The Virtual CMO

Conversations That Lead to Conversions with Paul Ace

August 24, 2020 Eric Dickmann, Paul Ace Season 2 Episode 7
The Virtual CMO
Conversations That Lead to Conversions with Paul Ace
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, host Eric Dickmann interviews Paul Ace. Paul is the founder of Amplify C-COM , an AI-based messenger bot system that turns leads into conversations using an 80% human-like experience and a 20% human experience, so you can close more sales and reduce customer support time.

He created a specific solution for each customer, he worked with John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs On Fire and 8 figure trail-blazer Pete Vargas.

Paul shares how to use AI & chatbots in conversation to create a human experience with specific steps to gather information and present solutions in a dynamic way to increase conversions.

amplifyccom

Listener Offer:  Free success mapping session: https://www.amplifyccom.com/home

Eric Dickmann can be found on Twitter @EDickmann and LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/edickmann and my website https://ericdickmann.com

Paul Ace can found online at amplifyccom & LinkedIn @paulace.

For more information about Virtual CMO strategic marketing consulting services, visit The Five Echelon Group at https://fiveechelon.com

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Eric Dickmann:

Welcome to season two of The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group. Our goal is to share strategies, tools, and tactics with fellow marketing professionals that you can use to impact the trajectory of your company's marketing programs. We have candid conversations about what works, and what doesn't, with marketing tactics, customer experience, design and automation tools. Our goal is to provide value each week with a roster of thoughtful and informative guests engaged in a lively conversation. This week, I'm excited to bring Paul Ace to the podcast. Paul is the founder of Amplify. C, COM an AI based messenger bots system that turns leads into conversations using an 80% human-like experience and a 20% human experience so you can close more sales and reduce customer support time. He has helped hundreds of companies improve conversions and reduce the overall cost per acquisition. Some of his clients include John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire and eight figure trailblazer, Pete Vargas. Please help me welcome Paul to the podcast. Paul welcome to the virtual CMO podcast. So glad you could join us today.

Paul Ace:

Thanks Eric, Great to be on the show. Really excited to be here.

Eric Dickmann:

So I've gotta ask you read a little bit in your biography that you've got singing in your background and happened to have an affinity for 50s rock and rollers. What got you into singing and what attracted you to 50s? Rock and roll.

Paul Ace:

So my wife's family, they're all massively into 50s. so we, we started against this in my 50s rock and roll kind of do's and. Then I realize that that suited my voice as well. And my personality with the kind of over the top, excitement. So got into singing and then ended up doing what in singing and that kind of transition to get me into markets in as I was, as a lot of people seem to. It's kind of weird. The amount of people that are in marketing that came from a music background. which is really strange. A lot of the bigger names, in that space, which is really cool. So yeah, that I just kind of transitioned and I was like, actually I like the markets and even more than the music.

Eric Dickmann:

So the marketing, was it related to the music? Were you trying to market your singing abilities or your position as a wedding singer? How did that work? What was the transition?

Paul Ace:

Yeah, we, so we actually created an info product, at the time. And, we were like, we create this thing called a dream money and secrets box. cause it was like, well, that'd be, that'd be great. You know, that's what brides want. They want a dream. What in, so, and then obviously it had a plug for my stuff in there as well. We started creating those. We sold like 250 of them, which was awesome. looking back now, I realized it was a self liquidating offer and I could have literally just scaled the hell out of it, but I didn't. Cause I was like, Oh, it's not making money. so then that transitioned into this other business completely, which was like, okay, well, the brides really won and they won a bridesmaid's dresses at a reasonable price. So we ended up. We built a group of three and a half thousand brides. I asked him what they wanted. They told us it was that. And then we sold over a thousand dresses in, in a few months and they want a little bit. Little bit crazy, until we didn't calculate our return policy. Right. And, then in the space two months we add 24,000 pounds comeback, in two months and Nina went bankrupt. So that was like, that was the moment, when you go, you know, when they say that I pay for any moment and I was, Oh my God, like. Well, like, I can't do this anymore. Right. So it was like, but he was a problem. I couldn't actually stop spending. Because if I'd stop spending all together. Then I wouldn't hide the cashflow to actually monies owed tens coming in. So I knew these returns to coming back and I'm still putting money in Facebook ads that would be months, but loss less and less each month going, I know this money's coming back. I know this is coming back. So, I actually got like a postmaster phobia, which is also known as being scattered the postman every time. every time I heard that, you know, the scanner. When this. There's that beep. Every time that happened. I knew another 300 pounds. I've gone out my account. That's anything to me.

