Facebook Messenger Marketing and Chatbots: What Every PPC Marketer Needs to Know Right Now

I’ll be upfront. My goal here is to persuade you that you should be using Facebook Messenger marketing and chatbots as part of your marketing strategy.

This isn’t a sales pitch. This isn’t an infomercial. This is hard-hitting marketing intel.

Whether you’re a PPC specialist, an SEO, a CMO, or just a curious bystander, I wrote this for you. Facebook Messenger marketing with chatbots are too big to ignore We’re in a new era of digital marketing, and this is what you need to know about Facebook Messenger marketing and chatbots.

Just four points. Here we go.

1. Give me the big picture. Facebook Messenger marketing with Chatbots, explained.

For just a minute, I’m going to pretend you know nothing about Facebook Messenger marketing and have never heard of chatbots.

Let’s start with a clean slate.

So, what is Facebook Messenger marketing?

Messenger marketing is using Facebook Messenger to connect to and communicate with prospective customers.

It’s really that simple.

And what are chatbots?

Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human conversations. When applied to Facebook Messenger marketing, they take on a unique and powerful angle. It’s much more than conversation.

Facebook Messenger chatbots are specifically designed to work with Facebook Messenger and their capabilities are nearly endless.

Customers can download resources, schedule appointments, purchase tickets, check order statuses, self-segment, receive real-time updates from you, ask questions, get answers, power drip campaigns, and give you a Shiatsu massage.

(Okay, we’re still working on the massage, but, hey, a chatbot can at least schedule one.)

Before you chalk up chatbots as one-more-thing-you-can’t-do-because-you-can’t-code, get this.

You don’t need to code.

You (yes, the non-coder, you) can make chatbots without even thinking about code.

Look at this. This is the drip campaign chatbot builder in MobileMonkey.

Can you think? Can you click?

Good, then you can make a chatbot.

2. Tell me why this is so important. Facebook Messenger Marketing and Chatbots are revolutionizing marketing.

When unicorn marketers are getting 88% open rates and 60% CTRs, every marketer in his or her right mind needs to pay attention.

Stop and think for just 2 seconds: Have you ever achieved 60% CTR on an email marketing campaign? What about with non-branded paid search?

No?

If not, it’s okay. Those rates are unheard of in the wild.

But in the mindblowing (sorry, I just had to use that word) world of Facebook Messenger marketing, 80% open rates are normal.

What I’m about to show you is not bragging.

I think you need to see the results of my most recent drip campaign I sent this out a couple weeks ago. This screenshot is from my MobileMonkey account.

86% of the Messenger contacts opened my message. And — hold on to your mobile device — 61% of the readers responded to my message!

Let’s go a level deeper.

I took a screengrab from my MobileMonkey chat blast analytics. This targeted message, sent to a few hundred contacts, had an average-to-low open rate for Messenger campaigns — just 61%.

But even with such modest open rates, look at how quickly people opened the message. The image below shows how many of my recipients opened the Messenger message within the first 24 hours. A full 90% of all the opens happened in the first sixty minutes after I sent the message.

I have over 30,000 Facebook Messenger contacts, and I’m getting results like this all the time.

Why am I showing you such detailed data points?

Because actual numbers help to prove a point better than mere hyperbole. I can say “this is revolutionary!” but I want to show you how powerful it really is.

Now, let me back up from the data for a moment, and share a few points about the tactical advantages of Facebook Messenger marketing

When it comes to Facebook’s reach, you’ll successfully get in front of more people using Messenger than with organic posts. Organic reach is nearly dead. Messenger messages are alive and well.

Facebook Messenger messages convert 3-5 times higher than Facebook desktop ads.
Facebook Messenger marketing radically slashes your overall marketing costs. A few chatbots can effectively do the job of an entire marketing team. When it comes to actual dollars spent, I dropped my cost-per-lead from $150 to $5, a 96% reduction!
Facebook Messenger marketing allows incredibly precise audience segmentation. Audience segmentation can radically increase the effectiveness of your marketing, and with Messenger, your audience can segment themselves!
Every Facebook Messenger contact is a lead. When you add a Facebook Messenger widget to your website or use click-to-messenger ads, you are amassing leads at an incredible pace.

3. Can you show me some examples? What do Facebook Messenger Marketing chatbots look like?

Ready to get eye-to-eye with some Facebook Messenger chatbots?

Chances are you interact with chatbots on the regular.

Many Facebook Messenger chatbot conversations start directly on a business’s website.

Adding live chat to a website can boost conversion rates by 45%. Messenger chatbots, however, are more cost-effective that live chat. Besides, they’re more versatile, not to mention more persistent.

Messenger chatbots retain the customers as leads, save the conversations in Messenger, and (in most cases) allow you to send them updates and information.

Here’s what a typical Facebook Messenger widget looks like on a website.

When the contact engages with the chatbot, it begins a Messenger sequence.

Here’s what the introductory chatbot sequence from MobileMonkey looks like:

That is merely the beginning.

As I mentioned above, Messenger chatbots can do anything short of a back massage, so let’s take a look at some of those capabilities.

