Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast. I'm Esther.
And I'm Melanie.
And today we're joined by Sacha Liddiard of Think Outside the Bot. And Sacha is here to talk to us about chatbots. Welcome, Sacha.
Hi there. How are you doing? Both of you, Esther and Melanie is great to see you. And thank you for inviting me.
Great to have you with a Sacha. So chat bots. What are they? What are chat bots?
They mean a lot of different things to different people. But basically it's just an automation and to have a conversation. Really chat. But it's just all it is, is just having a bit of a automation attached to anything. So you have it attached your website or you can have it attached to messenger. Whatsapp Instagram any way you like.
So is this AI is it... You know about taking over.
You can have it as artificial intelligence if you want to get a little bit more complicated. But most people, they just want something that's just straight out of the box, something really simple and easy to set up. And so it just depends on what type of business you've got, whether you've got an e-commerce business, whether you're marketing and the type of box that you want. But we do do artificial intelligence, but much further down the line. It's not something I would recommend somebody starting out with right at the beginning when they're just discovering chat bots. So yeah, but probably the ones that most public will now is when you sort of go on to a website for your favourite store and you ask, ask a question and you get an automated reply. That is a Chat bot.
I wanted to ask actually, just quickly. You're in the field of marketing like us, but what made you pick chatbots in particular? Where did you niche?
Well, initially I started using chatbots for business I had I used to have an e-commerce business back in 2017, and I was also coaching people on how to set up an e-commerce business. So I was using chatbots to get people into my coaching programme and I just I just loved it. I get quite addicted. I was addicted then in 2017 and we're in 2021 now I still get excited when I see a message coming through. It just still gives me that buzz. But I wanted to continue coaching and teaching because that's something I've always been in the outside in the corporate world. I've always been a coach. I wanted to find something in the marketing space that I could teach other people to do. And I needed to niche down. And I thought, you know, it's hardly anybody out there. This is quite wild ago. Anybody out there teaching this stuff or doing it for anybody. So I thought, right, I will niche down just on chatbots. I'm not going to be doing the marketing as a whole. Just let's do chatbots and I will learn as much as I can learn, but just as long enough to always be that one step ahead of somebody else. So whoever I'm coaching or training, I'm one step ahead all the time and I've just learnt continuously since that time. So really, it started from the training and then the agency got taken over after the training. So a lot of people were doing the training. You know what? Actually, this is great, but can you do it for me? And that's how the agency started. Really. So I haven't actually gone back to the coaching and training is mainly the agency now.
And people need to understand code to be able to set up a chat bot.
Well, I'll let you into a secret. I don't know anything about code tool are not that techie as far as you don't, because we've got the fantastic platforms like many chat. Many chats is the one that I use. And it's all the coding and everything has already done for you already. So you don't need that. I've learnt a lot along the way and I now can do more with coding, but I'm not a coder. I've never built a website before. I'm not Super Super techy. It's just I can learn and teach people how to have a conversation and I know how to format that all up. And that is my marketing background just really helped me because it's understanding that when you're using chatbot, you want to have a conversation. You don't want to be the one that telling the chatbot isn't the one that's telling and selling. You're actually wanting to find out from the customer what they need so that you can then respond. Yeah, it's all about having a conversation.
Ok, What telling things that you said just there is you don't need to know code, but there are things are sort of like pre prepared, like a template. There are template websites, the template tools that can help you set this up as well. So the kind of levels that you can have when you're creating bot for your business.
Yeah. I mean, do you know what right from the beginning, without even using many chat, the most basic basic is that Facebook Messenger has got your very simple automation already set that. So if you didn't want to go down down the many chat root and a bit more advanced, do it within Facebook. If you're on LinkedIn and even email now you get these automated responses, it can be used Instagram not so much. How I'm going to talk to you about Instagram in a minute. So yes. So that automation is already there and then you can come into something like many chat. And if you want to do everything for yourself, there are templates sitting there ready to be used. It can be used by anybody. You can just install it and they'll be simple instructions, such teaching you how to do it.
Brilliant. So you mentioned Facebook has a chat bot LinkedIn, you can automate things. Email automation. Where is the best place to put a chat bot.
Okay, so with messenger, you've got it on your Facebook page. Okay, but you can have links to any flows within the box. So when I say a flow, it could be that we may be running a challenge or we might be directing people to a podcast. These are two different ideas, we could be anybody to a live show on Facebook, though. You've got the bot sitting on your page so people can come in when they kick on send message. We can provide links for all of those flows so those links can go in an email. They can go anyway, you can put a link. You can bring people into your chat bot, so it doesn't really it sits. It sits there because it's part of messenger. But you bring people in from all different directions. You can bring them in from a QR Cade to whichever flow you want to bring that to. Simply you're just using the chatbot to maybe to make appointments, send them to your calendar link. You would just give out the link to bring them into the messenger bot. But people can have it sitting on their website as well. So you know, you can see little chat bubble on people's websites and they click on that that will bring them into what other bot flow you want to bring them into. So again, if you had on your website, the question saying, do you want to subscribe to our podcast on bring podcast back? Then they could click on that and go straight into the flow that would get them to subscribe and send them the latest episode. So that's another place to bring people.
