Ep. 428: It's Time to Harness the Power of Bots for Your Business

From Answering FAQs to Following Up with Leads, a Chatbot Could Revolutionize Your Business

Key ideas: 1. Don’t keep it a secret. You’ll have more interaction if you let users know that they are conversing with a chatbot online. 2. Don’t focus on branding before you’ve generated business. Instead, set out to do what you do exceptionally well, and your brand will develop organically from there.

Chatbot automation continues to make huge strides forward, but for a while now, it’s already been possible to talk to a chatbot online and never know it wasn’t a human being with whom you were conversing. But is that necessarily a good thing?

Ray Ellen, our guest this week on Stay Paid and a prior anti-bot enthusiast, doesn’t come down on either side of this question. He merely points out that when users know they are interacting with a chatbot, they tend to explore, play, and push the technology. Furthermore, he notes that the ability of his real estate chatbot to provide users with answers to FAQs and perform initial follow-up with leads is impressive, leaving him to wonder if he would do much better himself.

With Ray at the helm, he and his team of three agents at Pixel Properties continue to test their Manychat and Chime real estate bots, and they’ve already seen an improvement in their efficiency, effectiveness, and speed to lead. What’s more, since they can monitor the chats between visitors to their website and the bots, it’s possible for them to easily jump into an exchange to assist or take advantage of turns in the conversation.

When you listen to his interview, you’ll hear more of Ray’s opinions and use of bots, including his process for following up.

He also talks at length about the “you do you” trend he’s seeing in real estate, where new agents embrace their authentic (i.e., “way too casual”) selves, believing that their tribe will find them and embrace their style. That approach, he says, can cost agents money in lost opportunities. He offers an alternative, more effective approach to how agents can establish their brands.

We hope you enjoy this episode and act on the advice Luke offers at the end. We’d also appreciate it if you took a moment to leave us a 5-star review and comment on Apple Podcasts (we read them on air!). Thanks for listening!

Connect | Resources

• Instagram: DM @Rayzorback with the word Gear, and Ray will send you a list of the gear he uses for his video and podcast productions.
• Free e-book: The Relationship Marketer’s Guide to Branding

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