Eric Dickmann:

So what were people doing? Getting married and then returning the stuff.

Paul Ace:

So because we. And this is a thing to learn on return policies, if nothing else is. so we had a three month return policy. I would just like, look, you can return it for any reason, because we want this to compete with the big boys. and so we did that and then after like two months, someone had to return it. Okay. and just go, yeah, I decided I wanted something that was instead, because here's the thing as well. We bridesmaid's dresses. There's an advantage to it. Right. The first advantage is: you don't have, you only have to sell to one person and then you've sold eight. Five six, seven, eight copies of it. So you're like great. So to one person make 400, 500 pounds. however, the negative to that is when one bride maids doesn't like. The eight, they return all of them. So, yeah. Then I got to the stage where I was like, okay, a lot. We can't do this anymore. So I did this graph and anyone who's ever across road, eh, in their business or their life or whatever. Why do highly suggest to do this? I put a line down the middle and a port. What I enjoy, what I don't enjoy and then apply a line across the horizontal that says what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. Right. Or it's a. Thinking more extremes, like what I love and what I hate and what I'm terrible at and what I'm amazing at, what am I a rockstar? Right. And then what I did is applied everything that I'd ever done in business say from, from accounting to marketing to automations, to managing people, everything's applied it all on there. And then the one thing that was at the top was this, And at the time this one thing was messenger. Right? So that was, that was a start point of what then became C-Com Facebook messenger. Yeah. So that's one thing that Manny chat or whatever, that's just a platform. And then I realized actually, like, it's not just manager, it's this whole conversational experience. So then I started going or what about. SMS. What about voicemail? What about personalized video messaging? Like how can we reach these people in like every different platform to create this like amazing customer experience? So that's like kind of how C-Com was born, which is. All about conversational commerce.

Eric Dickmann:

That's a great lead into my next question, which is really what encompasses conversational commerce. There's a lot to it, right? It's not just chat bots and AI. Explain what the term means.

Paul Ace:

Yeah. And, what's really interesting is why hiring a lot more stuff at the moment. And. this is sometimes the hardest thing to explain them. What we've actually done is we've created a, so we use Monday for project management. We've got a board on there. and I've actually got patterns of polls brain as a bot, so they can understand the creative side behind what all that encompasses. So yes, there's a lot of tools. Okay. So, like I said, I'm like messenger, SMS, voice mail person, I video messaging, audio messages, all that kind of stuff. But it's about understanding from a natural standpoint. If you were to have a conversation with someone, how would you speak. Don't speak to someone like you, a robot, speak to them, like they're a human. So for example, when, when you're putting phrase in, in SMS or messenger installed, Then, like, I don't my punctuation. Isn't great. Right. I, and here's the thing. That's kind of intention, a lot of other time. Because when you do it like that, Then people feel it's more human because it's got human errors. Right. so we, when we did, we did a few things at local businesses, awhile back end, it depends on the, you've gotta understand the psychology, but behind the person who is buying. Right. So if you're selling to all the marketers, you're not gonna have this same kind of conversation as you would have with someone who's having a new kitchen fitted. Right. So. If you, I mean, that kind of conversation with someone, I have a new kitchen fitted, you might type something wrong on purpose, put a delay and say, Oh, sorry. I meant to say this. And then they're like, wow, this feels so human, such a human experience. And it's not about deceiving someone. It's about just creating something that feels more human. so we create a 28, 80% human like experience. And then the 20% human experience, because what tends to happen. Yeah, a lot of businesses where this starts is grow. They start to scale. They've been doing all this human kind of touch points and everything, you know, reaching out to people going, I'll let some of this conversation and then they realize they can't do that at scale. He's just, he's just physically not possible. If you're running a million, million dollar, a year business or$10 million a year business, you can't personalize everything from a human perspective. So what we look at is using the parade or parents of all the 80 20 rule, right? 80% of the results come from 20% of the actions. So we go, right. What's the 80% that we can automate to create that top 20% of the action. So then we look at automating the human experience around that.

Eric Dickmann:

So, what kind of businesses do you see are having the most success implementing these tools? Is there a certain category? Is it mostly for sales? Is it a combination of sales and service? Where people finding the most success?

