Podcast episode (#205) by Kate McKibbin (Hello Funnels) explaining how to turn social media engagement into sales using automated DM-based funnels (ManyChat). She breaks the funnel into three phases: (1) Basics — prompt users to comment a trigger word and deliver a freebie via automated DM; (2) Qualification — follow up after a short delay with a single qualifying question (A/B/C) to segment users; (3) Connect & Convert — send personalized-feeling follow-up (e.g., voice-note audio) and route each segment to the most appropriate conversion event (low-ticket offer, discount, webinar, call, etc.). Practical notes include permission confirmation in the DM, common automations (auto-reply to comment + DM), timing (follow-up within minutes up to 24 hours), and quick integrations (optional Zapier/email capture). Episode closes with a limited-time paid "social selling bundle" and CTA to hellofunnels.com/social.
Questions this episode answers
Up to 24 hours.
A trigger word such as "potato" (listeners are told to comment the word).
Foreign.
Lovely. It is Kate here from hello, Funnels, and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Now, if you've ever seen those posts on Instagram right now where people are saying, like, hey, DM me the word funnel and I will send you this cool free thing, and you're thinking, okay, these are happening a lot, but how are people making money from these? Well, that is exactly what we're going to be sharing with you today. So let's dive right, right on it.
Okay, guys, so these started to really blow up last year, even though actually this as a strategy has been around for a really long time. And the tool that you used to do at ManyChat has been around for years. Like, I think I've been paying for it for at least five to six years and just not using it. But last year they got a bit of a resurgence, and that is because a couple of things happened. The most important one being that people realized that when you got things like comments and DMS and stuff like that, like when you encourage people to do that, the algorithm really rewarded you. But that was always a bit time consuming to be doing it yourself as the owner of an account. And, hey, actually, what if you could automate that? So when that kind of came together, when people went, hey, there's a tool that lets me do this and it helps my reach on the algorithm. And, oh, look, it's actually kind of a funnel and I can make money off the back of it. Even better, then these things kind of blow up. The help of, you know, people like Amy Portfield, Jenna Kutcher, they all kind of got on board and then they were all siding everywhere. And the thing is, unlike a lot of strategies that we see people with big seven, eight figure businesses using, I love, love, love this strategy because it works just as well with small businesses. So today I actually want to go through a breakdown of how these funnels work. And normally people talk about just the basics, but I want to talk about the two steps below that can also help you to start making some really great, consistent sales from your social media channels and platforms, doing what you're already doing and without having to spend a cent on. So I hope that sounds good. All right, so let's start now with the first phase. So we've got three phases of this funnel, and most people just use phase one. And phase one is what I call the basics. But that is getting people to engage and getting them to opt in. So this is where, you know, what you're seeing everywhere, where people are saying DM me the word potato and I'm going to send you a PDF about potatoes or whatever it is, right? So that's phase one. And what happens then in the back end of ManyChat is set up to look for that trigger word potato. And when that happens you can set it to usually do two things. So usually you tick this little box and you tick it that says automatically reply to that comment. So it comes up in the feed. So that's good engagement. People see and you go like, yep, go check your DMs. And then you also DM that person with the start of the conversation. And usually just permission wise, you have to reconfirm with them that they were happy for you to send them stuff. So you say, hey, do you want to get this? Click this button. Yep, they do. Then the second part of the message is you provide them with the link. Now you can now sort of start to get in there and you can ask people for their email address, their name, you can use Zapier to go and connect things up and automate it, but you don't need to, it's a bit overkill. Just usually just giving people the link is enough. So that's part one. Part one is just how to deliver people the freebie, right? Like get people that first piece of information. And that's where most people leave it. They just really leave it as a bit of a list builder and driving people to their email and allowing the emails to do the next steps for them. But I think that is actually a bit of a waste and leaving money on the table. And I think there's two more really simple steps you can add in to your manychat automations that are going to make them infinitely better. Okay, so step number two is called qualification. So you've already, you know, they've opted in, they've said potato. You've got them to confirm that they're happy to be DM'd by you because it's just like a permission thing, right? And then you've sent them the link to go and get their potato PDF. Great. Now you're going to leave it for a little