#229: Natasha Willis – $70M from automated Instagram DMs

Natasha Willis [00:00:00]:
The first four months of Tory and I working together, she grew by 1,400,000 followers and she has now made over $700,000 with this strategy for her own products.

Jay Clouse [00:00:11]:
Woah. Her name is Natasha Willis, and she's the woman behind the conversational marketing agency School of Bots, which has generated over $70,000,000 for clients like Tori Dunlap, Jenna Kutcher, and even Facebook.

Natasha Willis [00:00:24]:
The way that we do that is through the DMs on social media.

Jay Clouse [00:00:27]:
In this episode, Natasha reveals how you can use automated direct messages to grow your email list.

Natasha Willis [00:00:33]:
This gives us an 85% or higher email capture rate compared to the average 25% landing page opt in rate.

Jay Clouse [00:00:40]:
Generate more revenue.

Natasha Willis [00:00:41]:
The best thing you can do for your business and for your audience is start to simplify to amplify.

Jay Clouse [00:00:48]:
And she shares her secrets on how to increase your organic reach on Instagram.

Natasha Willis [00:00:53]:
Anytime you see them mention a specific feature, know that they are probably making preference to those types of stories. Try it out and see if you get more reach, essentially.

Jay Clouse [00:01:04]:
To give some context for folks, can you explain what conversational marketing is?

Natasha Willis [00:01:10]:
Yes. And I'm so happy that, Tori pointed you my way, and it's such a joy to be here. Fun fact, in just 4 months, just in case this gets people excited about what we're gonna talk about, in the first 4 months of Tory and I working together, she grew by 1,500,000 follow 1,400,000 followers, collected almost a 150,000 new emails to her list. We're now almost at 300,000 within the last, like, year and a half, And she has now made over $700,000 with this strategy for her own products. So lots of good stuff here in terms of just, like, whatever metric you're looking to grow that you're here listening to this for, I'll have an example or something that, you know, you can use. So

Jay Clouse [00:01:53]:
Well, we'll put a pin in that. I'm gonna revisit some of those

Natasha Willis [00:01:55]:
Yes.

Jay Clouse [00:01:56]:
Some of those numbers to say how.

Natasha Willis [00:01:57]:
Absolutely.

Jay Clouse [00:01:58]:
Let's start let's start with conversational marketing as a topic. We haven't really touched on this on the podcast. Yeah. And that seems to be how you frame the the work that you guys do at School of Bots. So can you explain what that is?

Natasha Willis [00:02:11]:
Yes. In simplest terms and kind of my definition now having been in this space for the last 7 years is that conversational marketing, when we look at social media, is simply the process, the art, and the science of taking people from a content viewer or a follower all the way to becoming a customer. And the way that we do that is through the DMs on social media.

Jay Clouse [00:02:34]:
And is that platform agnostic? Are we talking about any social media platform we can do this through?

Natasha Willis [00:02:41]:
No. So to kind of break it down, we have Facebook that first became available, at the very beginning of this, which was, like, in 2016. And then from there, WhatsApp became available and then Instagram. We primarily at this point focus on Facebook and Instagram because it's the biggest opportunity for anyone who's putting out content on those platforms to just get a lot more people converting for you versus going to, let's say, your landing pages or your sales pages. And for the other platforms like x.com or YouTube or LinkedIn, it's not quite available yet in the way that it is on Instagram and Facebook. I should also add TikTok is in that bucket as well where there are very simple automations that you can run with your content and the DMs on the platforms, but the platforms themselves haven't yet opened themselves up to saying, Hey, you can build full blown automated conversations in here in compliance with our terms of service and privacy policies. So one day but Meta has definitely been the guinea pig, out of the social medias for this.

Jay Clouse [00:03:39]:
So theoretically, conversational marketing as approach as an approach could work anywhere. But through the means that you use and teach with specific tools, that tooling is a technical limitation on platforms that are not basically the meta suite of platforms.

Natasha Willis [00:03:55]:
Correct.

Jay Clouse [00:03:56]:
So for the purposes of me misspeaking from time to time, I feel like the the term I hear a lot is, like, Instagram automation. And is that basically the same thing we're talking about here?

Natasha Willis [00:04:08]:
It is in the sense that conversational marketing is more of, like, saying, let's say, development or social media. It's like this bigger picture thing of, hey, even things like website, you know, chatbots or chat GPT or, like, some of these things could be considered conversational marketing. Right? So the term I both like it and tend to not use it too much these days because it is just so widely encompassing versus, to your point, Instagram automation is much more tangible, and it's, hey, when somebody does something on Instagram to my profile as a creator or a business, then I can automatically reply in this way to them.

Jay Clouse [00:04:48]:
Can you walk me through a customer journey of interacting with conversational marketing and how that actually plays out to me, the individual.

Natasha Willis [00:04:57]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And to kinda give an idea of where this can start from, I'm gonna pull up my screen real quick and show you just an overview of the 9 different places where you can start that automated interaction. So anyone who has an Instagram profile that's a creator or a business can use this where these 9 ways, just share for everybody who can't maybe see, is commenting on a post. So this is what somebody would do to you, replying to one of your stories, the bio on your profile, right, just what it says in text, somebody tagging you in their story, someone directly messaging you, just going to your profile, you know, and hitting the message button on Instagram, using a link that takes people to a DM conversation with you instead of to your Instagram profile, ad traffic as well from Facebook, Instagram, etcetera, if somebody comments on live. And then also, if somebody is in a broadcast channel of yours on Instagram, we can then send them over to the DMs and trigger a message to them. So these are the 9 ways that we can actually start the conversation. Most people are using just the comment one right now on a post, right? That's the most common one you'll tend to see right now.

Natasha Willis [00:06:05]:
And I will say that's with good reason because, typically, on an average account that we work with, that's gonna be anywhere from typically 50,000 followers to up to 45,000,000 followers on Instagram. We get about 70% of the traffic from post comments. So that's the one where typically if you're a user who's gonna go into someone else's, you know, DM system, then that's where you would start. You would comment on a post. They might say something like, hey, I've got this free webinar coming up. If you wanna get access, just comment the word class, and I will send you over the information for that. Just wanna pause and make sure that that all makes sense so far.

