The Bring Your Product Idea To Life Podcast is perfect for anyone just starting out in product sales or looking to create their own product to sell. I’m Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert, here every week with friendly, practical advice and inspiring stories from small businesses.

Mel is an experienced Meta marketer, helping product brands maximise their sales and leads through Facebook ads and chat funnels.

As well as working with ecommerce brands to scale their sales through ads, Mel is also known as the 'Manychat queen' - helping businesses to personalise their connection with followers through Manychat automations, helping to boost reach and engagement, leading to higher conversion rates through a seamless customer journey.

Mel explains how to make the most of Facebook and Instagram ads and connect better with customers using chat funnels.

Mel shares helpful advice on running effective Meta ads, like testing different ad types (such as carousel, video, and catalogue ads) to reach the right audience, understanding your customer acquisition costs, and adjusting your ads regularly to keep them fresh. 

Mel also introduces ManyChat, a tool that lets you set up automated, personalised messages for Instagram and Facebook DMs, making it easy for customers to interact without leaving the platform. With ManyChat, you can automate replies to boost engagement, increase sales, and keep customer relationships strong without overwhelm. If you have seen a post saying comment ‘insert word of choice’ and I will send you the link - they are likely to be using a Chat Funnel!

It’s a great, in depth practical episode, that will help you decide how to harness the best tech to boost your product sales.

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started. Hello.

So today on the podcast I'm speaking to Mel Ilers from Socially Sound.

Mel is an experienced metamarketer, helping product brands maximize their sales and leads through Facebook ads and chat funnels, as well as working with e commerce brands to scale their sales through ads.

Mel is known as the manychat Queen, helping businesses to personalize their connection with followers through manychat automations, helping to boost reach and engagement, leading to higher conversion rates through a seamless customer journey. Mel is also a sought after speaker and has shared the online stage with the likes of Amy Porterfield and Michael Hyatt.

Mel is a very popular podcast guest and I'm delighted to have her feature on our podcast today. As you can imagine, we spoke a lot about meta ads, that's Facebook and Instagram and about chat funnels as well.

Now, I don't know about you, but chat funnels is still something that's fairly new to me.

So it was great to talk about a way that you can sell more of your products doing something that not a lot of other businesses are actually doing right now. So as I say, two part conversation. Firstly we talk about meta ads, then we talk about chat funnels.

Both parts equally interesting, equally useful and actionable as always. And I would love now to introduce you to Mel.

Hi Mel. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me, Vicky.

Oh, you're so welcome. I've been really looking forward to this chat because it's a subject I know nothing about.

Excellent.

Yeah, I don't know how many people do, but for me it's all quite scary and new. So I'm really excited to get into it with you. Can we start by you giving introduction to yourself, your business and what what you do?

Yes, certainly.

So my name is Mel Il Islers and I am an experienced metamarketer helping product brands to maximize their sales and leads through Facebook ads and chat funnels.

So as well as working with e commerce brands to scale their sales through ads, I also help businesses personalize their connections with followers through manychat automations on Instagram and Facebook, which helps them to boost their reach and engagement, which can lead to higher conversion rates and a much More seamless customer journey.

That's amazing. Thank you for that. And yet, as I say, topics I know nothing about, I mean, I've seen them on the consumer end, obviously.

Ads pop up on my Facebook and Instagram all the time. And I've experienced the chat funnels as well. But I'd love to talk about both in more detail.

Let's start with Facebook and Instagram ads first, if that's okay. Because I think that's a good starting point and I think that probably leads well into the topic of chat funnels as well. So can we start?

This is going to sound like such a basic question, but for anyone who's listening, who isn't quite sure what Facebook and Instagram ads are, maybe they're not on socials or haven't used them. Can you just give a really quick overview for us, please?

So Facebook and Instagram ads, so on the behalf of the consumer, they are the ads that you will see in when you're scrolling through your apps on Facebook and Instagram, they are the posts that you'll see that have the little word called sponsored above them. That is an ad invariably that comes with a button that will say something like shop now or learn more or message me or something like that. And so.

So on the other side of that, on the brand side of that is where brands can spend their budget to build a strategic ads strategy through the Facebook ads manager in order to place their ads hopefully right into the palms of those scrolling consumers, right into their target audience, essentially.

That makes sense. Thank you.

And I'm thinking there were different types of ads because I've definitely seen sponsored posts, although I have to say on Instagram particularly, I think if you're not always looking for it, they do blend in a bit more because of the style of platform.

Yes. And I've also seen, Definitely.

And I also see quite a lot of the bigger brands, mainly clothing brands, will do those ads that are like a carousel where they'll show you an item, someone wearing something and you can scroll through and. Yeah.

Yeah. So for product brands, really there's, there's, I mean there's many options within the, within the ads platform anyway.

