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Learn Chatbot from the Expert - Amazon Marketing Tips with Paul Baron - Part 1
December 27, 2021
Learn Chatbot from the Expert - Amazon Marketing Tips with Paul Baron - Part 1
Things we discussed in this session:

A. Part 1

B. Part 2

Things we mention in this session of Seller Round Table:



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Transcription in this episode:
[00:00:01] spk_0: Welcome to the seller [00:00:03] spk_2: roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies with [00:00:06] spk_0: and er not and amy Wiis, [00:00:10] spk_1: Hey, what's up everybody? This is Andy are not with you and we are super excited of paul Barron on today paul, thank you so much for being on. [00:00:18] spk_0: Absolutely. [00:00:20] spk_1: I, I can't believe this is the first, this is your first appearance, right? [00:00:23] spk_0: I know, I know that I have, we have talked on zoom with Amy. Yes. Like maybe it was just a conversation. [00:00:31] spk_1: Yeah, I think it might, it might have been one of our little special episodes, [00:00:35] spk_0: right? I can't remember. I mean yeah, no, no, this is one of those things like I don't, I don't think we've met in public And the weird thing about Zoom is that you meet someone in public that you've met Zoom, you talked to them on zoom like maybe 30 times and then you meet them and you're like, you don't recognize [00:00:54] spk_1: them. [00:00:55] spk_0: Oh, it's because I've talked to 50 times, [00:00:59] spk_1: right? It reminds me of like today I was at the gym after dropping my kids off and there's this guy, I'm like sitting there the whole time in the gym being like, I've seen this dude before and I can't realize like I can't figure out like where he's from and then I realized he's like from one of our favorite restaurants in town. But it took me like the whole time working out like that's all I can think about. [00:01:17] spk_0: It's really funny. I just realized I had the wrong microphones selected. So if it like sounds weird, let me know, I just changed it to the right one. [00:01:23] spk_1: Well, I mean it might sound extra weird, you [00:01:26] spk_0: know? [00:01:29] spk_1: All right. So what we're going to get down to the nitty gritty AARP. Also what we like to start out with is uh, you know, we, we need your street cred, we love to hear the journey to what, you know, what got you to where you are today in terms of your journey. You know, if you want to share is deep is like, you know where you're born, where you raised kind of any past jobs or just kind of the journey on so where you are today? [00:01:51] spk_0: Yeah, So I got started in e com Really more as a consultant and not really, I wouldn't, not consultant. I was working at an agency back in 2010. So well here let me go for the back. I've always been an entrepreneur now I'm an entrepreneur. When I was younger I was an entrepreneur. Um, I always wanted to start businesses and so I would, I started several like businesses and I say that lightly because you know legally we were in LLC like I registered with the state. So technically speaking, we were a business. Um, but like I did a video production company when I was younger and um, I grew up super poor, like I didn't really have much money and which is one of the reasons why I have braces today. You can't really see that, but you can't afford, you know that sort of stuff. When I was growing up and so I couldn't afford the camera equipment for this videography company. So I was borrowing it was borrowing camera equipment to do wedding videography and I quickly realized that wedding videography is absolutely terrible. Um, so it was one of my businesses and I mean there's a lot of reasons. I mean you could make it work, but yeah, it's, you know, you miss a shot. Like you missed the first kiss and well you can't go, oh sorry, hey guys cut just everybody go back to your marks and all right roll film, okay shoot action. Now you know, you can't do that. So I had a couple incidences where nothing that bad. So I did uh man um, yeah web development, I started a web development agency called barking pineapple with a best friend of mine. And this was because I was like, I feel like I'm good at design and um, there's, you know, there's web design and I remember when you were starting, I was talking to a friend about, about web film. I need to call him up and ask him if he remembers this conversation because it was like the nucleus newbie newbie question that you could ever do. Like it was literally like, so you know, you will quickly explain like how you turn a graphic design into a website. It was like like no big deal like and he was like well yeah you have to learn how to do like coding and stuff, and I was like wait so you mean that you can't just design it and then it turns into a site and I started a company doing a company uh doing web development and we were charging $100 a page um and I was like you know it seems like a good pricing model um ended up leaving that, I was thinking it was 2000 and eight, and um obviously surprisingly we weren't making money weird um and I got hired on at at an agency And 2010 and um there's a whole like cool story around all that and I can get into it if if you guys want later, but it was just like really don't you guys believe in God or anything, but it was a very like I just feel like it was like divine providence, like how everything was set up, it was super cool and um got hired in honor of this agency and um I don't have a four year degree, I went to school actually to be a pastor um in Australia never completed that because I got home, got stuck in America and so I was always just trying to like scrape so all the businesses right? So like the wedding videography business that was post coming home and then the the web development business that was post coming home because I was like I have to do something, no one is going to hire