Facebook Messenger Marketing 101 - Molly Pittman Expert Session

Hey everyone this is Trevor Erickson with StuKent I'm super excited for this expert session today you get to hear from the vice president of marketing at digital marketer Mollie Pittman while I. Was attending the social media marketing world conference I was able to catch Molly's presentation and immediately thought that she would make an amazing expert session speaker so today she'll be sharing her expert on facebook messenger marketing did you know that there are over 1 billion people using facebook Messenger I had no idea that number is huge that's a ton of people and that means there's a ton of opportunity to get in front of them so without any further ado let's turn the stage over to Molly cool thanks for the introduction Trevor excited to be here like Trevor said I'm going to be talking about Facebook messenger marketing today again my name is Molly Pittman I'm the VP of Marketing at at digital marketer were an e-learning company that likes to talk about online marketing so in specifically related to Facebook messenger marketing and and really the reason that we started paying attention to messenger marketing was because Facebook rolled out messenger ads so they rolled out the ability to tap into their Facebook messenger platform and to actually run ads on the platform now this happened November 8th 2016 so this is still really new to advertisers and to consumers there are over 1 billion users so there's actually 1.2 Billion active monthly users on the facebook messenger platform specifically as of April 2017 so one point two billion monthly active users which is really insane for a messaging platform now the feedback that I've heard about facebook Messenger and facebook Messenger marketing since we started teaching it was you know this will only work for tech audiences right only people that are technically minded would use Facebook Messenger and actually respond to brand so if you're thinking that definitely try to remove that thought from your head just like the Facebook platform in general Facebook Messenger is used by many different demographics age ranges this is not something that just works for a tech audience Facebook Messenger has a huge amount of consumption it's funny this is a screenshot of my great-grandmother she's in her 90s and she uses facebook Messenger so if your audience is using facebook Messenger you can market to them through this channel it's not about being high tech it's about entering the conversation where your audience is already having theirs right so if your audience is using facebook Messenger which they probably are then this type of advertising can end and will work for you it's about being present where they're actually having their conversation so this works like any other social advertising and here are some interesting graphs on the left-hand side you can see that in 2015 first quarter of 2015 the monthly active users of the top four messaging apps actually surpassed the monthly active users for the top four social network now what's interesting about Facebook is it's both right so you have the social networking side and then you have the messenger side so the reason that Facebook Messenger has has become such a thing is because it was built off of the back of you know the the biggest social network so I just wanted to show that that chart there on the left-hand side to show you that even comparing these messenger apps to social networks Facebook Twitter Linkedin Instagram these messenger apps have a higher monthly consumption which was pretty insane I was I was shocked when I. Saw that chart but also people's preferences are shifting so it's not just about them using these messenger apps you know to talk to their family and their friends Facebook did a study and 56% of people say it said they would rather message than call customer service so they would rather message a brand than call their customer service line more than one and two people say they're more likely to shop with a business they can message and 67% of people expect a message business is more in the next two years and really the point that I'm trying to make with this slide is for you to think about how you use you know instant message communication in your life right you know most people don't even answer phone calls of numbers that they don't know or maybe numbers that they do know right you know it to me it's almost rude to call someone without texting them first right and in today's culture so really the point of this slide is to get you thinking about the role that messenger plays in your life and in the lives of many people that are like you but you know the other day I was was trying to get a hold of AT&T's customer service and the first thing that I googled was AT&T live chat I wanted that instantaneous communication and I didn't want to have to talk to someone on the phone email is slow and the phone is kind of obnoxious so from my points of view messaging and instant communication is my preferred communication line with brands and businesses and most people are trending in that direction so this isn't just about being on Facebook Messenger as a marketer to even generate leads or sales this is about even just being reactive and being present on these channels because your customers and your prospects they want to communicate via these communication methods and it's not just about customer service so this was a little image that Facebook released and you can see that messenger played and each step of the customer journey here so consideration a 35% of people were messaging the business to ask a question 33 percent asking about sore hours location inventory 34 percent making or confirming an appointment 33 percent actually making a purchase or placing an order over messenger connection 30 percent providing feedback about the business after purchase and 39 percent were sharing photos of a product you know or some sort of feedback after the purchase so a funny story actually signed an apartment lease through facebook Messenger so I was driving through Austin and I saw that they were building a new apartment and I was interested I was in a place where I was ready to move and so I messaged the the apartment complex directly on Facebook and from the you know me inquiring about the the complex to setting up