Jay Clouse [00:06:39]:
Yeah. So these 9 things, these are essentially triggers. It's an action that the user takes, and that is triggering the next step in this piece of automation. And I think a lot of people watching this have probably experienced the thing you just described of, hey, this is a short form video. At the end of it, they said, if you want this thing, comment this word and that will happen. And that tends to be fairly instantaneous. Why don't you just take us through like that like an entire example, if you could, of what this interaction looks like so we understand on the front end how we're interacting with it and on the back end what is happening to deliver that end result.

Natasha Willis [00:07:15]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So on the left hand side, we have a post, and that post says, comment protein if you want this free breakfast guide. So as soon as you comment then, what happens in the next image here on the right of that is we now send somebody a message. So I know, Jay, I told you, hey, let's not get too deep too fast. But I know your audience also, you know, isn't necessarily beginner marketers or beginner business owners, so I think they can handle just seeing kinda the different steps of this, and I'm gonna walk you guys through what's happening at each step. So as soon as somebody comes into the DMs, typically, most of the time, somebody who is using this automation on Instagram would just send the link to their landing page. That's the easiest thing to set up, and truthfully, that's the best thing to start with if you are just testing the waters of this technology.

Natasha Willis [00:08:02]:
Now what we do is we take it several steps further. And this example is one of a simpler type of funnel where instead of sending someone to a landing page to go and get, let's say, this free guide, we can instead replicate that same experience inside of the DMs and do things like collect their name and their email, which you'll then see in the first and the second steps here, and even allow them to change that information if they needed to. Instead of them having to go to the landing page, this gives us an 85% or higher email capture rate compared to the average 25% landing page opt in rate. And it also gets taken over to your email marketing platform through behind the scenes tech. Right? And then at that point, we can, in this case, deliver this free guide, and someone can actually open the guide, the PDF directly in the DMs so they never had to leave the platform to accomplish this. And this gets us 85% or higher of people who commented on your post all the way to the end of the experience here.

Jay Clouse [00:08:57]:
It's so wild. So to repeat some of this back to make sure people are following, you basically you you kinda laid out 2 strategies you could take. At the point of the, hey, comment this word and that trigger sends an action, you could just at this word and that trigger sends an action. You could just have the automation say, here's the landing page to get your free thing. And I click that. It opens up a browser. I put in my name and email. I get the free thing.

Jay Clouse [00:09:18]:
You're saying you guys take that a step further to have that entire interaction happen within the direct message thread, and that is converting at something to the tune of 60% higher than having people go to a landing page.

Natasha Willis [00:09:32]:
That is correct. I'll show you just a quick kinda graphic of the difference between if you are not using any kind of automation, this is just a side by side comparison of what I just showed you versus what you can do with a landing page. Right? You miss out on all those people who come to the page but then just decide, hey, this isn't for me or they forget to opt in or whatever have you. And then to go back to what you were saying, a lot of people are then also doing a simple automation where it's not really a conversation. We're not respecting the medium that we're in in that sense where it's kinda like, hey. Here's a link. Good luck. And at the end of the day, I'm not crapping on that in the sense that, like, hey.

Natasha Willis [00:10:10]:
You know, everyone's busy. This is a great way to get started with this, and it can get very complex, as I'm sure you all can start to imagine. But there is so much more that you can do with this to significantly increase the amount of emails you can add to your business as well as, of course, increase the amount of sales that you're getting for whatever it is that you promote on Instagram.

Jay Clouse [00:10:29]:
And I'm familiar with ManyChat as a tool that a lot of people in my space use for this. Is that are we implicitly talking about ManyChat as a platform that you typically use to enable this? Or are there other alternatives we should be aware of?

Natasha Willis [00:10:42]:
Yeah. ManyChat is definitely one of the best tools to use in your tech stack. And, for example, because my team and I are building out very advanced and complex and, like, multi phase kinda campaigns with this technology, we have multiple platforms that we use, and ManyChat is going to be one of the key ones that allows you to easily connect your account to Instagram and to Facebook and run this automation system. And then we have other tools, certain AI tools, automation, third party platforms that, like, connect to the other tech that our customers use, and they plug into ManyChat. So you can think of ManyChat kinda like your hub, almost like your email marketing platform but for the DMs.

Jay Clouse [00:11:22]:
It enables this type of conversation, but you're saying it's not the full experience that can be possible if you really wanna push this to the edge.

Natasha Willis [00:11:32]:
Yes. Exactly. And truthfully, for most businesses who are going to, like, run this system in house, maybe you only have a couple products or maybe you don't have any products and you primarily monetize with brand sponsorships, or some other medium, then you may just need a few simple automations. You can run all that in ManyChat and that maybe is perfect for your business because you don't wanna spend time doing all sorts of other things. Like, there's other ways that you can get more ROI for your time versus, let's say, a company that has a ton of different products, different online courses or coaching programs or something of that nature. They have many different sales mechanisms like free webinars, maybe live webinars that they do. They've got a podcast, a YouTube videos, you know, all these different things. And so it becomes, like a big web essentially of these things that you're promoting.

Natasha Willis [00:12:21]:
And so there's an art and a science to like how you get traffic into all those different things and then how you actually make those interactions more meaningful both for the people who are experiencing them as well as make it worth the time to set it up for your business, as you start to like layer more and more of that on. And that's where then it makes sense to bring in maybe a webinar platform, things like OpenAI or like other AI tools that we can be able to tune into if we want to, let's say, bring in like an AI salesperson use case. So, there's other things that we can layer on top of, like, that initial simple automation that we're talking about. But the first step is ManyChat for sure.

Jay Clouse [00:13:00]:
After a quick break, I asked Natasha whether the people on the other side of these automated direct messages know that it's automated and whether that even matters. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Natasha Willis. When I think about the difference in conversion we're talking about here, It's such a large leap Part of it I can certainly say like okay there's less friction I'm not leaving this experience going to a new experience There's obviously some friction there I'm wondering how much of this you would attribute to less friction, and how much you would attribute to maybe an implicit assumption that this was done manually by the end, like, by the creator themselves. Do you find that people are aware this is an automation or they're not aware that it's an automation and that's why it works so well?