me to do a real job because I don't have a degree and you know I have you know they always say like bachelor's degree required. Um Anyway so I got hired on to this agency and I was a actually hired on as a project manager now amy you are an incredible project manager like S. O. P. Like you're really good at that sort of stuff, like I am terrible. [00:05:35] spk_1: So [00:05:36] spk_0: I'm a I'm a visionary, I'm a I'm like great I'm a salesperson marketing. I'm and that's where I am like a geek out with marketing right? Which is why I do chatbots and influence your stuff now. But back then is you know I was young and figuring out what I did and I they were offering me money and I was like yes I can do that. Uh And I was like so what does a project manager do? I was like I'm a manager, I manage people. I was quickly moved into a sales role and this agency was a web, it was actually web they did web development but they were more of a web marketing and then paid search marketing firm. And so that was where I really cut my teeth in what S. C. O. Was what PPC is what ECM is and all of these things and I I just am a perpetual learner. I'm always learning. I'm always reading um generally a mix of like uh fantasy fiction or fiction and actually, you know, nonfiction, but um always reading and always learning. So because I was selling S. E. O. Services and ECM services, they moved me out of the project management role in like, like two months because it was terrible, but I'm really good at sales. So a salesperson um over my course of time there, I became the director of channel sales, which is kind of like a brand partner manager sort of thing, and was fired I think in the december 20 12, I think it was. And you know, at that point in my life I had just gotten just gotten married Um two years earlier. And um you know, I feel like all everything that I was trying to do up until that point in my life was just cut short. Like I wanted to go to school to be a pastor, that was cut short, I couldn't go back to school, that was cut short. I got a job and I was trying to succeed and that was cut short and I just felt like I just absolutely immense failure. And there's a difference between failing which is essential to success in identifying yourself as a failure. Like, like deep down in your soul, like you intrinsically believe there's something thought about you and that you are a failure. And it took me a really long time in counseling and all sorts of stuff to get through that. But because of my work at this agency, a lot of our clients for really local small businesses and it was like, we're worldwide nationwide. But in my city I would always go to the chamber events and go to the networking events for like young professionals and all sorts of things. So people knew me as the guy to talk to when you had questions about S. E. O. And questions about search marketing and digital marketing, because today now where I'm at speaking on stages and everything, that's just how I am, I want to help people. And so the thing that would always pissed me off is that with S. C. O. And SCM, there's so much like voodoo magic, there's a lot of room for people. They throw acronyms around and they sound like they know what they're talking about and they take advantage of people. And so I had built a reputation in the community is somebody with integrity that wants to help people. And so um in that two year interim, I was like, okay, we'll start another web development company. So I started catalyst media group in 2014, the same year that our son was born, bo was born and you know, started starting a company when you have a brand new baby. And that one was actually moderately successful, meaning that we were actually making money. Um I think your best month was like $9,000 or something. So it wasn't like for me that was huge because it was the most money I'd made him in business at that time, um but it was enough to pay the bill, so I was working nights as a waiter, so fast forward to March of 2015, and we had seen advertisements for a sm and so my background again in digital marketing and helping other brands grow in search engine optimization, like for those of you guys that don't know, Sm was one of the original courses on selling on amazon. My background in up to this point was working with brands, helping them develop themselves and market themselves and so, um I always took it from a brand approach, so when we developed our products, we were looking in areas that we had passionate, so baby products because we had at that point in eight months old, and so that was kind of the genesis of our selling on amazon and ever since then, um it seems like, I mean it is a lot of hard work and the hard work pays off, but it just almost feels like accidental success, like we got in, we got under the Rachel ray show somehow, we got in through some pr efforts and in year two and we continue to win awards for our brand in our, in our products and, and one thing after another, and a lot of what I have done that has helped us become successful in our business, you know, leveraging, influencers, leveraging, grassroots pr leveraging chat marketing. Um I began starting to teach, I began, I started to teach chat marketing specifically back in 2018 and we actually had the very first ever course on chat marketing. Um we even be Ezra Firestone a market like anybody, any course that you see now, like we were actually first um we developed basically every strategy for amazon sellers. That strategy is still used to this day. Um so anybody that teaches this is like most of the time they learned from us, which is cool. Um and last year I transitioned into doing services uh you know, with the chat agencies. So I've got my hands on a lot of fingers in a lot of bowls or whatever. Um but yeah, getting started on amazon it was, we had a problem and we didn't take the normal, I mean we took the product research and everything, but we looked at the