#181 - 5 Clever ways to grow your list + make more sales using ManyChat

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Hello guys, it is Kate here from hello Funnels and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Now today we are getting nerdy as usual and I'm going to be actually geeking out with you pretty hardcore on a tool that seems to be having a bit of a resurgence lately. It's not a new tool, but it's a tool that's definitely having its moment in the sun. We are playing with it, we are loving it and we're going to show you how you can use it inside your business as well. So let's dive right, right on it.

Alrighty guys. So as you would have seen from the title, there's no real surprises here today. We are talking about ManyChat. So ManyChat, for those who haven't seen it, I'm pretty sure you would have seen people using it though. So if you are hanging out on Instagram at all at the moment, which if you're listening to this, you know, I'm pretty sure you are, you probably will have noticed there's a bit of a trend at the moment for, for when people are promoting something, sharing something or sharing a link of any kind. Rather than them saying, you know, click the link in the bio, what they're instead say is, you know, DM me this word or comment this word and you know, and we'll send you all the details. So what this is, is it's a little, this is basically a trigger like similar to what you would use in any kind of automation software that is picked up by a piece of software or a tool called ManyChat. So Manych, ManyChat is basically set up, runs in the background of your account and it's looking for these triggers. And so when someone types in whatever that word is, that trigger word, manychat will pick it up and then it can do a bunch of really clever things. It can reply directly. So if someone leaves a comment, it can reply below their comment. But mostly what it's been used for is it will then start a DM based conversation with that person and within that conversation, all completely automated, it will then share links, it will, you know, follow up, it might ask questions, you can share gifts, you know, all kinds of really cool things. Now it is one of those tools right though that with as Spider man says, or Spider Man's uncle says, sorry, don't come for me comic book nerds. With great power comes great responsibility because you can also massively mess this up. And I'm going to share at the end one of my number one tips to Stop you messing this up. Like when we very first time we played with this, which was actually a couple of years ago now, we basically set up an automation that kind of forgot about it and left it because it was kind of like, oh, new toy, let's play with it. And then you know, went about the rest of our business and then one day logged into our DM inbox and basically our automation and someone else's automation had gotten stuck in almost like this infinite loop where they're both within their sort of automated follow up sequence had the other person's trigger word. So they're just triggering back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it was just like it nearly melted my phone. So, you know, there's definitely ways you can mess this up. I've seen in some other ways. Again we'll talk about later. But let's not worry about the how you can get it wrong. Let's start with the how you can get it right. And I wanted to share with you today 5 really simple, really clever ways you can use many chat inside your business right now that's really easy to set up and that can all be super beneficial to help you to, you know, engage better with your audience, to grow your audience and all of that good stuff. So let's dive into that. So the number one, and this is the basic one, I just kind of wanted to cover it off to make you, to make sure that we mentioned it. But I'm sure you're well aware of this one. But number one is obviously to use it to promote any of your list building tools. So if you've got a really great opt in bribe or lead magnet, if you have a launch coming up and you're doing a challenge or a webinar, you can obviously use this to help to pass on the information, to help people to take that step. So like all those examples I was saying before, you'll see people talking about sharing a piece of content and at the end they have that trigger word where it's like if you want to get more information, if you want me to send you the link, if you want to join our workshop, either DM us or comment this particular word and you know, we'll send you all the details. So that's number one. And I think within that there's probably like an A and a B A being obviously think about what your number one and most successful opt in bribes are and you definitely want to set up one for those. And then you just kind of start getting into the habit. You Know, whatever your call to action normally is where it might be like, go to this link or link in bio or something, start mixing it up, start instead giving that option of commenting below dming to get the link. Now just a little side note, one of the reasons why this manychat is having its resurgence at the moment and why it's so powerful is that if you think about it, your Instagram is actually favoring this and preferring you to do this. And whenever we play nicely and we do what Instagram wants, it generally rewards us. So what I mean by that is if you think about Instagram being the all knowing being that it is, Instagram wants its users to stay inside Instagram. It wants its users to be engaging to using different features. That's why usually when Instagram rolls out a new feature, you generally get really good results from using that