Natasha Willis [00:13:56]:
Yes. There are two sides of it in the way that we do it, versus some people that I'll kinda speak about, like, what I've seen in the market since I'm always observing and kinda saying, okay, like, what are people doing, and how can we make sure that we are staying on the edge of what's happening in the space with, like, consumer behavior of, like, what's gonna feel the best to the user and also accomplish the business result. So the way that we structure our funnels and our system and, like, the voice that's essentially speaking to people through the automation is it's always implied that this is automation. We don't typically come out and say, hey, this is so and so bought and blah blah blah, you know, and like kinda go the the like alter ego personality route of like, hey, I've taken over Jay's DMs, you know, kind of thing because we find that that actually doesn't work well. People wanna engage with your likeness, which is why they're engaging with your content in the first place, especially if you're a personal brand. You can go the more like alter ego, like, hey, it's Jake from State Farm, you know, kind of thing, like, in the DMs for a company brand. That does work, and it works well. But if you're giving a persona as an alter persona to the person who's creating content, then that's where we find it doesn't work.

Natasha Willis [00:15:02]:
And so anyways, the type of feedback that we get, I may have a quick example on here. What we have seen over the years are thousands of messages like this where they say, I know it's all automated, but this is so nice. This is so engaging, like so friendly. Like, this gave me what I wanted, when I wanted, and how I wanted. And people we find are appreciating that more than ever when they can get something 20 fourseven from you without having to wait for that manual touch. Now on the other hand, I see people who I'm not necessarily advocating for this, and I'm also not saying there's anything wrong with it. It's just different from what we have found to work best for us and the companies that we work with where they will either actually do everything manually or they will use ManyChat to start the first message and the first conversation. And then from there, they act like it is a human.

Natasha Willis [00:15:49]:
And they, kinda go back and forth with, yes, it's an automation, but there's no buttons or there's no kinda indication that it's automated. Technically speaking, not to go down rabbit holes and whatnot legally, but there are certain states where you cannot pretend to be a human, if it is an automation. So in California, for example, there are laws that say, hey, you can't, like, have an automation pretending like it's a human. And so in the state of like, okay, there are buttons, there are different things that differentiate these experiences that we run to have it be very clear that this is not, you know, your typical human conversation even though it has elements of that, versus, like, pretending to be, let's say, a human, but it's actually just random automated messages. It's a little bit of a gray area right now, and I'm sure AI laws and everything are gonna evolve so that there is more clear distinction. But right now, we find that even that approach doesn't tend to work super well just yet because the AI is not good enough or the automation really isn't good enough yet to have a good conversation with somebody in the same way we can if we program more of like a, hey, here's the path that you're gonna go down. Here are some different options you have, but here is like how to get to the end result you came into this conversation for versus leaving it super open ended where it's almost like you're talking to chat gbt, you know, inside of someone's DMs. I hope that makes sense.

Natasha Willis [00:17:10]:
I might have gone in a couple there.

Jay Clouse [00:17:12]:
For sure. So there is there's an aspect of even if I recognize it's automated, ultimately, what I want is convenience and things on my time schedule. So I'm not feeling slighted that this is an automation in lieu of manual effort on behalf of the person.

Natasha Willis [00:17:28]:
Yes.

Jay Clouse [00:17:28]:
This all speaks to me because I know for my business and I think a lot of people listening to this, we allocate a lot of time to social media creating content. And then every once in a while I step back and I say what am I doing all that for I'm not even giving people away to go deeper on that like sure hopefully my effort posting on LinkedIn every day is building the brand and building awareness and eventually I can cash in that way or awareness later. But being able to create an immediate bridge at the point of interacting with my content to something that deepens the relationship and gives people a step closer to the outcome they want. This really speaks to me and makes me feel better about all the, you know, time and energy and even investment I'm putting into social media. So I'm listening to this. I'm saying, okay, I should, you know, make sure I still have a log in to ManyChat, kick off the dust and try this out. But before I dive in with both feet, what are the commonalities you see among people who do see good results with conversational marketing? How do we know that this is going to work for our business and is something we should invest time into figuring out?

Natasha Willis [00:18:38]:
Yes. Thank you so much for asking that because and I know we talked a little bit about it beforehand, but I think people at any stage in business get so excited about, oh, here's the new thing and here's what I'm gonna explore without realizing, okay, maybe I should have this prerequisite before I go and do this. So there are 2 key prerequisites to keep in mind before you dive into even a simple automation, in my opinion, just because I really value time regardless of where you're at in in your business journey or your creator journey. And the first thing is that whatever you're planning to promote on Instagram through an automation, make sure that it's something that is proven. And when I say proven, if this is a brand sponsor, then it probably is a proven offer because they are clearly paying you to promote this, so you don't have to worry too much about that. On the other hand, if this is your own product, then typically, the milestone I wanna see or the marker is that at least 30 people have purchased this product from you in the same way. For example, if it's, let's say, a $300 online course, then I wanna see 30 people who have gone through maybe a free webinar of yours. They all watch the same webinar, and they all decided to buy the same product, same price point, same name of the product, same delivery of the product.

Natasha Willis [00:19:46]:
That gives you enough data to know, hey, this is something people are interested in. It doesn't matter the cost of the product, by the way. We've sold products from a dollar to $100,000. I still have this rule in place of, regardless of how simple or complex the automation system is gonna be, it's probably not worth your time to try to promote something that you just don't know is actually gonna sell or resonate with people versus trying to make the offer better or the sales mechanism better, which in the example I gave is the webinar. So first thing, proven offer.

Jay Clouse [00:20:14]:
If I have, made a product and emailed my list about it and 30 people have purchased, I didn't do a webinar, but 30 people purchased from this launch campaign or, you know, some some promo I ran that would cross this off your list?

Natasha Willis [00:20:30]:
Yes. Precisely.

Jay Clouse [00:20:32]:
Okay. What's the what's the second prerequisite?