You can just put a single image out. You can use video content, you can build carousels as well with some of your best images.

You can also connect your catalogue if you're running say for example, if you're running Shopify, you can pull images in from your Shopify catalog into your ads as well and build different out product collections. So say, for example, if you were, I don't know, a, a pet brand or something. You could build one ad that just displayed your different types of food.

You have another ad that displayed all different types of dog bedding or something like that. So there are various different ways in which you can build creatively and run different types of ad. It doesn't have to be just a single image.

And in all honesty, the best way to get results is actually to test all the different functionalities that you have access to and that you can deliver on as a brand as well. So it's definitely worth testing your videos, your im, your carousels, your catalogs. Yeah.

And it all helps to, you know, to get your product out there basically into the hands of your target audience.

That makes sense. And I think trying all the different types of ads is really good advice because I think it's hard to know what will work for you.

As with lots of different types of ads, I have to say, from a consumer point of view, I feel they're pretty good because they're really easy to shop from because generally you click a link and it takes you to a page where you can actually buy something. So I'd love to know from the brands that you've worked with, do they see success? Do they see that these do work?

Yes, they do. They definitely work.

But that's not to say that running ads should be, you know, a very simplistic off the cuff decision because they do take work, they do take budget and you can't, you need to have a lot of the fundamental business, the things working in the background as well. So, you know, you need to know your numbers. It's not a question of waking up one day and think, you know, I've got a bit of extra budget.

Let's just, let's give Facebook ads, ads a go because if you don't know what you're doing and you're likely to lose your money very, very quickly. So it is a constant testing process. You will see dips in performance. We are in Q4 right now. Costs are going to be quite high.

Whereas in January, depending, depending on what your brand is, you might see that costs dip because we're after that main sales period of Q4.

But that is why it is a constant testing process, because what work one month may not work the next month and you can get, you know, your ads can fatigue. So it's certainly not a case of just setting up your ads and then forgetting about them. You need to be going into the platform regularly.

I look at my clients ads On a daily basis. I may not do something on a daily basis, but I look at them just to make sure that they are still performing.

And it's also important to remember that you know, different, there's different levels of success for brands as well.

You know, brands that have a very, you know, possibly more low priced and mass consumer may see a much higher roas than a brand that has a, whose price point is a lot higher but their customer base is a lot smaller. So it's not a case necessarily of looking at oh, that brand's doing really, really well. Why aren't our results like that brand?

Every brand is different.

Every brand will have different sets of results and it's focusing on what works for you as a brand rather than picking numbers out of the sky and thinking we should be able to achieve that.

It really is a constant process of knowing your numbers, testing your creative, knowing what you're doing in the ads platform or hiring somebody who knows what they're doing so you don't waste your money and then having the ability to adapt and bring out more creative. Test different messaging, respond to the market conditions as, as you work through the calendar year.

As I said, you know, you know, now at the moment costs are quite high because there's a lot of competition in the market because a lot of those brands want those Christmas and new Year sales and just being able to work that as to what works for your brand.

Really that's so helpful. Thank you.

And we won't go into the technical aspects of using the platform today because I think that's really going to be deep and be a bit much, especially for something that's aud.

But I would love to know as a starting point before we even thinking about running ads, you mentioned there were some fundamentals you need to have in place before you even think about switching them on. What are those?

So the biggest one I would say for a brand is to know your numbers essentially because if you, and the way you really know that is by having organic traction with your brand to start with.

I would always advise a startup brand not to just jump into the ads platform and start spending money because ideally you really need to know whether your product has traction organically. And if you're getting traction organically, you're going to be starting to know your numbers.

That is, how much does it cost you to acquire that customer? What is the average basket size? You know, how many times have they shopped with you in the last few months?

Are they, is it a repeat purchase type of brand or Is it like a one off purchase that maybe they won't come back again for another couple of years? So only by getting that organic traction do you then know your numbers.

So when you do jump into the ads platform, you have a rough idea of your target cpa, what you, you know what it costs you to get a customer because if you don't know those numbers and you suddenly jump into the platform and start spending money and your CPA is like £20 or for example, pluck that out of nowhere. But you know, how do you know that that is what's good for you when you haven't got that traction organically? So definitely know your numbers.

That's a massive one. And at the moment as well, the Azure, as you know, many of your listeners understand the meta changes a lot.

Several years ago when we were running ads, there was a real focus on audience, on being able to target very, very specifically within the platform. Almost like Ninja, like targeting to deliver your ads right into the heart, right into the palm of your ideal consumer.

That doesn't exist as much anymore. There are still targeting options within there, but meta is, has moved to a much more broader based targeting.

You know, meta knows who you are looking for and there are many sort of, you know, audience plus options they call them now within the platform. So the all there isn't such a focus on Ninja. Targeting, which means you're creative is what really needs to pull in your audience.