problems that we had and um you know, we developed a line of reusable swim diapers that are adjustable to fit kids from birth through three years, listening to our audience, we decided to start developing largest sizes and um now we have sizes up through adult that are still adjustable because of demand and listening to them and like modifying our stuff and um you know, we have rash guards and we're developing swim hats and uh, last night I got an email from a distributor in Mexico that works with Mexico's largest retailer that found us. He had Basically, he's letting go there, the brand that was like the brand that established, we used to swim diapers back in the 1980s. They have a retail footprint worldwide there huge brand and he's dropping them and asking if he could pick us up because of the fact that we built a premium brand and he feels like they're brand direction is going less than premium. So, um, yeah, so that's where I am today and it was really kind of all over the place. I don't know if that necessarily answer your question, but um, I don't know uh just an entrepreneur at heart and problem solver really, [00:12:31] spk_1: I love that, I love that, that back story and that's why we asked this because I feel like, you know, a lot of people kind of, you know, I've heard of people in the amazon space, but don't kind of know the whole story, you know, their whole journey and I think that's uh really important for people to know because there's so much still to this day, there's still people who think that you can, you know, spend five grand jump on amazon and then get your Lambo like six months later, right? But they don't realize majority of the people, you know, they might not have been amazon might not have been their first business, but they've been doing stuff for a long, long time and had had a lot of failure a lot of roadblocks and kind of had to find their way. So I love that, you know, that's one of the reasons why I love um you know, kind of getting that that back story. So that's that's fantastic. Um you might be old enough to remember. So I always I always laughed about chatbots because I was like, yeah, I was doing chatbots when I was 19 years old in college about 20 date myself, like 24 years ago. There was a thing called I. C. Q. And there were like the rudimentary chatbots back then where I was using it to affiliate to um kind of spam back then, you know, it wasn't really jackpots were so new that there wasn't even like rules against that. But like, you know, message people would be like, hey, do you want high speed internet click this link, you know, so it's so cool to see uh that that technology and how, you know, it's kind of like VR was has been around for years. But the progression to where it's finally at the point where it's usable, it's cool, it's, you know, it's more mainstream now. Uh So that's so that's awesome. Speaking of chatbots, let's kind of get into the nitty gritty for people who are listening to have met, you know, I've heard the term chatbots or, or you know, um chat marketing, things like that. Can you kind of give a basic kind of overview of what that is and you know, maybe how somebody could get started with that just from the basic, [00:14:16] spk_0: I mean, so chatbots are in a nutshell, I mean, so you kind of have like a couple families of chatbots really. So in a nutshell is just automating chat, right? So that goes without saying, but most of the time people think of chatbots or at least when outside of the amazon space or even like people that are new to chat bots, they think of a chatbot as like, uh, you know, uh, incredible chat widget on website that helps with customer service, which that is a chat bot. Um and when I talk about chatbots, I mean we build those. Um but I really focus on chat marketing automation, which is also a chat bot and most of the time, I actually don't say chatbots, I don't externally to our audience that we're building, I don't use the term bought because it has a very negative connotation, especially in pertaining to Starting with 2016 with all the election scandals and all that sort of stuff. Right? So take accounts, but accounts and being that the majority of the time these chatbots that were building live on facebook messenger. Um now we're building them on instagram direct and in WhatsApp, we have that capability now, which is WhatsApp is brand new, it's in beta. Um, it's been in beta for a while now. It's an open beta um where I think you make might be still invite, I'm not sure, but instagram is open for anybody. So chat marketing automation is basically a series of predefined messages that you write, you determine as a marketer, um, you know where you want people to go, So say cheap internet, um, you want to get cheap internet? Yes, no, they say yes, taking a cheap internet, they say no, okay, cool. Have a great day. I mean it can be very simple or it could be very complex where you're baking in conditional logic. So conditional logic would be something like if so like a good case in point. I just got done speaking at the billion dollars dollar summit and I talked about influencers and how we build our team of influencers with chat marketing and how now, like when we were doing that originally, we had several iterations, but for the longest time we were using messenger as a channel, which is a little bit sticky because most of our influencers are on instagram. So we had some fall off because of that transition, even though instagram and facebook are, you know owned by the same company, it's very distinct brands and you find people that love instagram and hate facebook, which is, you know, whatever. So I was talking about instagram direct and, and I always deliver in my slides or when I deliver my slides, I always have to go through a chat bot, especially when talking about chatbots because um if people haven't gone through and I kind of wanted to be like, here's what it looks like, this is how