Natasha Willis [00:20:34]:
And the second thing is making sure you have enough traffic right now that's engaging with your content. Yes. Other metrics are useful around knowing, okay, how many non followers are seeing your content? How many followers do you have? What's your average views per reel over the last, let's say, 30 days? Likes, shares, saves, you know, all those things are helpful. But the most important thing is actually looking at your comments. And so our absolute minimum before you implement and I would say this is even more important than the proven offer. You can mess up on the proven offer, but if you don't have this, it's not gonna perform for you. And that is that we wanna see at least 5 comments on average per post over the last 30 days. And I'm being really specific with that because what we have found, and we have tested this on 100 of thousands of accounts, is that when you don't get some kind of engagement on your posts, and not just posts that are saying, hey, comment this word, right, you can still technically count that, but you would wanna see genuine conversation or reaction saying, oh, I so relate to that or, hey, this was really helpful, in the comments of your content that doesn't have call to actions as well.

Natasha Willis [00:21:40]:
Because then you know, hey, I'm putting out good quality content that's resonating. And so when I make the ask and I say, hey, I've got something that, even if it's free, I still am asking for you to give it attention and sign up for this thing, that you're going to have people who feel like there's been enough trust building, relationship building, goodwill built up for them to say, cool. I can you know, I think that they would deliver on whatever this thing is that they're promoting. I'm going to opt into this. If you're not at that 5 comment mark, then we tend to find that it's very hard for you to get sufficient traffic to the automation so that you actually know if it's working or not. Because if you don't have, let's say, at least 5 people commenting on your post right now, the automation typically will 2 to 3 x, if not more, the amount of comments that you get on your post by telling people, hey, comment this specific word. I'll give you this thing. But if that's gonna be, let's say, the same people over and over or it's gonna be even less than that, so let's say only 2 people comment the word, then was it really worth your time setting up the automation and having to go through the whole process you know, just to have a little trickle of traffic come in.

Natasha Willis [00:22:47]:
So those are the 2 most important things above all else that I would kinda grade your profile and business by right now to say, hey, is it worth my time, or do I need to focus on the offer first or focus on making better content right now that's resonating with people who are seeing it?

Jay Clouse [00:23:02]:
And implicitly, we also have to be operating on Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

Natasha Willis [00:23:08]:
Correct. Yes.

Jay Clouse [00:23:10]:
You didn't mention follower number. You mentioned comment number. Do you see any correlation between comment number and follower number? Should we worry about the number of followers at all? Or is it purely if you're getting 5 comments, no matter how many how many people are following you, this can work for you?

Natasha Willis [00:23:25]:
Typically, the comments trumps any kind of follower count because there are countless accounts that we look at that have over a 100000 followers or millions of followers, and they're not even getting great amounts of comments. And their views are super down and it just depends on how people acquire that following. But when it comes to just a general follower count size, like if you're gonna invest, let's say, more time into this and you say, hey, I really wanna like ramp this up and build all these different things, like maybe you do have a more complex business but your follower count is, let's say, relatively smaller, typically, the 10,000 follower mark starts to be the place where we as a business can look at that business and say, hey, they are putting time and effort into building up their following. And there are people who are resonating with the content. And they got to this 10 ks follower mark because they were consistent with the content creation process. Unless somebody built and I'm kinda throwing out exceptions, but the only exception I've seen to that is if somebody built their following over, like, years years years and they're only at 10 k right now versus, hey, over the last maybe 2, 3 years, I've built up this follower count to at least 10 k. That means you're probably posting actively, and you probably have a couple of comments per post.

Jay Clouse [00:24:36]:
Because I'm fairly new to Instagram, I don't know all the games that are being played there yet. But I do often see these profiles that have, like, hilariously high numbers of followers, inexplicably. And not to say, like, I just don't get their content. I'm saying, like, they're not posting much content or the content they're posting, there's no reason why it would be growth style content, and there's no engagement. So what's going on there? How how are follower counts inflated on Instagram?

Natasha Willis [00:25:04]:
Yeah. There are several ways that this happens. The most common way is that people buy followers, meaning that they are buying from these, let's say, bot farms in countries where places like India or China or Pakistan, where there are these essentially farms of phones where they will essentially amp up the amount of followers that you're getting. And these accounts will have all sorts of random, you know, things and information on them, but they won't be actual people. Right? It's just a bunch of fake accounts that are being created. And so you can still pay nowadays, even though these services get shut down all the time by Instagram directly. You can still pay for services like that, and they will get you a certain amount of followers. Now, the problem with that strategy is what you'll kinda notice is that if you look at these accounts on something like socialblade.com, you'll notice they lose a lot of followers every day, and then they gain just a little bit more so that that way they're always kinda growing.

Natasha Willis [00:25:57]:
But the amounts of followers they're losing and gaining, like, kind of equivalently, are usually pretty enormous as people get into, like, the millions and millions of followers. So that's the first way. And then I can speak to some of the others that are not maybe as unethical, let's say, or as,

Jay Clouse [00:26:12]:
you know, I'll be Continue on.

Natasha Willis [00:26:15]:
Cool. So that's the first. The second, which was really popular and nowadays, not, not super effective but are like engagement pods. People are still a part of these things where it'll be a group of usually, it's smaller but, like, more notable accounts, like, let's say, 20 people or 30 people. But sometimes, it's hundreds of people in these groups, wherever. It could be in Discord. It can be in Telegram or other places where it's like, hey, anytime someone in this group posts something, drop the link to the post and everyone's gonna go engage with that thing. And then the third way, which is almost unintentional, but it can happen and it becomes something that businesses just have to figure out what to do with is if you have run a lot of ads as a company, you may have gained a lot of followers over the years because people tend to follow you if they liked your ad.

Natasha Willis [00:27:01]:
It's just a common behavior that happens is they click on the profile and they say, cool. Whether I'm gonna buy or not, like, I like that. I'm gonna hit follow. But then those people don't end up engaging with you that often or the profile just doesn't post that often because they're primarily relying on ads to grow the business. And so as a result, you get a lot of inactive followers who just are not gonna see your stuff when you post because you just don't post often enough, and then they're not engaging with it. So then they're not seeing it in their feed. Those are kind of the 3 most common that I would say I see, and there's plenty of other, like, offshoots of that.