So it's, you know, fair enough, you use single images, of course, use videos, but really what is it in that creative that's going to stop the scroll of your ideal consumer? What is the messaging that's going to really appeal to them, to make them consider your product and hopefully buy it?

You know, what pain points or what problems is that going to solve? Why should they buy your brand as opposed to another very similar brand?

So it's less about targeting now, but it's much more on the creative and the messaging to hook that ideal consumer in and hopefully get them to explore your brand and hopefully buy from you.

That's really helpful, thank you. And with the targeting, does your creative play a part in the targeting? As in it sounds like that meta are doing a lot of the targeting for you.

Does your creative play a part? Are they looking for certain words or phrases or imagery or.

Yeah.

Does your, does your creative have any impact on who they show your ad to? I guess is what I'm trying to get at.

No, I think when you first launch the ads, Meta will always give it some spend, hopefully and then if that spend then gets traction, then it will give it more spend. So it's kind of you really.

So when you're testing, say if you launched three ads at exactly the same time, Matter might initially choose one of those and give it a lot of spend. But if it, if it doesn't get any traction, it will switch to spending money on one of the other ads to see if that gets traction as well. And if.

And it will, it kind of, you know. So when you launch an ad campaign, it's not. You don't look at the results after a day and think, oh, that ad's rubbish, that one's not worked.

But that one is a surefire winner.

Because bear in mind, five, seven days down the line, it's quite likely that those results are going to be very different because of the way that Meta chooses to spend its money. So those ads get released, they go out the gates. Meta will think, well, let's try this one. This is a video.

Video gets lots of traction on the platform. Always highly recommend that if brands can that they do try video and it may push that one out first.

But actually after a few days it's not really got any traction.

So maybe meta shifts the budget into spending onto the single image and actually that resonates with people a lot more and actually starts to get traction. So it is that constant testing process, but there's no specific words or phrases or creative angles that meta will look for. It's kind of more.

The algorithm is looking to see where it gets that traction first and then it will give it more budget or it'll scale it back and give something else a bit more budget.

Perfect. And that sounds. The algorithm actually sounds pretty smart.

It's definitely getting smarter.

Yeah, it sounds it because I think I remember when I ran Facebook ads myself years ago. Now, I can't tell you how many years targeting was a big thing and you could really niche down, you could get really, really specific.

And it sounds like what you're saying is you don't have to go into that detail anymore.

No, no, you don't. And actually Facebook have removed a lot of the kind of the ninja like targeting as well. And it does depend on your account.

So the ones that I have access to, actually some of the accounts have different functionality than others. It's just the way it is when Meta rolls things out. No one gets everything at the same time.

So I do have one account where the client, I can still do a lot of the original targeting audience options in it and on the Other one I can't. So. And it's much more about letting going the broad audiences and letting meta do the work for you, which can be really successful.

But again, it's a question of testing what works in your account because no account is the same as somebody else's. So you can never compare two very similar product brands and think it's like versus like, because it's so not. It's very, very different.

And with the targeting being, let's say, reduced, you know, not having quite as many options as we did. How good a method, in your opinion, at showing your ads to the, to the right people?

I'm assuming that they have an algorithm and then they refine it as they can as they get data.

Yes, definitely. I mean that's where it is.

You know, meta can essentially see all your, you know, a lot of your touch points on the Internet due to, you know, the Pixel, the Facebook Pixel.

So if you visit a website that has the Facebook Pixel installed and therefore, and it's maybe it's about, I don't know, car products or something, and then maybe you're part of a Facebook group organically on online about classic cars or something, you know, those different signals of your movement around the web will be telling Facebook what your interests are and therefore it knows to show you possibly that you might be interested in some, some sort of car product ads. So it's basically about those, you know, the signals that it can be picked up and it's the touch points that you have as well.

So, and you know, Facebook does know what we're doing.

It's clever and scary and it also explains why I have to say for myself, a lot of the ads I see are really relevant. They are places I chop things that I'd buy. Yeah, scary.

If you think about it a bit too much from the other side, the brand point of view, it's really smart, isn't it?

Because I guess you're reaching people that you might not have been able to reach because you would not, you would not have this knowledge about who to potentially put your ads in front of.

No, no. And it can, it can be quite interesting actually when you look at the results within the Facebook app form of the people who have bought.

You might put out an ad for a particular product and you think, oh, this, I think this is definitely going to be really suitable for a younger demographic.

And then you kind of look at the results in the ad platform and you think actually that demographics a lot older than I thought it was and it kind of Puts, you know, you can see the breakdown by age and it's super interesting.

But then it tells you that, you know, that can formulate some of your strategic decisions going forward that actually maybe, you know, your, your actual audience is older than you originally thought it was. So there's a lot of data there. I can spend hours in the back of the ads platform totally geeking out on who's buying what.