easy it is. So what I did was a very simple conditional logic where I just asked people if they were a service provider aggregator or seller and um, you know, three choices or both actually it was a service provider aggregator cellar or both. And then I had baked in later on in the flow that if they were a service provider or an aggregator, you know, something like a soft pitch, like okay, awesome. You know, this is great for your just imagine using this for your clients and we love partnering with aggregator. So if you ever have any questions just let me know. So that little snippet right there, it was a very simple flow, it was like handful of steps. I got an email just to deliver the slides through email and then I had a question on whether or not they were seller and then I had later on based on the response to the earlier question, I provided different content for them. And so that one of the power, there's so much power behind chat. Um, but I specifically like the like contextual ization and the ability to deliver information to people when and how and where they choose to receive that information. Um if you've been in the space for a long time, you might hear people talking chatbots are dead. Don't use them. They're terrible. You're going to, you know, if you send traffic to amazon what the chat bot many chat, you're going to, you know, it's going to hurt your listing and quite frankly, that's not true. And the people that are saying that don't know what they're talking about, um it's [00:18:26] spk_1: like what people say to us [00:18:28] spk_0: about google [00:18:28] spk_1: ads, they say if you use google ads, it's gonna destroy your ranking and everything and you don't want to send traffic directly to your listing. And it's like, okay, well we've been doing it for years. So. [00:18:42] spk_0: Exactly. I mean, it'd be like, would be like somebody going to a builder and say why are you building a house that doesn't work if you've never built a house and you try to build a house from scratch and then you build something that fell over and then you assume that every house there after you can't build one, like that's just absurd. It means that what you did was it broke because you didn't know what you were doing and you just needed to learn more or you needed to hire an expert, right? Like it's anyway, so um chatbots are incredibly powerful. Um I like them because again, like when and how and where when and how people want to communicate with um People live on messenger. People live on instagram. People live on WhatsApp. People live and communicate with people over smS. I mean just think when you are going to first get in touch with somebody, what is the first method that you reach out to them? Generally it's chat and then if it's like super serious, you might try to call them right? And that is just how people communicate now. And so as marketers, and if you don't view yourself as a marketer in your business owner, you need to start thinking of yourself as a marketer because you cannot grow your business. If you do not market your business, it is not possible. Um So when and how and where they want to be communicated with. One of the reasons why people are saying chat is dead is because it was back in the day, like you mentioned, you could just spam people and that was way back when but you know, in the 2016 2017, when when Messenger was first rolling out automation, um It was the Wild West and people were making a boatload of money building massive list. I mean we were able to our first foray into chat, marketing chatbots, we built a list of 1500 people in I think it was three days might have been five Um big difference there, right? 1500 people in either three days or five days. It's either 500 or 300 a day. But still that's a massive amount. We were paying about a penny per person. And that insanity now back then then you can put all those people into into a list and then broadcast to them technically you weren't allowed to do that. There was breaking of rules, which is why facebook clamp down on how you can communicate with people because it is in their best interest to keep everybody using messenger. Because they're seeing the science, The population that uses facebook is aging out and the newer generations are not using facebook. And so they're investing all their money into VR into messenger. Into voice recognition apps. All those sorts of things. Because they see that, that is where they need to stay. If they're, if they're going to continue to be relevant, they have to pour money into this stuff. So if people are continually spamming getting spammed on messenger, you will not use it. You'll just uninstall it. You'll switch to telegraph, you'll switch to WhatsApp, you'll switch to something and then facebook is out that all of that equity, all of that money that they put into that, they're out just because um, people are spamming. And so that's why uh, facebook changed the rules. And if you are unfamiliar with those, you can anybody can ask me what those rules are and I'd be happy to help. But yeah, [00:21:57] spk_1: awesome. Yeah. I love that background. So um can you, you kind of give you an example, which I love. Did you? So you did that florida conference, I assume, right? Yeah. That's awesome. I love when, you know, when you go to a conference, one of my, one of the hardest things, especially if you're a newer person is to actually grasp the concept, right? People get up there and they give you all this stuff, but it's so cool that you actually step people through so instantly they can see the value there. That's that's awesome. That was a great idea. Um But can you kind of go through uh you know, maybe some different examples of how you could use uh chat messaging, chat marketing to engage your customer to get new customers, uh you know, kind of some basics on that maybe. [00:22:37] spk_0: Yeah, so I'm gonna give you that this is the easiest, most attainable