Jay Clouse [00:27:31]:
My assumption is having an inflated follower count of people who aren't real or aren't engaged makes it difficult for your content to reach outside of your followers. Is that correct?

Natasha Willis [00:27:45]:
It is to a degree. What's been interesting now, and Gary v talked about this quite a bit in his newest book, Day Trading Attention, which I love and highly recommend to any business owner creator, is that nowadays, it's easier than ever to go viral. Like, people have a pretty equivalent chance of going viral if they just use the right sound or just do something a little bit more unique that captures attention. And so what's been kinda interesting is I observed some of these accounts that you're talking about, and I love the way you describe it, like a hilariously high, that's a tongue twister, amount of followers with, let's say, subpar content, is that these accounts though could still potentially like have a big piece of content that absolutely goes viral and and crushes it. But the likelihood is low, but it's becoming higher because now Instagram, at least as of right now because things are always changing, is that, they now they used to show your content to a small number of your followers. And based on how they interacted with it, they would then push it out to more. And then, eventually, your content would end up maybe on the Explore page or get recommended to somebody in someone else's feed since they do a lot of, like, recommendations now, like YouTube Shorts does as well. But now what they've started to do is that they also show your content to a number of non followers.

Natasha Willis [00:29:04]:
And depending on how those 2 groups engage with your content, they then decide to push it out to more of your followers and or more non followers and see if more people can see that content and see if they like it. And so there are little tactics that you can use. I shouldn't say little because they can create big results, but things like using a trending sound or doing like, using one of their newest features that they drop because then they push more traffic to it. Using stuff like that can sometimes then make a post pop off for you even if you have historically posted subpar content.

Jay Clouse [00:29:37]:
And is that the goal? Like, when when on Instagram should I be trying to pop off and get to new viewers versus not? Because, I mean, like, implicitly, you might think, yeah, more more eyeballs, more impressions, more views. Definitely do that. But on some platforms, you know, that would push you to make content that might be more broad than your actual audience and might not actually be useful. So what what's your take? How how should I think about my approach to growth on Instagram?

Natasha Willis [00:30:07]:
Yeah. Given that Instagram has become more and more competitive, especially in the last 12 months, typically, the rule of thumb that we follow is there are kind of 3 types of posts that we'll typically put out there. The first type of post, and I'm gonna come back to this one, kinda break it down of, like, how to think about this, is a post that can reach the largest addressable audience possible. This means that you want as many people as possible to see this piece of content. And actually, I'll explain it now because I think it'll just be more useful, is what we do though is that once that hook or whatever goes out and it's viral, people are enjoying it or just getting a lot of views, You're right. It's capturing eyeballs that you might not want necessarily engaging with you or going into your business. But then what you can do later in that same piece of content is then you say, hey, if you are this avatar or if you're looking to solve this problem, then comment whatever and I'll, you know, share that with you. So that's the best way to kind of use something like that.

Natasha Willis [00:31:05]:
Or even if you don't have a comment call to action, what's cool about this is that these are the audience getting posts, Right? These are meant to be shared with a larger audience, be more relatable to the largest group of people. So for example, you just became a dad. If you put out a post that is relatable to dads, that's like one of the largest, you know, audiences on planet Earth. Like, if you are a dad, you might resonate with this thing that happens, you know, with newborns. But what that would do for you is that then in either the actual post or the caption, you could have a call to action or you could not, but then all those people, all those dads are gonna be like, this was really funny. Like, what else does this guy do? And so they go to your profile, and then your profile acts as the filter then. And they say, hey. I actually happen to be a dad who's also a content creator.

Natasha Willis [00:31:50]:
I really like this guy's content. I'm gonna hit follow, or I'm gonna engage with him. I'm gonna go and look at some of his other posts. MrBeast talks about this as well with YouTube channels, right, where it's like, if I enjoyed the content, I'm probably gonna go and binge now some more videos from that same channel. So in the same way now, people go and, quote unquote, binge your other content because they want more of it. And so now then you go into the second type of post, which is something that is more specific for your target audience but doesn't speak to people as if they already know who you are and what you do. You are being a little bit more like, hey, I am a creator who does this or whatever, but you're leaving it a little bit more open while not targeting the largest addressable market. It might be your target audience, which might be dad content creators, let's say, which is one, level smaller than just like all dads of the world.

Natasha Willis [00:32:39]:
And so those posts then kind of same strategy where you can have a call to action int it or maybe it's just a relatable post and then they come to your profile, they want to learn more. And the 3rd type of post then would be something that is really specific. It's you're doing a product launch. You know, we were talking a little bit about this earlier. You mentioned, hey, I might email my list some offers. So let's say you're in the middle of a big promo and you say, hey, I'd love to make a couple social posts about this. So in the post, you might then get pretty specific and say, hey, my coaching program or my course or my paid newsletter or whatever is coming out. If you wanna get access to it, you know, I've spent so much time putting this together.

Natasha Willis [00:33:14]:
And you actually tell the story, something like an origin story or something that would be interesting maybe to people who don't know you yet, but it's still pretty specific. So most of the time, the people who are gonna see and engage with that content do know you. And that is your, like, let's say, bottom of the funnel style content where then that would get people to go and buy or go and take action on your thing even more so. But those are people now who have gotten to know you and they have consumed multiple pieces of your content. So if you wanna think about it as like top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, we just rotate through those. So every 3rd post is that more top of funnel largest addressable market. Every second post that we post is gonna be that kinda middle of funnel. And then every third post we put out is gonna be that bottom of funnel, like very targeted and specific call to action.

Jay Clouse [00:34:01]:
This is really smart. I mean, it maps very directly to a framework I've I've been taught about YouTube from Patty Galloway, his core casual new framework. But I hadn't thought in terms of Instagram and basically any other short form platform. I hadn't thought through the lens of broad interest in the content itself filtered through specific call to action or filtered through specific profile. That's that's kind of an unlock for me. I like that.

Natasha Willis [00:34:28]:
Amazing. I'm happy to hear that.

