A New Path to Conversation, Connection & Conversion with Natasha Willis

As technology continues to reshape the business landscape, entrepreneurs are constantly seeking innovative strategies to stay ahead of the game.

This episode offers a deep dive into one such strategy: conversational marketing.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Natasha Willis, co-founder of the School of Bots. This fantastic platform has proven to be a game-changer for our business, and I can't wait to share the insights with you.

During our conversation, Natasha Willis unveiled a transformative concept – how you can revolutionize your business in just 45 days with conversational marketing.

But that's not all; she shared the specific content pieces that have generated an astonishing $700,000 in sales and amassed an impressive 31,000 leads. Yes, you read that correctly!

We also delve into the art of adding value and building authentic relationships on social media. And here's the golden nugget: automated conversations at scale are the key to unlocking consistent and profitable growth for your business.

So dive into this episode and discover tools and strategies that could be the key to your business's next big leap.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• Shifting focus from sales to organic conversation
• Combining technology with psychology for effective communication
• Simplifying the opt-in process for higher conversions

CONNECT WITH NATASHA WILLIS:
Know more about Natasha Willis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natashatakahashi
Access Live Masterclass on content strategies: https://melabraham.com/bots
Know more about School of Bots: https://schoolofbots.co/welcome
Drop Natasha a DM on Instagram and mention this episode: https://www.instagram.com/natashatwillis

RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU
If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• Path to Richness As Digital Business Owner with James Wedmore
• Using Video For Profits & Income With Sean Cannell
• How Community Drives Sales, Profit & Wealth With Lindsey Schwartz
• How the Top 1% Earners Accelerate Their Wealth (It's Not By Getting a Raise)

TAKE THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM QUIZ:
Take this free quiz to see where you are on the path to financial freedom and what your next steps are to move you to a new financial destiny at http://www.YourFinancialFreedomQuiz.com  

OTHER RESOURCES:
7-Day Money Plan Workshop: https://www.TheMoneyPlanWorkshop.com
Affluent Entrepreneurs Private Facebook Group https://www.melabraham.com/group/

CONNECT WITH ME:
Website: MelAbraham.com
YouTube: MelAbraham.com/tube
Instagram (@melabraham9): MelAbraham.com/ig
Facebook Group: MelAbraham.com/group/
TikTok: 

Transcript

Mel Abraham [00:00:00]:

Hey, there. This episode of the Affluent Entrepreneur Show is off the charts. I just had a chance to have a conversation with someone who has become a friend pretty quickly. Her name is Natasha Willis. She's one of the co founders of the school of bots, and it's something that we found and we used recently in one of our launches, but we use it throughout our business. Look, one of the greatest ways to build revenue, to build income so you can build financial freedom and get on that path by building the money machine is to scale your revenues, to scale your profits by connecting with more people, deepening the relationship, extending the relationship, and getting more buyers into the game. And what we're going to talk about is the strategy, and one of the strategies and tools and tactics that we use because of her teaching to help us do that so we can have deeper conversations. But at the same time, it wasn't something that was complex.

Mel Abraham [00:01:06]:

It was something that we got implemented and working within 45 days. So I think this is going to be a game changer for some of the things that you might be doing. It's a great episode where you start to understand what it means to have better conversations that lead to better sales and higher profits. Enjoy this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. I'll see you soon. Cheers. This is the Affluent Entrepreneur Show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle.

Mel Abraham [00:01:42]:

In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom, because that's what it really means to be an athlete, entrepreneur. Hey there, natasha. So good to have you on the show. I'm so excited to have this conversation because you kind of changed the way I looked at business launches, relationships with clients and all that stuff. But before we get there, would you do my followers, the viewers? The listeners? I almost said the readers, but I guess they are just a little bit of background on your story and how you got into what you're doing and what it truly is that you're creating for people or helping people create.

Natasha Willis [00:02:41]:

Absolutely. And first off, that was such an incredible opener. I mean, what a statement to say that this has completely changed the way you look at business and launches and all these things. And so I hope everyone who's listening is like, I got to learn more about how this works, because Mel is just such an incredible case study and testament to how what we're going to be talking about here has to do with, at the end of the day, how you can build relationships with people in a deeper way and at scale more than has ever been possible before with any other communication method. So that was such an incredible opener and thank you so much for having me. I'm honored. So to give a little bit of background, long story short of it, my now husband and I started our first business, which happened to be a marketing agency about six years ago, seven years now. Keep having to add those years to it.

Natasha Willis [00:03:28]:

I'm like, when was that? So in late 2016. And I was actually just fresh into my first semester of college, but I knew that this was something I wanted to do. And he left his job. And so we started this business, but we totally dove into the deep end, because what we're talking about today is an industry that has really developed and grown during that time. But we jumped in right at the beginning when no one knew what the heck it was. And looking back now, it was kind of in its Fart app phase, I like to say, meaning that people knew you could start to automate messages on social media, but it wasn't quite known and really even obvious, like how do you actually make money from this stuff? How do you create real business value? Why would people want to chat with an automation, with a business? So it just wasn't understood the same way that when apps first came out, you've got the Fart app, the bubble wrap popping app, all these silly games, it's like, one day this will become something, but we don't quite know what it is yet. And now look at us. We all use apps on the daily for banking, for business communications, for all these things that are vital parts of our lives and so very much in the same way.