fruit that anybody can do. And if you're not doing this, you need to start now. Um Post purchase inserts. So product inserts. I, you should see, I keep like every product insert. But I get, and I just, just for reference, right? I [00:23:02] spk_1: do too. I'm like obsessive product inserts. I studied them all I think and he does to really, I just, yeah, I take pictures of them because I have, I have a hard enough time keeping my house clean. [00:23:14] spk_0: Yeah, that's like one of these, this is actually not a product insert. This is just a really amazing branding like this, the branding on this. I kept that because the brand is incredible. It's awesome. Um so there's this one, this is a Truth or dare one. This is all getting reviews. So um I'm gonna reference a couple this, this is my most favorite recently and the reason why I like this one the most, this is the go, this is GoPro, so I'm gonna break this down for you, the psychology of this and why it works. So first and foremost you have one call to action. So is it focusing? Can you see that? Okay, so if one call to action, So that's the what? Right then you have four reasons why we have four wise, why you should do the call to action And then two steps how you can do the call to action. So to house one, what? Four wise now, most people's, I'm going to try to cover the branding on this because I'm going to be picking on this person, this is your brand. I apologize and I will significantly discount the funnel that I built for you since I am outing you um, this one. How was your experience or what does this say? How does your new product make you feel now that I love. That's great. This Uh huh is terrible. [00:24:36] spk_1: Oh no, those people who are listening for those people who are listening, he just opened up this insert and it said happy with a big smiley face or need help with the meth face and which is totally against us as well. [00:24:54] spk_0: And so there's so many reasons why this is wrong. one literally every time Dick and harry, does this. Like if you want to stand out from the crowd, you've got to be unique, right? You don't want to be like, you want to be the donkey in a field of horses maybe or the Unicorn. I'd rather be the unicorn. But you get what I'm saying? Like you want to stand out. Like if if you were trying to earn people's trust and money and the whole purpose of this is they're trying to, they're trying to get reviews right. So that's a review insert. Okay, so this is a product registration insert. But the cool thing about this is you inside a chat funnel, you can switch the bottom of the funnel, ask. Okay, so top of funnel, so top of funnel is, this is top of funnel and these are the lead magnets. These four things, Unlimited cloud storage of your GoPro footage. GoPro footage, no questions asked camera replacement. Up to 50% off mounts and accessories. Up to $100 off your next GoPro. And I love the language to, because up to Like, it could be literally a dollar, but it's up to $100. So um, the great thing about this is there, they're wanting you to subscribe. So that's called action. But you could just change it to register, register your purchase for and then you switch at the bottom of the funnel last. So the bottom of the funnel is where you do, you could ask for a review, you could ask for people to join your community and you know uh on facebook and you know possibly become an influencer or you could ask people, you could up sell them another product. A great way to launch products. You launch products and inserts and you say, hey well you bought this, would you like a free this? Or if you've built a brand where where you don't have to give it away from free and people understand that There's value in paying you bought this, would you like this at 50% off, you can get it today only for Blah Blah, whatever. So they register it. And the cool thing about Chat is its dynamic and you can set a time period like you have seven days right now you can't do that in an insert if it's a coupon code but you can deliver a coupon code through chat that is time sensitive. So a very simple chat funnel would be registered your purchase, they go to a QR code or they go to a short link, go into a chat. Fun and then you gather the minimum amount of information up front that you need and then give them something. Engender goodwill and then if you want more information or if you want them to do something else, that's when you do the ask. The biggest thing that you want to make sure that you're not doing is breaking terms of service like this. Now, the chances that this is going to get caught art, honestly, they're not too high, but all it takes is amazon looking into your packaging ones, right? We have were down Our projections this year on Amazon about 500,000 over what we were rejecting. Um mainly because of amazon screwing stuff up and we don't break the rules. So I have enough problems with amazon when we follow the rules, I don't need to create more by breaking them. So that is one thing that I always highly advocate for people and if they decide in their own, you know whatever they want to break the rules and they want to do it their own way that's on them, you can do that. But you just need to understand that you are breaking the rules and you are running the risk of losing not just your revenue now, but if you exit your company, potentially millions upon millions upon millions of dollars just by trying to take a little shortcut. Thanks for tuning in to part [00:28:23] spk_1: one of this episode, Join [00:28:25] spk_0: Us every Tuesday at one [00:28:26] spk_1: PM pacific standard time for live Q and A. [00:28:29] spk_2: And bonus content [00:28:30] spk_1: after the recording at cellar round table dot com, sponsored by the ultimate [00:28:34] spk_2: software tool for amazon sales and [00:28:36] spk_1: growth seller s [00:28:37] spk_2: c o dot com [00:28:38] spk_0: and Amazing [00:28:39] spk_2: at home dot com.