When we think of social media marketing, it’s often just the major players that come to mind as tools; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
But that thinking misses a huge part of social media: messaging apps (which are actually separate platforms)!
If you haven’t explored the options for extending your reach, customer connection and sales with the ‘king-hitter’ of messaging apps, Facebook Messenger read on - boy do we have some news for you.
GET JIGGY WITH IT
Every month 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger to communicate with family, friends, and acquaintances, that’s ⅙ of the global population, and more users than Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram combined.
Put simply, Facebook Messenger is where your most of your online customers are communicating these days.
Facebook IQ conducted a study on the use of mobile messaging with 12,500 people across the world and found several promising trends among the people surveyed:
- Sixty-three percent said that their messaging with businesses has increased over the past two years.
- Fifty-six percent would prefer to message rather than call a business for customer service.
- Sixty-one percent like personalised messages from businesses.
- More than 50 percent are more likely to shop with a business they can message.
WHAT FOR?
Customer Support
The most obvious application for Facebook Messenger is to provide quick and effective customer support. In fact, if your have a Facebook page you’re probably already doing this in one way or another. It’s clear that people prefer to contact brands through messaging than through other channels. And they want a response from brands — a quick one.
In a survey of more than 1,000 people, Sprout Social (our amazing social management software) found that most consumers expect a response on social media within four hours (while brands take an average of 10 hours to reply). They also found that 30 percent of the people would go to a competitor if a brand doesn’t respond.
If you’re not already using Facebook Messenger, it’s very easy to get started. Make sure you allow people to message you on Facebook Messenger. You can enable this in your Facebook Page settings. Under the “General” tab, look for “Messages” and click “Edit”. Then, check the box and click “Save Changes”.
Now, visitors to your Page will see a “Send Message” button on your Page, which they can use to initiate a conversation with you on Facebook Messenger. It’s possible to streamline this process further using chatbots, but more on that later.
Content Delivery
Currently, email is the most common method of delivering content to your readers, however, is it the best method?
To find out whether Messenger is a more effective method of communication, Hubspot tested this theory. They found that their Facebook Messenger broadcasts had an average open rate of 80% and average click rate of 13%. Compared to an open rate of 33% and click rate of 2.1% for the same content delivered via email. This shows a clear winner.
Besides pushing content to your followers, you can also use Facebook Messenger to help your followers find content themselves. There are many great examples of this use case on Facebook Messenger. Companies like Whole Foods Market, and Food Network, have Messenger chatbots that can help their followers find articles they want to read.
This really turns things around for content marketing. You now have a non-intrusive way to deliver personalized content to your target audience. Creating a chatbot that allows your followers to search is a little more complicated than creating a chatbot which simply delivers content (we’re experts in both options and can help your business out with this (get in touch if you want to know more).
Engage Potential Customers
You may be wondering how you encourage people to talk to you on Facebook Messenger in the first place. The easiest method is Facebook ads.
There are two types of Facebook Messenger ads that can be used to generate Messenger interactions. The first type, destination or click-to-Messenger ads, allows you to direct people from the Facebook News Feed to a Messenger conversation with you. Like a regular ad, a destination ad can display a video, carousel, or image. When someone clicks the ad, a message to your Facebook page opens in Facebook Messenger and you can begin a conversation.
The second type, sponsored messages, allows you to initiate a Messenger conversation with anyone who has messaged your Facebook Page before. When you send someone a sponsored message, it appears in their Facebook Messenger inbox. Facebook limits your audience for sponsored messages to those that have messaged your page before so that Facebook Messenger doesn’t become full of spam, and people can unsubscribe from your sponsored messages.
A great way to use these Facebook Messenger ads is to re-engage potential customers, such as people who have visited your pricing page but didn’t purchase your product or people who have asked you questions via Facebook Messenger before.
For example, you can use the click-to-Messenger ads to offer people a channel to ask any questions they have. Or, you can use sponsored messages to send relevant content and offers to them.
Engage participants with events
Another way to use Facebook Messenger is to send important information and reminders about events, webinars or workshops that people have signed up to.
Through Facebook Messenger you can handle everything from allowing customers to sign up for an event, sending reminders for the event, links to event information, and follow up messages to ask customers what they thought of the event.
SOUNDS GREAT, HOW DO I DO THIS?
The best way to implement any of these strategies is using Artificial Intelligence in the form of a chatbot. Chatbots can be created directly through Facebook, but using an expert agency like us, to get the job done right is a better option for trialing your first campaign. Bots are great for welcoming people, guiding them through any common issues, and asking two or three questions which lead towards a sales conversation with a real human.
It’s predicted that chatbots installed on messenger apps, like Facebook Messenger will see a stark rise in usage over the next few years. Business can use messenger-based chatbots as cost-effective solution for the uses above - it’s the way of the future.
As more and more people adopt messaging, the potential for you to market and grow your business through Facebook Messenger becomes even bigger. It’s time to jump on the bandwagon and see how you can make Facebook Messenger work for you, so get in touch and let us help you nail it!