new feature because they want to reward you for adopting and using that new feature. So similarly, they want to reward people for keeping people inside the Instagram app as much as you can. So again, rather than saying link in bio, clicking off somewhere else, asking people to dm, asking people to comment and then you know, following them up and sending them the details, even getting them to provide their email address and do the whole opt in process inside the DMs that makes Instagram happy. So you know, you kind of get a big tick there. So that usually gives you some, you know, some brownie points algorithm wise. The second piece, which is really important and again why this strategy right now and this tool has had like a second life because it's not a new tool, it has been around for years is it seems to be with how the algorithm is at the moment is that you get really heavily rewarded when people are interacting and engaging with your content, but beyond that when they're actually engaging with you as a brand. So Instagram likes it when you are getting DMs and you are responding to those DMs and when you are getting comments and you're responding to those comments. So that again is giving you some good algorithm juice. But you're not having to do it manually. It can all be automated. So that was my little sidebar. Let's jump back in to the five ways you can now use this. Now you understand why it's so powerful. Now you can use this inside your business. So as I said, number one, well one A is obviously setting it up for all your static and evergreen opt ins and just starting switching up your call to action to being a manychat trigger and then 1B would be then to do the same thing for anything you've got coming up live. That's the basics, that's how everyone's using it. Let's go a little level deeper. Now. The second thing that I would recommend everyone goes and does is to basically create a link or find a link. And you want to be a static link because you don't want to be having to update this every single time, but to whatever your most recent piece of long form content is. So maybe you have a YouTube channel, maybe you have a podcast like us, maybe you are old school and you're still doing blogs, whatever that is, you should be able to find a link to like for example, if it's to blogs, you can generally find a link that takes them to. These are the most recent blog posts, right? Like you can get to that page if it's for your podcast, then you might want to have even better yet, give people the option of being able to link through to itunes, to Spotify and to anywhere else where you are commonly being played, or even again directly if you have it hosted on your site, to your blog page, on your website, or again linking to your YouTube channel. So what this does is it gives you again another call to action when you are sharing. Like maybe you're sharing snippets, maybe you're talking about or dropping hints or getting people excited about your new content each week. It's just another way to get people that link to get them to watch that content. So you share a little 30 second, 60 second snippet of your podcast and they're like, hey, want to see the rest of this episode? Just comment whatever your trigger word is and I'll send you the link. That's an evergreen one that you can just have running all the time. It doesn't need to be updated. And again just makes your life easier and makes it easier for the people who are engaging with your content and who want to find more to be able to do that. The next one is for a similar idea, but for getting people onto your email list. So maybe sometimes you want to, you know, start dropping hints about something coming up. I know some people use a strategy where they're like, hey, my newsletter is super valuable. It's coming up on Thursday. You don't want to miss out. Make sure you're on my email email list. So if you want to be able to also send people and give them a chance to opt in and get on your list, then having again a static evergreen trigger that you can run Again and again. And that you can use as a call to action again and again to just let people get onto that list. Or also if you have like a VIP broadcast list on Instagram or something like that, you can set all that up. And again, it's the same thing. Just DM me this, comment me this and I'll send you all the details. Number four is to ask for reviews and to automate that process. So whether it's reviews of a product or program, whether it's reviews of something you're running live, maybe you're doing three day challenge or something like that, and you want to get people's feedback, whether it's a more evergreen, you want to get reviews of your podcast and then be sharing some of those again, just sitting down and going, what do I need from people? So whether it is taking them through the steps, it's like, oh awesome, you want to share a review or I'd love it if you could leave a review. Here's what you need to do. Click this link and then give them a link to go and fill it out and you can follow up. Hey, how did you go? Thanks for sharing a review. Have you got any questions? Like you can kind of start again, start that conversation, make it a really nice natural process. Now lucky last. And this is probably a bit more advanced and is really specifically for those who have a higher ticket or a mid to high ticket program where you know you want to be able to have some, some sales conversations, right? But you don't want to be talking to absolutely everybody who's opting in for these things because they're not all going to be people who are actually buyers or who are qualified for your program or who are even a good fit. So