Natasha Willis [00:04:31]:

What I feel very fortunate to have been able to witness is over the last seven years and since we started our agency that was focused on providing this service to businesses, trying to figure out those use cases along the way. So we have now since come to see how powerful of a tool, fully automated back and forth conversations on particularly Facebook Messenger, Instagram, DM and WhatsApp, because these are the places where you can do this to the fullest capability. So if we want to, we can dive into the difference between those platforms versus something like Telegram or SMS and some of the others because it's a pretty common question. But ultimately it's so powerful here because you can take your likeness either as a brand or as a personality as you have, and be able to create these really native but also profitable conversations that people enjoy engaging with. And that turns into on average three X, the amount of leads and sales that you can collect from these channels, even just organically, right? Let alone the stuff you can do on the paid side. And so, long story short, what we do these days is we still have a marketing agency. We've been fortunate to work with some of the largest digital product companies in the world, like Dean Graziosi, Russell Brunson, amy Porterfield, jenna Kutcher, Mind Valley founder. You know, these brands that have really made a name for themselves, not just in the personal development, business development space, but also as great marketing companies.

Natasha Willis [00:05:52]:

And so I also feel very grateful we've been able to come in and show them this whole new medium and avenue that everyone is trying to figure out. But we have just spent the most time, quite frankly, doing this. And so that's where we're at now. We've generated over $50 million in revenue, sent over 60 million messages on these platforms. And now we also have ways to train marketing teams, which is the process we took you and your team through, so that more and more businesses can create the system that runs on Autopilot for you and allows you to just exponentially grow your leads and sales through these channels. So I'm excited to dive in, but that's the quick and dirty backstory.

Mel Abraham [00:06:29]:

I love it. Let me give a little perspective for everyone because I think it's really important. What we're talking about is automated bot types of conversations that don't feel automated. And the nuances that Natasha and her team brought to our conversation because I tried many chat years ago and I go, yeah, this is a great toy. And I couldn't figure it out in the sense that it was antiquated or it was cumbersome and they would get messages when they shouldn't. But this was different. And it was different in a way that it felt. I can make sure that we captured my voice, we could capture the conversation, and we really actually engaged in conversation, which to a point, we could then take offline and create more one on one conversation.

Mel Abraham [00:07:18]:

But I think there's another element that I failed to mention I think is really important for me. So my team will say, hey, I want you to get on social media. Okay? You tell me that and I go, It's like, now what? Okay, I'm on social media. What do I do? This tool, this process, the technology, the strategy, the tactics gave meaning to my social media. Every single time I get on social media, whether it's for my podcast, whether it's for a launch, whether it's just for nurture, I now have a direction, I now have a purpose. And so it's not just to fill up social media. It's to sit back and say, how do I deepen the relationship? How do I carry on the conversation? How do I take the conversation to another place? And it changed the game of how I view social media from that point forward.

Natasha Willis [00:08:22]:

Yeah, I love that you shared this, because I've heard this, iterated a little bit more from a lot of the business owners that I'd imagine you probably have who are listening, who are like, I come to social media and then what, right? This doesn't do a whole lot for my business. I'm better off doing other things. And so, to your point, it allows you in a really organic way to be able to add value to your business, to those relationships. And so thank you for saying that and sharing that, because I think that that's something people don't think about as much when they're looking at this. They look at it kind of like what you mentioned, right, years ago when you were testing it out. You're like, this is a cool toy. What do we do with this? It's a blank slate in a sense, right? And so when you can give a little bit of meaning to it, business value behind it, not only is that now giving you value by showing up on social media, but it's also serving your audience so much better because they want to hear from you all the time. But being able to give you that incentive as well as the business owner or as the face of the brand, I think just creates such a win win with the tech.

Mel Abraham [00:09:22]:

Yeah. So you came to this as a marketing agency, but at the same time you saw a problem, you saw something that you wanted to solve, that you had an expertise, an aspiration or just an acumen to be able to go after it. And what was that? What was the catalyst that said, I could do Facebook ads, I could do all this other marketing, I do copywriting, I could know landing page, I could do all kinds of things. But you said, no, this is the vehicle and this is the problem we're solving with it.

Natasha Willis [00:09:57]:

Yeah, there was this moment where it all clicked as soon as we found out that this was possible on a Facebook messenger, which right around early 2016 was when Mark Zuckerberg was like, public announcement, here's what's possible. He's using 1800 flowers and a couple of other big companies as examples of hey, this process that is quite cumbersome, sometimes on websites or even having to do via email or even in apps where it can just feel like a lot of pieces. Instead, we've turned ordering flowers or booking appointments or collecting emails all into a simple conversation that is frictionless. And for Kyle, my partner and I, we were just like, holy crap, this all makes so much sense. And one of my favorite lenses to view the world in now, when it comes to what tech is coming up and how will businesses interact in the future, is just simply looking at how are people interacting with other people. So in our familiar relationships, best friends, colleagues at work, even just trying to reach people online, how are we all engaging together? And then how will eventually businesses to people that interaction mimic that and so we were seeing this rapid growth of messaging apps over the years leading up to 2016. And then since 2016 just the amount of monthly active users on the platforms has skyrocketed. But it's also been steadily growing year after year too.