Jay Clouse [00:34:30]:
After one last break, we break down exactly what this DM strategy looks like for Tori Dunlap and how it drove $700,000 for her business. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Natasha Willis. Okay. So I wanna go back now to this example you gave at the very beginning of the episode with Tory and these huge results you shared of she's grown her account over a1000000. She's had $700,000 in business driven from this. Help me bridge the gap between some of the beginning strategies you showed us here and what she's doing.

Jay Clouse [00:35:07]:
How can we visualize what this looks like at that level so we can start to understand what it would take for us to get there?

Natasha Willis [00:35:13]:
In terms of the larger strategy, so we've talked a little bit about some content frameworks here, which are an important place to start because one of the biggest mistakes that I see content creators and business owners make on Instagram is that they try to promote too many things every single week. And it is such a condensed timeline to where it'd kinda be like if I sent you an email and I had, like, 10 different call to actions. And they're all over the place for different people maybe or just, like, different solutions. And people tend to do this a lot where and it might just be because they just don't think about it, and they're like, well, I'm just going through my day, and I'm gonna post, like, my athletic greens link, my, you know, interior design, some furniture link, affiliate link, and my online course and my lead magnet, my new podcast episode. I'm gonna put all that on my stories today. It just happens by the end of the day. And then they tend to also approach their content in that way where in a given week, you might have a post with a call to action to a new podcast episode, all those affiliate links I just mentioned or brand sponsors, plus maybe you've got your own stuff. You're like, oh, wait.

Natasha Willis [00:36:15]:
I didn't promote my own thing this week. I've gotta make sure I promoted my newsletter and my webinar and my course. So by the time you get to the end of each week, there's so many things that you're throwing at your audience. And people already have a million options, right? Like, we're just bombarded with options every single day through ads, through different creators, through the content we consume, friends referring products to us. And so the best thing you can do for your business and for your audience is start to simplify to amplify by focusing on one core thing each week if possible. And so with Tori, what we did is that she, yes, might have these promo periods during the year where there's like 2 weeks that we really focus, let's say, on like one product to sell. But most of the time, we can alternate through each week a specific offer that we're focused on. And so over time, we have now, I wanna say, something like 30 different funnels that are running in the DMs, kinda like the one that we walked through earlier where there's these multiple steps.

Natasha Willis [00:37:18]:
We're collecting names, emails, and then we're leading people to whatever next step is gonna be for them. So there is a collection of free webinar registrations, those types of funnels. There are, a number of, like, freebies that people can download and just view right then and there. There are a number of, affiliate and brand partnership ones, which I actually wanna show because it's a little bit different from what I showed you guys earlier. So this is an example of how somebody can see a post where she is she's in the finance space for those of you who might not be familiar with her first 100 k. And in this post, she is promoting a high yield savings account. And this is one of the best performing campaigns that she has. We've collected, I think, almost over a 130,000 emails just from this campaign alone, so this has been highly successful.

Natasha Willis [00:38:09]:
And, typically, when you promote a brand partnership or sponsorship, you tell people to go to your link, and that's that. You don't really benefit until that person buys or does something with that link, and then you get paid by the brand either per person or maybe it's just a flat rate to promote for a given period of time. With this, what we're doing is we're able to collect people's emails, which happens after they initially opt in. We then have a little conversation with them. We're giving positive affirmation as to like, hey, this is really like my best recommendation. I trust this company to essentially be the high yield savings account that you pick. And then at the end, we take people to the affiliate link or the brand sponsor link. So we get a 2 for 1 here.

Natasha Willis [00:38:48]:
Wow. One, these people are interested in high yield savings accounts, which probably means they're interested in the other things that with because it's all around building your personal financial system. And so we add those people to our email list, which we could also follow-up with later and be like, hey, did you get a chance to sign up for your savings account? If not, what are you doing? Like, here's the link. Totally. So that's one way. And it's also, I have a friend as well who, and I don't know if he's still doing this. Maybe I won't name him by name now. But what we talked about a couple months ago, he's a big content creator as well in the, like, resume and interviews space.

Natasha Willis [00:39:22]:
And he was he had different upsells of his brand partner packages based on whether he would run a funnel like this with them or not. And he'd say, hey, I'm gonna collect emails and I'm gonna send them follow ups. So if you want that extra juice, then it's gonna be this tier of my, you know, partnership offer.

Jay Clouse [00:39:39]:
That's delicious.

Natasha Willis [00:39:41]:
So it's something interesting. It also adds some motivation for you as the creator if this is something you wanna test where you say, hey, I'm not gonna put the extra effort into this unless I get paid more. But if you do have your own products, then it's totally worth it to collect those emails. And then, of course, you then get the double dip of, okay, now these people are gonna go and take action. And the one thing you don't see here is that in between each of these steps, if, let's say, I was the person going through this and got super busy, like someone calls me in the middle of this conversation and now I jump off Instagram, I forget about it, we have follow ups at each point where they are thoughtful GIFs or funny GIFs, voice notes, selfie videos where, like, hey, if you still want this, like make sure that you take action on this. So there are some thoughtful follow ups that happen if somebody drops off. And then also at the end, we can follow-up too with them maybe a couple hours later or a day later and just say, hey, did you get a chance to do it? Right? So these are some creative ways that you can use campaigns like this. And this is one of those types of funnels that we ran that wasn't just for her own products.

Jay Clouse [00:40:42]:
Wild. So do you find that the folks you work with are the people that are doing this the best. Does this automation end in, like, a product pitch within Instagram, or is a lot of the final, like, transaction pitches happening in email?

Natasha Willis [00:41:02]:
Yeah. It's a mix. And we try to do both if we can because you're gonna have people in different phases of their buying journey. There might be somebody who for example, with Tory, she puts out a lot of content, typically 2 posts at least a day. And there are people who are going to consume, let's say, 10 posts at some point and say, hey, I would love to go deeper. Like, she keeps talking about budgeting and like, I just don't have a budget. Like, can she help me with this? And then the next post is, hey, if you wanna get my budget template, you know, comment budget, for example. And so those types of situations where somebody is a little more hot and ready to buy and take action, they might be the ones who buy immediately.

