, it's not going to do everything. It's not Terminator two, it's it, it's not Siri. So it can't do everything to me. It can get 25 to 50% of that engagement started and then hopefully it'll either close bring an e-commerce sale or pass it off to a live person after that 50% mark. That's kind of how I look at it,

Clarence Fisher: Which is still huge and in getting the conversation started, because it can automate that listening and I didn't even think about that. So you're going to map out the sales process, how does it happen? And then I love that if you're on Facebook, and a lot of people don't know this, that if you're on Facebook and you can have Facebook Messenger auto, like you said, auto reply or introduce yourself to people who comment, even if they comment a specific keyword, then you can have a specific chain of events happen. But I really like that where you're like, okay, so where's the action at? Mm-hmm. The process and is that going to help you if we speed that up, right,

Arvell Craig: Or you don't want to slow it down. In other words, I've talked to customers who have lead ads, they're running ads and they're getting tons of leads through, but the leads aren't qualified, they're not ready, they're not, they're spam. There's tons of different reasons why a company may have some kind of legion system happening, but it's not quality. So the chatbot or messenger can slow down the sales process. In other words, protect your time. Again, let's deal with time again, but not the time of the customer, the time of your salespeople or your owner. If you're busy responding to people who are not yet ready, you might put in a bot to like, okay, wait, wait, wait, tell me again what's your business? Okay, and when are you looking to buy, you know, looking to buy a house? When are you looking to upgrade your flooring?
Three months, six months, nine months. Okay, great. If you're in nine months or six months from now, why don't you check out this series of videos we have, you know, can direct the conversation and only if they say 30 days or two weeks, then you bring 'em on live. I've got things that connect to business owners, salespeople's phone number or for s m s. So the bot starts the conversation, it grabs the number, but if it's a hot lead, I'll send a text message to the client in order to get to respond fast. So there's a lot of times we want to slow down the process.

Clarence Fisher: That is so great. So it's doing all the vetting for

Arvell Craig: You. Qualifying Exactly right. Qualifying or whatever. Yeah

Clarence Fisher: Man, that's great. That's great. I was just telling you before when we were talking that I had the drift bot on my site actually set an appointment for me and so that is really cool. It shows up on my calendar and then I can go from there. So what do you see being used the most between Facebook Messenger and Drift? Let's say, and I probably shouldn't keep saying Drift, but I mean we know that's kind of the 600 pound gorilla right now, right?

Arvell Craig: True,

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. But let's say website chat on my website or Facebook Messenger. What is the very first thing, and I know you said it depends on where the traffic is. I know a lot of people are doing Facebook ads, but just about everybody has a website now, so what's the very first thing if that first one I need to do?

Arvell Craig: You're saying would you choose I'm not following the question really, sorry.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, so I'm just, okay, I'm just getting started in it and let's say I'm not running Facebook ads, okay, I've got some organic Facebook going, would you then recommend me to install something like Drift on my website?

Arvell Craig: I mean Drift is free. The basic to get started with Drift, you can just have live chat on there for free. So you definitely, it won't hurt to have it on your site. Just like you're setting up your analytics, you get your website set up, you do some basic tracking, basic retargeting, basic pixels. I mean you can add Drift as a basic setup and then you want to also download the app on your phone so you can definitely live chat mean. So sure that's definitely something you can do. But again, you can't just start with technology. You still got to start with a problem or with a goal. So if you're saying I want to get more leads, then we chop it, then we say again, how much traffic are you getting? Honestly, that's one thing I've got to more and more refer clients to other people because they're just not ready. Right? Let's talk about traffic and then they're talk about how are you getting,

Clarence Fisher: I see. So okay, so it all comes back to traffic, right? Alright, so are we getting traffic check? We are getting traffic. So then your next question is, where's that traffic coming from? Is that right or no?

Arvell Craig: Or

Clarence Fisher: Is it still, what do we want to do with that traffic?