you can actually use the ManyChat system and flows to have sort of follow up sequences that allow you to automate the asking of additional questions. And then you can see are these people engaging? Are these people therefore qualified? Like you can ask a few questions about their business or about, you know what it is, the particular issue that it is that you're helping them with and get them to give answers. And if they're actually engaging, then that is probably a good point for a human to step in and to actually start to talk to them and start to have those sort of pre sale conversations, see if you can help them, see if your offer is a good fit. But you can do that whole filtering process, that triage process can be automated and can then come off the back of all of these opt ins as well or all these other initial first engagement actions. So last thing I want to cover today. So there's five things I said you can go and do and you can set these up really quick. Particularly once you've done your first one. It's pretty easy like you'll kind of get the flow. So number one, promoting all your opt ins and list building and Legion. Number two, setting up some kind of static link and call to action to whatever your content is, whether that's YouTube, podcast, whatever it is. Number three, again setting up a static link to get people to come and join your email list to get all your awesome value and goodies that you share to your list for asking for and actually giving the process of leaving reviews, getting feedback. And number five is starting buying conversations and triaging people to then potentially be handed over to an actual human to have the real buying conversations. So those are five things you can go and do. I would love to know if you are going to go give one of those a shot. Just pick one. DM us @hellofunnels, let us know. Or if you're watching the video, let us know in the comments below. But I wanted to before we finish up to share a really important tip because this is going to save you a world of pain and it's a mistake I'm seeing even someone like people with like millions of followers are making and when they're making it, this is just kind of like amplified. So basically my tip is whatever your trigger word is, it cannot be a single word and it cannot be a common phrase either. So again this is a lesson we learned the hard way and I want to give you an example actually. First, this is a real world example. I won't say whose account it was that happened, but I saw this and I saw it kind of screenshotting and I, I probably should have messaged them now I think about it. But basically they had just a very generic kind of conversational post going out on I think it was on Facebook. And I think the question that they asked was something like what is you think the most important characteristic in a friend or in a business or I can't really remember the full details of it, but asking people to list traits and characteristics that they thought were really important. And a lot of people were listing or saying having the ability to listen or being a good listener. Which seems great, right? Pretty straightforward. Unfortunately this account had a manychat trigger which was looking for the word list like just L, I S T and it was seeing list is part of listen and it was automatically responding to all of these people who were saying it's really important to be a good listener with a autoresponder, which clearly showed they were not listening. So and then all these people were like freaking out and you know, it wasn't great. So that's why that and so many reasons like why it's really important to not just use a single word, particularly not a common word or one that people might comment below or even responding to someone else's comment might just come up. So I think a lot of people, they automatically go, oh, I'm doing a list building challenge, so I'm going to make my trigger word list or list building. But unfortunately people, you're probably going to talk about list building again at other stages and people might be asking about that and then it's going to trigger it. So the real magic of these automations is that yes, even though people know they are automated is you don't want to make it so clearly obvious that they're automated, that they're just coming across as being tone deaf and just answering the questions that aren't even questions. So what I recommend that you do for your trigger words and phrases is actually do a combo word. So that is, you know, have two to three words as a single word. You also don't want it to be too long or too easy to misspell or do a combo. So we did one recently, it was three a day, but it was all one word. So the number three and then update all together. So again, it's short and easy, quite easy people to type in, but not something that people are going to again be likely to be typing or writing on their own. They could, it happens, but you know, you just want to try and mitigate the risk of that happening. So that's my number one tip. Ignore me at at your peril. I've definitely seen this on multiple big accounts be a real, real problem. So I don't want it to be a problem for you guys. So, yeah, that's it guys. This is my little deep dive into manychat. I hope it's been useful. I hope you've got a few, or at least one that you're going to go away and give it a try. It's a very inexpensive tool as well, so not a big investment. But anything that you can automate, anything that's going to help you to make it easier for people to opt in, to engage, I'm all for that and manychat is a brilliant, brilliant tool for that. So let me know how you go, guys. Otherwise, I'll see you all next week.