Natasha Willis [00:11:19]:

So it didn't just do like a spike and die, but it has continued to just somehow ascend more and more and I think we can also anecdotally say that because I'll use text, I mean we text all the time. We're talking about all sorts of stuff. We'll use voice notes, videos and so these kind of rich media sources now do so much for us. More than sending like an SMS that is maybe a little bit more simple and blank. But now we are all migrating a lot more towards using messaging apps in our daily lives for all the different use cases. And so realistically, the problem that we were seeing back then was more so an innovation of like hey, business communication is broken as we have it right now. Everyone hates waiting on the phone for these complex phone systems that take hours to get to a person. Everyone knows now to press zero if you're waiting on the line.

Natasha Willis [00:12:14]:

They've gotten a little smart try to change up the numbers on us. But you've got that, you've got website chat that's pretty broken as well where you've got to wait for an agent to get to you. It's usually a pretty terrible experience. And then ultimately the fact that nowadays because we're all on social media so often, what you're seeing consumers do and it's just unavoidable at this point instead of trying to divert it, is that people want to get questions answered from businesses. So they want to know if I see an ad, I want to be able to go to that Instagram profile or that Facebook page or on TikTok wherever and be able to ask them my questions about whether this product is the right fit for me. And so what happens though is that there's such a volume of that as you grow your business that people are like there's no way that we can handle that. And so you not only are losing out on business because somebody's going to move on to the next person. We all know that brand loyalty has continued to decrease over time.

Natasha Willis [00:13:04]:

But then you also have the fact that the consumer feels crappy about the fact that they never got a response from you and they're expecting now this kind of level of support or level of being able to go through the sales process on these channels that they're spending all their time on already. They don't want to hop over to the email app or have to call you or go to your website to get some info. So that was at the core of it. The fact that we saw, hey, business communication, it's working, but it's not enjoyable, and it is broken the way that it is, and it's not going to survive in its current phase. Given how we're seeing how people are moving to messaging apps to talk to each other, which then businesses will need to follow them there, and we'll have to present those solutions to them. So it's been, I say, a slower journey, but really, I mean, fairly fast if you look at other tech, and that was at the core of it. And now it's not only that, but it's also the innovation of, well, how do we continue to make that better and better?

Mel Abraham [00:13:58]:

Yeah. So let me give a little bit of thoughts of what we did in a relatively short time, so you all get kind of a perspective of what we're talking about. Because here's the other thing that I think is important. When someone comes to you on an Instagram or a Facebook or a WhatsApp, it's actually abrupt to try and take them off the app. And the strategies, the tools, and the technology that you have taught my team and myself, because I went deep into it, also has allowed it for instance, we just finished a launch. Okay. A launch that we can talk about it later. But I broke zoom.

Mel Abraham [00:14:45]:

Okay. I had no idea there was certain limits on registrations, but we broke it. And that's okay, and it's a beautiful problem. But the point was that we decided that we were going to lean in to the technology and the strategies that you are doing. And in the process, we were able to create an environment where people came into our sphere through Instagram, Facebook, primarily. We didn't do WhatsApp and they could decide, hey, I want to register for your training. I want to register for something. And it literally took them from the moment they said yes to registering for the training, delivering the confirmation, getting them on my email list so we have them in the sequence and doing all of it without ever leaving the app.

Mel Abraham [00:15:38]:

And it is so seamless once you have it set up that it makes it just this clean kind of process. Because some people say, I love Instagram. I hate Facebook. I love Facebook. I hate Instagram. And yet to force them to go somewhere else doesn't make sense. And if we're truly trying to meet our clients where they're at, and I think that a lot of my audience is trying to build income because they want to have financial freedom, the greatest way to scale your income is to scale the longevity of your clients and deepen the loyalty of their journey. And the way you do that is to meet them where they're at and have deeper conversations with them.

Mel Abraham [00:16:27]:

And that's actually what you're helping people do.

Natasha Willis [00:16:31]:

Yes, absolutely. 100%.

Mel Abraham [00:16:34]:

Now, you use a term when it comes to this, and I botch it all the time, but I think this is important for people to understand, and it's about profitable conversations.

Natasha Willis [00:16:48]:

Yes, both profitable and native conversations. And I like to start with the Native piece because I think we were talking about this before we started recording. It is at the end of the day, all about relationship building and community building. And I know that that doesn't always pay in the immediate future, which is why a lot of brands kind of neglect it because especially at the beginning of your business, you kind of have to you have to just start to get that cash in the door. But once you've started to create some stability, then this becomes so important, like you said, to the longevity of your brand. And so if you look at the word Native, what that means inside of the platforms themselves is that this feels like a conversation I could be having with a friend. That at the core is the simplest way to put it and the easiest ways to completely eliminate trust that you're building in the DMs or just making it feel like it belongs there is if you immediately start to sell or if you send people really long messages. I mean, at the end of the day, I've liked to say throughout the years that a lot of us are like conversational copywriting experts to a degree because we understand the etiquette that comes with chatting with people.