How about a survey?

You want to know if your customers love you or not-so-much. So you use a survey chatbot, which looks like this in the mobile version of Messenger:

All your customer has to do is tap merrily along with the responses that you’ve programmed into the bot (code-free, of course).

Want to try this Facebook Messenger chatbot yourself, live and in person? Just click here and the sequence will launch. This chatbot is available as a template on MobileMonkey.

How about something a little different? Let’s say you work at a dentist’s office, and you want to make it easy for your customers to schedule a cleaning.

There’s a Facebook Messenger chatbot for that. A simple bot, which you can make in five minutes, will allow your patients to schedule a cleaning.

For the patient, the entire process is quick and…dare we say, pain-free? Visiting the dentist isn’t the sexiest thing in the world, but at least you can make it a bit more bearable with a Facebook chatbot.

Want to try out this chatbot? Go ahead.

If I were to describe all the different applications of Facebook Messenger chatbots, this article would become as long as War & Peace, unabridged version.

If you need some tactile, won’t-believe-it-till-I-see-it evidence, please try one of the following chatbots. Clicking the link will open a Messenger chatbot sequence.

My guess is that if you engaged with just one of those Facebook Messenger chatbots, all doubt will be erased and you’re ready to make your own Facebook Messenger chatbot.

Let’s go there now.

4. Okay, you got me. How do I do Facebook Messenger marketing? And how the heck can I make a chatbot?

So far, I’ve sung the praises of chatbots. I can’t help it. I founded an entire business based on the belief that chatbots are a thing. A very big, powerful, effective thing.

Now, instead of sing the praises, I want to provide some instructions on how exactly you can start doing Facebook Messenger marketing with chatbots.

If you’re bracing yourself for an 89-step process with brain-numbing and eyeball-glazing tedium, brace no more.

I have only five steps, and they are shockingly easy.

First, you need to have a Facebook Business page.

Since more than 50 million businesses have a Facebook Business page, you probably already have one. If not, you can be up and running in 90 seconds flat. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Second, choose a chatbot builder.

Earlier, I told you that you can make a chatbot without having to code.

That’s only partially true. Let me explain. If you choose one of the clunkier and less intuitive chatbot building platforms, you’re screwed. Coding you will need to do.

But if you choose a chatbot builder that has your best interests in mind, you’re okay. No coding required.

I’ve toyed around with nearly every chatbot builder known to humankind. As a result, I have a few suggestions that will help you to choose the right Facebook Messenger chatbot builder.

Choose a chatbot platform that focuses on Facebook Messenger marketing. You can find chatbot builders that work on everything from Kik to Slack. However, unless your audiences are all rabid Kik users, you don’t need those capabilities. In my experience Facebook-focused chatbots work better, are easier to learn, and are remarkably bug-free.
Choose a Facebook Messenger chatbot builder that has competent support and wants to teach you stuff. There’s a lot to learn in the world of Facebook Messenger chatbots. If you choose a chatbot platform that has a blog, some videos, and maybe a webinar or two, you’re in a good place.
For the love of unicorns, choose a Facebook Messenger platform that is easy to use. You have more things to do with your one wild and precious life than drown in the jejuneness of a complicated chatbot builder. Be kind to yourself. Find one that’s easy to use. Remember, ease-of-use is not the same thing as totally-devoid-of-power-and-features. Some of the most robust chatbot builders are also the most simple to pick up, play with, and then deploy in minutes.

Third, build a chatbot.

Wait, already? What?

Yes, it’s that fast. As long as you’ve selected a chatbot builder that’s easy to learn and simple to use, you can build a chatbot in a few minutes.

Quick example? In MobileMonkey, you can create a welcome chatbot with a short dialogue in your first 28 seconds of opening up the app and connecting your Facebook Business page. (Yes, I timed it.)

This is a simple task of clicking 1) bot builder, 2) dialogue, and 3) making a few tweaks to the sample dialogue.

Fourth, test your chatbot.

You should be able to test your shiny new chatbot before you launch it to all your Messenger contacts.

Test the chatbot for functionality and, of course, accuracy.

Depending on what type of chatbot you’ve created, you’ll want to make sure it has a logical sequence, clear CTAs, and no errors.

Fifth, keep learning, creating, testing, and improving.

The potential of Facebook Messenger marketing is enormous, and chatbots are what make it all happen.

When you start to gain some experience with basic chatbot dialogues, you’ll want to start flexing your chatbot-building muscle by taking on some even more potent methods such as chat blasting, messenger ads, custom landing pages, live chat takeover, and other unicorn methods.

Let me just warn you about something

Facebook Messenger marketing and using Facebook Messenger chatbots can be kind of addictive.

The real danger is when you get that rush of power upon seeing an 84% open rate or a massive vertical spike in your contact list.

And that’s kind of the idea.

As I said at the beginning, my singular goal in the preceding 1,909 words is to persuade you that you should be using Facebook Messenger marketing and chatbots as part of your marketing strategy.

Now, let’s see what you can do with it.