It is always great to have options in new ways to communicate with potential customers to improving business. When Facebook rolled out Messenger Ads on November 8, 2016, we all knew it was a game changer. This article will extensively look at this feature to show the what’s, how’s and why’s to increase engagement.
What are FBM Ads and How they Work
Facebook Messenger Ads focus on generating conversations between advertiser and audience. Businesses can create a Facebook advert that opens the Messenger chat window between the business and prospective customer. There are two different types of Facebook Messenger Ads: destination messenger ads, and sponsored messages. Both are designed to start or continue conversations with users.
Messenger as news feed destination shows up in the news feeds like regular advertisements with a Call-To-Action – ‘Send Message’. When a user clicks on the advert, it will redirect them from their Facebook News Feed to the Messenger box set by the advertiser. The user can return to this conversation at any time and continue on any device with Messenger installed. The objective of these kinds of ads is to get users to contact the advertiser through Messenger.
Things to consider:
- You can target interests, behaviours, custom audiences, etc.
- It is available in the newsfeed, on both desktop and mobile.
- It is only available for campaigns with a “page post engagement” or “send people to a destination on or off Facebook” objective.
Messenger as a placement (sponsored messages) is an ad type that allows advertisers to re-engage users who have had a conversation with their business in the last six months. These ad formats will allow advertisers to send targeted updates, information about promotions, reminders and other relevant information to increase the chance of reading the whole message.
Things to consider:
- You can only target people who have previously messaged your page in the past.
- It is only available for campaigns with “send people to a destination on or off of Facebook” and “website conversions” objectives.
- Facebook will charge advertisers by impressions. Charges will be applied whether the end user opens the message or not unless you use a tool like ManyChat (Chatbot for Facebook).
Why Should I Care About Messages?
- 11% of the World’s population uses Messenger each month
- 22 million gifs are sent daily on Messenger
- 1 billion B2C messages are sent each month
Who Should Use It?
- Advertisers looking to re-engage with a particular group of people
- Brands seeking to build brand awareness
- Business looking for an efficient way to share deals and offers
- Marketers wanting to have users interact with their bot.
Big brand companies like Disney’s Zootopia, have seen success with Facebook Messenger Ads, where they used the feature to allow fans to chat with the movie’s creator. The NBA used a bot on Messenger to provide instant access to highlights for NBA finals and drafts for fans. Absolut recently launched a Messenger bot to drive product samples and used News Feed ads to increase traffic to this experience.
Key Benefits:
- Gives a more personalized customer service experience by opening private conversations.
- Quickly and easily complete the entire sale process in Messenger using chatbots.
- Helps build a stronger relationship with customers due to continuous interaction.
How To Build Your Subscriber List and Increase Engagement
- Start with a small and niche target audience. Use destination ads to retarget people who are towards the bottom of your funnel. This will ensure you’re having fewer, but more highly leveraged conversations.
- Use an eye-catching imagery which reflects insights about the target audience to capture users’ attention.
- Automate conversations using a chatbot. ManyChat’s bot feature is very active in welcoming people who message your page. You could essentially automate the sales process with this tool.
- Use a consistent language format in both the ad copy and the bot.
- Choose an apt call-to-action for the advert to set expectations for how users will experience the bot.
- Use the tagging system inside of Facebook Messenger to stay organised.
- Integrate your customer service and sales platforms with Facebook Messenger so that your team can leverage Messenger while still having access to customer information.
- Consider the ideal creative format according to the business objective. Clicking on photos will redirect to the Messenger page, but videos will just play.
- Share deals and offers to attract clicks. Offer a discount and promote new offerings to complete the sale.
While this feature focuses on increasing engagement, following the above strategies will boost the process.
The key is to experiment. See which strategy works best for your business module and target audience, and as always let us know how these strategies are working in your business.