a tour to actually signing the lease everything happened through facebook Messenger so it just goes to show that you can literally facilitate the entire customer journey with a prospect to a customer to a promoter for your business through Facebook's messenger but it's not just for talking and if you use facebook Messenger you've probably noticed that you can now send money to anyone via PayPal right inside of messenger they do have integrations for brand pages with stripe and PayPal more to come so this isn't just about talking I believe that Facebook Messenger will absolutely become a commerce platform if you read anything about you know what Facebook saying about messenger they actually say they don't want it to become a commerce platform but what they mean by that is they're not looking to take a percentage of payments that go through facebook Messenger right that's not their monetization model Facebook is going to stick with an advertising monetization model inside of messenger just like they have you know in the newsfeed and on on the social the actual social side that doesn't mean that Facebook isn't looking to facilitate commerce for their brands and for you know businesses inside of messenger so in the next few months and it's already in beta you will start to see the ability to actually browse through products to ask a company if they have you know your size in a certain colored shirt and you will have the ability to pay to input your shipping information to input your credit card information and to essentially click buy right within messenger but what's important here is that if people don't build engagement inside of messenger other than just asking people to buy stuff those brands are going to have trouble ever selling through messenger um so until we do have the functionality to you know have the payment buttons right inside of messenger I'm absolutely encouraging brands and marketers to look at this platform from a way of you know how can i really make this engaging to the end-user right so how can I use facebook Messenger ads to engage people to give them good content you know to explain more about my you know your products how can you use a bot to give them good content and that's what I'm going to be talking about today so first let's talk about Facebook messenger ads so there are two totally different types of ads that are lumped into the idea of facebook messenger ads so the first is facebook Messenger as a destination and these open inside of a message the second is Facebook's messenger as a placement and these are called sponsored messages these are more like email and they actually appear inside of your inbox as an unread message just like a message from your family or friends would appear inside of messenger so this is what the first type facebook Messenger is a destination looks like you're scrolling through your newsfeed you see an ad whether it's an image or a video or a carousel and you click on that ad and then immediately opens right there inside of messenger in the bottom right hand corner if you're on mobile it will open in the messenger app it will open a conversation directly with that brand so this is set at the ad level so if you're setting up an ad and at the ad level under page and links instead of selecting website URL you would simply select messenger so this is telling Facebook I don't want the traffic to go to you a URL I actually wanted to open right inside side of messenger so this is set at the ad level this particular ad type is as you can see here you can put the text in the bottom left hand corner that's going to go into your ad so have questions about digital marketer lab and how it can help grow your business Facebook chat with one of our specialists to get your questions answered under message text that's what will appear inside of messenger after someone clicks on one of these ads so if for some reason you aren't seeing that option inside of your ads manager or power editor most pages do have get messages as an option on their Facebook page so this is another way to set up this ad type so here's an example of the first destination ad that we ran at digital marketer so it's the one you saw before have a question about how we can help double the size of your business have a question about DM lab or any of our products click here to chat now this was just a test we had just received access to this ad type and I wanted to simply give it give it a test right so this ad isn't perfect but we were just testing and so this was posted to our page and then I boosted it to our email list and our website custom audiences so I wanted to run it to people that you know knew the brand right because we were asking if they had questions about our products so we spent $800 and generated over 300 conversations and they were great conversations like do you have a UK. Contact number I'm very interested in some of your products but not sure where to start I would love to talk to someone that person you know we got on the phone with them and we were able to sell them one of our products so these conversations were very very helpful in actually selling also answering questions you know from our prospects people that had questions but what was cool is that we knew we could drum up conversation through this ad type right we were able to have a 300 conversations for 800 dollars and that was asking people if they had questions about our products right so we immediately knew that this ad type had a pulse after we ran this test a great way to use this ad type is to retarget down the funnel retarget further down the customer journey to help overcome any barriers to entry so for example if you have a sales page where you're asking people to buy something or you're asking them to fill out a form, a great way to use these destination ads is to create a custom audience of people who have landed on that that sales page or that landing page but didn't reach the thank-you page so they didn't take whatever action you were wanting them to take and usually when people get that far in the sales cycle and they don't buy there's usually a reason it's usually not that they actually don't want whatever you're selling or whatever you're offering it's usually that a question came up in their mind that wasn't answered and so instinctually they hit the back button they hit the X.

