Chat automation yields a plethora of benefits for you and your business. From engaging with customers to capturing important information, chatbots can take a lot off your plate.
One of the most important instances chatbots can assist with is lead generation and lead qualification. While lead generation is all about getting a customer into your inbox, lead qualification is the process of building that relationship to transform a potential prospect into a lifelong customer.
From start to finish, here’s how automated lead qualification can be implemented to show results for your business using ManyChat.
What is automated lead qualification?
Automated lead generation is an important part of the sales funnel, where you determine which leads are strong enough to transfer potential customers into purchasing customers.
Lead qualification is used to save time during a sales funnel. Instead of spreading your marketing efforts thin by trying to be every customer’s solution, lead qualification focuses only on the “best-fit customers.” These are the customers who best fit your ideal customer profile, letting you offer a solution to their problem that actually works.
As for the leads that don’t qualify, it’s best you release them from the sales funnel or redirect them to a different product or service you offer.
How does automated lead qualification work?
Let’s take a look at how automated lead qualification works using ManyChat’s powerful chat automation tools. For instance, let’s say you run a consulting business that helps new businesses get their foot in the door of areas like marketing, target audience research, and lead generation (among other things).
As the owner of your business, you know exactly who your ideal customer is. For example, they can be a start up, likely within their first year, with a small social presence and a great need for direction in honing their craft. However, you also know who isn’t your ideal customer. Maybe they’re a business that has already built a large following, is securing hundreds of sales per month, and is no stranger to the business world. It’s obvious where your services would benefit one and fall on deaf ears with another. Lead qualification using ManyChat allows you to perform several tasks such as:
- Initiate the capture of important sign-up information
- Start conversations using keyword triggers
- Motivate potential buyers using incentives
- Ask qualifying questions to gather more in-depth information
- Save your information using a Google sheet that can be used to sift through the noise to sort only your ideal customer
Qualifying leads based on data
Remember all that data we discussed retrieving using ManyChat’s tools? Well, let’s discuss how to best extract that data from your potential customers. It’s all about asking the right questions. Let’s go back to our example of the consulting business. As you are setting up your ManyChat flow, you’ll want to ask certain questions based on triggers the audience chooses. For example, if your first question is “Where are you at in your business journey?” you’ll want to include a couple of answers to segment them off like:
- I’m a new business owner
- I’m a long-time business owner
Depending on their answer, you’ll be able to steer them down more qualifying questions with the main intent of honing in on the best-fit ideal customer. These questions can include:
- What are you struggling with?
- Growth
- Finding my target customer
- Building my brand
- How much output are you producing?
- 1–150 units per month
- 151–175 units per month
- 200+ units per month
Once you’ve driven them down the funnel, you can choose to either kill the flow by redirecting them to a product or service that better fits their needs, or direct them to your booking page, where they are able to book time with you or your team for further information.
Moving qualified leads through the sales funnel
Shifting customers with a curious mindset over to a buying mindset is all about offering value and over delivering. You want them to know that you understand all of their pain points and that you have the answer they’ve been looking for. This can all be done within your initial incentive and throughout the sales funnel.
Taking it back to our example, let’s say you wanted to draw more customers in (known as lead generation). You may do this in several ways, with one being an incentive. Offering an incentive like a free consultation call or free access to your first tier material can be the best intro to draw them into your sales funnel.
Once you’ve hooked them and qualified them using the steps above, it’s time to move them through your sales funnel.
- Reestablish the value your product or service provides. Basically, restate their problem and how your solution solves it.
- Go in for the “big ask”. This is where you ask for their commitment through a purchase or a signup.
- Regroup and add more incentive. If they refuse your initial ask then try adding more incentive, like 20% off for the next 24 hours.
Boost your lead qualification with ManyChat
Lead generation and lead qualification goes hand in hand, with one feeding the other. ManyChat has the tools you need to do both, translating your hard work into sales, subscribers, and lifetime customers.
With ManyChat Instagram automation you’re able to:
- Capture your audience information using keywords, conversation starters, and DMs
- Take the information you acquired and use it to qualify your audience for the best-fit customer
- Follow up with your stragglers to rein in more sales and potential customers
ManyChat is free to sign up for and offers excellent customer support and lessons to get you started building the chat automation your business has been missing. Let ManyChat help you engage with your target audience and seal the deal with your customers.
Try ManyChat now!