Natasha Willis [00:41:40]:
And you may get some people who either, you know, got busy, jumped out of the DMs, forgot about it, maybe get a follow-up a few days later, they buy via DMs, or they may need just a little bit more, relationship building or more proof maybe or they just weren't ready yet and they're like, oh, this is great, but you know what? I'm like super strapped for cash right now. I'm gonna hold off. Maybe next month, I'll try to invest in something like this. And then those people, you might end up converting via email because you wanna make sure you're also sending emails ideally with an email sequence or your weekly emails, right? And eventually, they decide that either they wanna buy the original product or better yet, let's say that person's like, hey, actually, I ended up figuring out my budgeting over the weekend. My boyfriend helped me. Like, I feel really good about that. But you know what I still really need is a high yield savings account. And then maybe you get an email about the high yield savings account and you go, oh, awesome.

Natasha Willis [00:42:31]:
I'm gonna go do that. So it's an opportunity to either pivot the offer that's being offered or upsell people to just take more action with your products or with brand sponsorships.

Jay Clouse [00:42:41]:
I really like what you said about simplify to amplify because I'm finding that in email Yeah. Right now to your point of too many calls to action is actually fewer clicks. Like, the way to optimize clicks clicks is to reduce the options of what to click on. It sounds like you're saying that is also true in, social.

Natasha Willis [00:43:01]:
Yes. Absolutely. In so many different ways, it's it's literally present in every single aspect of social from like the link in your bio, which is not completely gone with this. Like, you do still wanna have that there, but it's just you're not gonna get the most people engaging with that. You're gonna get more people engaging if you tell them to comment on your posts and reply to your stories and that kind of thing. But then it's also even simplify to amplify with not just what you're promoting per week, which is like the bigger decision. And if you do that, you are gonna see better results just right off the bat. I've just never not seen it not work.

Natasha Willis [00:43:35]:
But then also in the post itself, like really making it clear, hey, what is this thing, that I'm gonna get? Or what is the, like, purpose of this post? What am I supposed to, like, get from what you're telling me or teaching me here in this piece of content? All the way to how do you bridge the gap of, oh, I taught you 5 simple exercises you can do from home without any body or with body weight to, okay, I now wanna be in your coaching program. It's like, okay, how do you make sure you're bridging that gap and telling people what the outcome is then of that coaching program since you just gave me this and this post? So it very much is about that, like making sure one call to action, same call to action, like all those things. It sounds simple, and it's tough too when you're like, you don't have the muscle memory to go through it. Right? If I like ask you to record a podcast and then upload the podcast and put everything together, it's kinda muscle memory for you. You've done it so many times. But if I ask you to go and create, you know, a type of video maybe that you've never done before, it's like you just don't know what you don't know. You're in that unconscious incompetence phase. And so, the more that I can just harp on that message for everyone here, I think just the more you're gonna get out of your Instagram, whether you're like an Instagram god or you're like, hey, I'm getting back into the game or kinda starting it up.

Natasha Willis [00:44:51]:
Just keeping things really simple, one call to action, one offer, like, where you can will help a lot.

Jay Clouse [00:44:56]:
I wanna recap some of the use cases you've shared here. We had freebies, lead magnets, you mentioned that. We've talked about sponsors. We've talked about affiliates. We've talked about our own products. What major use cases are we missing here for automation?

Natasha Willis [00:45:12]:
I'll list out a couple, that come to mind, and then nearly anything that you can envision that you would wanna have happen in a conversation or a landing page experience, you can do inside of the DMs as well. There are experiential use cases. I'll kinda just start there as, like, a quick random one. For example, with Nike Football, which for us Americans, technically, that's their soccer account. And, we we supported and consulted them in an experience, I think it was last summer, where or maybe 2 summers ago now, where, it was all around this, like, daily challenge kind of thing with their audience, and none of it was leading to, like, a sale essentially or a conversion point. It was all about the experience that we're giving with these super customizing, credible, high definition videos. And it was all around essentially like one of their specific athletes, whose name I'm gonna mispronounce so I'm not even gonna try, but it's like one of the largest soccer players in the world. Most well known.

Natasha Willis [00:46:08]:
And so that's one example that, like, probably no one here will use unless you're a Fortune 500 company or Fortune 100, but that is one of the use cases. The others that are more practical for us are things like, you said, free download, or lead magnet. You know, free video is also one. You don't have to go and create a fancy PDF. You could just film a selfie video going deeper into a concept you talk about in a post and then have that be the thing that you give. Free webinars we talked about or master classes, whatever name people like to use. Wait lists are a really big one that we did not talk about yet. Then we have things like if anyone is writing a book and launching a book, or you already have a book and you wanna promote it, we have things like applications for high ticket coaching programs or masterminds or memberships, direct purchases we talked about a little bit, things like discount codes if you run an e commerce store or a merch store as well.

Natasha Willis [00:47:01]:
And then we talked about affiliate and brand sponsors. Giveaways are a huge one as well, especially thinking about the holidays. That's just such a great time to do a giveaway or really around anything that you want to. But doing 1 or 2 of those a year can be just such a great boost, in leads for your business. And the last thing that I'll mention that is not necessarily its own use case but is actually combining multiple use cases is because we're in a conversational medium, the fun and really powerful thing that you can do is give people what one of my clients, Jenna Kutcher, likes to say as, like, invitations, which means that, initially, when someone comments on your post, you are inviting them to your free webinar, your free lead magnet, your purchase, your newsletter, whatever. Once they get into the DMs and they've given you their name and their email, then now we might have the opportunity to invite them to something else. So we can say, hey. I've emailed over your free guide, and I'm really excited for you to dive into it.

Natasha Willis [00:47:53]:
But super quick while you're here, are you looking for more help with x y z? And someone says, yeah, I actually am. Like, the guide sounded great, but, really, like, here's my deepest struggle with this right now, and we have multiple choice questions and things we can do there. So it's super easy. And then from there, we can then say, cool. Well, actually, I have and then maybe they opted in for a free guide. Now you're inviting them to the free webinar. And you can kinda double dip there where you can get typically 50 to 80% of people to also take you up on your second offer. And so now you have generated a lead and taken them deeper than it probably then they probably would have gone for at least a couple days or maybe even a couple months because they wouldn't have seen that second offer for a while.