bit, like let them go off and do that and you're going to check back in with them and the timeframe is really up to you. Some people make it 15 minutes, some people have it a few hours. You've got up to 24 hours to be able to still communicate with them. Obviously these things do change, but that's what it sort of currently is with manychat and what I Love to do here is come back to them sort of on the quicker side and say, hey, I hope you found that really useful. We've actually got, you know, this, this great thing we just shared with our clients or something. You want to make it sound really juicy and exclusive, and they're only getting it because you're already chatting with them. Right. It's like it's a special thing just for people that you're having a conversation with. Do you want to. Yes. Great. We just want to make sure we're going to send you the most relevant, most useful thing. So can you just quickly answer a quick question for us? Are you A or B? So here is why I've called this the qualification section. So here you're going to come up with a really simple qualifying question which is going to help you to determine maybe what stage that person's at, maybe what they've done before or haven't done. But basically it's going to help you to figure out which of your products and programs this person is best suited for, because you don't really know anything about them at this point. Thinking of a question, it doesn't have to be a yes, no question. You could probably even say, are you option A, B or C, if that's easier. But a question that doesn't feel, you know, too personal, something that people are happy to share, but that's going to help you to, you know, figure out where to send them next. So that's the qualifying section. Then when people say, oh, hey, I'm a beginner, you say, great, now, and we move them through to the final section, stage three, which I call connect and convert. So in stage three, like, you could just, again, just send them a link to something. But I think, again, you're missing an opportunity because one of the beautiful things about these types of funnels and this type of medium is even though it's a bot and they know it's a bot, you can make it feel really personal. And I'm not talking about, like, pretending here. I do not believe, like, I love automating, but we don't pretend. Okay? But you can add some beautiful personal touches. And one of the ones I discovered just recently is you can actually upload audio into your many chat sequences and it looks like you've just sent them a voice note. So imagine, first of all, knowing, like, asking them a question. I mean, I would say, okay, I now know this about you. I know you're at this stage or you're trying to solve this problem and being able to shoot them a quick voice note like you, the business owner, the person that they're following. It's not going to be an individualized to every single person, you're not going to say hey Jane, thanks for this but you can definitely do something like hey, I saw you are at Saba. You know, I'm so excited to share this with you. You know, here's why people are finding like, you know, just give them a nice little personal touch and then share with them a link to the next step and everyone's next step is going to be different. Depends on what your offers are, depends on what conversion events you've got set up. It depends if you've got any funnels like it might make sense for you. Depending again on what they've said. Option A, B or C, you know, one group of people, maybe you send them to a low ticket offer, maybe that's the best thing for them. For another group of people, maybe you give them a special discount code to get your special access to a program that's not normally open. For another group people, maybe you send them to a webinar or a training or you invite them to book a call or to start a conversation. But either way, adding these extra two steps into your social media funnels, they're really simple, they're really easy to do, but they're going to make anything that happens after that so much more powerful and gives you such a higher chance of it converting really well and converting to a sale, which is of course what we all want. Now of course, if you want to dive into this deeper, if you would actually like to come along and sort of look over my shoulder and have me walk you through exactly how you set these up as well as some of our other top converting social funnels, you can do that. We have got a special little bundle that we've created for a limited time only which is our social selling bundle and we're going to show you how to set up your own amazing social sales sequences. Try saying that 10 times fast. You can get all the details right. Now as I said, it's for limited time only. There's be a link below or just head to hellofunnels co social. You get all the details, you can jump in, get the step by step funnels one click install. In some cases, depending on what platforms you're using, we're going to give you the swipe files for exactly what to say, exactly when to say it and it's going to help you to automate your sales. Coming from social and to make selling even easier, which of course is always the point. So go check that out. Hellofunnels.com Social let us know what you think. And as always guys, I hope this episode has been super valuable for you. Please, like Share Review we love it when any time that you do that, it means the world to us. And I'll see you all next week.
