Everything You Need to Know About Chatbots And Facebook Messenger Marketing As a Small Business

Chatbots are one of the biggest trends in marketing today. They can give answers to your audience and be there to represent your brand even when your employees aren’t. They can speed up your buyer’s journey, reduce customer service costs and boost the value of each order.

But the tech behind the chatbots is a complex one and a professional developer needs to code it, maintain it and so on. This means that chatbots – as amazing as they are – are out of reach for small businesses.

However, there are some great ways you can utilize the chatbot technology as a small business without losing a ton of money.

Enter – the Facebook Messenger Bot.

What is The Facebook Messenger Bot?

So, generally, a chatbot is a program which communicates with the users through an interface that’s friendly and conversational. Facebook Messenger chatbots are, as you can guess, those same programs but on the Facebook Messenger platform.

This is probably the most popular platform because it has more than billion users and it has an API that will enable businesses to create automated messaging for their business. So you get the tools and the audience all in one.

This technology will allow you to engage with your customers on a personal level every day and every hour, making sure that nothing slips through your fingertips.

What Can You Use The Messenger Bot For?

Here is what you can do with your messenger chatbot:

• Driving more sales and gaining more leads

Chatbots are the easiest way for people to communicate with brands. Most people are using the chatbots already. This is the crucial part of customer service moving forward. People don’t care that the person is not on the other hand of the conversation. They need help and information and as long as they get it whenever they need it – they are happy.

• Helping your customers solve their problems

“One of the most important chatbot uses is the fact that your customers can get all of the answers they need quickly, no matter when. It’s like an interactive FAQ page which does even more than that. But in this case, they don’t have to scroll through a ton of questions they don’t care about to get what they need. They can immediately ask a chatbot and get a quick answer,” says Allison Hodge, chatbot expert at Australia2Write.

Through the Facebook Messenger, they use a familiar interface that’s friendly and works well. Both customers and brands prefer them because of the ease and convenience.

Who Is Going To Create a Bot For You?

So, chatbots are great, right?

But, how do you build them? Who is going to do that for you?

Your bot needs to be high quality if you want it to work in your favor. This is essential. And the truth is, you can probably do it yourself. If you do your own copywriting or marketing, this could be you. If you have a team member that does this, you can get them to do it.

Building a chatbot to answer questions and send data back to you requires no coding when you use a visual content builder. Today, most of this technology is really friendly to people that don’t code. The most important thing here is to create good content for your chatbot and that’s it – no coding knowledge required.

The content should be engaging and concise, ultimately helpful and conversational. Since chatbots are a marketing tool, your copywriter can do most of the job.

What Tools Will You Need To Build a Chatbot?

With the proper tools, you can build your own chatbot easily. One of the keys to that is the Mobile Monkey tool which is free and simple to work with. There won’t be a need for even a single line of code. All you have to do is use the friendly, drag and drop, toggle, checkbox and so on to design your own chatbot.

You will have to do some maintenance for your bot, naturally, because over time, questions that you haven’t listed will come up. Rather than seeing this as a problem, you should see it as an opportunity to improve and build upon your bot. Just create the answers and add them to the list of questions. You are using solid data from your customers to build a more comprehensive bot.

You will need to review your unanswered questions frequently, to avoid keeping your customers waiting.

You should also send chat blasts which are quick messages that will drive traffic to your website. Focus on people that have already engaged and shown interest in your product or service.

Your bot should be entertaining and engaging. Make the conversation fun, like your customers are talking to a friend. Give your bot some personality, create useful tips and tricks for your customers and have your bot send it to them and so on. Encourage conversation, above all.

Keep in mind that expanding your email list is crucial so make sure that your chatbot is inviting users to subscribe to your email lists.

You also want to grow your messenger contact list and you can do it by adding several features:

• Website chat – Add a messenger feature to your website. Your customers will use this through their Facebook account which gives you a new list contact. You can use this to keep the conversation going. This is also very mobile friendly which means that people will use it easily on their phones.
• Comment Guards – You can create an autoresponder chatbot which will send a message whenever someone posts a comment. This automatically adds your customer as a contact list user and you can utilize this especially for contests, giveaways, free guides and other methods of increasing engagement.
• Facebook ads – Instead of taking people to your website with your ads, why not send them to your messenger chat directly. This makes for an easy conversation and they will be captured as a contact by your messenger bot.