Arvell Craig: Yeah, it's kind of more if you want to do, because again, you mentioned there's different Drift, it's not the only bot out there system or chat systems again, again, it's like if you need, again, because there's certain systems like Intercom, that's great for customer service and customer support. So again, it depends on what the client needs. Some people want more customer support interaction or automation or didn't want to filter, they want to engage with customers more. Some people want more sales and marketing focus, which is my focus. You want to want to go that way. So that still makes a big difference with one thing with I learned from Drift, cause few months ago I became a certified partner with them and what they do, they provide trainings and so one of the philosophies of conversation marketing is I say there's at least three different ways you want to engage with somebody who's on your website.
One could be where they came from, which you mentioned Traffic Source. You can change the conversation or build a conversation based upon where they came from. If they came from email, you can have it talk a certain way if you came from Facebook or Google or Aero or whatever, you can engage a certain way. Number two, it is what page are they on. So the page are on your website somewhat implies the intent. If they're on the homepage, you have no idea, but if they're on your pricing page, your contact page, whatever that topic of the page is, that determines their intent. So therefore you begin to conversate with them. If you start the conversation based upon that page they're on, you're going to more likely get some interaction. And then number three is more of who the person is. You could load your Drift has a plan where you can have target accounts.
If you know have a hundred companies you want to go after and you maybe have a list of target accounts and you want to can say their information and within the bot system, then you can talk to that specific person by company or you can read their IP address. And so you shift the conversation based upon who they are. So it's who they are, where they came from or what is their intent or what pays are on or the three different ways go on your website where you can steer the conversation that's really going to convert, it's going to really engage them.

Clarence Fisher: Man, I love it. It's just blanket, blanket. General marketing is just out of the door. What I'm saying it is, you can get so granular with everything now. So let's just take for instance, I don't know, we'll take me for instance because I mean I know there are a lot of service professionals that listen to the show and for me the big thing is, and probably is that vetting is that where are you right now if you are just starting out or it, it's that vetting process. So doing good that we've got Drift on the site and so now we want to get sales, but I just want to talk with the right people. We don't want to waste anybody's time. So if they don't qualify, maybe we send them off or give them some other resources. But if they do qualify, then that we set the appointment and I get on the phone with them is that, of course you said other pages on the website, so depending on if they're talking about reputation or AdWords or anything like that, you can tailor the conversation to that. How long does it take to set all this stuff up?

Arvell Craig: It doesn't take long at all mean. Normally if I'm going to a company, if they're brand new, they heard about it, they're intrigued and they're just wanting to get something started, what I want to do is I want to look at Save their analytics. I want to see where people are spending the most time at On. Again, again, if it's a website thing versus if it's a Facebook Messenger thing, it's strictly a funnel. It's strictly they're specifically running ads to a specific offer and we are going to replace engaging people via email with Messenger. That's one of the mindsets is one things about Messenger, just to put in proper context, if you do a lot in email and you're running a bunch of ads to opt-ins and leads and you've got some nurturing thing going on, a simple win is to replace or augment or split test that send traffic through Messenger versus email because you will get two to three times more engagement on Messenger versus email.
Simple because the channel is not as crowded. So that's one thing. Messenger is really one thing about that. It is a replacement. It can be a replacement for email funnels, just to put that in context. But back towards your website, I want to look at the analytics. Let's see, where do people spend the most time at? Yeah, you've got five, six different services on your website, but again, after the homepage, people are going to spend most of their time on, I would start with a top three or four popular pages on your website and then create the bot, create the conversation from there. One other thing that will be helpful for people just to understand is that the philosophy of conversational marketing is that it goes against, it's kind of different from the traditional gate, all your content or gate your value. There's the Drift teaches, somebody comes to you and says, oh, I want to learn about pbc.
Okay, give me your email address and then I'll tell you more, which is okay, but the whole word conversational marketing, it's more like begin. In other words, if somebody is willing to have a conversation that help, that shows they're kind of qualified as well. So other, a lot of times we give away content within the conversation and we don't always gate all the resources because if they look at you as a trusted resource, just like would just, people could read your blog and read your information. A lot of times I'm putting more resources within the conversation and not gated behind an email address, which hopefully shows that Goodwill that I'm willing to talk to you, I'm willing to help you out. Here's some information. And so the whole, in other words, if someone is willing to have a conversation with you, it's very likely they're willing to give you their email or contact information. Yeah, that's kind of one of the things I think that helped structure the conversation, help you to look at it, how it's different from some of the traditional ways of doing digital marketing, which they all work, but it's just a different approach.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you wouldn't do that in person if I walked up to you and you said, Hey, Clarence, I've been meaning to ask you. And I was like, okay, give me your email address first. So in your experience, like, okay, I'm going to put this out there. I think the easiest way to get started is to either Drip is Drift, drift is free. Well, I guess Facebook Messenger is free too, right?