Paul Ace:

Yeah. So why, why are all focus is, and we kind of stumbled on this and then run with it. Is webinars. AC. It's working fantastically well for webinars. we just started client client go from$31,000 a month to 243,000 in 12 weeks. Just because of. and, and that's per month as well. So it means you can scale a lot more rapidly and it meant, it meant that the systems didn't break at scale because, because we've got this process. In there and then we've got this automated followup process as well. So the good thing about it, as well as. We make a lot of assumptions in marketing. Right. We got, Oh, this is why this isn't working it like, okay. If you asked ask to the customer. no, but this is why it's not working. Like how do you know, like what date or if you got to support that. So then we'll look at the data and well, we'll do things like, just find out what went wrong. Say, Hey, what went wrong? And then we'll pull that information to Google sheet and then we'll use our own tools to analyze that data, to find out like the five top keywords are why people are not buying. Cause then we can fix it. So it's also, it's a combination of this conversational process, but then understanding that like meeting the customer where they're at and then taken them over the line.

Eric Dickmann:

I think the webinar example is great because it's well known in marketing that when people commit to something, especially if it's free, It's not really much of a commitment, right? They put it on their calendar. If they have time, if they're not doing anything else, maybe they'll show up. Maybe they won't, but it's not much of a commitment. That's why a lot of event producers charge a fee, even though it's being subsidized by sponsors or, vendors or whatnot, they still charge you because it's a commitment. That means people are going to get on a plane and they're going to show up. So talk a little bit about the methodology that you use around webinars, which makes the difference, which helps it go from just being one of those things that's on somebody's calendar that may or may not be important to them, to something that they feel drawn to.

Paul Ace:

Yeah. So, you just, you mentioned on a very, very key point. We were always looking at is micro-commitments. I, so from the start to the end, like how many micro commitments does it take to get someone to buy? I, and that might be a question of, you know, how many people does it take to change a light bulb? however, what we are, what we like to say. And I learned this from Jason Fladlien is. Eight to eight on average. To be aiming for 150 micro commitments on our webinar.

Eric Dickmann:

Wow. That seems like a lot.

Paul Ace:

Yeah, it seems like a lot. Right. But it doesn't mean is because what people look at when it comes to a micro-commitment, sometimes you think in too much in your head of what that commitment is. And that's not always someone getting them to say directly, yes, I want this. Right. That's the commitment that you want. But the micro-commitment some more of the the nods, right. That, those kind of things. So for example, if you're on a webinar at the end of a sentence, so you're just saying the word, right? Like, as I've just said, write to you twice. No, not in backers and fall. It's not Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. Aye and asking those questions all the time. This go in. So, is that making sense to you? Right. Can you see now how that would work for you? And then what we do, then we look at like, how can we build that in, across the whole conversational process? So by the time they get to the webinar, they're already been pre-framed for the sale. They're already taken a certain amount of, micro-commitments say. For example, one of the things we'll do, if it's a live webinar, one hour before it starts, we use a confirmed event reminder to say,"Hey, just to let you know, webinar's starting in an hour. What I want you to do is just let me know what your number one burning question is because we're going to do a Q and A at the end of the webinar." Right? And because you're doing that just before the webinar starts, then if they're going to commit to you at that point to go, I'm going to give you my question. What do they want? They want the outcome. So they're going to wait. They're going to go, right. I'm going to be on that now because I need to be on there to find out what the answer was to my question. And what that also does is it gives use great market research for free. Right. So we know what people's number one problem is. And then we can use that in our marketing messaging, use a word in that they are using, and then adjust the headlines and everything accordingly.

Eric Dickmann:

So let's stick with this webinar example, because I want to understand more about what this process looks like. So you have some sort of an offer that maybe you've made through email, or maybe it's something on your website that says there's an offer. Are you involving chatbots, follow up emails, SMS as part of a complete flow in this process. So it's not just one thing. It's multiple things to get that attendee to show up.

