8 Benefits to Investing in a Chatbot Instead of An App

No matter what industry you work in, you need to offer your customers opportunities to interact with your business efficiently. In recent years, many organizations have developed their own apps for this very purpose.
However, apps don’t offer the kind of personalized or conversational service that comes from interacting with an individual. That’s why you should consider developing a chatbot for your company, instead of an app.
Chatbot technology has improved dramatically over the last few years. It won’t be long before bots can authentically recreate the experience of talking to a human. The following are just a few reasons to consider focusing on chatbot development for your business, instead of an app.

You Don’t Need to Convince Anyone to Download Anything

Here are a few of the major downsides of apps:

• Apps take up space on a customer’s device
• They can be expensive
• It’s not always easy to convince people to download your app, especially among the over 2 million available

With chatbot tools, that’s not a problem. You can create your own chatbot that’s accessible via a service your customers already use, like Facebook Messenger.
They’re much more likely to make use of your product if they don’t have to download anything first. According to a recent survey, 56% of current Facebook Messenger users expect to use the platform more frequently in the future, making it a very powerful tool for marketers.

Chatbot Technology Reduces Business Expenses

A strong chatbot solution can theoretically take the place of a customer service representative. By offering your customers this type of chatbot tool, you’ll be able to save money on hiring, while still offering the personalized experience individuals desire from customer service.
This is ideal for any company, but it’s especially smart for startups that need to grow quickly while sticking to a strict budget. Experts already predict that chatbot development will reduce business costs by as much as $8 billion per year by 2022.

Customers Can Use Chatbot Technology More Easily

Although a talented UX designer can build an app that’s intuitive and easy to use, nothing truly matches the convenience of interacting with another person. When customers open an app, they still need to click on the right icons or buttons to access key features. This can get confusing.
Chatbot technology is different. If you want to access a feature, you simply tell the bot to open it. It’s a much more human and conversational experience.
For example, when we developed VICE’s VICELAND chatbot, we made sure one of the key features included was a simply command to access a full show schedule. We also let viewers select their favorite shows, and our chatbot tool then reminded them when that show aired. The entire experience begins with a personal greeting from Action Bronson, one of VICE’s most recognizable hosts.

Create Your Own Chatbot to Help Develop Emotional Connections

Some of the most successful companies in the world, like Apple, brand themselves so well that customers actually develop an emotional attachment to the brand.
While this is possible to achieve with an app, it’s not easy. You need the right combination of intuitive UX and appealing UI to trigger a genuine, strong emotional response in a user.
Meanwhile, a chatbot platform is much more effective in this respect. If you take the time to give your bot its own “personality,” you can create a brand that truly resonates with customers.
Partnering with a chatbot agency will make the process of individualizing and branding your bot even easier. As experts in the field, they understand both how to build the most successful chatbots, and also how to market them effectively as a representation of your brand that encourages customer loyalty.

Bots Can Help You Learn About Customers

A typical chatbot will answer user questions. By keeping track of what types of questions people commonly ask, the chatbot could help you learn a lot more about your customers. This makes it easier to address their needs quickly. Additionally, it helps you optimize your marketing strategy to reach customers in the most effective manner possible. When you understand how to personalize the marketing experience, your campaign is likely to become much more successful.

Building Your Own Chatbot is Cheaper Than App Development

Although quality chatbot development isn’t free, it can be much less expensive than developing an app. Again, services like Facebook Messenger allow companies to host their chatbot technology on existing platforms. Thus, the process of creating your own chatbot takes less time and less money than building your own unique app.
A top chatbot agency includes a self-service chatbot platform, which makes the technology even more accessible, customizable, and affordable. With access to chatbot tools like these, businesses can more easily deploy the technology and begin leveraging the effectiveness of conversational marketing experiences.

The Tech is Improving

Chatbot technology is improving at a very fast rate. More and more organizations are going to embrace this software in the near future as conversational marketing becomes the norm. By developing a chatbot for your business now, you’ll have an advantage over the competition, and you’ll be able to easily implement new features as they emerge.

Your main goal should always be to offer customers the best possible experience at the lowest cost. While an app may have been the ideal solution for the last few years, chatbot development is the wave of the future. Get started on yours now.



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15 Books That All Entrepreneurs Should Read

I’ve read hundreds of books on entrepreneurship and business but some have stood far above the rest.
This is a list of 15 books that are essential reads for aspiring entrepreneurs. Reading them will improve your business mindset, soft skills, productivity, and more.
They are divided into four main categories for convenience.