You said that little speech bubble. It may me think immediately about of Ulster Bank and Cora.
Okay.
For those of you that don't know what Ulster Bank is. It's a local bank here in Ireland.
It's Cora the avatar?
It's the AI
and she's lovely. But it is a conversation doll.
Well, there you go. You see it's having these conversations with using image, using gifts and emojis and making sure you're not replicating an email. This is what I see people doing replicate an email into a conversation. That's not what you want to do. You want to keep it short, interesting, fun. So, yeah, if she's doll.
She need's a personality transplant,
it needs a bit of a personal transplat.
It's a bank. What can we expect?
But it's important. My bank is just as important. No, it's customer service. No matter where you go. The conversation got to be good. And conversational marketing is in itself. And a lot of people that build chatbots just build it to say, deliver lead magnet or send you a link to registrars or webinar or something like that. Chat bots are so under used as far as having that conversation, getting to know, getting to understand, asking questions and then segmenting people out based on the questions of the answers they get to those questions being intelligent.
So I gave you an example of what may not be considered, in my opinion, the best example of a chatbot. But do you have any good examples that people can look at and consider how they work?
Yeah, I do. Actually. What the move was quite exciting is I mentioned Instagram earlier and chat bots are now coming to Instagram and we've got so much we can do on Instagram so excited. And I've been really lucky that one of my clients was chosen by Facebook. The debate testing for.
Tomato, Tomato.
One of my clients was chosen by Facebook because she got an enormous amount of followers on Instagram and also teaches and coaches Instagram. So we've been using the chat bot in the last sort of three to four weeks or so. And it's Janet Mary. So if you want to go and have look at Janet Mary and interact with the bot from her Instagram and you can do so. But it's so that's marketing is marketing. She's marketing courses to learn about Instagram and she has a great PDF to learn how to do reels. So when people DM her on Instagram, when people reply to a story, if people mention the page and the story, they will come into the bot and she can then send them the real PDF. So yeah, exciting stuff in Instagram. You can even have it actually on Instagram where people comment now on the post, on the Instagram post or in a video they that would also trigger the bot. So a lot of things we've been doing on messenger can be done on Instagram, but just a little less, little less rigid as what I would say. So. Yeah, that's a good one.
Okay. Like should the chat bot then signed more like the person themselves? Or should it be obvious that you're talking to a robot? It's out of ours. It's obviously not a human talking high far one way or the other should bot
well, there are actually laws on this, would you believe not over here in the UK, but in the state? Is it California? Is it California where they have always different laws? It has to be really clear that it is not a human being. Alright, but people aren't stupid, you know, you know that what was a name from the Ulster Bank?
Cora Cora.
She's not real is she?. Did you, you should know that right from the beginning. Now some people go way over the top and make their bot some wonderful character, which can be quite tricky depending on how many different things you're doing with the bot that this character to still keep appearing. And sometimes it just might not fit the brand. So you need to know the brand voice still needs to come through. And sometimes it's the person from that company that is the brand is the person I don't want to speak to necessarily core from XYZ. I want to speak to Esther and I want it to be Esther, even though I know it's not really Esther, but is Esther voice, you know what I mean but it's very clear. It's very clear from the outset. It's not a bot sorry, that it is a bot and it's not really Esther, and that if anything, somebody wants to chat to human being is really easy at any stage that hey can come into live chat and start talking to a human being. And that's really important, actually, you give them the opportunity one to get out right from the beginning. They really clear how they just have to type the word stop and they're out and make it really clear. There's a live chat button and they can come into live chat and talk to a human being at the beginning.
See Melanie? She doesn't want to talk to you.
Sorry Melanie
those are a few of the rules and regulations, so you have to allow them away. They have to allow them away to join a live chat. The rules and regulation because I mean, our regular listeners to the show know how much Melanie loves things like GDPR and cookies and all the rules and regulations that we have to follow, how much of that the chat bot have to follow. And as a sub question to that, how has the iOS 14 update affected a chat bot?
Okay, well, to start with the moves and regulations since I start in the entity and I can't tell you how many changes there have been regarding rules and regulation, we had it just before Christmas and it was just a dreadful time is that Facebook decided to take absolutely everything away from us here in the EU, as far as our bot creation is concerned, we had old restrictions and we could do nothing. It lasted about a week where we thought we could do nothing. In that time we had to change everybody's chat bot. And at the end of the week, I wish we never changed a the thing because we gradually all these things that they took away from a sole virtually will come back now. But one of the biggest rules that everybody needs to stick to our messenger is the and Instagram is the 24 hours rule. You cannot send out a broadcast like an email on broadcast is when I say broadcast. It's one message to many that's the broadcast you cannot send out unless they've interacted within the last 24 hours. So we're always conscious about opening up that 24 hours window. And if there's been an interaction, you can send whatever you want to send. That doesn't mean you should do the you know the old they have. Yes, just because you can. You should. No, you can be with caution, but we're always opening up that email, the 24 hours window, and within many chat, we can use SMS. We can use email, so we can always re-engage them using those those things as well. And then you re engage them, say on a post or whatever within Instagram within Facebook that will bring them back in. Keep opening up that 24 hours window. There are certain conditions where you can send a message outside of 24 hours window, and that has to have a special developer tag attached to it. Sorry, I'm getting techie, but it's getting that Super Super simple within Many chats. It's easy to do, but it means you can send out something like an event update. She simply is registered for your event and it's in two weeks time and they register for it and we want to send them an update. We can do that if you've got an e commerce business and you want to send an order receipt or something. Absolutely. Post purchased tag can be used. All right. But anything else, if in doubt, stay within that 24 hours window. And it'll be fine.