Natasha Willis [00:17:55]:

Unless you just do it so little in your life, which I'd imagine most of the people listening use social, use messaging apps on a daily basis. You would probably not send a message to somebody you're interacting with professionally that has ten exclamation points and a bunch of emojis or like you just think about these ridiculous things, right? And so those are just good examples to think about. Well, what else can feel like that if a message is extremely long, this wall of text of just promotion, like an email that's just pasted into a messaging app no one's going to read that they immediately want to unsubscribe. It's a terrible experience and ultimately you gain zero positive from that other than people just remembering, hey, I had that one bad experience with that business is kind of what gets ingrained into their mind because these channels are very sensitive. You're going into people's homes in a sense, their digital homes, right? And so that's what native means and that first part of it. Anything else that you would expand on there, Mel, now that you've kind of gone through it and you've done voice, know, video, et cetera.

Mel Abraham [00:18:53]:

Yeah, I think that it allows it to be native, but it also allows you to be authentic. So I can incorporate a video message, which I like to do. I mean, people that know me will get video messages from me because that's just what I do primarily because I have fat thumbs. Inevitably I'm going to type something wrong and it's going to be offensive. So figure just talk it out all right. And so this allows me to be me and to speak to them in a way that is really about me and doing it that way. And so that's the thing that I started to say, is that not only can I be native, I can be authentic.

Natasha Willis [00:19:39]:

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing. And on the other side of that, like you said, profitable. So meaning that at some point this will either pay out in revenue or in goodwill to your users. So whether somebody can afford to buy from you now and that makes sense for them to move forward on the investment, or if they're like, you know what, I need a little bit of time to figure this out. But I'm glad we've had these touch points. Or maybe they're never a buyer, but they're like a loyal listener. Loyal engager and they want to continue to support you and your brand.

Natasha Willis [00:20:07]:

Being able to provide these automated conversations to them at scale allows you to serve everybody in the same way with the same amount of depth. And so what we've been able to see over time though, is that typically on Instagram, if somebody finds you organically, they hit the follow button. They may take three to six months to actually buy from you, let alone actually even join your list, give you their email and allow you to start to come into their inbox. Whereas with this we're able to not only capture right now the audience that you have already engaging with you pretty immediately, but also what we find with the posts that go out where people can comment on a post, receive a DM from you, and that leads them into this fully automated back and forth conversation. In those situations, typically 20% to 30% of the people we're capturing are actually new to your brand. So they've found you specifically on Instagram through the Explore or the Recommended posts, or they've seen you in another manner on Social, on Facebook or Instagram. And the ability for them to immediately become a lead without you having paid for them, keeping that in mind too. And then from there, having all these touch points happen in such a short period of time allows you to just radically increase your profitability, increase the revenue and the leads that you're going to be collecting from this channel again, whether you have immediate sales happen or not.

Natasha Willis [00:21:23]:

This is increasing the likelihood that people are going to buy from you and increasing the amount of leads that you actually have in your pipeline. So it's both of those pieces and they have to be thought of at Equal manners.

Mel Abraham [00:21:34]:

Yeah. And I think that what you're getting at, which is really important, is that we need to think more relational and less transactional and be okay with the fact that we need to nurture, we need to connect, and we need to have conversations. What I started to realize is that this is a magical mix of psychology, communication, strategy and technology. And it comes together in that way. So when we think about it, let's get more into kind of the crux of how it works, how does it work, what are we dealing with here?

Natasha Willis [00:22:21]:

Yeah, so to give just a quick background of how you might go through the process as, let's say, the consumer, so let's talk through the customer journey of what actually happens when somebody opts into what we call a chat funnel. So there are over eight ways that people can actually do this, both organic and paid. But for the purposes of this example, I'm just going to start with one, which is where we get 70% of our traffic from and that is posts. So this could be any kind of Instagram post, a reel, a single image carousel, whatever you're going to put up. Now, the difference between what you're doing right now and what you would be doing differently when you implement a chat funnel is instead of in your post caption telling people, hey, go to the link in my Bio to sign up for my webinar, for example. Instead all people have to do is comment on your post. So you are immediately reducing friction, reducing the amount of steps, reducing the amount of work that people have to put in just to opt in for your thing. So at that point, because they could find your post from the explore page, from their feed, from a friend sending them the post.

Natasha Willis [00:23:19]:

There's all these ways now that you're able to capture more traffic, tap into more people than you can, usually with a link in bio because people are having to again go through those additional hoops. After they comment on the post, they are then going to receive an immediate automated message from you that starts this conversation. Now, what you're seeing a lot of, and this is fairly common, I think, with any new tech, is you try to keep it as simple as possible. And so what a lot of people are doing on Instagram right now is they'll just have a simple Autoresponder that's like, great, you want to get access to my thing? Here's the link, hope you enjoy it, peace out. And the challenge with that is it's not a conversation. And so not only are you not building that relationship then and accomplishing all the things that Mel and I have talked about so far, but you are also then reducing the amount of people who are actually going to opt in for your thing. Because we have now, like I said, run over 60 million messages of data through even campaigns like that, just to see for the heck of it, like, are we still right? Is this still converting a lot less? And it is, because what we do instead is as soon as somebody gets that first message, we are simply reminding them of that offer. And asking them if they still want it.

