I was in San Diego all last week at the Traffic and Conversion Summit, one of the largest conferences in North America. There’s a lot I learned, and a lot of amazing people that I was able to network with. Today, I’m going to be covering a couple key points and key takeaways I learned while at TNC.

 

CONVERSATIONS ARE THE NEW LEAD

 

Number one of what I want to talk about is conversations.

Conversations are the new lead. These are text, email, website chatbots, and Facebook Messenger. You want to make sure that you’re utilizing these to their maximum potential. Make sure that you’re at least present and responsive on each channel — Facebook messenger, website, text, and email.

Everyone communicates on a different channel and on a different level. You can text someone for an hour or two, but you might never pick up the phone with that person. You can email back and forth all day, and you still won’t get on the phone with that person. The same thing with phone — they might call you every time they need you, but they’ll never text or email their response. So, your job as a business owner should be to make sure that you’re creating conversations on these channels because that’s the new lead. You want to do these offline and online. Utilize all those channels.

You can’t expect someone to opt in and just click on your offer to get your free estimate, 10% discount, or whatever it may be. People want to talk to you. They want to hear from you and your team. They want to know what you can offer and how it’s valuable to them.

And some of these can be automated. We can create chatbots on Facebook Messenger. Now, you don’t want to totally remove the human factor here. You just want these to be a gateway for your customers to speak with you, and then you step in for that human-to-human interaction.

We can keep going on and on but realize that conversations are key. So make sure you’re utilizing these conversations as much as possible.

 

BUILDING YOUR COMMUNITY

 

Next thing would be community.

Community is your brand — whether it’s your Facebook page, Facebook group, memberships, clubs, or forum.

Right now, Facebook is favoring Facebook groups. From your Facebook page, it’s easy to create a community through Facebook groups. You want to post there. You want to bring your customers there and bite them. You need to live and breathe in your Facebook groups so your customers can share their stories, issues, and success all on that page. And you might have your other customers stepping in for you. When that happens, you won’t always have to manage and answer your Facebook group.

Choose your brand ambassador to help you manage those pages. These are your favorite customers — the ones who favor you and the ones who are utilizing your services all the time — because that’s where you can get your best results.

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