Now I'm beginning to see why people get you to do this.
Complicated. The rules and regulations are really important and people fall foul. But Facebook, I mean they tend to they give you a warning. They do give you a warning, and they say, right, we'll shut you down for the next three days. What people are stupid is they carry on regardless and keep going. I've been given that warning. Facebook doesn't know what they're talking about, I'm just going to keep going. They get a seven day warning, they ignore it, keep going, keep going, keep going. No, it's not as if they shut you down immediately, but they do send you a warning, so that's when you just need to take ease .
How obviously marketing is an umbrella term. Okay. And what you're doing is an element of a larger, broader vision that every business has to do.
Yeah,
because most of the people who are listening to our podcast would be smaller businesses, sole traders, or maybe the two or three people in the team. How much sort of time would they need to commit to this? Setting up a chat box once it set up, how much time and effort would need to be put into it afterwards. Just a ball park. I know it's very different.
It depends what you're using the bot for any business, any small business, whether it is brick and mortar, whether it is a small marketing business. Every business has some form of lead magnet in order to bring people in and do not write a must do to build your email list. Because if you don't build an audience and you don't build your lead, you've got nothing to to sell to. So most people do that. And what if you can have the simplest, simplest of funnels of where somebody clicks on a link, they come in, you send them a message saying, do you want this XYZ lead magnet? Yes, I do. Okay. We're going to get your email address. We're going to have a GDPR. We're going to get you to click on the button that says, I agree to you sending me this email and we may occasionally send you X y. Okay. Get that set up. We then deliver the email with the lead magnet from many chats are all in the same flow. They send the email that the lead magnet in and 24 hours later the messenger can follow up to say, I can see you've opened the email. This is the next step
Stalkarie
or it can just say an email open. It could be you've not. So do go and check your spam folder, your trash folder and let us know and we can help you. So think of all those emails that people send out with leave magnets and people never get them. They never get them or they forget they've even asked for them, at least for this. You've got the follow up and it could be done that night for a live show, for an ecommerce plan selling it was menopause. It was selling supplements, but it wasn't set about selling supplements. It was about talking about questions that people had about menopause. And I don't if you watch the Divine programme, you guys know her anyway, I was really interested. So she had them on for about an hour. But anybody that commenting was going into this funnel to get her menopause fact sheet. Okay. And that was then delivered by an email. And as soon as people clicked on the email, it would say, I see in the email. What did you think? Would you like to see the products that will help you? So that's what it does. That's what it's, so how long do that take doesn't take on to set up how long it take is to monitor if people go outside the blow give you wrong email address, it might take you a bit tweaking.
Wow. Okay. So you mention. You've mentioned many chat and you've mentioned a few are other services, including Facebook on chat bot installed there. Are the chat bots free? Or how much would it cost to run a chat bot?
Yes. If you want a really, really basic the basic free platform on any chat to just get yourself a bit of a feel. Obviously Facebook's free, but many chat has a free element to it. And then once you get over a certain amount of followers or you want to start using the more complicated stuff conditions, Tags, that sort of thing segmenting, then you will need to pay, but it's really cheap it's 10$ month really.
Okay. So it doesn't sound like it's going to cost a fortune. Doesn't sound like it's going to take a huge amount of time. You can show people how to do it as well as manage it yourself.
Yeah.
So this really is something that most people from you don't even have to have an e commerce website, do you? You don't have to have an e commerce works. It's probably handier if you had one, but you don't have to have an e commerce website to have the chat bot.
You will need a website
You can use Facebook or Facebook and Instagram shop
or emails
or emails, yeah it's even better. So there's lots of manoeuvrability for these particular tools. So where do we learn more about what you do and where can we find your website, Sasha?
Think Outside the Box.UK is my website. If you Google think outside the box, you will find me mostly everywhere. I mean, I hang out obviously on Facebook is my main thing because that's where I do most of my chat bots, but think outside the box. You will find me.
Brilliant. Thank you very much, Sacha, for joining us today. And yes, if anybody has any questions about chatbots or how they can get started do reach out to Sasha and let us know. And I'm sure after this episode, Melanie and I will have set up something on our website so that you can subscribe to the latest podcast episode. Thanks Sacha. Thank's for giving us all of these ideas, but thank you so much for joining us, we'll be back next week with more Monday morning marketing podcast. Until then, have a good one. Bye.