Arvell Craig: Exactly. Yep. Manny, chat chat a few of most of the systems, because MailChimp, a lot of these things you start off free, but again, if you really want to get results, let's start, have a plan, have a plan, have a problem, and have some type of intentional way to go about what's the best solution to test. Give it some time, have the threshold of quantity of conversations, quality of traffic that's going to go through this experiment and see how it can benefit you.

Clarence Fisher: So some of the key points that you're looking for, again, we're looking for the plan, the problem, your what's favorite way to, you know, handle sales and marketing. So what's your favorite way to prospect right now?

Arvell Craig: The my favorite way to prospect I, the two ways that, I mean, again, me personally, I, I'm a speaker, so I like far as my personal brand and my authority, I travel and I get in front of people and that always gets me in front of my target audience. And that the positioning of my brand where they're doing this interview or doing other type of speaking engagements, the positioning is always stronger. And so I love the prospect that way and then offers some kind of resource to get people in into my pipeline and then the bot qualifies them and we going from there. Also, my Be, before I was doing chat bots, one of my main focuses was email marketing. And so it's one of the things that also not convinced me, but swept me up into Drift because Drift has an system built, they do email as well, which is not their focus, but I love to take targeted email list. So I start with email marketing often and I can send out emails and Drift, and then once, if they click on a link, I can automate a conversation with that same person who was in that email when they hit my website.
The bot can talk to that person individually, it knows who they are because they came from my email. So I've done a lot in the past 55 years with email marketing code emails. So a customers like my own self, I've got lists, I forgot all kind of different lists of different businesses. I've done different things I've been in contact with. So we A, we start a lot of conversations with email and that sends them to the website and then the bot picks up the conversation while they're reading the content. And then I can, whenever somebody engages while they're reading that content with the bot on that page on my phone, I could be notified that that person who came from that email is now reading that is now reading that information on the website and they've engaged with the bot. And then I jump in right there. So again, I don't run ads. We do a little bit of content, so that's not our focus, but I do do a lot with email for prospecting and Legion.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. All right. Let's pull this back because I wasn't going to let that out out of the bag yet, but I do, I want to have you come back and speak on cold email because a lot of people don't know that I sent somebody to you a couple of weeks ago, people don't know how much of a beast you are with cold email. And then that's how, that's a whole nother thing. But what you just explained, I know just about any business can relate to, maybe they're not running ads, but they definitely can do emails. Are you saying that you are uploading, are you uploading a cold list to Drift and it's sending out that way? Or are you using something like reply.io or something else to send those emails out?

Arvell Craig: No, I do both. So no, if a client has Drift again, I've got a client a couple weeks ago, they're in it and they've got conferences they've been to, and they've been got lists from conferences and trade shows, and they have Drift. They have a big account there. So we are, I'm running right now creating a three touch email campaign because Drifts one thing to Drift because they're big into, I can't remember how they can communicated it, but I don't tell anyone. But there's no limit on the amount of emails or contacts that you can add on Drift. So you can put, again, I've never done a hundred thousand or 10,000, but you can run. Yeah. So yes, I got a client right now we're uploading contacts into Drift. And in Drift you do sales emails, which a sales email goes from your Google account or Outlook account, or you can do marketing emails, which runs through Drifts email marketing servers, E S P.
You can do either one. So sales emails through Gmail is how you do code emails anyway. No, but I've got a client right now, we're doing a three touch email campaign, and then we're also building the playbook or the chat bot conversation for anybody who clicks on the link from the email and hits the website. We are automating the chat bot conversation there. And then we're tying that into certain salespeople who get notified based upon who responds from this entire campaign. So it is blending email code, email plus chat bots all into one kind of funnel.