• 1 Business and Entrepreneurship
  • 1.1 The E-Myth Revisited
  • 1.2 The 4-Hour Workweek
  • 1.3 The Millionaire Fastlane
  • 1.4 The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  • 1.5 Start With Why
• 2 Startups
  • 2.1 The Lean Startup
  • 2.2 The $100 Startup
  • 2.3 Zero to One
• 3 Marketing
  • 3.1 Traction
  • 3.2 Trust Me, I’m Lying
  • 3.3 Tribes
• 4 Soft Skills and Miscellaneous
  • 4.1 The Obstacle is the Way
  • 4.2 Think and Grow Rich
  • 4.3 How to Win Friends and Influence People
  • 4.4 Predictably Irrational
• 5 Summary

Business and Entrepreneurship

These books are focused specifically on creating and running businesses to build wealth.

The E-Myth Revisited

The E-Myth Revisited was published a few years after the original (The E-Myth), and is focused on small businesses.
The main concept is that most people who start businesses run them with an employee mindset. They understand the technical jobs, but don’t have the big picture knowledge to create a smoothly functioning and profitable business.
This book emphasizes adopting the right mindset to build processes that will allow an entrepreneur to run their business, rather than work in it.
It’s an easy read, and largely focuses on a hypothetical business case study.
Keep in mind that this was written before the Internet was really a thing, but the principles still apply.

The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek is the book that really made a name for its author Tim Ferriss.
It tells the story of how he was able to turn his supplement business into a lifestyle business.
Instead of working 40+ hour weeks, he was able to reduce his workweek to around 4 hours, while still remaining profitable.
He did this through a lot of streamlining, delegation, and automation. He’s also a big fan of leveraging the Pareto principle.
The book details everything he did to transform his business, and shows you how you could apply the principles to your own.

The Millionaire Fastlane

This title scares off a lot of people (including myself) at first, because it does sound like a get rich quick book.
But it’s far from that. Give it a chance.
The first big chunk of The Millionaire Fastlane focuses on the author’s background, and how he studied average people who went on to achieve great wealth.
The purpose, above all else, is to remove the mindset that the path to wealth is to get a job and invest money safely. DeMarco loathes the thought of only having wealth when you’re too old to fully enjoy it.
Instead, he proposes the “millionaire fastlane,” a track to unlinking your time from money. This is the only way to achieve exponential wealth growth.
Despite the terminology sounding a bit sketchy throughout the book, the writing is captivating, and the principles themselves give you a lot to think about.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers

I love books written by authors who have had sustained success; It gives the writing more credibility.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things was written by Ben Horowitz, who’s one of the most respected entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. That raises the bar of your expectations for this book and you won’t be disappointed.
In particular, this was written for CEOs, and entrepreneurs who want to be CEOs.
It mostly focuses on how to be an effective leader. This includes both how to decide what needs to be done, how to define it clearly, and how to get others to help you accomplish it.
Ben also has written a ton of posts on his blog, I highly recommend reading a few to see if you enjoy his writing style.

Start With Why

Start With Why is both focused on business, but also on psychology and mindset.
The main message is that all great leaders do one thing differently than others. Instead of focusing on what they want to accomplish, or how they’re going to do it, they start with why it’s important.
This conclusion is based off of research that Simon Sinek (the author) did, looking at leadership traits of people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Steve Jobs.
If you’re looking to build a brand, movement, or even just be a more inspiring leader, this book will have at least a few great takeaways for you.

Startups

Startups are a special kind of business, so I placed these recommended reads in their own category.

The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup is a framework developed by Eric Ries. It’s a great book to read if you feel like there’s too much luck involved in creating a successful business.
It’s very different from most business books, because it focuses on a scientific approach to validating ideas, building products, and selling them.
The core concept and motivation behind the book is that most people get a business idea, spend months or years building it, and then find out that no one even wants to buy it.
Instead, Ries proposes to get data as soon as possible, and keep revising your idea and product until it matches what a market really wants.
This approach will help you minimize wasted time and investments, and give you a better chance at creating a thriving business.

The $100 Startup

If you’re not interested in making tens of millions, but would rather create a business that allows you to live comfortably and with freedom, The $100 Startup is a must-read.
Chris Guillebeau started by finding 1,500 people who have built successful small businesses (earning $50,000+ per year), without a large investment. Many cost less than $100 to start, hence the title.
He chose the very best of those to create case studies and identify patterns that others could follow to achieve similar success.
In short, he found that people were able to find an intersection between their skills and knowledge and what the market will buy. His writing makes it clear how these connections were made, and with a little thinking you could do the same.

