All the Money is in Live Texting

Transcription

I was at Traffic and Conversion Summit last week and we had a little booth for one of our companies, YetiText, and as I was there, one of the things that came up a few times is we were telling people about live, two-way texting and where it fits in this picture of how you should be doing texting for a business.

The interesting part that came up is that some people kind of kicked against life texting.

They're like, "What? I got to have a real person answering questions? Why would I do that?"

And, as we explained it to them, some people got it, some didn't. But all the money, honestly, is in the live, two-way texting. Let me explain why.

There's the people who buy, there's the people who act like buyers and don't buy, and then there's people that don't act like buyers at all.

If you look in your marketing automation platform, whatever it is, hopefully you'll be able to identify those groups: people that buy, people that act like buyers, and then people that don't buy.

The people who act like buyers, I call them "should-have-boughts". They're people that, for all [00:01:00] purposes, should have made a purchase, but didn't for some reason.

In order for you to be able to increase your bottom line the quickest with text messaging, you really want to help people who should have bought, but didn't, and the easiest way to do that is the live texting.

There's three parts the texting.

The first one is the lead capture, which is keyword automated conversations. If you haven't experienced those, you can text DEMO to 760-621-8199. You can get a quick demonstration of how that works.

That's the first way that you use texting, and that's to lead capture.

A lot of people get excited about that, but they don't realize that the whole point of the lead capture is to open the door for live texting.

So, when you do an automated conversation, you really want to end on what we call an open ended question, which is a question that allows that prospect to express themselves in some way.

What it does is when they express themselves, that's when they get the chance to overcome whatever is holding them back and keeping them in the should have bought category and move [00:02:00] into the customer category.

They need that ability to communicate with somebody.

But, what's fascinating is that, if you don't do the live texting, you miss out on that whole opportunity. That's the whole point of the lead capture, is to open that door so that you can have that live conversation.

Unfortunately, I've seen some people who will open the door, they'll use the keyword conversation to capture a contact's information and start that relationship with texting, but then they won't respond.

They don't even have a way set up to answer those out-going text messages.

The next part that people usually will do in texting is they'll set up some automation-generated text messages, meaning text messages that are initiated by a campaign of some sort.

Well, when they do that, what's interesting is they're usually just talking at people unless they understand the live, two-way texting part.

When you just talk to people, you don't build a relationship. In fact, you create annoyance.

It's really critical that when you send out that message, normally, I'll do [00:03:00] one of two things.

I'll either add value in some way, this is probably something like a resource, like a link to a PDF or video or maybe even an audio, a podcast episode, whatever it may be. We're sending some sort of value to them from their perspective based on what we know about them at that point.

That's great, but the more valuable text that you can send out through automation is one that initiates a conversation. When I ask an open-ended question, it allows them to be able to respond with whatever they want.

Not a one-word response like, "Is this good for you?" or something like that, but something that really allows them to express themselves.

This question should be asked from their perspective, meaning, what is it that's on their mind? What is it that you think they may be concerned about? Or maybe it's about something you sent to them and you want to find out, was that valuable for you? You can ask an open ended question that allows them to express that.

What's fantastic is when that person responds, you start having this back-and-forth conversation.

[00:04:00] That's where all the money opportunity is, because that's the opportunity to overcome concerns, overcome questions that people have, answer questions, and then, as a result, lead them towards becoming a customer.

If you want to see an example of that open-ended question, you can text DEMO to 760-621-8199.

When you do, you'll get a little demonstration of an automated conversation, but at the tail end of that, there's gonna be an open-ended question. In fact, there will be a couple opportunities for you to be able to respond and then you'll be able to talk with a live person and you can see how that works.

And that's the really critical part.

Now some people get concerned because they're like, "Oh, okay, great. Now I'm going to have to talk with customers or prospects."

Well, the reality is, your math should be good enough that it's worth the time of having a human speak with another human.

That's kind of the core philosophy that I have about messaging, which is what we're trying to do with automation is we're trying to compensate for human nature, that part of us that will forget things, that won't follow up properly, that just kind of [00:05:00] hesitates the reach out when we should.

The automation compensates for that weakness that we have within us as human nature.

But, what we don't want to do is we don't want to, in that process, cloud over our humanity, or block our humanity from being expressed to other people who are prospects or customers.

We really want to engage people, and the way that you engage people is messaging.

You want to be able to have that live conversation back and forth with someone after you've asked them a question, or after you've delivered something of value from their perspective, or after you've initiated a bit of conversation, collected some contact information, and hopefully delivered on some promise.

So, when you get that down, then you'll realize, "Oh, okay, the real point of all this is to have that live conversation!"

What if you don't want to talk to people?

Well, you got to get through that because that's where all the opportunity really is.

What we found is that you don't end up talking with every prospect because a lot of prospects can take care of themselves. They already are [00:06:00] interested, they figure out what you have, and they can initiate that purchase or becoming a customer.

Where the live texting really comes in are those people who should have bought, but didn't.

Once you understand that, then you see that all the profit opportunity in your business currently, if you're not using live texting, is in that opportunity of live texting.

That's where people can ask questions safely. They don't have to be concerned that you're going to try to take advantage of them like a silver tongue salesman would do on the phone.

That's where the live texting is, it gives them this real opportunity to be able to safely ask questions, safely get concerns brought up and hopefully addressed.

So, if you are not already doing live texting, and maybe you're just doing outbound texting and you have no way of responding to an incoming text, or maybe you're using the lead capture, turn on that live texting.

If you don't have it, message our support team in the right hand corner what marketing automation platform you use and they can point you in the right direction.

But, I promise you that if you [00:07:00] will engage with people, and you give them the opportunity to engage with you, you're going to see all sorts of good things come out of your business.

You're going to have growth, and you're going to profit growth, most importantly. Right now, whatever profit you have is the result of the processes you're currently running.

And if you're profitable at all, then you're going to see a big increase in profits if you can help should have boughts, people you're already spending money and time and effort getting to that point where they are doing everything that the buyer does except for but and helping them get over that hump of a concern or question.

I hope this helped you today.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to try out our demo, 760-621-8199. Just text the word DEMO to that and you can get a quick example of what's going on.

And, I'm going to give you an extra opportunity.

If you don't already have my book The Messaging Connection, what I want you to do is if you do text DEMO to 760-621-8199, after you've gone through the automated portion of that [which is what the demo is for, to show the automated part], go [00:08:00] ahead and say,"Hey, I'd like to get a copy of Ryan's book."

They'll get your address from you and they'll mail you a copy.

If you'd rather just listen to it, tell them that and they can send you an audio version of the book. You can hear from me. If you enjoy my voice, then that's great. If you don't, then maybe you want to read.

If you do text and ask for that book, they'll send you a copy of it.

And the reason I want you to have a copy of it is it explains much more than what I just talked about today.

Today I just talked about the importance of live texting. I covered a little bit of some other things, but if you really understand what live texting is all about, that's where all the money is.

But, if you read this book, it'll teach you some of the pitfalls I've seen.

We've sent out, I want to say, close to a hundred million text messages in and out.

And with that, we've seen people do some really smart things and we've seen people do some really terrible things for their business. In the book. I explain both of those.

I explain things I want you never to do because it will be bad for you, and then things that are wonderful and very effective that you can do.

So, if you haven't, you [00:09:00] can text DEMO to 760-621-8199, there's a banner below so that you can see that right there. But if you'll do that and then just ask them for the audio or the print version, they'll send you a copy of it. I hope you enjoy that.

This is Ryan Chapman, hoping that you'll make good use of messaging so you can connect with people the way that they want.

Thanks.