Paul Ace:

Hundred percent. Hundred percent. Yeah, we, we use, we use all the things I mentioned at the start. Like we use all of those. and then, you know, for each client it's a little bit different, you know, when we take on a new client, sometimes we'll go, okay, well, we're going to get into register three messenger. Sometimes that's the most effective way. Sometimes the most effective way is to get them to register on our landing page. And then on the thank you page, let's say it's a live webinar on the thank you page. We'll go, Hey, go and download the free workbook. But the only way they can get that is going into messenger. Now, at that point, we're looking at. So I always say removal, friction. And then add it back in. So, I know a lot of people, this is why you can't sometimes see why things are bright break-in because there's too many friction points of going out while it could be that it could be, that could be there. But if you remove as much friction as possible, so let's say you just go right. Landing page, email. No name, no phone number? No nothing. Right. You do that. And then the next stage you go, well, what if we asked them for a phone number? On the landing page. How does that affect conversion rates? If we change nothing, I was just changed that. And then you go, well, what if on the thank you page? Well, what if we ask for their email? On the landing page, but then on the thank you page, when we bring them into messenger, then we asked for the phone number when they've already made a commitment on the front to register for the webinar. Are they more likely or less likely to give the phone number at that point? So it's always looking at every point, the process, like where is the best point to ask for that thing? And we're just starting to do some new things as well. We're launching this week. Where we've got this, like, also optimization. Fly away. It's got 16 different outcomes, right? So all the, all the most popular questions that someone could ask, so like, what's included, is this a scam? You know, the, the usual questions. So. then the conversational flow will actually pop up with a call to action at the point where it's been optimized over the repeated data coming into that at the front. To be able to go, okay. One when someone's asked that question and that question and that question at that point, they usually ready to buy and then giving them the call to action. So it's about understanding where that person is in the buyer journey to take them to the next part of it.

Eric Dickmann:

What you're talking about, the different points to collect information and reducing friction. Now, when you're using a tool like Facebook messenger, there are some really advantages to that tool, right? Because there are things like a lead ad where you can pull information automatically without having to ask it. Is that right?

Paul Ace:

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if you run in a, like, for example, like a lead magnet or a registration, It's also ultimately going to pull the. Email from their Facebook account. And it's going to be able to call the phone number as well, so that there's a reduced amount of friction to get someone's phone number. We find on average, we collects around six 67% of, phone numbers. which is what we also give them the option to skip. Right. So just because they don't want to give the phone number, it doesn't mean you've lost that lead. Because this is what, the difference between a landing page. Right? So if you're going to a landing page and you say, enter your email, enter your phone number. Now you might say the phone number is optional. However, because it's there. On that box and it's all as one, even if it's optional, they go while it's probably not optional. So I don't know what they want. That first I'm going to leave, but if you've already collected someone's email and step one, and then on step two, gone. Hey, by the way, we've also got this VIP list. If you want to, if you want to put your phone number and you can do. So we you've got that flexibility. and here's a great thing as well. You can split test that flow in messenger. Right. So you could go while I'm going to run them. And this is what we've done a lot, which is like geeky stuff. but on the front little guy, right. let's collect the email and then we'll do a split test and we'll, we'll put like a couple of different words. In that split test of the way that we asked for the phone number. So it might be like, what's your best phone number? And then the other one might be, please confirm your number. Right. And I can tell you most of the time, please confirm your number outweighs either one. Like by a lot.

Eric Dickmann:

Interesting.

Paul Ace:

Because a confirmation is a small, again, back to micro commitments or confirmation is a smaller commitment than, than a full ask.

Eric Dickmann:

Now, how does artificial intelligence fit into this? Because what you've described so far is a fairly heavily scripted flow, right? Where you're coming up with the questions and the responses and the flow can take several different paths. So how does AI come into this? Or is it not that present yet?

Paul Ace:

Yeah. So, so. There's elements of it, you know, you can, You can link with things like dialogue flow, which does, like. It will track the words that are actually being said, and then it'll do the response kind of like, it will basically analyze, let's say you put a full sentence, for example, let's say you were going to go and order a coffee, right? Okay. I knew in a coffee shop and it says, ordering messenger, I can you go in there? And he owed, say hi, I won a. Decaf. A large latte with soy milk and two sugars, right. It won't, it won't recognize a high, it will recognize the, the individual parameters. So it would just be like latte and now be like coffee make, and then it would be like soya milk type. Right. So, or recognize those parameters and then pull that out. to be able to put that in the right place where you need it now with webinars, we don't use that that much. but we use are so many other different tools. we're just starting to experiment with different things around the AI side of things as well. So, It's about looking at the right UK use case. And I think in a business to consumer standpoint, especially from a customer service perspective, like that can be extremely powerful and really reduce the workload of their followup.