Zero to One

If you feel like all the good ideas are taken, this book will change the way that you see how businesses fit together in a market.
It’s written by Blake Masters based on direct input from the well-known entrepreneur (and billionaire) Peter Thiel.
Unlike The $100 Startup, Zero to One focuses on creating startups with huge potential.
Instead of taking an idea that’s already been done and improving it, he proposes a thought framework leading to true innovation.
He proposes to niche down and find a problem that only you (or very few) have the unique perspective, skills, resources, and timing to solve. In doing this, you essentially create your own monopoly that no one can replicate.
This is definitely not a “how-to” book, but he does offer practical steps.

Marketing

Being able to create a product is useless if you can’t get anyone to buy it. Marketing is an area that most entrepreneurs struggle with, but these books will help you understand how to use it effectively.

Traction

Anyone can build a product, but it’s difficult to get people to use it.
Traction is all about gaining traction, more specifically, choosing the right marketing channel using a 3-step process called “Bullseye.”
Those 19 channels include blogging, SEO, content marketing, and so on.
This isn’t a revolutionary book, but it will certainly clear up where you should focus your marketing efforts on.
Alternatively, you could just read a ton of blog posts written by the most respected marketers, but consider this book a shortcut that will save you some time.

Trust Me, I’m Lying

I wasn’t sure whether or not to include this book on this list, as it’s kind of depressing.
Ryan Holiday is a highly successful marketer, and wrote Trust Me, I’m Lying to really expose how modern online media works.
He clearly explains and shows why you see so much clickbait, even on what used to be respected websites.
With that understanding, you can either use it to manipulate media to your business’ benefit, or just develop better reading habits.
Either way, it’s an enjoyable read.

Tribes

Seth Godin has written a collection of great books, but Tribes is the one I chose to include on this list.
The concept of a tribe is a group of people that are connected together through an idea, a leader, or each other.
This book does require a lot of thinking on your part if you’re going to get a lot out of it. It’s not explicitly practical.
Godin analyzes different “tribes” and explores how they work, in particular, the leadership. If you have a cause or purpose that you’d like to lead and build a tribe around, this is a great book to gain a few insights and show you what to think about.

Soft Skills and Miscellaneous

A lot of your success won’t be determined by your hard skills, but by your social skills and mindset.
The books in this section are not necessarily business books, but will help you be more successful, both in and out of your business.

The Obstacle is the Way

This is the most philosophical book on this list.
The main goal of The Obstacle is the Way is to help you react to failure as well as possible, and turn it into success.
There are several interesting stories included of famous historical figures like John Rockefeller and Ulysses S. Grant.
If you feel like you take failure really hard, and it’s crushing your motivation, this is a good book to read to start to reframe some of these events.

Think and Grow Rich

This is an old book, but Think and Grow Rich has stood the test of time since being released in 1937.
Allegedly, Napoleon Hill studied successful individuals for over 20 years leading up to this book, as well as his others.
This book focuses on 13 principles that he identified in these people, that will lead to riches.
It has a nice balance between being motivational and being practical. One principle involves belief, and thinking clearly about what you’d like to achieve, which may sound a little like something that should be on Oprah. But then another involves careful organization and planning.
Of course some things have changed over time, but there’s a reason why so many successful people today give credit to this book.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

This classic, written in 1936, should be a must-read whether or not you’re an entrepreneur.
How to Win Friends and Influence People contains a series of stories and compelling arguments that will help you do exactly what the title promises.
Some of it will strike you as common sense, but just about everyone can benefit from learning how to connect with others better.
You will learn concepts that will help you get clients, maintain better relationships with them, and have happier employees. These ideas will benefit you in your personal life as well.

Predictably Irrational

Besides just being interesting, this final book has some direct lessons that you can apply to your business.
Predictably Irrational is all about weird human judgment and behavior. Why do we make poor decisions?
Dan Ariely analyzes a variety of psychological experiments to find out what drives certain decision-making paradoxes.

Summary

The most successful entrepreneurs never stop learning, and neither should you.
If you can read just one book a month, you’ll have finished all of these books in just over a year. Your entire outlook on business will be revitalized and improved.

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5 Digital Marketing Experts Share Views on Predicted Trends for 2018

There’s no certainty that yesterday’s digital and social media marketing strategies will work tomorrow. In fact, in my digital and social media experience, full-blown trends that become mainstream, become ineffective and eventually die just as quickly as they come. To understand what the digital marketing trends you should focus on in 2018, we asked 5 digital marketing experts the following questions.