Clarence Fisher: My goodness, that's a game changer, man. You've been holding back. I had to get you on the show to learn now and Oh, that's awesome. Okay. Alrighty. So what do you suggest that our listeners do in order to get something like that going in order to do that, if okay, they've got Drift installed, they've got probably, I mean, that's on one, that's why I'm one of the paid plans, I'm sure.

Arvell Craig: Yeah. Yep, yep. It's only, yeah, that email plus live chat, because what I'm talking about is it's definitely have the bot, so the bot, it starts around 500 bucks a month for having chatbots. So to can automate and think about it, it's your salesperson, a va, that's where the budget comes from. Don't compare it to MailChimp, compare it to somebody on your site that's going to at least do a couple hours a day of work for you. 24 7. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, again, I've got a bunch of resources on my site just because again, if you're getting started and got a little hour consulting kind of a video I recorded to show, it's like it's called 30 for 30, and it could shows you, it's like 60 minutes of me just going through, this is what I learned, this is what I learned, this is what I learned, this is what I learned, this is what I learned.
It's just like, blah. I just wanted to share from, if you're a newbie, I have that video on my side, chatbot funnels.me/thirty 30. So it's like 30 ideas of what I learned, and I forgot where the name came from, but it's 30 ideas of things that help. Number two, I've got a bunch of free resource. How do you pick what's the best platform I've got a resource on. It's like, how do you choose, do you want Drift? Do you want Messenger? Do you want chatbot? Do you want live chat? And I'm going to be adding more to that. So I've got a comparison sheet there. So I've got a bunch of resources because if you're new to it and you're a business owner, that means you are already juggling 3, 4, 5 different 10 different hats. And so I definitely try to help people save time and energy by just, Hey, you can learn from my mistakes.
You can learn from what I know. Yeah, I've got a course on my site called Free Course called Your First Three Funnels. What are the first three things you need to build? If you're like, okay, how do you welcome somebody? How do you segment them and how do you general the lead with a bot? So there's a core scenario called Three Funnels, I think that's on my site as well. So I've got a bunch of resources that are really built for people who are new to it, who are not predisposed to one direction or the other. And I try to help people out as best I can.

Clarence Fisher: So, man, that is awesome. And we'll put those links also in the show notes too, so that everyone has that. And that's great. So what do you think one of the biggest mistakes well, I think one of them, like you said, is just not having a plan. Any other or a problem, any other mistakes that you find that people make?

Arvell Craig: Yeah, I mean there's tons when it comes to Messenger, I mentioned that it is a replacement for email. It can do what email does, but it's not email. And so some people who just take their email sequence and they generally replicate it exactly in messenger, just long, long, long drawn out conversation and Messenger, some people do that. They want to take the easy way out. They're going to be lazy and just copy and paste it over. So in messenger, that's one of the very common things people do that doesn't work. Number two is the mindset that this ai, because again, AI confuses people. I always say there's an AI versus an AI perspective, meaning the bot, even though it's automation, even though it's ai, it can't do everything I mentioned earlier, let it do 50% of the work, not a hundred percent. And that is people think, I'm going to add this thing on this my site, and I'll never have to talk to a person again, or it'll do my work for me.
And that's a big mistake. In other words, plan to engage people live. The more time you spend live, honestly for most businesses, you're going to do much better. It's not all automated. So that's another thing that I'm thinking. And other thing with the AI versus AI meant mentioned is avatar intelligence versus artificial intelligence. That's a huge one. And how you plan it. In other words, again, if you get caught up on this geeky, cool tool, let me program all these keywords and try to make this bot act like a real person or respond, it's a real person. All that is the wrong direction versus avatar intelligence. I know my customer, I know the needs that they have. They're their dominant pains and problems, and I know my core solutions. So if you marry or merge their problems with your solutions, cause the goal is that you want to filter the person as fast as possible, not have this ongoing dynamic automated conversation, Hey, how's weather?
Oh, don't know. You like Starbucks, y'all like it too. People start playing around with the tools versus, Hey, your site, do you need more traffic? Do you need more the reputation? It's real simple. And at first I was building bonds where it was all, people could just type anything, and I was trying to program and make it cool and versus now, yes, I'll have three or four buttons on there because I'm only going to help people in three or four ways. So maybe that's, but that's the AI versus AI can go on. So that's the big people difference. You don't have to program it and try to make it geeky and cool. Just understand your customer and understand, get to the meat of what they actually need as fast as serve them fast. It shouldn't be more than three clicks before you either book a meeting, find out their unqualified or send them to a resource, three clicks, three clicks, understand what they want, who they are, and hey, here's a recommendation. Do this, do that. Not this ongoing chain of events, a long drawn out thing.