And they went along that they went about their day so a great way to use these ads is to essentially provide you know a chat option for people who don't take the action that you want to see if you can help overcome any barriers to entry they might have to doing whatever you're wanting them to do so this ad was retargeting people that landed on a sales page for one of our products but didn't buy and it says have questions about the EM lab and how it can help grow your business Facebook chat with one of our specialists to get your questions answered we're here to help questions about DM lab chat with one of our specialists you can see that we've actually incorporated the little bubble there and the bottom left-hand corner psychologically that triggers in most people's minds that use Facebook messenger or use Apple products Oh someone is actually talking to me right so using that little chat bubble was really successful for us and people were able to click and chat with someone on our sales team that could help answer questions about the product and we were able to sell it to them you can also target more top of the funnel people with these types of ads but you must prompt you know with a relevant question so what I mean by this is you know you could run one of these ads and target anyone in the world right but you obviously don't want to start a bunch of irrelevant questions so asking what is your favorite color and having people message your page probably isn't a good use of your resources so if you are using this more at the top of a funnel make sure you are asking questions or you're enticing them to message for a reason that really fits into a sales conversation for the business so for example maybe you're having them click and message your page to download a report right that's great if it leads to the ideal sales conversation for you know whatever business you are working on so just be careful if you're using these more at the top of the funnel and to target cold traffic that you are are leading with the ideal sales conversation and that you're not just um running ads that ask random questions that that you know aren't going to lead to anything in the business so just a recap Facebook messenger as a destination this first ad type the the key thing here is that you can target anyone so you can target absolutely anyone with these ads interest targeting behavioral targeting, custom audiences every targeting option that's available with with normal ads you can use that for these destination ads these are only available in the newsfeed mobile and desktop and if you want to set one of these ads up you would need to use the objectives send people to a destination on or off Facebook which is also called traffic or a boosted post page post engagement type of ad now let's move to Facebook Messenger as a placement so these are sponsored messages and as you can see here these actually appear as an unread message in your facebook inbox just like you would receive from a friend or a family member and you can see here at the bottom that you know these look like normal messages you can also add a fancy little button there which is pretty cool too but these sponsored messages appear in people's Facebook inbox these are set at the ad set level so when you're setting up an ad you'll need to uncheck Facebook Instagram and audience Network and then check messenger so that this is simply a placement available at the ad set level inside of ads manager or power editor so a few things to know about Facebook messenger as a placement with these types of messages you can only target people who have previously messaged your page in the past so that's what what is key about these messages and what will keep you know marketers from just spamming people's Facebook inbox you can only target people who have previously messaged to your page in the past you can use the send people to a destination on or off Facebook, traffic objective or you can use the conversion objective messages can contain one link and one photo and basically Facebook is going to charge you whether some one opens these messages or not so brands will have to pay for the Ad impression even if the person on the other end never opens the sponsored message which could obviously get a little expensive but these messages are absolutely worth it their high touch point but there's a better easier and cheaper way to do this and we're using a tool called manychat as you can see here on the screen there are other tools like this I've just found manychat to be the easiest to use the best tool and for the pro version it's only $10 a month you can see that it says create a Facebook bot to engage with your audience that this tool is so much more than a Facebook bot you don't even have to use that feature to really make this tool worth it the key here is that you're building a subscriber list so when someone messages your page you are building a list of those people right it's it's just a messenger subscriber list similar to a website custom audience and you can figure out how big your list is by creating an engagement custom audience inside of Facebook and then just selecting from the drop-down that you want an audience of people who have messaged your page in the past Manychat also builds that subscriber list for you inside of their tool which is really useful you can broadcast for $10 a month so all of the messages that we just talked about sending and paying for them whether people you know saw them or opens them or whether they didn't you can do all of that for a flat rate of only $10 a month through a many chat you can also do a lot of fancy things like set up follow-up sequences that are similar to email autoresponders you can use their tagging they have a really cool feature now where if you comment on it you can set it up it's called Facebook's comment to message feature and you can set this up on a post to where someone comments on that post they are immediately auto-messaged so a lot of cool features inside of mini chat other than setting up a bot here's where you're building subscribers inside a dashboard which is really exciting here's the option to send broadcast so notice that you can add text image gallery lists you can send and you know people's particular time zones you can say that you want it to be a regular push which means whatever settings are on their phone so it would be like receiving a normal Facebook message so you know I want the push notification on their screen I want the sound I don't want the sound so manychat allows you to get very specific with these broadcast messages which is really really exciting you can see that the open rates on the first few that we sent are really high eighty-nine percent, eighty six percent, 67 percent and the you know we've obviously sent more since then and the read rates here are really really high so keep in mind this audience is very very engaged and because this platform is so new people are used to opening messages and even if these messages are from brands they are opening the message because they have messaged you in the