What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

What is the best way to implement these trends?

How will blockchain affect digital marketing in 2018?

There’s a lot of buzz about blockchain as a payment mechanism and how it might affect the digital marketing scene.

Some of our experts believe that 2018 won’t see much development in that regard, while others on the panel have expressed their excitement for the potential that it holds. Read about this and more on this expert interview series.

Before we go into the answers, here is a short introduction to our expert panel.

Ron Sela

Digital marketing expert and social media influencer Ron Sela has acted as Director of Marketing for top companies such as Pagewiz, Klear and Dapulse. He now heads his own consultancy (RonSela.com) and has an influence marketing blog which has been named as the second best globally.

Aaron Ginn

A Silicon Valley Tech guru, Aaron Ginn is considered an early influencer in the growth hacking movement. Named in Forbes 30 under 30, Ginn specializes in product development, data science and digital marketing, and currently heads Lincoln Network, a community of like-minded technologists.

Gary C. Bizzo

Gary C. Bizzo has been an International Business Mentor to over 1000 entrepreneurs, leaders and investors. He’s a published author and has been referred to as one of the 17 masters of Marketing & PR and an incredible resource for entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, and is currently Founder/Partner at Kickstart Ventures Inc.

Eric Enge

Named US Search Personality of the Year and Search Marketer of the Year in 2016, Eric Enge has extraordinary SEO skills and has worked with several Fortune 500 companies. Enge frequently shares his expertise via several prestigious publications, some of which are Forbes, SearchEngineLand and CopyBlogger and is CEO of Stone Temple.

Aaron Agius

With over 14 years of making impact in the digital marketing space, Aaron Agius has worked with high-profile clients such as Coca-Cola, Salesforce and IBM. Agius is an experienced search, content & social marketer who excels at developing enterprise-level digital marketing solutions and is currently Managing Director at Louder.Online.

Ron Sela

1. What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

Chatbots developed using AI technology is one of the top marketing trends in 2018. The chatbots can maintain conversations with customers using machine learning. It gathers information to improve its conversational skills over time. Leading brands like Facebook have already come up with their chatbot platform and chatbot. There are various tools AI based chatbot platforms like ChattyPeople, ManyChat, ChatFuel, and FlowXO which can be used to develop chatbots for websites and mobile apps.

Voice-controlled devices have brought a change to how brands used to develop their content strategy. Leading players like Amazon and Google have introduced their voice-based devices which have sold in millions. This has lead brands to shift their content strategy to include potential customers in this new audio-based channel. Companies are thinking beyond just simple narration and coming up with innovative techniques to engage the audience making it an important trend in 2018.

Predictive lead scoring is another essential trend which has changed the way marketers deal with leads. It produces more value than traditional lead scoring, accurately identifying the potential leads that can be converted to sales. Marketers can now prioritize their leads better and close deals with increased success compared to traditional lead scoring. The system adapts to changing market conditions to provide an accurate result.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

The best way to implement the changes is to develop a marketing strategy with timeline, objectives, and goals along with metrics to evaluate success. The company should create a marketing team that gets the responsibility to carry out the marketing project. The need may arise for collaboration with an external marketing partner who can help to implement the strategy and get access to resources. The marketing team should be aware and educated about the strategy and any specific technique that is going to be applied.

Marketing project management software can facilitate the implementation. It can be used to assign duties, manage campaigns, track deadlines, measure success and gather analytics for creating marketing insights. The results of the marketing campaigns can be measured using the metrics you developed like the number of sales or amount of readers who accessed the content. Changes should be made to the strategy based on insights and changing marketing conditions for better success.

3. How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Blockchain has already proved to be a disruptive technology which can enable real-time automation. The feature of smart contracts allows real-time universal updates which are accessible to all parties. The tamper-proof system is suitable for developing an automated process for formal client agreements. It can replace the multi-layer executive approval process to offer instant approvals eliminating any project delays. Blockchain can also be used to record each stage in the supply chain of contracts. The whole contract lifecycle can be accessed and used to automate supply chain processes like sourcing.

The system ensures that all data and transactions are entirely accurate and accountable creating a reliable and innovative way for marketers to engage with customers and provide improved service. It will also be possible to monitor products across their entire lifecycle and track down to the minutest detail. Blockchain automation will impact marketing strategies by providing a new way of company and customer interaction.

Aaron Ginn

What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

• Movement back towards 1-1 communication
• Death of the “open platform”
• Contact book is king again

What is the best way to implement these trends?