Natasha Willis [00:24:25]:

We're asking for permission to continue that conversation with them, just like you might if you're chatting with a friend or even just chatting with a business manually. Right. So, like you said, it feels very native. It feels good to be in that conversation. So as soon as that happens, there are a couple of key steps that we've identified in our frameworks over the years that work exceptionally well. So what we do is it's a back and forth. And just like you would go onto a landing page and fill out a form and say, here's my name, here's my email, here's my information. Instead, all you have to do is type that out.

Natasha Willis [00:24:54]:

And so what we're able to do on the business side is collect that at each stage so that by the time someone shares their email, we typically collect at least 85% of people's emails from the original pool of people who commented on your post. So out of those people, you're collecting 85%, which is much higher than let alone getting people to the landing page and then getting them to opt in. But even then, we are converting at a much deeper level there because it's such a seamless opt in process. Anything you would add to that, mel and I can go a little bit further.

Mel Abraham [00:25:25]:

I think this is really important because you could be doing this is why I said it changed my social media, because typically I'm doing social media or you're doing social media and you get comments on the post and that's it. It dies there. Yet when you create this and you have this vehicle and you have these strategies and you have it in place, it actually is the beginning of the conversation. And that's a game changer, because now when someone comments on a post, they're literally raising their hand saying, I want to get to know you better. And I think that's a huge difference than what a typical social media strategy would entail.

Natasha Willis [00:26:12]:

Yes, I really love that flip on the frame, because to your point, again, going all the way back to the beginning, right, of business owners thinking about what's the ROI on social media, like, why is this worth my time to be posting? And like you said, it's now completely flipping the script, allowing you to gain more value as the business, but also allowing your people to start that conversation that otherwise, like I shared, the data says it can take three to six months usually to start that conversation for people. And so this happens a lot more immediately. A couple of additional pieces I'll add in there is that things that you can put into the process, as soon as somebody comments on your post, you can also send them an automated comment response back. And so that is a beautiful way to reciprocate engagement with them, let them know you appreciate them. Like Mel. Said, these are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want to get to know you better. I would love to learn more about this offer. I think this can solve a problem I have, right? And at the end of the day, that's what people are looking for on social and in life is what are the solutions to all the challenges I'm facing right now.

Natasha Willis [00:27:12]:

And so if you present that like, hey, I've got this free webinar coming up that's going to help you be better with your finances, make more money, achieve financial freedom, et cetera, insert your desire and outcome that your products and services offer people. Then as soon as they comment on your post, you now can reply back and say, hey, I'm really looking forward to helping you with this in your own way. And then from there, you give them a gentle nudge as well to go check their DMs. And so that's one of the pieces that allows us to be able to, again, get more people seeing your message. You're still usually going to get 100% open rates because that's just how DMs are right now. It's not like email where people let them all pile up, but they're like, oh, I've got a notification, I need to go see it. Right? And so you get that activity, but you also get the reciprocation, which is another touch point. And then now you lead people through that whole process I mentioned and that's kind of stage one of the process.

Natasha Willis [00:28:02]:

Mel, we can definitely talk about things like reminders and sales follow ups and that stuff too, just so people know it's possible. But that's kind of the first stage of it, right?

Mel Abraham [00:28:10]:

Just so people understand it is and it's not absent. Something that we did in our launch is actually even some of our email traffic or organic traffic that came to the website, the opt in page, that didn't come from this. Okay, they came to the opt in page. So they go to opt in. They get to the thank you page after they opt in, and then there's a pop up that says, hey, would you like DM reminders? So we popped them right into what we call a DM list there. And now I have the ability to send them the reminders via messenger as well as through the email system. So I had them, in effect, opt into both systems. So we brought the two systems together in the launch.

Natasha Willis [00:29:00]:

Yes, beautifully described. I mean, you could teach this stuff all day long. I love it so much. And it really shows you guys, right? Mel's ability to explain all of this mean, I know it might sound a little bit complex, like as we're talking through all the tech backend pieces, but once you get it, you really get it and you understand how valuable this can be for your business. And so Mel, to just quickly expand on that piece right? You can not only opt people into reminders as soon as they jump onto your thank you page, get them in that way. But now everybody who signed up from Social, you can now send these reminder messages for your events or for sales you've got coming up, or even just a quick check in to be like, hey, I'm thinking of you. Here's a quick affirmation to share with you today. Or a journal prompt, or just a quick money tip.

Natasha Willis [00:29:45]:

It's Sunday, maybe I'm budgeting for the week. Here's a quick tip on how you can do that too, in case that's helpful. Talk soon, right? Something that's just very conversational. So just like you might send out email newsletters, it's a similar concept. And then you can also have sales follow up messages too, like you have your sales email sequences and all of that goodness. So it starts to become that parallel.

Mel Abraham [00:30:05]:

Channel for context so people understand. I started down this rabbit hole in August. We are recording this at the beginning of September. So was it August or July that I started?

Natasha Willis [00:30:22]:

End of July. End of July.