I'm sure it's really interesting. And I think, as you say, that's great data for you to have as a brand, particularly if you're fairly new and maybe you're.

I think we all can think we know who our customers are, but you can get surprise perhaps.

Oh, you definitely. Yeah, definitely you can. Quite often you'll think, oh, and then, and then maybe, you know, but maybe you're a predominantly female brand.

But then you, you think, well, actually I can see that there are some men, Brian, so why are they buying?

And then it's probably because it's gifting or, you know, and then you're thinking, oh, actually maybe we should do some ads targeted to men buying for their partner's birthdays or, you know, Christmases. And it's. It. Yeah. So it's quite interesting to really take a deep dive into that and then formulate your ad strategy going forward.

I could really talk a lot about this because I think it's fascinating, but we shall move on before we get too deep and lose people. What are some of the other elements that make up effective ads on Facebook.

Or Insta so effective? So we've talked about creative. That is really the biggest thing.

So as well, it's definitely on the messaging as well, the ability to be able to produce more creative. I know that it can be quite a sticking point for some brands and actually thinking beyond pictures of their products as well.

But as ads managers, it is kind of our role to hopefully help you make decisions creatively of things that we would like to test going forward. And the thing that I see some brands can do really, really well is also is kind of lifestyle imagery.

So if you're a product brand, sometimes the images of your product don't really give the consumer an idea of, for example, how that product could look in their home.

So, for example, if you were a home wares brand and you did some sort of ornamental, say you did fake flowers or something like that, and you just did product shots of your fake flowers in vases, it would be likely that you definitely want to try lifestyle shots. I seeing those flowers and those vases within the setup of someone's living room.

So you can see the kind of the feelings that evokes, the kind of the display that is possible for your products.

So it's not about just showing your products, it's showing the ways in which that they can be used to kind of get that consumer to attach your product with an emotion that they are feeling saying, well, that looks really nice. Or I can see how that makeup brand would really help me with my eyeshadow or something like that.

It's less about the actual product, it's more about the transformation that the consumer will get from that product. And I think that's a massive thing to try. I do can see some brands doing it really, really well as well.

Definitely, I think that's great advice. And I guess that's where video really helps as well.

Because as you touched on earlier, some of the most engaging ads are videos and they could be really, really short.

But you know, for makeup it's so much nicer to see someone putting on an eyeshadow and seeing it on someone's face than just seeing a picture of a palette or whatever it is.

Yes, yes, exactly.

So do you have any more tips on how to get Facebook and Instagram ads working? Well? Anything to do also, anything not to do would also be good.

So. Well, my number one piece of advice is if you don't know what you're doing, get some help.

Get some help because if you can open up Ads Manager, it is a load of columns and figures and you know, and their objectives and you know, building an ad. There are so many different drop down menus, links to click, etc.

If you do not know what you're doing, get some of health or if you're the position to be able to outsource it, then do that as well because it would save you so much time and effort and stress knowing that your ads are in good hands. So yeah, definitely don't dive into the platform if you don't know what you're doing.

Do accept the fact that they do take budget and that budget can change throughout the year.

You know, Q4 much more expensive January, probably a lot cheaper again, you know, different times of the year for different products, you'll see different competition in the market and just be aware that it's a constant testing process as well. I think it's all too easy to get an ad running and then forget about it and not go into the ads platform.

But if that ad tanks, your CPA is going to be rising and if you're not looking at the ads, you're not going to know that actually those ads aren't getting any results. And you need to try a different strategy, different messaging, different hooks, different creative in order to get that going.

And you do need to have, you know, a pretty regular supply of creative to keep testing, to keep your ads not, not fatiguing.

And by the fatiguing, I mean if, you know, if as a consumer, if you keep seeing the same ad over and over again, essentially you're going to tune out to it, you haven't taken action on it for whatever reason, that ad didn't resonate with you.

You'd.

As a consumer that just becomes something that you just aimlessly scroll on by, which is a complete waste of money to the, to the brand. Whereas if that was that image, maybe then became a video or that that video had a really strong hook.

It may be the same brand, but actually the consumer responds differently to it and then it might, you know, therefore they might take action on that. So creative fatigue is, can happen as well. But that's where you need to be looking at your costs.

You need to be knowing your, your cost per acquisition.

And if your cost per acquisition rises and your frequency is rising, then it's quite likely that that ad has fatigued and the audience have seen it too many times and they're tuning out. And in which case you need fresh ads, you need to launch fresh creative, possibly fresh messaging to try and bring that CPA back down again.

So that's really what I would advise. You know, if you don't know what you're doing, find someone to help you definitely be aware of the creative options that you need.

And testing, testing is huge as well.

Thank you so much, that's brilliant advice.

