Facebook Messenger has crossed 1 billion monthly active users. The social media giant now owns 3 social media platforms that have more than 1 billion monthly active users, with Messenger being the latest.
Facebook Messenger Monthly Active Users
While Facebook Messenger is obviously growing in popularity, are businesses using it the right way to reach out? It looks like there are a lot of gaps that brands can fill using Facebook Messenger. Let’s identify these and understand the ways to use Messenger more efficiently.
Chat With A Prospect On Messenger
Social media is all about connecting with your prospects and users. It gives your brand. This becomes essential if your brand is dealing with sensitive products or services. Imagine brands which deal with contraceptive pills, adoption clinics, hair transplant or private detective services. You wouldn’t expect your users to write their queries on your wall, would you? Invite them to your chat so that you can respond to any questions they might have. Once they get to interact with you, they would be more likely to do business with you.
Give the option to chat prominently
Instant Reply and Auto-Greeting
Once a user lands on your page, greet them with a welcome message on Facebook Messenger. This is just to give your Facebook fan page the feel of a local store. Encourage them to interact with you. Ask them a question. Would they like to know the delivery time? Or would they like to see the product in action? Asking a compelling question goes a long way in getting the user to start interacting.
You can also use instant replies to give the feel that you are listening to your prospects. Imagine asking a question through chat and not getting any response. You feel ignored which is awful for business. Stop giving them the cold shoulder by setting up instant replies. Don’t worry if you think your user might be annoyed with another generic message. At least they’ll not feel ignored by your brand.
Messenger For Customer Care
Convert your Facebook page into a customer support portal by using Messenger effectively. Messenger opens up another channel for your customers to get in touch with you. What works for the brand is that Messenger is more personal, and a private chat can give you a lot of insights. Help your customer with the decision-making process and try to resolve his issue in a single conversation itself. Here it becomes necessary for you to take the message private too. If a customer is angry and is venting all over Facebook, take charge and pull them into a private chat. You can use this by using Facebook Messenger code.
Facebook Messenger Code
Take the conversation private using the Messenger code
Send the message to the user asking them to scan it. This opens up a private Messenger chat. This is great to manage your reputation on Facebook.
This is just like sending a CTA in a tweet to take the conversation private. A very useful tool to put out fires.
Start Using Chatbots
Marketing on Facebook has its challenges. Messenger opens up a few more. If your page has a huge active following, getting to respond to each and every request in Messenger is difficult. To mitigate this, Facebook announced its chatbots for Messenger. Developers can use Facebook Messengers API’s to create awesome chatbots. Slack has already used the Slackbot to its advantage. It’s time brands use these chatbots to automate some of the processes in Messenger.
Facebook Chatbots for Messenger
These chatbots can assist you with your shopping, order food online and even deliver customized stock market alerts. You can tailor them further to remind them about an upcoming birthday. You can top this reminder with gift suggestions. There are a lot of different applications to Facebook Messenger chatbots. Your imagination only limits them.
Create Ads That Link Out To Messenger
Facebook continually experiments with their ads platform. One such recent update is that you can link out to your Messenger using Facebook ads. You can now create image ads and carousel ads on Facebook that take you to a private chat. This is a brilliant way to get personal with your audience.
Link out to Facebook Messenger
Facebook ads give you that boost your business desperately requires. Integrating their ads platform with Messenger not only puts your brand in front of a larger audience, but it also brings them closer to you. Imagine a real estate agent marketing on Facebook. Facebook ads with Messenger can be used by them to get closer to their audience. Add a chatbot to this and they can indeed deliver a personal experience even with significant traffic.
Response Time
It is always a good option to update your typical response time on your Facebook page. This helps you to set expectations when a user visits your Facebook page. Most users expect you to respond to them in an hour. Keep them engaged with a greeting or chatbot. The response time has to be set carefully to ensure that your user doesn’t feel ignored. If the wait time is longer than the response time mentioned, your brand image will take a beating.
Leverage Impulse Buying
Messenger is a great way to invoke that salesman in you. Get a conversation going with a user. Get them to the ‘aha’ moment quickly. Pitch and then close the sale soon after. Messenger lets you do that on Facebook. What you can do is get the ball rolling by inviting the user to chat with you. After the pitch, you can then link out to the landing page to close the sale. Facebook is currently experimenting with peer to peer payments on Messenger. I believe they will come up with an update to close the deal on Facebook itself. As of now, though, you have to be satisfied by linking out.
Have you tried using Facebook Messenger for increasing your business yet? If not, it is time that you implement these steps so you get closer to the users visiting your Facebook page. If you have other ideas about Facebook Messenger, let us know in the comments sections below.
@nykontym
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