Clarence Fisher: I love it. That's huge. You did a presentation on that, AI versus ai, right?

Arvell Craig: Yep, yep.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. I love that. Three options, because a person is looking at that and they're like, well, my option's not here. Well, we can't help. You may be in the wrong spot. But then also that three clicks to the solution because people want, again, they want to know if they're in the right place. Really quick, and I love that you have spent enough time in this, because I think I went through one of the original funnels and that spent enough time in this to realize that all the trial and error, to get to the point to where, hey, within three clicks, we want to have you where we need you. I mean, that's great.

Arvell Craig: Yeah, yeah. No, it's work. It's a work in progress. Again, and you can say three clicks, three levels per page. So if you're on this one page and hey, you need this or that, or whatever, and also those three options, there is a human option. That's what Drift versus, yeah, if you can't find the option, if you want to bring in a live person, that's always an option as well too. Cause again, the bot can't do everything.

Clarence Fisher: The purpose is, I mean, we want to get people offline as quick as possible. It's possible. Especially, I mean, if you're selling anything unless you're what? E-commerce, right? But definitely in a service business.

Arvell Craig: One quick note, I was talking to a lady yesterday who does some consulting and she was saying how she local business, some a med spa, whatever, and one of the things that they did that blew up their lead gen was that they took off. They might've had Drift, they might've had something else, it might've had a messenger, whatever. What they did, they put in a WhatsApp chat button and that blew up their business for whatever reason. I guess here may people use WhatsApp. I don't use it that often, but in other words, customers cut live chat through WhatsApp and that went straight to the receptionist or whatever, and whatever reason, people were willing, just click on that button and chat. And there, there've been booking meetings nonstop that way. So that's something that I just heard like, huh, let me, I've been looking into WhatsApp for business for a while, but in words, because again, that's the one thing that business don't understand is that one of the things about marketing that is helpful is that, how to describe this one other picture, what consumers do themselves, they do, it's like people to do stuff first, technology happens first, peer to peer, customer to customer, and then eventually businesses jump on board, right?
Twitter was 2006 and seventh, whatever was our, it was for geeks and nerds, and eventually some business got started doing it. People like Gary V got into it and whatever. Then it led the way, and 10 years later, businesses started doing it. Same thing with Facebook right here, people are doing it, and wherever people are, businesses follow and can take advantage of that. And 95, 96, email was just person to person, and eventually businesses started using it. So things like WhatsApp, but there's 2 billion people in WhatsApp. There's a couple billion half people in Messenger. So even though businesses are not doing it a lot, once, if you get into the stream of where people are communicating, that's one way to lead and have that first mover advantage over things. So yeah, whether it's Messenger or again WhatsApp for business, if you just offer people to communicate on their own terms, there's a good chance you can get a good boost of business for a while with that mentality. That's happening. WhatsApp, it's what's happening with Messenger, it's happening a lot of these live chat. It's that, that's kind of the trend that I'm going to like, or Instagram. It's all social media. When something is popular around peers with people, there's a large percent of businesses that can jump into that stream and take advantage of some of that traffic.

Clarence Fisher: Man, you've given a lot today. You think when you finally get a funnel or bot going, what do you find is the most challenging point in getting it to I don't want to say work, but getting it to produce, which I guess is work. Because in a funnel, you're going to run into, okay, are your ads showing? All right? Yep, that's great. Are they getting clicked? All right? Yep, that's great. Is it okay if they're getting clicked and nobody's buying? It's either the offer, you know what I mean? We have these points on if somebody like these points that we need to check to make sure that somebody is getting from seeing an ad to actually booking an appointment, what is a challenge or two that maybe what's, well, what's the most challenging that you run into once you get things set up? Where's the breaking, where's the point of failure there?

