Chat up Your Clients: How to Use Messenger Marketing
by Arina Smith Marketing 28 February 2019
If you’re trying to position your business at the frontier of the next great marketing trend, you’ve come to the right place.
The days of cold calling and random emails are over; Messenger marketing is here. If you’re not yet familiar with Messenger marketing, it’s not too late to jump in on this new trend.
In this article, we’re going to talk about why Messenger marketing is going to be around for a long time and how you can use it to sell your products to new customers.
This is your guide on how to use Messenger marketing. Let’s begin.
What Is Messenger Marketing?
Simply put, Messenger marketing is the act of reaching or engaging with your company’s audience through messenger apps. In a sense, it’s similar to how email marketing works at its core, but much more effective in 2019.
Why Messenger Marketing?
The way that Messenger Marketing works for businesses is that it feels more conversational and one-on-one than any other type of marketing. People don’t answer their telephones anymore and they don’t look at emails they don’t recognize.
More Engagement:
What they will do, however, is respond to a message from a company that they’re already interested in.
To show the contrast, a 2016 report concluded that for email marketing, only 6-18% of email ads were opened and less than 2% were followed. Compare those numbers to the 80% open rate and 30% link following rate of Messenger marketing. You can’t argue with the results.
People Prefer Messenger:
In 2019, messenger apps are the most popular mobile and computer apps across the board. Facebook Messenger in North America, WhatsApp in Europe, and WeChat in China; it doesn’t matter what you call it, messenger apps are what people use to communicate.
For companies, that means adhering to the more personal nature of marketing. Focusing on Facebook Messenger is a no-brainer for companies trying to appeal to the masses. It’s 2.3 billion users are ripe for the picking.
It’s also an advanced app. Comparing the FB Messenger app to the other two powerful messenger apps, we see that Facebook has been developing marketing features within the app. These allow for automated chat bots with images, videos, CTA buttons, etc. There are no limits on Facebook Messenger marketing.
Marketer Friendly:
Messenger marketing is better for marketers. As we’ve stated above, Facebook Messenger’s many features make it easier for marketers to promote their products. Images and videos are two of the most integral pieces of digital marketing, so with Messenger marketing, you can be sure that your media is being viewed.
Previously with SMS and email marketing, putting hyperlinks and images in your advertisement was near-impossible. All media shows up as an ugly attachment or maybe it doesn’t show up at all in SMS messages.
With the rise of AI in digital marketing, Messenger marketing presents companies with an intriguing option. One day with Messenger marketing, there won’t be a need to have any humans involved.
The next thing on the horizon for marketing AI will be more predictive questioning. Answering questions before the customer can even think of them. For companies, this means less staff and lower costs.
Personal:
Normally advertising is done on a broad scope. Businesses try to appeal to as many people as they possibly can in one fell swoop. It’s been a pretty effective model for a long time but what people crave these days is a personal touch.
When you normally target a demographic, you advertise to them through the TV or the radio, with an ad in the paper or a billboard, or through a scripted call or email. Not very personal at all.
Messenger marketing lets you give the pitch a personal touch. Chatbots can be programmed to ask leading questions in order to help customers. If the chatbot doesn’t help them, a human can easily hop on a chat and speak directly to a customer. The customer will always feel catered to with Messenger marketing.
How to Use Messenger Marketing:
Now that you know what Messenger marketing is, you can start to employ it in your marketing plans. We’ll go over a couple of steps that can help you out in the beginning stages of this journey.
How to Get Subscribers:
Getting subscribers might sound harder than it is. If you’ve got a Facebook page for your business, then you’re already halfway there.
There’s only one more step. When you’re creating Facebook ads, doing posts, or creating a dialogue with your customers, use a call to action to have them reply to you. Once they’ve replied, then you’ve got all you need. You can send them ads through Messenger until they’ve decided to unsubscribe.
The call to action can be a button placed directly on the ad or a request to comment in the comment section of a post. It just has to be something that the customer willingly signs up for.
Once You’ve Got Subscribers:
Once you’ve got a few subscribers, start sending them messages. In this, Messenger marketing is similar to email marketing. You can either send a one time broadcast to your entire subscriber list, or smaller groups of customers.
The other thing you can do is automate your Messenger marketing to respond to certain keywords and phrases with pre-written auto-responses. A sequence of these short Q and A style interactions is what we commonly refer to as a “chatbot”.
Chatbots are common on any websites that are customer service driven. Some sites’ chatbots open as soon as you land on the home page.
It’s good to provide the customer with the option of talking to a customer service agent through the Messenger window as well. This will let them know that you’ve got their experience in mind if communication breaks down with the chatbot.
Embrace the Future:
Why sleep on this trend? Messenger marketing isn’t going anywhere. People want to communicate with their favorite companies on a personal level and this is the most efficient way to do that.
Now that you know how to use Messenger marketing, start building your subscriber list today and see for yourself how it can improve your digital advertising numbers!
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