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Likability - Your Secret Weapon to Successful Bot Marketing

howdy chatbot fans and welcome back And this lecture will be continuing on talking about principles of persuasion, ineffective chat design. And we're going to talk about likability, which is what I call your secret weapon in every single bot message you send. And the principal is really straightforward. It's really simple, right? We prefer to say yes to requests from people we know and like um this is something which is just true in all um aspects of human interaction, especially when we decide which brands to buy from. We often buy from brands that we like the way their website looks. We like the production quality of their videos, all different sorts of subtle, irrational cues help us figure out where to buy from now, since we don't know or are users don't know our chat bot, right? Not a person even if it was a live chat representative, they're not gonna know us personally, we're not going to really be friends. We need to at least make them likable. Okay, so there's a bunch of differ...

ent things that you could do when you're building your chatbots and you're thinking about how to actually craft your messages to make these chatbots likable and just going back this is why these chapters in my mind are so important because you're gonna learn all the technical steps in building chatbots and all the different features and all the different widgets and what's the difference between an rss blast and a chat blast and a drip campaign and to click to messenger link, but none of that stuff is important if you can't write in a way that appeals to other humans in a way that's likable in a way that gives a sense of urgency and it gives a sense of um, and develops that feeling of reciprocity and commitment. Those are things that we spoke about previously, which is why these things are really important and it's really worth thinking about. So humor, humor is a trait that people tend to like. So don't be afraid to make your chatbots funny. It's in fact, you should be afraid to make your chatbots boring and not funny or unfunny. Um, we've seen chatbots that are humorous that have sort of tongue in cheek, just doesn't have to be like, you don't have to be a professional comedian. I'm certainly not a professional comedian. Um, but there's a certain element of, of looseness and natural language and authenticity and humor that comes across in a very likable way when you're building your chatbots, um, give your chatbots good taste. Okay, this is interesting people like people with good taste. So you could send cool gifts. Um, tasteful images and videos from around the web. Again, this is going back to one of the previous points of using instagram posts or other social media posts that have been successful or just interesting images that could spark a conversation that shows that you have good taste that you are aesthetically refined to things like that. Those are things that will make your chatbot more likable people like people that are authentic, Right? So it's okay to be genuine, discuss things that you don't like them, you can complain about things. Ask your users about their frustrations and their fears. That's a really important um and a really good technique and good advice when it comes to building your chatbots and this applies to all different messages, you could be sending out a drip campaign or specific chat blast or you could be running click to messenger adds these elements should be used in each area of the of communication, be open with users and ask users to be open with you. Another interesting technique is to ask questions that will give your bot an opportunity to complement a user. Alright, we'll talk about a couple ideas for that in the in the next slide people are more willing to comply and engage with people who have similar interests in backgrounds as them and this is very similar to what we just spoke about with regards to social proof and tribal identity. If you remember that a big part of social proof is looking to like people to see what is good and what is appropriate. This is a very similar concept and likability if you could convey that we are similar and we have similar interests and similar backgrounds and desires that will create a sense of likability, a sense of ease and a greater desire to buy from you as opposed to an unknown competitor that hasn't done as good of a job as you're going to do with getting people to like your brand through better bot marketing. So let's take a look at likeability and body design. I have a um a little bit of a chat bot over here that you can take a look at the picture, but in a couple of minutes we're going to actually just go through, I'll show you the back end of that boat again. So here's a couple examples. E commerce brands can send cool images and videos from around the web and engage users in a conversation about the subject of that video or photo successful brands understand that you don't have to have a picture or a video or a topic of conversation that's directly related to your products or services and that's why they're successful because they understand that if I can engage you in something interesting, even if it's a little bit off topic, it creates that sense of likability and that sense of engagement and that's very important. That's really powerful. Um, a client of ours, which is a company that makes stand up desks, desk risers. Um they might send out a chatbots or chat blast or drip campaign complaining about back problems that they're experiencing in their office, right. This is really interesting stuff. It's unique and sort of like, I don't, I think the chatbots are really the only venue and channel that something like this could really work. They can complain about their back problems and they can engage users to talk about their own back problems and their own um, health issues related to sitting in an office cubicle all day and sort of just open up that conversation which is so authentic