Arvell Craig: I mean, when it comes to with websites or Drift, then there's two points. Number one, again, it's that initial hook. Cause it has somebody's on your website and they're browsing, whatever. That's one thing, again, I like about Drift, is that it's proactive. It's not just going to sit there on a right hand corner waiting for somebody to interact with it. So it's that initial hook that just, hey, cause you got to get people's attention. So if you can get that there, then just cause just shows you their stats. What's the percentage of people who decide to engage with the bot on the front end? And then once they're inside the conversation there is how many people actually make it towards one of your goals or how they finish the process and become a lead or get an email or something like that. So there's like two.
So those are the two parts. And that's, again, it goes back towards the intent. If I can craft a hook that relate to the page they're on or something, to me it's no different than any other copywriting or any other offer. I've got clients that do webinars and whenever they do webinars, when the bot, it's initial conversation with people, Hey, did you sign up for our latest this webinar? And the option are, what's that? Tell me more about it. Things like webinars for this client always gets more attention than, Hey, how can we help you today? So it's really just the offer, which is no different than any other thing. Oh, that's

Clarence Fisher: Great.

Arvell Craig: That's what's going to make the difference of getting somebody to begin the conversation because again, you're building a bot based upon your ideal audience, your target. If they're not interested in the first place, there's no copy, there's no trick to get them to engage if they're not interested. But if you're offering something that they actually want, you're solving problems that they have, it's really a copywriting type of thing versus any type of technology skill.

Clarence Fisher: Man, that is so great. Hey, if I know Arve has covered so much today, and just always, if you go to clarence fisher.com/ask and you have a question that you know wanted to get an answer for, you can go ahead and submit it there. You can leave a voice message there. And I would love to gather all these things. Arbel. Usually what happens is we can gather all these things and then just ask you to come on again and just rapid fire, answer these questions. I know you're going to give resources for people to reach out to you as well, but that's kind of one of the things that we do. So, ok clarence fisher.com/ask and then just reference this show and we will get that on there. So, so in wrapping up, what should our listeners be doing over the next 30 days, 90 days, one year to accomplish what we've talked about today?

Arvell Craig: Great question again. So again, but somebody over our arching themes of what I do in chatbots, it's about speed. The question in hypothesis is, will I get more business if I serve my customers faster? And with automation and with technology, you are able to speed up the process of interest, of consideration of decision to close. And so whether to me, it's definitely smart to test offer people ability to chat, whether it's the Facebook messenger bots, the website bots offer people opportunity. They want help now. They want to help faster. Putting that out there is something that's going to be valuable. Number two, if you are going to do that, make sure your entire company is on board is, again, the bots don't do everything. So make sure you can get two, three, or four people in your company all to have access so that somebody can be responsive and talk to those people as soon as possible.
And then number three is going to be whether you, I don't know what kind of research or investigation or spine, just pay attention to some of the leading people, maybe your competitors are doing. Just definitely watch what else is happening. Just start paying. Cause a lot of times when you begin to look into chat and chatbots, then you begin to notice that they're everywhere. Like, oh wow, I didn't even notice that I was there. You realize how popular they are. And so you just begin to test and play around and just pay attention to the industry, pay attention to what's happening. Cause it'll give you some ideas because back when I said avatar intelligence makes a difference, that means that within the mind of the business owner is some of the most important knowledge and most important keys that's going to bring success. And so I'm always looking to my clients to know what's the fastest, most efficient way to serve their customers faster because they have that, I have the technical skills and the marketing skills, but they know their customer better, so, so just kind of pay attention to what's going on and try to experiment as much as they can.

Clarence Fisher: Man, just trying to, I can't wait till the replay comes out because I'm trying to jot down notes. I've got solve the problem. Know the avatar, avatar, intelligence, speed, what a huge thing, man. The three clicks, the options, offer a webinar or some type of lead, ma, get that conversation going. Let me ask you this. So if I have decided that I don't want my marketing person to spend the time getting all this set up and I've kind of just decided it's probably better to contact someone like you, what's the biggest thing that I need to consider when I'm evaluating consultants like you to come in and help us build all of this out? As I'm looking at maybe there's this other company, what's the most important thing that businesses need to consider when they're evaluating consultants to help us execute this?