Mel Abraham [00:30:24]:

Yeah. So we're literally talking 45 days. And I'm an old dude, all right? So if this old dude can kind of take on this technology and start to adapt it to my business, to the connection, it is that easy. Now, there may be a learning curve with any technology, but bottom line is in 45 days, fully implemented for a launch. So I think just to give the proper context of this, that this is not something that we've been working on for six months or a year or even three months. It's literally 45 days.

Natasha Willis [00:31:06]:

Yes, thank you for sharing that. And I think timelines are definitely helpful for people to understand in general, right? Because I think there's a lot of promises, unfortunately, in the marketing space where it's like, this will help you overnight, but then those overnight things tend to be just quick tactics or fads or hacks trends that are going to go away. The thing is that what we're talking about is built upon this shift in consumer behavior that's been happening for a while and it's continuing to grow exponentially. But now more and more businesses are adopting it, as they do with any new tech that proves to be valuable. And so this is not something that's just going to immediately go away because it's dependent on the fact that humans need to connect with each other in some way. And messaging apps are the most convenient, effective way to do that right now and for the foreseeable future until we all live in the metaverse. And so right now, when you look at this stuff, like you said, 45 days for you guys to create those incredible results of getting 1000 people in there, you got 5000 people for your launch. We can dive into some of those numbers.

Natasha Willis [00:32:04]:

But then also when you're looking at the first couple of days of implementing this, you start to increase those touch points, those leads and those sales pretty instantly. But if you look at, let's say even a twelve month cycle or 24 month cycle, this is stuff now that is a long term asset for your business. So you're creating something that's not just a one and done, but it's actually, like Mel said, every time he hops on social media, he can point people now to this experience in the DMs that allows him to capture leads without him having to do any work either. As soon as that's built out too right. You're not having to do the work of popping in a link or worrying about if it's going to work. And so there's both convenience and kind of this streamlined process that happens for both the business and your users once you get this whole thing implemented.

Mel Abraham [00:32:49]:

Well, the other side of it is I don't want people to misconstrue that the only reason we did it was for the launch. So launch finishes, we will continue to use the tools, the tactics, the strategies in our ongoing nurture sequence, whether it's sending them to an assessment, whether it's sending them to one of my show episodes, whether it's just having a conversation. We're going to continue to do this because it makes sense for the long term loyalty, the long term relationships with our audience. And that's what I want to deepen.

Natasha Willis [00:33:22]:

Yeah, thank you for highlighting that because absolutely, it's something that's going to continue to serve your business, just like setting up landing pages, emails, these assets that are going to continue to serve you. And with social, the fun part is you can continue to test, as you have been, different formats and different styles of content. But you know that the conversion piece is pretty guaranteed. And ultimately it's just about how do we continue to find new ways to speak our message and get traffic in the door? But then the actual DM piece now is something you don't really need to touch and worry about too much. You can optimize it over time, but once it's built, it's there and it can run on Autopilot 24/7.

Mel Abraham [00:34:01]:

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the other thing, because I got a fair amount of audience that is, they're up when I'm sleeping, even though I don't sleep a lot. But this will operate in the background until we need to get involved, which is great. Now, there's a couple of different ways you bring clients in, but you help clients make their work easier, scale faster. What particularly do you do? And I know that our relationship started with something new that you were doing, but I just want people to understand what it is that you do and your agency does. Your coaches, the people that you have working with you, which I will tell you in this space, is probably one of the best white glove experiences I've ever experienced and I've been here for a while.

Natasha Willis [00:34:58]:

Well, thank you so much for that. That means the world to my team and I, as you know. But truly, we are so grateful to be able to create an experience like that as well as with new tech that can be quite complex if you go at it on your own with just all the nuances and things that kind of come up. So whilst we have had our agency and continue to run that with very innovative clients that can scale at a certain volume, what usually makes the most sense these days for businesses in this space, what I have found is that you get a system set up internally. Your team understands how to use that, right? So whether it's your social media person or maybe a marketing person on your team, even an assistant can go through the stuff and learn, as long as they are somewhat tech savvy or willing to learn a little bit of new tech, right? But it's not too crazy like coding or anything like that. It can be quite simple. It's just understanding at a high level how does social media work and how does maybe your email marketing platform and some of that tech work just so that they can come into it with that mindset. And then what we do right now is train teams over a four week period, which is what you guys went through, and you're able to literally launch your first chat funnel at the beginning of the third week, which is a pretty dang quick turnaround compared to Ads and pretty much any other marketing service that you can do.

Natasha Willis [00:36:14]:

So you start to see that ROI immediately. But then you learn the rinse and repeat process of how do you create the strategy, the copy itself, getting access to all the frameworks that we've proven, and then the tech pieces that we help you implement so you can rinse and repeat that process every time. Like you said, after your launch, you're going to have your podcast episodes that you're promoting through this method. Any other lead magnets. You've got your book coming up. There are all these different things that you're going to be promoting. And so just like you are going to create landing pages and emails for this stuff, you now will also have a chat funnel that runs for each of those use cases. And that all can be, again, rinse and repeat process from what you learned because the system runs on autopilot, but you also know very easily how to repeat those steps for anything new you have coming up.

