Want to find a way to interact and engage with your prospects? If you're relying on an old-school "chat box" you could be missing out. Chatbots are the best way to generate more agency new business. They create interact conversational experiences with your prospects so you can engage with them when it matters most.

In this episode, we'll cover:

• What is a chatbot?
• Why use chatbots?
• 2 key features of bots.
• How to use chatbots to generate more agency new business.

Today I chatted with Peter Lisoskie, founder of Bot Nation the innovative chatbot agency he created in 2017. He's also the CEO of inViral, a business and product incubator. He has a background neurological research as well as development of hardware, software and firmware for companies like Hewlett-Packard and Nike. Peter's here to bring us great insights into the shift toward chatbots for the ultimate user-experience so you can capture more leads for your agency… No ifs, ands or "bots" about it! :)

What Is A Chatbot?

A chatbot is a software service or application that allows you to have an interactive conversational experience with your prospects or clients. A chatbot has the ability to take them on a conversational journey far beyond the typical automated chatbox, which usually ends up unread in the user's email inbox.

Why Use Chatbots?

Did you know more people are using instant, private messaging apps than are using big 4 social networking apps, including Facebook?

As agencies, we tend to focus on email marketing, websites, webinars and social media marketing. The problem with these is that they're passive and reactive. For an email campaign, your prospects have too many steps to take: check email, open the email, read the email, click-thru the email… (you see where this is going?)

As we know, email marketing has a 20% open rate and maybe a 1-2% click-thru rate, at best. And if you're using a pop-up chat box messaging to capture leads on your website, it's even lower. If that chat isn't answered before your prospect leaves the site, it goes to their email inbox. And we know what happens to email open and click-thru rates.

However, chatbots are instant and our society is addicted to instant results. Chatbot messaging interfaces with the users Facebook instant message and has upwards of a 95% open rate!

2 Key Benefits Of A Bot

1. It's user driven. The user choose their journey. Bots are set up with a series of questions and the "conversation" develops based on the users' responses. It's a "choose your own adventure" approach to marketing.
2. It's engaging. Your agency prospects like to be engaged and entertained. Using bots will captivate your audience and keep the conversation alive as they connect or identify with the bot.

Using A Chatbot to Generate New Business

To do it the right way, use a chatbot to get the conversation started with agency prospects in a fun and engaging way but have a live human take over at some point.

Let the bot ask the questions, then use those answers to get the prospects to the right place or as a primer for when a live person can respond.

Be honest and let the user know it's a bot. Many brands and agencies will pretend it's a live person, but that's just an insult to the user. Instead, let them know upfront that it's a bot. Heck, I've even named mine Don (as in Mad Men's Don Draper). Giving it a name and a personality helps the user identify with it a bit more.

Then, ask a series of questions to gain understanding of where your prospect is at in their buying journey. You can use this as a pre-qualification sequence and/or to get them in to the right place and able to access the right helpful content.

The key to using bots to keep the conversation alive and continue to nurture the relationships.

Peter's innovative technology has also added in an element of artificial intelligence that can really be mind blowing. You can check it out using the demos at the bottom of the page at: www.botnation.tech