past right there's some relationship built there so really high open rates from these broadcast messages here are some examples of broadcasts that we've sent at digital marketer on the left hey there because you're a value DM. Subscriber we want to extend an invitation for you to join our 15,000 plus member community the process is simple click the button below follow the two-step invitation process and we'll reach back out to you in a few days a nice little button there the right to get to our eighth annual traffic and conversion summit increase in price tonight at midnight grab yours while they're still 50 percent off because you're a DM subscriber use the code carpe dm for an extra $300 off and we were able to put an image in there and a nice call-to-action so notice that in both messages, we make them feel special for being a messenger subscriber so just two quick examples of sponsored messages that we've sent I. Believe that brands are going to need to articulate a communication strategy for messenger right so whether you're using it to announce new content or items of interest you know in your your market to promote new products reminders for flash sales or deals just really sitting down and thinking about this like you would your email list and you know what are you sending when and why I. Believe that you shouldn't send more than at least more than one broadcast a week the platform is not mature enough for people to you know they're not used to receiving these broadcasts so just keep in mind that this is very new and make sure you don't overdo it so I want to go into a little section of how to take advantage of messenger ads even if you're not or messenger even if you're not buying ads install manychat inbound messages will become subscribers so immediately install manychat so you can start to build that list think of inbound messages as a selling opportunity so most Facebook pages are already getting customer service messages through through Facebook right so if you can help people when they message your page but also ask them other questions like at digital marketer we will help them and then say you know what else is going on in your business how can we help to really start a conversation where we can help that person and possibly sell you know one of our products to them use your manychat link to drive conversations so Facebook gives you a unique link that if clicked on anywhere on the web it will open inside of a Facebook message conversation with your brand so it's very smart to use that link to drive conversations because messenger is a place where people want to chat it's also a great way to turn your existing following into messenger subscribers and you can also integrate Facebook Messenger with your tech stack here's an example of a link inside of an email so we sent an email asking people if they wanted to buy tickets to our events and at the bottom we said you've got three ways to answer reply to this email give us a call or my personal favorite and the fastest way to hear your discount let's chat on Facebook so people who are literally clicking this link and having conversations in facebook like good morning I would like to in fact get another ticket the person's name will be blank and the last four digits on the card you can charge is an Amex ending in blank blank blank blank so most people use the chat option from this email so not only were we able to have quicker sales conversations we were also able to turn our existing audience into messengers subscribers you can also integrate with your text stack so whatever technology you're using in your business they're probably figuring out an integration with Facebook Messenger right now so for example this is Shopify's integration so imagine you're on the order form it says get order updates customer service and more that's that's checked you hit complete order and here as an example that that I experienced I.

Immediately received the confirmation number from the brand you know the order and then when they actually shift they sent me the message on the right so I. Was able to follow the shipment on this map which was really really cool so this is a very passive way to turn your existing traffic into messenger subscribers unfortunately I haven't heard from this brand since inside of of messenger but at least they are using this to build subscribers so you might be thinking this requires a lot of human resources and here are some tips to ensure that it doesn't. Start small further down the funnel so if you're just getting started and you want to make a difference with messenger and you don't have a lot of humans on the other side chatting start small use this as a retargeting platform essentially so that the conversations that you do have a really high leverage get help from a bot so inside of mini chat you can set up all kinds of sequences that will basically allow your bot to answer questions for you to ask questions for you you know in the least it's great to just say hey you know I'm the Facebook bot and my humans will be back shortly right so that they get that instantaneous response from the bot and so that they know that a human is coming within certain business hours you can also integrate with customer service software or use the tagging system inside of Facebook so as you can see because we have multiple people inside of our messenger we use a tagging process so that they know you know if this is the sales conversation if it's completed who's working on which conversation so that there isn't overlap so those the tags those labels inside of Facebook make it a lot easier to use so just some action steps for you guys install mini chat run Facebook Messenger destination ads to build your list but make sure that you're giving them a reason to click right so give them a free resource if they message your page or a coupon give them a reason to take action send sponsored messages to your list and and that's really the the three steps that we recommend in terms of getting started right now this platform is evolving and changing very very quickly so I think what's important right now is for people to build really engaged audiences inside of messenger yes it's great to use it to generate sales but I believe that the people that use it as a conversation mechanism right now and to give a lot of value and content upfront when this really does turn into a commerce platform I think that those people will win but this is a really exciting exciting time I actually talked to the CEO of manychat last week he was at the F8 Developers Conference with Facebook and they are forecasting that in the next two to three years Messenger will essentially gobble up 80% of the communication market so you know in terms of email phone messenger you know when when people are talking to brands Messenger will take up 80% of that market which is huge so it's time to to learn this stuff now and to start testing so I hope you guys enjoyed this definitely check us out at digital marketer.Com if you have any questions feel free to to find me on Facebook and I'm always happy to help.