I have a follow up question if that's okay, because I totally agree with you that if you can afford to invest in someone to help you for all kinds of things, it's usually a really great investment because you're taking out all of that time and energy and effort and money spent on learning something. And it's always good if you can get someone who knows what they're doing.

But before we consider outsourcing, I'd love to know what kind of things do we need to know and what sorts of things? So I'm thinking, you know, we're doing this for the first time running some Facebook ads, never done them very new.

What kind of things do we want to be able to get back from the person running our ads so that we know that our Ads are performing and we know what they're doing for us because it can be quite scary, like just giving over control for something. So what's your advice around that?

Well, actually just on that, on that very first point there about control, as a brand, you need to have access to all your own assets and be able to access your ads manager and your Pixel and have your own credit card running the account. So essentially it's your business, it's your brand, and it's your assets essentially that you need to own.

So one of the very first important steps is when you set this all up, make sure that you have control over all of that. And then there are ways in which you can then give access to the people working for you.

What you don't want to do is someone comes along and say, oh, we can set that up for you, and then they end up owning your assets.

So it's quite complicated to explain, but the most basic level is that you need to own your own Facebook page, your own ad account within your business manager, which is the suitcase essentially that holds all of your Facebook assets. And then you as the brand, give out access to the people that are going to run your ads. So that's the first thing, definitely.

And then what they should be reporting on is what is most important to a product brand essentially is sales.

So what that's they should be reporting, you know, what sales that they can see, what is the cost per acquisition that they can see in the platform as well. And hopefully, if you've got access to your assets, you should be able to go in there and see it.

For me, the way I quite often do, it is actually just a screen share on a call because invariably the brand have an idea of what is going on. But unless you can actually visualize that through the platform, I find that really helps them to understand what we're trying to achieve.

So what you don't want them reporting on is just reach and frequency and impressions, because you can have as many impressions as you like and you reach as much as you want and be spending loads and loads of money.

But if actually your end objective is sales, that's what's most important to you as a brand, because that is what essentially is going to be helping your bottom line. So your ads manager should be very clear as to what Your objectives are, I.e.

sales for a product brand and then helping you to work towards getting those sales that you need at the cost per acquisition. That makes sense for your figures as the brand as well. And if they're not Achieving that they should be able to suggest different things to try.

So maybe the, maybe the click through rate is quite low and if the click through rate is quite low, that means that people aren't actually reaching your website and if they're not reaching your website, you know, then they, they're not going to be able to buy because they're not actually on the website. So the ads are very much the, you know, only one part of the puzzle, it's that the ads and then there is also obviously the website as well.

So you need to be getting traction with those ads through the click through rate before they then start the journey on your website as well.

And quite often I have seen in the past as well, the ads get a great click through rate and then they hit the website and maybe they look around but no one buys or you know, there's few sales and in which case then you know, your ads manager should be able to advise that and say people are hitting your website but they are not buying. So what is it on the website? Why is the website not converting? Because the ads are bringing you the traffic but the website is not converting it.

And it could be due to a convoluted basket journey.

Or maybe your shipping costs are not clear or maybe it's, you know, maybe they are not spending enough money to get free shipping because your free shipping is like an astronomical level that they think they've never achieved. Like you know, free shopping over, free shipping over like I say, £100 or something.

And people think, oh, you know, so there's, there's many different factors of that whole ads journey and the ads management, the ads is only kind of a part of that as well. It's, it's, you know, remember that from the ads they do hit your website, so that also has to convert as well.

That's so helpful, thank you.

And I think it's really good that you can see at what stage of the journey you lose someone if you do lose them, because as you say, you can then do a bit of troubleshooting. Is it the ad, is it the website that's really useful?

So it sounds like a good ads manager will be able to tell you that and hopefully they would come to you proactively and say we're losing people here and here's some things we could do. So that's really good. So that's really great advice.

But I think anyone needs an ads manager who isn't doing that, then hopefully this gives you some questions to go and, to go and put to them.

So I think we've covered Facebook and Instagram ads quite intensively without getting into the platform, which we're going to leave because that's very complicated. So let's move on if that's okay to talk about chat marketing, chat funnels, I don't know the correct terminology.

Maybe both are okay what what they are and maybe why we might consider using them.

So chat funnels are the perfect way for brands to increase their engagement sales and leads organically. So chat funnels are not designed to replace any of your existing marketing processes.

They're used to amplify and enhance and run alongside your existing marketing. So they can be used on both Facebook and Instagram. I use Manychat to build and I'm a Manychat messenger marketing expert and agency partner. I.

E 100% geek and Manychat is a meta business partner. So chat funnels are 100% allowed on the platform.

So I generally keep I generally talk about Instagram quite a lot because that is where I'm building for clients at the moment, because that seems to be where a lot of brands are getting traction at the moment on the Instagram platform. So it is the ability to automate conversations in the DMs that deliver a personalized experience for the consumer on their mobile phone.