Natasha Willis [00:48:36]:
And instead, you just get them right into it right away. And that can also work for paid offers too.

Jay Clouse [00:48:41]:
Another unlock you've given here for me, Natasha, is the first slide you showed of like those 9 different triggers that could happen. When I think about Instagram and it's one of the smaller platforms for me and I get locked up because I think that I have to produce these like amazing reels. And I get really excited about this type of thing because I'm a very conversational, writing based kind of person. And what it seems like I can do here is make better use of my stories to the people that are already there and say, hey, I like hearing from you even though, like, I heard from you first on YouTube. I am also active on Instagram. So now I'm following you on Instagram, Jay.

Natasha Willis [00:49:18]:
Yes.

Jay Clouse [00:49:18]:
It seems like I could make a lot better use of my stories and then use this on the back end of that to move people through a conversation or through a journey.

Natasha Willis [00:49:30]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So that you don't have to worry about the production, you know, no matter how simple or how, you know, high production or high definition you wanna make your reels, and this goes for everyone here. Right, there is some level of production that's involved in decision making versus just throwing up a quick story of a selfie video of you talking or even just an image and being able to say, hey, if you wanna get first access to my next upcoming episodes, then reply back with this word, and I'll get you on to my email list to do that for one of many examples that I think you could use well. And the cool thing about Stories as well is like they're so used on Instagram that Instagram's always coming up with new ways to get people, more people, to see your Stories. And when they come out with these features that for the most part are usually what's called an Instagram sticker, which is once you clip or grab or record or whatever your story, you'll see a little icon like in the top right corner, kinda looks like a Post It note, and that's where you can click into your stickers. For example, adding your location to your story is a sticker. So within the sticker options, they're always launching new things there or trying to get more people to use the stickers that are there, particularly 2 that recently came out, that are still going to to work for a long, long time, my opinion, is the Ad Yours and the Reveal.

Natasha Willis [00:50:48]:
So those 2, Instagram is pushing a lot of traffic to. So the kinda ninja tactic here is that you can put up a story with one of those stickers, and the story doesn't need to have a call to action or anything in it yet. Just a story that's using one of those stickers, and then your next story can have your call to action. So then what happens is Instagram pushes a ton of people to that first story, and then people are already in your stories. They're like, well, what else is going on in Jay's life today? And then they go to the next story and see the call to action, and then they opt in to your thing.

Jay Clouse [00:51:19]:
I did not know Instagram will give preference to stories that are using features that Instagram is pushing.

Natasha Willis [00:51:27]:
Oh, man. Name of the game. And so it's always good to do that anytime you you know, my recommendation to anybody who is wanting to to create more on Instagram is to follow the at creators account and at Mosseri, who is the head of Instagram, because both of the accounts, they tend to post kinda the same announcements at the same time, but sometimes one before the other. They will always share, hey. This is a new thing, or they just coincidentally, as we're recording this, the other day or yesterday, I saw that they put up more posts about here's how to use the ad yours, how to use the reveal. So they're constantly pushing these things. Anytime you see them mention a specific feature in their post, know that they are probably, making preference to those types of stories and or those types of posts and try it out and see if you get more reach, essentially.

Jay Clouse [00:52:17]:
You mentioned high ticket coaching programs as one of the use cases here. Have you seen a threshold of how high a price point can be before this stops being effective?

Natasha Willis [00:52:28]:
The highest price point we've sold automatically with no human involvement has been a $100,000, and it was a business mastermind. So I have not seen this work not work, I should say, for any price point, below that, let's say.

Jay Clouse [00:52:43]:
Wow.

Natasha Willis [00:52:43]:
And it depends on your audience too. Right? If you have a very curated audience, you don't need to have the largest audience. But as long as you follow some of those frameworks that I've shared so far and are putting out content that just resonates with people, then the automation possibilities of what it can do for your business are are pretty limitless.

Jay Clouse [00:53:00]:
Okay. Last last question to tie all this together. I listened to this. I'm interested. This seems like a lot. What is the first best step I can take here to dip my toes into conversational marketing?

Natasha Willis [00:53:14]:
So 2 things, that I've actually put together. And I wasn't planning to share this one, but I do wanna give this to everybody who's listening. So if you have not already set up ManyChat, for example, or maybe just haven't used it in a long time, like you said, you know, knocking the dust off of it, then you wanna make sure that everything's set up properly before you go and run the automation. I get lots of DMs where people are like, hey, it's not working the way I wanted it to. What's going on? And I'm like, well, did you adjust this setting? They're like, no, darn it. So, just to save you all the headache and the stress of that, two things. If you wanna go to Instagram and search my handle, which is natashatwillis, click the message button on my profile and message me the word Jay, just j a y. I will give you my internal SOP.

Natasha Willis [00:53:59]:
There is no opt in or anything required. I won't collect your email, but I will show you a simple and effective automation that you can kind of check out for yourself. I'll give you the link to my SOP to set everything up. Even if you already have ManyChat set up technically, you can just make sure to run through the steps. It'll take like 5, 10 minutes so that everything will operate the way that you wanted it to, from the get go. And then that SOP also happens to tell you how to set up that first automation that just delivers a link. So either way, people can use that and kinda get set up with everything. The other thing that I did actually plan to give to everybody here, and again, no opt in required, when you message me, Jay, I will also give you a resource that I think is gonna be incredibly useful to everyone and kind of crystallizes what we talked about for her first 100 k earlier of like, here's all the things going on for this business.

Natasha Willis [00:54:50]:
Spent 20 hours putting this thing together. And it's an in-depth behind the scenes breakdown of one of my client systems who's a friend actually of her first 100 ks, who has added $2,000,000 in additional revenue with this, over 100,000 new emails to her list, and then her Instagram engagement also grew by 10x. So what I did was I put together every type of DM funnel that we've created and its results so that that way you can see, okay, if I have a webinar or a freebie or whatever, like, here's kinda what that funnel looks like and what types of results are possible as a benchmark. So I'll give you both of those downloads if you wanna just message me, Jay. It'll be there for you. And then from there, you can DM me any questions you have as you get started with that stuff. So I hope that'll be helpful.