Eric Dickmann:

Marketing is the engine that drives demand, but too often it takes a back seat to other priorities. Awareness, fails to materialize demand drops in sales falter. Don't wait until it's too late to build your brand awareness and demand generation programs. If your company is struggling with their marketing strategy, we want to help let's schedule a call to talk about your unique situation and what options might be available to get your marketing program back on track. To learn more text C M O two(407) 374-3670 that's C M ho two four zero seven. Three seven four three six seven zero. And we'll reply with further details. We hope to hear from you soon. You mentioned tools and there are a lot of tools that are out there right now. For example, I run my CRM on HubSpot. They have a chat bot that you can embed on a Wordpress site. you've got Facebook messenger, obviously, which you can put on your Facebook pages. You've got companies that are growing like crazy, like inner calm out there that have tools. When you look at the marketplace and see all these tools, do you see real advantages to one versus the other? Or is this really going to be a multiprong strategy where you're going to have to use one tool here on your website? One tool on Facebook? How do you see the marketplace there?

Paul Ace:

I'd say my favorite tool is up here Zapier or Zapier is a, you know, I don't think anyone's still knows the weight is what it is. But yeah. by using that you can link anything to anything. so, you know, we will try and cut that friction down by having to use less channels if we, if we can. But the end of the day, sometimes I believe that. If you've got. A tool that is a specialist in something. I would rather that, because you find these companies that start off diet absolutely fantastic. At one thing. And then they go, well, we could do this and we could do that. And that, and that and that. And before, you know, it, the original product isn't as good as it used to be. And they've saturated what they've done so much that they can't really explain what they do anymore. So I would much rather have a company that goes, we are fantastic at this. That's all we do. Over and over again, we will link that to anything and we'll make it amazing. And I'll go, okay, well, I'm going to use that over that. And I'm going to use this over here, this over here and link those together to make the best possible customer experience.

Eric Dickmann:

I completely agree because otherwise it becomes tool overload. You need too much expertise on your team to manage all these tools. Each one works a little bit differently. It can become overwhelming. So in the webinar example that you talked about before, I'd love to hear a case study about the performance of one of your clients that you work with before you got involved and after you got involved, because I think this is so key marketing is expensive. It takes a lot of time. And if you're spending all this money to do outreach through something like a webinar, but you're not getting an audience or you're getting a small audience. A smaller investment in growing that audience could pay exponentially rewards back to you because now you've got this many more people for roughly about the same effort.

Paul Ace:

Yes. So I'm going back to that with, with webinars. One of the lowest hanging fruit really is. People don't have a high show rates right

Eric Dickmann:

It's usually about a 50% drop-off right.

Paul Ace:

If not more. you know, so we we've had people that started with 17% show rate. and we first webinar we did together. They had a record launch in. Did 44% show rate. Right. So you can have the best party in the world, but if no one shows up, it's not really going to be the best party in the world, you know, you're just going to be in. Sausage rolls in the corner on your own, and it's not going to be great. you know, we've had, we've had other clients that you, I and people ask us, why does this work at scale? Right. So, like I said, That were mentioned previously that went from 31,000 to 243. Now obviously to do 243,000, you're spending quite a lot of nuts. You reach in a lot of people I can get expect. The show rates to drop quite a lot. So we actually increase them from. I think it's from. 14% to 24%, which doesn't sound that high. However, in their market that's like crazy high because these. That our audience are the kind of people like you say, who got free. Cool. I'll sign up for that. Oh yeah. I forgot buy it now. So, by taking that an increase in our webinars show rate by 86% eight, it meant that they could be profitable at scale.

Eric Dickmann:

Does the process really help too with webinar replays. So for those people who don't make it the day of the actual live event for the replay,

Paul Ace:

How much, I'm going to ask you a question, Eric, how much do you think it costs? To get someone. To collect. back to replay to respond to the message.

Eric Dickmann:

I honestly have no idea.

Paul Ace:

Between 5 and 7 cents You've always got to be looking as well at the lifetime value of a customer. Right. So sometimes it may cost more to get someone on the front end into messenger and into SMS and to be able to send them text and voicemail drops and things like that. However, then over time, that can be worth a lot more to you because they're on this messenger list because they're on this text list while the open rates on texts are 94% still. Right. This is not a new text is not a new platform, SMS. It's been around a long time. And they're only just starting to reinvent it with a rich text editor. So you're going to have a very similar style of Facebook messenger process in your normal SMS inbox within the next four or five years. So there's still massive opportunity there that people are not taken advantage of. So like, you've got a couple of choices you can either go, okay, well, I'm just going to do email and I'm not knocking email. Email, it is beneficial. Definitely. However, if you just do email alone, you're only gonna get maybe 15 20% of the people to actually even open the message, let alone click! So my 15% open. 2- 3% click. You're like. Well, this is a bit depressing. So you might have a list of a thousand people, 150 open it. Then you might get like 10 clicks. Great! That same list, on messenger or SMS. You might have a thousand people on there. You get 800 open it, and 50% click. So then instead of 10 clicks, you've got that 500. I mean, I know which one I'd rather have!