So you may have seen more people say comment this word below or send me a DM using this keyword. And that comment is a trigger that fires a message into the DMs to take the customer through a conversation to reach the brand's intended action.

So that may be to sign up for an email list, it could be to deliver a discount code, it could be for any number of reasons.

So it removes the need for a link in bio essentially because all your your engagement is on platform in the DMs and that that journey to link in bio is convoluted and doesn't convert very well because the consumer has to go from your post to your bio, hopefully find the right link, hopefully click on the right link and then that'll load a page, a landing page or whatever that they then are may or may not take your intended action. So chat funnels eliminate that. You can bring them straight into the DMs depending on what your objective is.

You can ask for their name and their email and then sign them up to your email list if that is what your intended Action is. And that can be done in less than 20 seconds. It's super quick.

And on Instagram specifically the triggers are things like posts, reels, stories, direct DMS face, sorry, Instagram lives, story mentions. So you, I think you can trigger your automations from about nine different places within the Instagram app.

So it's, it's, I think it's incredible what can be done and it really does help brands to increase their engagement as well and hopefully their leads and sales.

And hopefully it was also a time saver as well because obviously anything automated means you're not doing it.

And as you were saying that, I was thinking I've definitely done things before where I've said if you want more information than this, let me know in the comments.

But then that means you actually going through the comments, making sure you reply to every person, copying and pasting your message or whatever it is. And it might not take a load of time, but it's still time. And I think time is something that almost everyone I speak to is short on.

So the fact that it's automated and set it and not set it and forget it. Exactly. But I'm sure you have to keep on top of these things, but you can set it once and it work for you just sounds really.

The one of the recommended flows that I would always recommend for product brands is to replicate the sign up process that a lot of them have on their website anyway. So when you go onto a brand's website to look at their products, invariably there's a pop up that says sign up to our newsletter and receive 10% off.

And that's one of the easiest starter levels that you could set up to run through Instagram where they are, you know, then they're coming into the DMs and that's all automated. So you don't have to, you don't have to reply to them manually as well.

I mean there are options as well actually for the, you know, for the bigger brands within manychat. Not to get too technical here, but you can.

If you're a huge brand and you get a lot of messages into your DMs, you can use live chat and assign conversations to different members of your team to deal with those DMs because a lot of, a lot of communications now are coming into the, into the DMS of Facebook and Instagram and a lot of brands don't have the capacity to be able to go into there and actually, and respond to all those questions, whether that's about delivery or you know, where is my order or what are your shipping fees, et cetera, et cetera.

But as, whereas if you activate the live chat and people come in and they request help, you can direct that straight to an agent and that agent can then pick up that specific line of inquiry and deal with the consumer directly as well. So there's so much that you can do beyond just marketing your business as well.

So that live support element is quite crucial, actually for some of the larger brands who do get that volume of DMs, and it is a massive time saver.

That's really interesting. I didn't think about the fact that some of this would be a live person. But on the other side though, is there AI involved?

Because I've had some chats in DMS before, I think I'm mainly thinking of Facebook, actually, where I'm not convinced it's an actual person. So is there any AI involved in these things?

There can be.

So within ManyChat at the moment, I build the conversations and it's the conversations that I have, I have designed so the conversations my customers would want to have with their consumers. But there is an AI element now in manychat.

It is relatively new and it does incur a slightly higher fee, but it is the ability to recognize the customer's intention of a message and give them a suitable reply. Now AI is coming into chatbots as well. I would always say, should never pretend that your chatbot is human.

And if the customer is a little bit unsure, then, you know, you need to work on setting the expectation of that as well. And it's always good to give them the option, you know, to speak to a human by clicking for human help.

And that is then the brand is notified that there's someone waiting for them in the DMs who wants some human help as well. But AI is starting to come into it.

Yeah, it's certainly something that I'm looking forward to exploring in the next few coming months as well, because I think there's huge opportunities. But again, it's the way it's managed, I think, and what is relevant for the brand as well.

And for a lot of brands, AI won't be relevant because they, yes, they want to automate some stuff and they want to do time saving and build their leads and their sales without having to spend the time in the DMs. But actually they still want to maintain that human contact as well.

And many chat and chat funnels don't remove the ability to communicate as a human with your customers as well, so I think that's super important for a lot of product brands.

I think so too. And it sounds like you can do a lot with automation, so conversations.

And I've definitely been through these funnels where they'll say, say yes or no. And if you say yes, you get a response. I assume if you say no, you would got a different one.

So it sounds like there's a lot you can do with automation before thinking about moving to AI potentially. Because as I say, when I feel like I've experienced AI, I feel like I've experienced AI.

And I think a lot of the time you want the reassurance that you're talking to. I think a lot of us now more familiar with chatbots and we're kind of okay with that.