Here is why you should use Facebook Messenger Bot:

• It converts 3-5 times more than Facebook desktop ads – Users are now mostly on mobile and messenger is the perfect user-friendly solution to getting more engagement.
• They can reduce your marketing costs – Since building a chatbot is free, you will have no huge costs for lead acquisition. Plus, they increase conversions
• They can segment your audience – You can use your chatbot to segment your audience on what they prefer to do and then target them in different ways
• You can automate FAQ and have a human take over – People can get their answers and then easily get a meeting with a real human through a chatbot with a smooth experience. The chatbot will collect the information and the human can take over any time.
• You don’t need to code – Using Messenger for your chatbot means that no code is required.

How To Use Facebook Messenger Chatbot Effectively

Now that you know that you can get your own chatbot without coding or spending a ton of money, you can learn more about how to use your chatbot properly. This guide will provide you with all of the essentials you need in terms of using your chatbot to get more leads, more conversions, better branding, more engagement and so on. It will allow you to use your chatbot effectively once it’s been created and deployed and you will love what it can do for your business.

Here are some effective tips on how to use your chatbot.

Subscription messaging

Standard messaging on the Messenger allows you to send any kind of message to a person after they have contacted your chatbot. You can send as many messages as you want within the first day of the first contact with the bot. After that, you get to send just one more message to that customer.

However, subscription messaging will allow you to send messages whenever you want and no matter how many. The messages will have to be non-promotional and you will need a list of subscribers. To do that, you need to build a messenger opt-in page which will allow the people to subscribe. Inherently, the unsubscription process has to be just as easy and simple. A simple “Stop” after any of your messages should be the way for them to unsubscribe. The chatbot builder will make all of this simple and easy – all you need to do is show up with the right ideas.

Grow your chatbot subscriber list by running Facebook ads that lead to your messenger and using an autoresponder that sends the message to anyone who comments on your posts. You can also add the CTA to your Facebook page that will lead the customers straight to the chatbot.

Segment your audience

Your audience members will be interested in different things. This means that you will have to segment your list to suit those interests. This way, you will receive more engagement and retain more people on your list.

“You can use this to send messages that will be truly valuable to your audience. Make sure that your messages vary from segment to segment and that they truly speak to that segment.”, says Lorelei Grimes, a Digital Marketer at 1Day2Write and NextCoursework.

Rules of communicating

Here are a few rules from the Facebook and Facebook marketers with experience:

• Send short messages to your audience
• When sending long ones, separate them into several short messages
• Add some color to your messages – logos and icon design helps to grab attention
• Use your business name in your messages

Increase engagement for open rate improvement

“Messenger is a chat app that’s used to talk with friends. This is what people are used to and when they get a message they don’t expect a formal tone. This is where you can improve your messages to make them conversational and more fun,” says Haley Ferguson, a Senior Marketer at WriteMyX and BritStudent.

Your customers should feel like those messages are coming from a friend, rather than a brand. Talk like you would talk to a friend. For example, use emojis and simple words, no technical jargon. Make sure that your brand voice shines in these messages and that it’s consistent with your brand in other places, just make sure that there are some differences in communications because they are different channels. While emails would sound more professional and polished, your messages should be simple and fun, very friendly.

Account for personalization

Personalizing all of the messages you send out is time-consuming at best. However, there are tools in your chatbot builder that can help you set up some dynamic parameters that will allow you to use someone’s first name, just like you would in an email. You can include many more custom variables which will make your messages more personal and more interesting to your customers. You can use these tools to make sure that your audience stays engaged.

Some things to avoid

When people start experimenting, mistakes are bound to happen. However, you can easily fix them.

• Don’t forget the unsubscribe message – It should come with every message blast. People will complain to Facebook if you don’t and this could be a serious problem.
• Test your messages before sending them – This will help you see which version works best for your specific audience.
• Don’t send long messages – People see these on a small mobile screen and it can seem really overwhelming. Test messages before sending them. Keep in mind that a single message should be three lines long on a mobile screen at the most.

Sending sponsored messages

You can use your chatbot to send sponsored messages that promote your products and services. This will allow you to get more conversions and target the most eager contacts on your list. This goes beyond any organic reach.

Tracking and stats

One of the best things about using a chatbot is that you get the direct data from it delivered to you. You can use this data to improve future campaigns and make sure that they are better and more enticing for your audience.