Eric Dickmann:

Absolutely. Well, you know, we're recording this and the time of COVID, video is huge. Webinars have been huge, but there's also a little bit of fatigue setting in right. People have been watching a lot of online content. from your perspective in the clients that you work with, are you starting to see that? Did you see sort of a massive spike as people were staying at home and watching more content and now fatigue has set in and it's dropping or is it holding pretty steady?

Paul Ace:

Yeah. So the, the thing is the world is changing faster than it's probably ever changed in history. So the great thing about that is, yeah, like you say that there will be some people who have come online in the last, well, I say come online, but like really got into. Maybe starting their own business online or something like that six months ago, right? Yeah. And that there may be a little bit of fatigue starting to set in right now, but here's the thing. There's new people coming in every day, every single day. Because right now, people are going. And at any age, it's, it's terrible. What's happened here in the market. People have lost jobs, lost family members lost lives. And on top of that, there, there is also massive opportunity and, and it, it depends what you want to see. Right. I remember the first week that COVID like, came across the pond and I started watching reading these news articles every day. And then by the end of the week, I felt like crap. And my mentor said to me, he said, just get that out your head. Right. You said, how is that benefiting you in any way? So he was like, this could be the most magical time in history, right? If you take the opportunities and like, I'm not saying that in a way to like, disregard anything that's going on with people's lives, you know? Everyone copes with things in different ways and there's different situations. However, there's so much magical opportunity right now. It's unbelievable. Specially in the online world. So it's great for business.

Eric Dickmann:

And it really gives people an opportunity to stand out, right? If you're just doing the same old thing over and over, you shouldn't be surprised if your results are declining, but there is an opportunity to innovate and be different. And do something new and that kind of brings up a topic. It's a little tangential, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on gamification because you know, there's been a lot of news here in the States about this investing platform called Robinhood, where they're in trying to get young investors to invest in the stock market. But there's a big game of vacation element to the application. You know, lots of sounds like a slot machine and things like that when you make trades and confetti and all that kind of stuff. But there's some downside to it as well. Cause it's pulling in people who really don't know what they're doing, but they're playing it like a game. What do you think of game of vacation and marketing and how it can be used effectively?

Paul Ace:

I love it. so I actually got the opportunity to interview a Yukon ciao. Last year as wiring Yukon ciao if you don't, if anyone's listening and don't know who he is, get his book actionable. Gamification is the Bible of gamification It's at 12 hour audio book. so I, yeah. Awesome getting through, but so he talks about eight core principles of gamification. One of the things, one of them that stands out to me, I, and what he says a lot as well. It's a lot more than just points, budgets and stickers.

Eric Dickmann:

Hmm.

Paul Ace:

Right. One of the things about gamification, Epic meaning and Colin is massive. Right. So when you feel part of something bigger than you. Then, so you look for example, Pokemon go, right? That, that went ma like. Everyone's forgotten about it now. I bought, it went massive for a very short space of time. Why did it do that? Because people felt, both an Epic mean and, and calling around. Yeah. I need to get that to be part of this club. Right. It was an exclusive club. If you weren't in the club, you won't call and then they've also got the social currency where then they've got something to talk about with other people. You look at the same with sports, right? what's really interesting with sports. I love this phrase him, right? If someone, that team, if that team wins. They say we won. Right. If the team loses, what did they say? They lost.

Eric Dickmann:

So true.

Paul Ace:

So, so that kind of creating that culture of gamification as well around a sport can also be turned into marketing. so for example, we've done things in the past where. We created this challenge process. and each day people would gather at a certain moment. Amount of points for each thing that they clicked through in terms of, okay, so today's task is X. You're going to do this. Great. You won this amount of points. You do this, you get this Mark points and so on and so forth. Once they'd done that, we said, what happens is at the end of the five days of the challenge, you're going to go into a points leaderboard. And that whoever's at the top is going to get 50 entries to win this massive. it was like a thousand dollar cash prize and the load of all the bonuses. So we actually then leverage that, but here was the thing can be a lot of people will go while whoever's got the most points, win. I didn't want to do that because one of the other things that you want to create with gamification is hope. Right. So even if you only add one entry and let's say you were to hundreds in the database, you still have the chance

Eric Dickmann:

Yeah.