But sometimes you want to speak to a person and it's a bit disconcerting when you're not actually sure that is an actual person.

Yeah, I, I agree with you. I agree with you.

I think that is when the brand really needs to explore what is right for them because that, that's coming into their kind of their brown, their brand personality, their brand tone of voice. And a lot of especially small product brands, they are probably not going to want that.

And yes, you know, they can get that automation and that's amazing. But equally, that personal touch is going to be so, so important for them.

And a lot of brands are built on, you know, where the person behind the business is essentially the face of the business as well. So AI may not play, you know, a future role in that as well. So that's, it's really, that's really a brand decision.

But I also, I mean, you know, it's something that I would, I'm definitely keen to explore, but there are some brands I did. I don't think it's going to be right for.

That makes sense. And of course, as well, businesses evolve. So it might not be right now in five years. It may be. And hopefully AI will. I'm sure it will evolve as well.

I'm sure it will as well.

I guess the final thing I'd like to know about chat marketing or chat funnels or whatever we call them, is what are some of the ways that product businesses can use them to make sales? So I know we've touched on someone on your email list is one thing, but what are some of the other things we can do with them?

So you can, for example, if you can build out product galleries as well. So if you were launching a new, for example, you were launching a new brand or something like that.

You could, or a new product line, you could get them to opt into the DMS and they could have, have a look at that product line within the DMs and then they should they choose to be interested in, explore a little bit further that can then link through to the website.

If you were launching or you had a say if you had a skincare, skincare line which was suitable for, you know, catered to different skin types, you could bring them in and take them through a quiz.

So you know, if you have dry skin or you know, normal skin or oily skin, you know, and then build them out like a product recommendations which then link, link through as well. You can, it's, you can also, I mean you can, you can gamify as well.

Not to get too technical but one of the most powerful things I think for product brands is the story mention reply. So a lot of brands will get mentioned in unboxing videos when people receive their goods.

And if you are a large brand with a huge range of products, it's quite likely that your DMs are full of people that have tagged you in their stories. And again it's a time saver, you know, I. E. The, you know, the person who has tagged you.

If you set up the story mention reply can get a reply from the brand that simply just says thank you for the mention. Appreciate it. It can be as simple as that.

But that means that the human doesn't need to go in and either spend hours replying to everybody which in case invariably some consumers will get lost, they won't get any reply, any acknowledgement from the brand at all. So that is a huge thing.

But you can also gamify that by if someone mentions you in their story, you could in the back end you go thank you so much for the mention. I've awarded you 10 points.

And if you know, once they get to, that's saved in the, in the custom fields and behind platform and did they mention you again another time you can award them 20 points.

Exactly.

And then when they get to like 100 points you could send them, you know, a discount code or a little voucher to say thank you for your support.

Because effectively by mentioning you and their stories they are, they're giving, they're spreading the news about your products, they're giving you more reach and engagement and voluntarily sharing the products. So there are so many things that you can do beyond just straightforward lead generation for E commerce brands.

It's about developing what is right for your brand. What do you want to achieve and how can we do that? By increasing our level of automation in the DMs.

There will be some things that won't be suitable as well. So the, you know, list building is one that I would always recommend you set up.

But equally maybe during Q4 that list building becomes more of early access, early access sales. So maybe they're coming in and they're be being given. They're building a list in your back end of your CRM.

Maybe it's giving them a tag that they've come through Instagram. They want to be on that early access list for your Black Friday sales. Which means they get access to your sales two days earlier than everybody else.

Or early access into a new product launch. Exactly. There's ways and means of adapting the strategy to suit product brands as well. So super powerful stuff and it's exciting.

Yeah, it really is. And it sounds like something that you can definitely keep sort of review as well.

Because I think what you're saying about Q4 and maybe changing up what you're offering, I guess if you have any product coming out. So I guess it's just another marketing tool that you can think about when you're having a sale or product launch or whatever, whatever's going on.

It's just another thing you can use. And I think it's important as well at the moment, when we're in Q4 now.

But at the moment there is a lot of space in the DMS because not a lot of brands and businesses are marketing to people in the dms.

So for businesses that do adopt chat marketing and it's only going to get bigger from here, they are the ones that are going to get the early traction. I did read about a product brand last year, sadly not a client of mine.

It was a case study I read and where they had had decided to reduce their reliance on ads during Q4 and they did a lot of list building through the DMS through their organic. They really ramped up their organic content, built that list. That list was nurtured via email in the run up to Q4, Black Friday.

That list was delivered the offer within the email and then also said in that offer in that email, said if you would like an extra incentive, especially for today only, keep an eye on our stories and on their stories that day. They had automation attached to just one story, literally just that one story which gave those viewers an extra incentive.

So their store reviews went through the roof. They built their email list beyond what they had been able to build.

