Although no one denies email marketing’s power, email is currently facing the challenge of a new entrant: Facebook chatbots.

Instabot found that companies who use chatbots have seen a 33% increase in leads generated, as compared to traditional web contact forms.

The full article (link at the bottom) has very detailed instructions and screenshots for each of the steps outlined below. You should definitely check it out if you want to learn more. Here I’m showing the broad outline, with a few explanations and illustrations.

Step 0: Before the Chatbot

First, you need to decide where in your funnel you want to use chatbots.

Your Facebook Messenger chatbot can help you at every stage, from generating a lead to sending them the free offer you promised in exchange for their email to sending them more personalized and detailed messages.

Step 1: Install the Chat

It could be either Facebook’s standard chatbot or external tools like ManyChat or Chatfuel. If you want to get started quickly, choose one of the external ones.

Step 2: Generate a Lead and Deliver the Lead Offer

An example of how to present a relevant offer. The slide-in appears about halfway through reading the article and is relevant to what you’re reading:

After you get the promised free guide, the company will continue messaging you, just like what happens with email.

In this situation, the chatbot plays a double role, generating the interest to download the lead offer and delivering it. It’s like an all-in-one landing page mixed with an email marketing automation campaign.

Step 3: Engage and Qualify the Lead

This is where engagement starts and where segmentation happens.

Step 4: Get Your Prospect to Take Action

Once you’ve engaged and qualified the lead, you need to send them the final offer, whether that’s a sales consultation, a sales trial, a demo, or anything else.

You can do it over time but an important consideration is that these steps can all happen in one long conversation. Civilized Caveman does this with their Sugar Quiz.

In less than 5 minutes, the people of Civilized Caveman engaged you, qualify you, make you a lead and, if you are interested, transform you into a profitable customer, offering you a paid course worth $147, based on the results of your Sugar Quiz.

Instead of having to delay your sales funnel for weeks or months, Facebook chatbots offer the opportunity to speed up your engagement and lower the time it takes to convert a lead into a customer.

A Chatbot Sequence for Lead Generation

• Step 1: Segment the audience
• Step 2: Map the information that the lead needs before taking the desired action
• Step 3: Develop the sequence you will send according to the segment and respective journey that they take

Message 1-5: Introduce and Ask Segment Questions

In these first few messages, be sure to introduce yourself, which can be simple like the HubSpot example shown above, and ask them the key questions you defined before to segment the user.

“Do you have questions about X?”

“Are you shopping for Y?”

“Did you come for support about Z?”

Message 6: Playful Content

One of the main differentiators which makes Messenger so different from other channels is the personalized touch they provide. They make people feel as if they’re talking to a real human. Thus, using playful content to break the ice and create some rapport helps tremendously before asking for a sale.

Message 7: Soft Sell

To start, you can ask another question that touches on the problem the user has and that justifies the previously downloaded piece of content. You start by mentioning the problem, continue explaining the problem — what it means for them, like hours or money lost — and then close by providing the solution.

Message 8: Playful Content

Continue playing with the user, just as you did in the sixth message. At this point, however, you could tie it to the problem you’ve been talking about in previous messages.

Message 9: High-Value Content

If the user hasn’t signed up yet, now’s the time to send a higher value piece of content, like a webinar, a case study, or even a live demo. With this material, you’re looking to show the user the kind of solution you provide.

Message 10: Hard Sell

In this final message, you’re giving them a clear action to take: sign up for a trial, buy your product or schedule a consultation with your company.

After you send this message, you can continue to send the user more messages structured in a similar way as before (i.e., one fun, one content-focused, one conversion-focused) until they convert.

Conclusion

With the help of Facebook chatbots, you can take your marketing funnels to a new level of engagement never seen before because you aren’t just selling something to your audience; you are connecting with them.

By using Facebook chatbots, your marketing will become much more personal, effective and interesting. The possibilities are unlimited, so it’s time you get started!

How to Build a Facebook Chatbot Marketing Funnel

PS. I use ManyChat on growrevenue.io If you prefer receiving these articles by messages rather than by email, you can start here.