Facebook Messenger Marketing Strategies for Business Growth

There are now more than 1.3 billion people using Facebook Messenger every month. Have you considered the possibility of using it for your marketing? We certainly have. And we have been experimenting with different ways to include Messenger as one of our go-to marketing tools, by sending out our latest blog posts through Messenger and engaging and helping our customers through the platform too.

Since we are in the midst of figuring things out, we thought it would be great to share what we have found so far. Here’s everything we know about using Facebook Messenger for your marketing.

Why use Facebook Messenger We often think of social media as just the major social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. But that thinking misses a big part a bigger part, in fact of social media. And that’s messaging apps.

According to BI Intelligence, more people are using the top four messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Viber) every month than the top four social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn). And it seems that the gap between the two lines is getting bigger.

Instead of being a one-to-many channel, social media is becoming a one-to-few -- and often one-to-one -- channel.

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 rather message than call a business for customer service Sixty-one percent likes personalized messages from businesses More than 50 percent are more likely to shop with a business they can message

ways to use Facebook Messenger for your marketing

1. Deliver your content : The most common approach to deliver content to your readers is to use email. But HubSpot wanted to find out if using Facebook Messenger is a better alternative. So instead of just asking people to fill out a form and get the gated content via email, they offered the option to skip the form and get the content via Facebook Messenger. After four weeks of testing, they found a clear winner.

The Messenger strategy results in a 242 percent higher open rate and a 619 percent higher click rate.

2. Help your followers find the most relevant content : Besides pushing content to your followers, you can also use Facebook Messenger to help your followers “pull” content to themselves. There are many great examples of this use case on Facebook Messenger. Companies like Whole Foods Market, Food Network and TechCrunch have Messenger chatbots that can help their followers find articles that they want to read.

3. Engage participants during event : Another way HubSpot uses Facebook Messenger is to send important information and reminders about events that people have signed up to. Similar to the example above, they found that the response rate on Facebook Messenger was significantly higher than that on email.

Here’s a recent experience I had with HubSpot:

I signed up for their Four Days of Facebook event through Facebook Messenger (which felt much nicer than filling up a form). The day before the event, they sent me a reminder with links to add the schedule to my calendar app. During the four days, they updated me about the day’s talk and sent me a link to watch the session online. At the end of the four days, they followed up to ask if I enjoyed the event.

With a tool like ManyChat, you can create subscriber lists and broadcast messages easily. Broadcasting messages is very similar to sending an email. Just type your message, add attachments and send.

4. Generate high-quality sales leads : Since Facebook Messenger is still a relatively new and novel marketing channel, it is a great way to get people’s attention and to generate high-quality sales leads. According to Dmitriy Kachin from Chatfuel, the response rate on Facebook Messenger is incredibly high at the moment.

Valassis, a marketing agency, built a Facebook Messenger chatbot for Feldman Automotive Group to help drive leads and sales for their local auto dealers. They ran click-to-Messenger ads with location targeting to reach their target audience on Facebook. When a person clicks on the ad to learn more, she will be brought into a Messenger conversation with a chatbot that would ask a series of questions. (She has the option to speak to a real sales rep, too.)

5. Re-engage potential customers : One thing you might be wondering is this: how do I get people to talk to me on Facebook Messenger in the first place? Facebook ads.

There are two types of Facebook Messenger ads you could use. The first type, click-to-Messenger ads, which I mentioned briefly above, allows you to direct people from the Facebook News Feed to a Messenger conversation with you. The second type, sponsored messages, allows you to initiate a Messenger conversation with anyone who has messaged your Facebook Page before.

6. Reach your target audience one-to-one : The Facebook News Feed is saturated with ads. Imagine being able to reach your target audience without all the noise. One-to-one.

With Messenger ads, you can do just that. People will see your ad in the home tab of their Messenger mobile app. When they tap on the ad, they will be brought to your preferred destination -- your website or a Messenger conversation.

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