It before and it was all organic and they and you know not many other brands are marketing to brands sorry to consumers in the DMs in this way. So it was super powerful stuff and it really paid off for them.

So yes it is about adapting your strategy to your other marketing efforts and that what is timely for you and what work at certain times of the year.

That's such a great example. Thank you. I think that's really nice to have an example of how someone's using it it really well.

Okay, so the final question I ask on this podcast is for your number one piece of advice and you very kindly gave me your number one piece of advice for running Facebook and Instagram ads earlier. So I would love if it's not too cheeky to ask you for a second what your number one piece of advice would be for chat funnels.

So chat for my number one piece of advice really for chat funnels is that is successive chat funnels is quite closely linked to organic content. So and I think many product brands do very well on Instagram with their organic content and their engagement.

And it's probably because product brands are naturally quite creative I think.

And if, because if you, you need that kind of existing presence and engagement on your organic content in order to run chat funnels, because chat funnels will amplify that and it comes down to anything, you know, don't ignore your organic content.

If there's tumbleweed going through your organic content, you know, chat funnels aren't going to magically bring you those sales leads and engagement. It's very much there to amplify what you have an existing existing already.

So if you are getting good traction organically and people and that doesn't have to be public facing traction. And by that I mean the comments on your posts and your reels. I know myself personally, I get a lot more traction on my private facing DMs.

So if I run something for myself, the DMS will come via the story replies and the direct DMS. So it's it, you know, traction these days is not only about what you can see publicly on someone's feed.

So if someone's only got 3 or 4 comments on their post, that doesn't mean to say that they're not getting traction in the dm.

So it's where customers now are finding their where they want to communicate with brands with can be a lot more private these days than it can be public facing. So definitely don't ignore the organic content. It's super, super important that's so helpful.

Thank you.

And it's interesting what you said about stories there because that was going to be my follow up question because I find that I would say 90% of my engagement on Instagra is people replying to my stories.

Yes, I do get it is. Yeah. And I think, I think that's just, you know, proof really of where consumer engagement is going.

And so when I build for clients and when I teach people to build these people that build chat funnels for themselves, you know, there are, you know, about nine or so different ways that you can trigger within Instagram and people might think, oh well, I only get traction on stories, but you know, I'll only build that one trigger. But they were all these triggers are there for you to kind of make use of.

So whether you're getting the stories on the posts or the triggers or the reels or, you know, your Instagram lives for, etc.

It's worth setting up all these different triggers to trigger your automations because it just depends on where you as a brand actually get that traction. And a lot of people are seeing much more traction now in the DMs, the private part of the platform, than they are on the public facing side.

Brilliant, thank you. I think you did mention this earlier, but is there a platform you'd recommend or software you'd recommend for chat funnels?

Yes, I would recommend ManyChat. ManyChat is probably the best known. It is what a lot of people use to build on Instagram.

There are other options available, certainly explore and see what is right for you. But manychat is a no code platform, so there's nothing hugely technical about it.

It's literally connecting message nodes and visualizing customer journeys in the back end. So when I build for clients, I always have that end objective in mind. And then we work backwards throughout the conversation.

What information do we need to gather? Invariably that's name and email.

If you're list building and then you're literally writing out the conversations and connecting the nodes as well, which, so it is super simple. But you can also, you can also, if you know, pivot the conversation.

Someone comes in and they don't, they don't take your original action, you can offer them something else and you have, obviously with meta there's compliance as normal. And it's important to know that ManyChat is a permission based platform. So as a brand you can't just automate your conversations to everybody.

People can only, you can only automate conversations to people who have opted in to Your automations in the first point, I. E.

They've triggered one of those keywords and they've come into an automation and then you have 24 hours, in which case to send them other automations and message them through ManyChat. Once that 24 hour window is closed, you cannot send them any more automations, which I think is a good thing.

So for less scrupulous brands, you might want to just spam people with automations. You cannot do that. So it is permission based, it's easy to build and it is, it's, you know, you can get some great results with it as well.

That's brilliant. Thank you. And we'll make sure we link to that in the show notes.

Now for anyone who thinks this all sounds great that doesn't want to do it themselves. Mel, where can we find you? Get in touch with you.

So my website is sociosound.co.uk and I have all the information on there about my ads packaging done for you. Ads, packages and chat funnels as well. You can find also find me on Instagram socially underscore sound.

Do feel free to email me as well, which is melociallysound.co.uk I have done for you packages on Facebook and Instagram ads and also on chat funnels. And I also am starting to teach chat funnels as well.

So if you are interested in learning how to do this for your business, then please do let me know. The next cohort will run in January.

That's amazing. Thank you. And I'm going to link to all of this in the show notes as well.

Mel, thank you. Thank you so much and thank you.

Thank you so much for listening.

Right to the end of this episode, do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickiewinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find useful. Thank you again and see you next week.