Paul Ace:

So we are, you always got to create hope. And intrigue with. With gamification. So people don't feel like if they're not at the top, there's no point. Right. And you look at that way, video games all the time, you don't start on level 10. They don't, they don't make it so hard in that first level that you're just like, Oh, I'll give up. Right. I, apart from the occasional game that will do that on purpose to make it that's their reputation, that this is the hardest game out there. For example, like, I don't know if you, ever had it in America, the Impossible Quiz.

Eric Dickmann:

it doesn't ring a bell with me.

Paul Ace:

Yeah, we used to have this, when we're at school, they used to be this thing called the Impossible Quiz. It was just like this jar, flash game. Right. And the question is what's the most stupid thing ever made no sense whatsoever, but you just go through it. As soon as you've got a question wrong, you have to go right back to the star, most frustrating thing ever, but you kept doing it. You kept doing it because you want to get that a bit further. Like I know that question now. I know that question. I just keep going and going and going. So sometimes making something hard actually makes more people want to do it. Sometimes making things easier and then gradually getting harder or make more people get involved with it. And that's what we think about as well. When we think about conversational. flows is like, w again, micro-commitments right. Start off with a small one and then build up to a bigger commitment.

Eric Dickmann:

if you just take it all together, what it really is marketers understanding how people think, how people by the actions that people take, as opposed to marketers, trying to get everybody to think how they think. And it's really turning the tables a little bit. And that's, what's so fascinating is because there's a lot of research behind this and it's just so interesting to see the products that are coming out and the way that people are able to optimize what they're doing, because they've started to really understand people's attention spans. What makes people happy? What gets people engaged? It's fascinating stuff. And you know, this has been a great conversation. Paul, how do people find out more about what you're doing at, at amplify?

Paul Ace:

Yeah. So if you go to a www.amplifyccom.com. Yeah. And, they will be some great resources on there as well, depending on when you go, Oh, you know, we're always updating that stopped, but right now there is, I think 27 webinar, hacks on there. It allowed there to be that, or, 27 ways to get people to say how we ask. On your webinars. So all those things we're talking about, micro commitments. Yeah, there's 27 different ways that I've scripted out for you. So you can really easily get people to say yes on your webinar. Yeah. And you can get that on that and actually go through a C Com experience and see how it feels and how it, how it looks.

Eric Dickmann:

That's great. I'll definitely have that linked up in the show notes so that people can find it. And what about you? Are you on the social media channels? How can people track you down?

Paul Ace:

Yeah, I'm on Facebook a lot, to. To be honest, cause I hadn't been on Messenger and stuff, so yeah, just, search for Paul lays on there or search Amplify C-Com and either connects with me personally. ideally as well. Hey, here's the thing. If you want to get someone's attention on social media. Send them a video message. Right. a lot of people were scared to send video messages. I ma. My first outreach is usually a video message followed up with a, let me know. Because then I create a curiosity lead for the person to go when I've got to watch the video now. Cause I don't know what he wants to know.

Eric Dickmann:

It's so true. we did that a lot with the sales where we embedded video messages in our sales outreach, and it made such a difference. People will click on those videos.

Paul Ace:

It's

Eric Dickmann:

Yeah, it's personal. That's right. And it shows who you are. It's great. Paul, this has been a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed our discussion today and some really interesting things happening. So I encourage our audience to go check you out. Thank you so much for your time today.

Paul Ace:

Thanks very much, Eric. Absolute pleasure.

Eric Dickmann:

that wraps up another episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. As a reminder, if you'd like to learn more about Virtual CMO, strategic marketing consulting services, or anything else discussed here today, please visit us at fiveechelon.com. There's a link in the show notes. If you'd like to send us comments, feedback, guest inquiries, and your five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts are always appreciated. If you'd like to reach me. I'm EDickmann. That's E D I C K M A N N on Twitter. If you'd like to connect on LinkedIn, please let me know. You heard about me through The Virtual CMO podcast. I look forward to talking with you again next week and sharing some new marketing insights on The Virtual CMO.