Today’s topic is all about Facebook Messenger, and how you can leverage this to really move your business forward.
I’ve said many, many times over the last couple of years that I thought that Facebook was going to start to experience a little bit of a decline and that really hasn’t happened. I have no problem admitting when I call something the wrong way. And the reason that I believe that it has continued to do so well, is because they continue to just roll out more and more sticky features to keep people active and engaging on the platform.
Just a few days ago from this being recorded, they just released another integration in partnership in a way with Spotify, for example, to make e-commerce better for local businesses and anyone selling products. They’ve continued to just roll out more new features for Facebook groups to allow people to congregate, build relationships, and rapport. People will come to something and try something initially, but they’ll end up staying for the community.
If there are all these people that are just so engrossed with the Facebook groups that they’re in different communities that they belong to, it’s going to be really challenging for them to leave. I mean, they’re just not going to want to leave, in all honesty.
As they roll out these new features, it’ll continue to get better. The one feature that I am seeing the best success with right now for local businesses, is leveraging Facebook Messenger. Now, there’s a couple of different ways that you can go about doing this. What I’m seeing with local businesses and messenger is that it’s just a really easy way to have a non-threatening conversation.
If you start to think about your prospects and your customers’ behavior, they typically don’t like to call. They might send an email but often they like to just talk with someone on live chat. Or they like to send in something to messenger, send in a text message. They’re looking for instant gratification instant replies or at least as much as possible. With messenger, there’s a lot of interesting automation you can set up. It’s not just when a message comes in that it says “thank you for writing”, but you can have some automation like that you can put in emojis. However, you could then start to leverage software tools like many chats that essentially allow you to turn FB Messenger into a simulated live person that can even qualify people that can pull more information out of them that can engage with them on your behalf and then notify you when it makes sense. To jump into the conversation, if it makes sense to jump into the conversation. So, what I would encourage you to do is to really initially focus on how you can make your Facebook page more of a destination.
If you’re starting to make it where there are reasons for people to come to your Facebook page, contests, giveaways, trivia, fun announcements, Facebook on these specials—you’re going to start to get a lot more engagement and then you’re going to start to get more people that send messages right to your messenger. And, to me those conversations are as good as gold because it’s just, it’s a really easy way to just start and continue to have a conversation.
Step one is to look at how you can make your Facebook page have a destination more engaging, more interaction rather than just a static page.
Step two then is that I want you to integrate Facebook Messenger using a tool like many chats on your website.
Instead of even just using live chat, you can say, “if you have any questions, send us a message right now”. And when they do that, then it’s going to pop up on Facebook. And it can then start to trigger some of the different automation, where again, it’s going to start to ask questions, qualify people, disqualify people and start to warm them up. And based on how they’re answering the questions, it’ll start to have that progressive profiling. If they’re saying they’re interested in XYZ, then it’s going to move them over to that particular link, it may say to take this action.
Let’s just pick an industry and say that you’re a bookkeeper or something. GPA something in the accounting space? Well, if you had some of those businesses or consumers sending a message, you could start to ask them questions. Do you need your taxes done? Are you looking for bookkeeping? Have you accidentally forgotten to file for years and years? Do you need help with the whole paycheck protection thing? You can then start to warm them up and direct them so that when you do end up connecting, whether that’s through messenger phone, email, text, whatever the medium is, that you already have a lot of that information ahead of time. makes it a lot easier.
As you integrate it onto your website, you can start to put it across different pages. You can use it on other social media platforms and direct them back to the messenger. Here is the main reason behind all of this—someone starting a conversation with you, to me is the new conversion.
Where it used to be filling out a full form or giving contact details, I’m just trying to get prospects to interact with you and start that conversation so that you can better get to know them, and allow them to better get to know and trust you and your business.
Look at it again, how you can make your Facebook page more engaging. I’d encourage you to invest a few hundred dollars on starting to do some sponsored posts and just driving some more engagement. It just starts to move you in the right direction to start that relationship off on a more positive foot because you just have more things going on in the page, more engagement, more people that are joining—they’re liking things, sharing things, and then you again can start to use different contests and giveaways to really start to spur more traction. Then you can say things like click this if you’d like to send us a message and ask a question about XYZ send us a message if you want to hear a secret code for a Facebook-only special, it’s just you start those conversations.
Now as you start to get better and better with your Facebook page and messenger and all of that, you’re able then to start to do some more advanced things using mini chat, for example. You could put up a Facebook post and say, “if you’d like to be first in line for all of our Facebook only specials comment”. What Facebook can do then is send out a message to that particular person, it goes right to their inbox, not the other folder, and if they confirm it, they’re now on your mini chat tool where you can then send them messages pretty much as frequently as you would like.
Now there’s different rules and regulations and you want to make sure that you’re following all the right protocols. However, think about the power of you—having those conversations on Facebook Messenger and then also being able to send marketing messages, promotions, and helpful tips, right to their inbox on Facebook Messenger. The open rates and the delivery rates are nearly 100% Facebook Messenger. I promise you it will help you generate more interest and more sales.
Get out there, make a change, and take some action with Facebook Messenger today.