The number one priority should be building up your own direct communication with your customers. Social platforms are now unreliable and there is constant pressure to change algos which impacts organic marketing, forcing companies to paid marketing.

How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Probably will have limited to no impact on marketing as it is a means of contract formation and validation and the vision casting about blockchain hasn’t come to pass. Most of marketing has focused on Bitcoin over blockchain but these haven’t been marketing advances per say.

Gary C. Bizzo 

1. What are the 3 best marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

• Brand marketing will replace Cause marketing. It’s a different way of thinking but brings in the cause and ties it to the corporate vision. Just a different way of seeing it. In the past corporate responsibility to the community was the mantra. Now it’s an executable brand philosophy that is more about how the company manages day-to-day operations.
• Storytelling will be part of new long term play to keep people engaged. However it is done people want to follow the message. Video will continue to dominate the market.
• Machine learning. Marketers will have to embrace the d=idea that they need data collection and analytic tools so they can see patterns and trends faster and quicker than the competition. Google is the leader in this.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

• A company wide realignment in thinking
• Use video to do the storytelling
• Put some money into the best analytic tools then learn how to analyze the data

3. How will blockchain affect marketing in the 2018?

Marketers need to realize a change is coming in the form of blockchain and be prepared to pivot but I don’t see blockchain making major inroads to the consciousness of marketers until the mass market adopts it. We are still a couple of years before prototypical blockchain will be advanced enough for adoption in everyday work.

Eric Enge

1. What are the 3 best marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

The continuing use of Machine Learning by Google is a big trend. What this is driving is three things:

• Google is getting much better at understanding a user’s query-intent.
• Google is getting much better at understanding content depth and quality.
• Google is getting much better at matching content to user query intent.

These trends mean that your business need to focus on creating content that Google will want to select to match up to your targeted search queries. The best way to do that is to focus on how you create the best user experience for someone who enters that search query. If you fail to match up with that, you’ll have a great deal of difficulty in ranking for those queries. Broadly speaking, you can think of this as “aligning your interests with those of Google.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

More and more businesses will create apps for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. There are more than 400M active installs of the Google Assistant, and the Smart Speaker category is growing rapidly, with about 44M US households having one. Users are becoming more conditioned to use voice commands with devices as well, and this will drive more adoption of the digital personal assistants. By developing an app, you enable your business to reach large audiences that currently don’t have that much competition as yet.

Feeding into the digital personal assistant (DPA) opportunity, is the role of featured snippets. When using voice commands to conduct searches via a DPA, you typically get only one response. The great majority of the time this result comes from the corresponding featured snippet that you’ll get if you conduct a types in search on your desktop or mobile device.

As a result, learning how to obtain featured snippets is very important for your business. The basics are to map out common user questions related to your business. Then, create content that answers that question in a direct, and concise, manner. Then on the same page, have additional content that answers the related questions that Google may have. Google does value the more in-depth content, and our research shows that these types of pages are far more likely to get and keep featured snippets.

3. How will blockchain affect marketing in the 2018?

It will take time for blockchain to have a major impact on marketing, and this will unfold over time. In 2018, I’d expect that we’ll begin to see some marketing applications that rely on blockchain begin to emerge. In the longer term, what blockchain has the potential to do is to eliminate the need for intermediaries in advertising. For example, programs like Google’s AdSense program could get replaced, as advertisers will be able to deal directly with the web sites themselves, and the blockchain will provide them with the security needed to be confident in placing those ads.

Aaron Agius

1. What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

The three I’m focusing on most in 2018 are content marketing for thought leadership, customer experience as marketing, and personalisation in marketing.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

For content marketing as thought leadership, I’m continuing to invest in blogging, guest posting and speaking. I’m also advising Louder’s clients to think of marketing from the broader perspective of the full customer experience. As marketing gets more complex, it’s not enough to think in channel-specific terms. Your SEO, content and PPC ads don’t matter if your product isn’t good or if you’re letting new buyers down during the onboarding and activation processes. Marketing has to start thinking bigger.

Personalisation will continue to grow in importance as well, though implementing it can look very different, depending on your company and how you connect with customers. Personalisation might be as simple as incorporating better merge fields into your marketing emails. But it’s also about better segmentation, CTAs that are hyper-targeted to specific pain points and even building out product features for a niched-down audience. There’s no “one size fits all” anymore, whether you’re talking about marketing or the broader question of product development.

3. How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to have that much of an impact in 2018. I think we’ll start to see it in the future – in the way PPC ads are bought and sold, in particular. But I don’t think adoption has been widespread enough yet to really affect marketing this year.

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