Mel Abraham [00:37:00]:

I think for me, that was really helpful is the way you modulize. It was plug and play and it allowed us to start to look at well this month and you talk about it in the construct of themes. We're going to focus on this. So the funnels will all it's like all roads lead to this one thing for that theme, and then we switch it to another. So it is a mix and match kind of thing, once you understand it, that allows you to sit back and say at the first of the month or the 15th or whenever you want to do it, and say, what's our focus this next quarter? And how do we want to orchestrate the journey? And it's not set in stone. It's beautiful.

Natasha Willis [00:37:47]:

Yeah, precisely. It's all about molding it to your business. And that's really our goal, is looking at, well, what is the most common way people buy from you right now, or that you generate leads and how can we help you turn that into a conversation that we know with pretty much guaranteed certainty? Because we have all the data to back it up of what conversion rates you should see at each point and help you craft that copy, like you said, craft the strategy. You plug it into the back end that we have tried to simplify as much as we possibly can, and then from there you deploy that. And like we said, it runs on autopilot at that point. But you can continue to create more and more versions of that for whatever you're running in your business ultimately, so that every time you show up on social media, regardless of what you're promoting at that time in your business, you have a way to seamlessly promote that through this concept.

Mel Abraham [00:38:33]:

Because I want people to get context before we close out and give them some ideas of what they can do next too. Can we talk just a little bit about some data point? Because the level of, like you already mentioned, the delivery and opening rate at effectively 100%. Okay, it's unheard of. You don't do that in emails and you may get it in SMS, but the reality is that there's some conversion statistics that are mind boggling with this type of stuff. Because it's new, because it's native, because it's authentic.

Natasha Willis [00:39:12]:

Yeah, absolutely. So to talk through kind of the different pieces of the user journey, if you look at a full funnel, meaning that somebody went from a post or some of the things that we haven't even had a chance to really dive into but just for people are aware you could have people reply to a story of yours or comment on alive as well. There are many different ways. Pretty much any interaction on Instagram can trigger that initial message. And so typically what we'll see is that from that initial interaction, whether it's on the Instagram feed, in a story, on a live, all the way to collecting somebody's email, is an 85% average opt in rate there, which is, like we've talked about, higher than any landing page or any other method. From there, on average, the businesses that we've worked with, which at this point have been thousands of different businesses that we've been able to serve. And support. And in terms of what they see, on average, three X, the amount of leads and sales that they were doing before they implemented this.

Natasha Willis [00:40:09]:

So they're using Link in Bio Link and Stories, even with Ads, but being able to triple the amount of leads and revenue that they're getting from this channel. I could go on and on, but I think ultimately the types of numbers that you're going to be seeing, the click rates and the amount of people that are engaging with everything is going to be much higher too. So when you've got Broadcast, for example, we typically are getting a 40% to 70% click rate on those messages. So as you start to build up that list, too, because it's not just about collecting those emails on the front end, it's also how do we start to build this asset of people who have been DMing with us so we can send them more DMs in the future, which is what Mel referred to as the DM list. And that's exactly what it is, is you're DMing people whenever you've got something going on, even if you're not selling it's a piece of content, a piece of value. Those messages we typically now are getting a high percentage of leads for Webinars or for any kind of offer that's coming up. Sales conversions for like, let's say you do an annual sale or something like that, those people will come from that broadcast list and they're so much more engaged than any email list, even SMS as well. And there's no issues too when it comes to international messaging or high cost because it's all free right now.

Natasha Willis [00:41:22]:

So there's a lot of benefit to building that asset as well and then being able to use that again and again to promote and to serve your people too.

Mel Abraham [00:41:30]:

You all got to think this through because an 85% opt in rate compared to an average landing page, a good landing page, is probably getting 40 maybe on the top side, 50%. If I had 30% more people. If I can increase 30% more people coming through my customer journey, it is going to astronomically impact the bottom line. And this is why there's a couple of ways to scale your revenues, scale your profits. There's many ways, but the two primary ways is I got to bring in more clients or I got to have more things for my current clients. How do I deepen that relationship and deepen that journey? This is a vehicle that allows you to do it. So when people are coming to me saying, mel, I need to build wealth and I want to have that financial freedom, one of the things that we want to do is scale their income because that's the generate piece. Then we can deal with the money machine piece.

Mel Abraham [00:42:33]:

Well, this is one of the vehicles that you can use to make that happen and happen quicker. Than in an organic environment. Because the other thing that we're doing is we didn't talk about this, but we're running ads to it also. Now you've got some things coming up where people can go deeper and people can learn more. You're actually doing a special training for people coming up, which I want to make sure that we give access to. We'll make sure it's all in the show notes with a link. Okay? It'll be under Melabraham combos, B-O-T-S. We'll make sure that's there but can you do us a favor and just let's talk about what it is you're doing and what they can expect from that and why the heck they should be there because I'm going to tell everyone.

Natasha Willis [00:43:27]:

To go, well, thank you for that. Super, appreciate it. And I know you've already sent so many people our way and it's been such an honor to serve them all and really just help educate people about what this is, even if you're like, I've got a lot going on in my business right now, but this sounds like something I should know about. I want to be here as a resource for you. Whether we never work together or not. At this point. We've done so much in the space and it really is a big mission of ours to help businesses understand how this can help them not only make more money, but also take so many things off of your plate because there is a lot that this helps you automate, which we like to look at as a side effect, but it really does make a massive, massive impact because you're automating now 95% plus of your messages that are coming in and also going out on social media. So it's a big deal in terms of what Mel referred to here.