Arvell Craig: I mean, to me, a lot of the, again, know that most anything, every expert is going to have their preference of tools. And again, in this industry, what we're talking about, the tools do make a big difference. In other words, some people, they're a hammer, all these, everything that sees a nail. So it's like, no, again, that's why I want the business should know where their problem is, at least where they want to play around. They want something on their website if they want something in social media or Facebook if they want to a live chat. So some of those things they need to know in advance. Therefore, you can look for an expert who specializes in that tool. Because one thing about this industry, it is the wild, wild west, meaning there's no standard yet.
No, I don't know. You could say best there are best practices, but it's such a wide, people who specialize in Facebook Messenger generally are great at Messenger, right? We're not familiar. It is not the same mentality in mindset. Cause in Facebook, their name already, you got their Facebook profile. I can not scrape. There's so many things that happen in Facebook and it's different. And Facebook is, again, it's almost closer to email. It's almost like a choose your own adventure. It's just a completely different playing field than website. So in our expertise is definitely Drift. Like I mentioned, we're not just partners. We are in their certified partner program, which means that we had to generate a certain amount of business in order to qualify for that level. So again, we're definitely experts in Drift. I know a lot of different things and we are partners with Manny Chatt as well. So pretty much knowing I say just in researching, knowing what kind of experts you want because they're all different. Yeah. Yeah. That's the biggest thing I can say to look out for. And there's, again, there's tons of, I'm not saying cheap, but there's tons of different programs for chatbots. You can find 50, a hundred different systems and it can be confusing. So just try to work with someone who, who's an expert in the area that you're looking for.

Clarence Fisher: I love that. I love that because as I'm steering clients, as I'm working with clients and then as I'm looking at everything as a whole is, okay, well we really need to add this. And so when it comes to Drift, we need to call our veil on that. If it comes to this, maybe we try this expert. I love what you said right there, because you have the ability to dive deep into it. There are things that you brought up today that I know are going to stick with me until I schedule a consultation with you. So that mean that email thing just blew my mind. So we have to do that. All right, so how do people get it in touch with you? Get ahold of you?

Arvell Craig: Yeah, you can go to funnels.chat. That's the simplest R url. And that takes you right into a you could call it a conversational landing page, which you can, it'll give you my little cheat sheet on chatbots, but my main website is chat bot funnels.me. So those are the two main sites, funnels, dot, chat and it, it'll give you a preview of how we build landing pages and PDFs built into a conversation or just go to the main site chat, Bott funnels.me. Those are my main two sites.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. Cool. Thank you for spending so much time with us today, man. And giving value as you always do. I mean, when I see, when you are at these events all around the country, have you done Europe yet, by the way?

Arvell Craig: No, not yet. Okay.

Clarence Fisher: All right. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. You are everywhere and I love when you end up in town on some kind of way and then we can meet up but I appreciate you coming in and sharing with us.

Arvell Craig: Yeah, man, it's great. It's always good to chat with you. And I know then when we first met, you've always been a resource for me and I have a mentor for me, so I love learning from you as well. So I appreciate you, appreciate your friendship.

Clarence Fisher: Awesome. Thanks. All right. So there you have it, Mr. Arve, Craig, he gave a lot of resources there. I want to tell you, you can go to the show notes and you can download all of that stuff. And afterwards, I got to talking with Arve and you know how I do. So I asked him, well, what can you work out for my people? So if you go to the show notes, then there's a link there where you can schedule a free consultation with him. But not only that, he's going to give you the hookup if you end up using him, okay? Or you can go to clarence fisher.com/chat. I believe that is what we're going to put there. Okay? So go to the show notes, check it out, make sure you subscribe on iTunes and join us. Join the [email protected] slash community. That's the Facebook group that we put together for all of the businesses who want to own the block so that we can stay around like-minded people, iron sharpen iron clarence fisher.com/community, and we'll get you in there. So until next week, I'll I'll see you then. Go do what you got to do in order to own the block.

Outro: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit clarence fisher.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.

Resources

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