How to Use Facebook Messenger to Grow Your Business
On January 11, Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement that made a lot of businesses cringe. Facebook’s news algorithm will be prioritizing content from friends and family, rather than branded content.
This means a significant decrease in organic reach for businesses and brands, but it doesn’t mean all hope is lost. On the upside, as a business, you can beat the algorithm if you interact with your customers in a more meaningful way. If you create quality, engaging content that sparks conversations with users, you could be in the clear.
In the face of the new algorithm, here are 4 ways to use Facebook Messenger to grow your business.
The Rise of the Chat Bot
Chat bots are the new black. Seriously. If you haven’t implemented chat bots into your business yet, it’s the perfect time to dive in and get ahead of the game. Chat bots allow you to build personalized, custom communications with your audience, and now you can easily create, manage and publish your own Facebook chat bots.
Chat bots create engagement with your community with automated content, and provide instantaneous response times. They should be an extension of your brand and give your users that one-on-one attention they’re looking for. They’re an excellent way to increase engagement and brand loyalty, and grow your business.
Increase Your Open Rates
There are so many ways for you to communicate information to your audience with Facebook Messenger. You can deliver messaging sequences, create a sales funnel, send downloads, and so much more.
Facebook Messenger is becoming the new email marketing. While people are sending more and more emails to the trash, they’re engaging and opening messenger apps at a higher rate than ever.
Open rates for emails is around 10-20% (sure some of you get higher, but this is an average!). Open rates for Messenger messages: 90%.
You do the math!
Sponsored Messages
Sponsored messages are targeted, in-context ads you can send to people you have an existing conversation with in Messenger. Use sponsored messages to reengage customers and promote discounts, deals, and new products/services.
By adding sponsored messages to your messaging content, you can drive traffic to your website/sales page, and target an audience that’s already interested in your brand. These will become increasingly beneficial to businesses with the step away from branded content on users’ news feeds.
You’ll find these ads in Ads Manager. Go to create an ad and choose “message” (middle column, right at the bottom). Follow the prompts on how to build one properly!
Create Relationships
The best ways for brands to stand out is by creating relationships with their customers, and Messenger is a great way to do this. If your audience is reaching out to you with comments or complaints on Messenger, you have the ability to create a positive experience for them, which will only do great things for your brand.
Humanize your brand as much as possible and keep your brand voice in mind at all times. Your audience wants to feel a connection with your business and it’s important you maintain your brand while keeping the conversation friendly.
A word of caution!
If you’re not ready to be accessible for these messages, you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot. Make sure you have a plan for responding to the conversations that you’ll have with these messages. A poor response rate is the death knell of relationship building!
Written by Kate Bialowas (and added to in places by me)