Natasha Willis [00:44:16]:

One of the things I'm doing coming up is a live masterclass. And so my goal is to help business owners like yourselves, or if you work at a business and you're like, we should be exploring this or doing this or I got to learn more about how this works. The things that I'm going to walk you through are, firstly, exactly how those eight strategies work, where you can make people stop their scroll and literally turn them into a lead or a buyer in less than 60 seconds. And what that actually looks like so we can show some visuals so you can better understand some of those best practices as well and things that you could start to implement immediately even if you don't have a chat funnel and this automation set up just yet. The second thing I'm going to share with you is the one strategy that we use to Skyrocket your reach, and this is through the feed on Instagram and this is where we get about 70% of our incoming leads through the DMs. And the third thing I'm going to walk you through so you can really solidify. Exactly how this all works is I'm going to share three of our top performing case studies. We've got loads and loads of case studies for accounts between ten K followers to 45 million followers.

Natasha Willis [00:45:14]:

But the three that I'm going to show you in particular have brought in over $700,000 in sales and 31,000 leads. All of that was through organic traffic, just like the things that Mel and I have been describing. And so I think it's just helpful to see, okay, what kind of content brings in leads? So you can start to create more things like that. And then what does the DM journey actually look like that converts that high and allows you to bring in those real leads and sales and add some tangible value to your social media. So those are going to be the three things I'm covering in that Live Masterclass, and I would love to have you there if you want to dive into this more and just understand how it works, whether you want take action immediately right now or you're like, I just need to know how this works. I know we need to do this later down the line. And so just better for you to understand so you can start to weave that into your plans and like Mel said, really allow yourself to grow your business income and your revenue with this tool.

Mel Abraham [00:46:04]:

Yeah, absolutely. So we'll hook it forward slash BotsBots. Here's the thing, okay? And one of the biggest reasons I brought Natasha on is, one, because of how she's shifted, how we look at the business, but two more importantly, is how she approached her customer relationships. The level of care, the level of attention was amazing for us. Otherwise it probably wouldn't have been 45 days for me because I'm a slow learner. But the fact is that you all should be there if there's any, because this wasn't even on my radar in July. But in a conversation, I started to see the possibility and I said, let's explore a little further. That's what this Master class is going to allow you to do.

Mel Abraham [00:46:59]:

Have an open mind to look at what is possible in your business, even if this isn't on your radar, because it wasn't, but it's not leaving anymore. So it's something that is going to be entrenched and part of our overall business strategy going forward because I truly see the power in having native, authentic conversations with an audience that you care about to deepen the loyalty and to extend the longevity of the relationships with our customers. And so I just can't thank you enough for being here, Nadasha, to be so open to sharing for my audience, for me and the work that you and Kyle and your whole team has done. Are there anything that we should say before we finish up and all that?

Natasha Willis [00:47:52]:

No. Well, first I want to thank you for taking the time to have me on here and also for candidly sharing from your side in terms of just the experience of you guys going through implementing this into your business, because it is something new. But it just makes me so happy that it has made such a big shift in the business for the better. And in terms of any last things, I mean, like I said, I'll say it again, I am truly here to be a resource. So you are more than welcome everybody who is listening, watching, et cetera, to reach out to me on Instagram anytime and ask me any questions that you have. My handle is Natasha T. Willison. I'm sure it'll be on the page as well that Mel mentioned.

Natasha Willis [00:48:28]:

Sign up for the masterclass if you want to dive deeper, but if you've just got a quick question too, feel free to reach out and mention that you found us through this interview and I'm more than happy to at least give you an idea of how this might get integrated into your business. Share examples with you data, help you kind of sort out those first couple of steps. So just here to help however we can when it comes to better understanding this stuff and starting to get that ball rolling.

Mel Abraham [00:48:52]:

Oh my God, thank you so much, Natasha. It's always fun just having conversations with you and being able to mix it up a little bit and understand what's going, y'all, when you watch her operate and understand all the platforms and everything, it's sheer genius and everything. So I'm going to be there. Even though I'm in the game, I always learn something new, so I will.

Natasha Willis [00:49:14]:

Be.

Mel Abraham [00:49:16]:

So I want you to be there. We'll make sure that's hooked up in the show notes and if you have any questions, reach out to Natasha, reach out to me and I look forward to seeing there. Natasha, thank you so much for being thank you.

Natasha Willis [00:49:28]:

I appreciate you and I appreciate everybody who has tuned into this episode and I hope that you gained quite a bit from today. Again, whether you can implement now or you've got it on your radar, know it's going to be coming. And so I'm excited for you to be diving into this and having taken the time to learn about this.

Mel Abraham [00:49:44]:

Awesome. As you all know, I always sign off with this, always, always strive to live a life that outlives you. Cheers, see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneurship. With me. Your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the Affluent Entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to Melabraham.com/group, and I'll see you there.