and so natural and it really works to drive engagement. And again, it's the point is not to get a sale from every given chat. The point is to keep people engaged with your brand. As we've spoken about funny gifs, emojis work incredibly well and any type of emoji, there's not a specific set of emojis that worked better than others. All emojis worked increased conversion rate and increase engagement rate. And we have done these tests um, specifically, and we have found these results to be true across a variety of industries and verticals. If you're advertising a local business and this is really huge engage in conversation about the user's hometown. So for a negotiating seminar that we're advertising in buffalo new york and we're only advertising to people who are in buffalo new york, there's a, there's a huge amount of information that we could talk to with the user that's relevant to them in their hometown. Um, and just showing that we've taken, even if the user knows it's a bot. The user also knows that the brand designed the body, right? So just showing that the, that the brand has, has has the sense and has the awareness to talk about something that the that is dear to the user will increase affinity towards your brand. It will increase, it will increase likeability will create that sense of likability with your brand. A client of ours that sells a parenting course for newborns uh talks about their pains and joys of newborns while establishing likability. So you know, here's a terrible story of our toddlers and of our some of our customer toddlers, how difficult they were been where the parents almost went nuts and threw the baby out the window. What is what is your worst story been? And they start typing and it's like you see these incredibly authentic interactions that are taking place even when the people who were interacting with know that it's a chat bot on the other side. And all these things serve to increase just this this like overall sort of esoteric and difficult to describe intangible sense of likability. Um liking Very, very powerful now in your own business. Think about different ways that you could establish likability in your own body design. Again, the same exercises we've done in the previous couple of lectures, write down 2-3 different techniques or strategies that you can implement in your own bot and how you would talk to increase that likability whether it means giving your body some humor, giving them good taste. Um sending out tasteful videos or images opening up to them in a personal way, asking them to open up to you in a personal way, sharing some like sharing some similar, similar background like hometown or tastes or interests think of some different ways and you'll see once once you start taking pen and paper and actually trying to put down in writing different ideas that you would have for making these chatbots likable, you'll see that you'll start getting some really really great ideas. Now let's quickly jump into the back end of mobile monkey again and take a quick look at this little chat about that. I put together to that illustrates likability. So here we are in the back end of mobile monkey again and we're gonna quickly test this page and open messenger and again we're gonna do this on a desktop computer and you're seeing above here is the old thread from the same test but over here it says hey Isaac, what's your favorite horror movie now? This is an example bought for a client of ours that runs one of the biggest independent streaming services for indie movies and horror films. So we're trying to get people to sign up for a free trial for um the streaming service. Okay, but are we just gonna blast out to thousands of people. Sign up for a free trial? No, we're gonna talk to them like real people, we're gonna use psychological principals to increase engagement rate and that's what makes these bots so incredibly successful. So hey Isaac, what's your favorite horror movie? The shining 14 08, The ring friday the 13th, Let's say I choose 1408. Okay, no way. And then it's typing like, like, you know, like this is very humanistic, right? That's also my favorite horror movie John Cusack was fantastic in 1408. No, I think it's one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations, We're usually able to offer new customers a seven day free trial to our streaming service. But since we're both Stephen King fans, I'm able to extend the trial to 30 days if you sign up today, no credit card required. What do you say? And again, getting me to take a stand. What do I say about that offer? Right. That goes back to which principle commitment and consistency. And I'm gonna click that's great. That's the only option. That's fantastic. Isaac Here's a link to your extended free trial, 30 day free trial and click the link. Go to the website. Right? So that is likability and action. We've established a connection with both team and King fans. My favorite movie, your favorite movie, I'm gonna use that to offer you a free trial. That's extended, makes it increases that sense of satisfaction that you're getting a better deal than other people because we have this sort of, You know thing going on with the two of us that we both like Stephen King 1408 was our favorite movie um when you could apply things like this to your business, uh it's very, very powerful. So think of a couple of ideas that you could implement with regards to likeability and how you might even combine that with some other principles of persuasion, that persuasion that we've that we've spoken about until now and you'll you'll start having some ideas for chat bots that are going to be enormously enormously successful in the very next lecture, we're gonna talk about the last principle and what I would say is the most commonly used principle. It could also be very misused, but when used is very, very, very potent and very, very powerful. And that's the principle of scarcity. So, stick around, stay tuned. And I will see you guys in a couple of minutes in the very next lecture.