Disclosure: This blog post contains links to one or more of our advertisers’ products. We might receive compensation when you click on links to those products. To learn more, visit our advertising policy page.
Many businesses, especially those that are new to online marketing, sales, and support might be hesitant to use chatbots and Messenger Marketing for various reasons. For one, they might feel overwhelmed by the process of learning how to build and use chatbots, or they might be unsure about what services chatbots can provide.
Fortunately, each of these concerns is relatively easy to explain. Messenger Marketing can provide a wide array of services that would otherwise be difficult for small businesses to offer, and with ManyChat, creating and using a chatbot is simple and straightforward.
For business owners who are unfamiliar with Messenger Marketing, it’s a good idea to learn the basics before making decisions about where chatbots fit into your business model.
What is Messenger Marketing?
Messenger Marketing goes by a variety of different names. For example, Chat Marketing or Conversational Marketing, but each of these names mean the same thing. Messenger Marketing is the use of business-related automation in the chat feature of different social media platforms. Typically, these automated chat options are used to allow a business to maintain consistent contact with its customer base whether the aim is to sell products, market services, or offer customer support.
Why is Messenger Marketing so Popular?
For businesses, Messenger Marketing through the use of chatbots has become a highly useful way to keep in contact with customers without having to invest more money into paying for customer service labor. Automated bots can perform the basic work of human support personnel while allowing human workers to take care of more involved tasks.
Reaching out to customers through Messenger also offers quite the success rate, with messages being opened and read 70-98% of the time and click-throughs occurring 30-55% of the time. Email open rates only averaged 21%, so the difference is worth noting.
For customers, chat options are ideal because they’re convenient and usually provide quicker response times than contacting companies through other means (email, phone, or social media).
The Benefit of Chatbots
Chatbots provide services that are often difficult for companies to provide on their own, especially if the company is a smaller business. Having enough staff on hand to take care of customer requests or reach out with promotions is a challenge for many businesses, which in turn can lead their customer satisfaction to suffer.
By utilizing chatbots through Messenger, businesses can let their customers know that their time is valuable by answering their questions and providing service in a timely manner. Automated chats offer one-on-one interactions, which help build a sense of familiarity and respect between customers and the businesses they frequent. Because chatbots can very closely mimic human speech and behavior, customers are often not aware that they’re speaking to an automated response system and as a result, they walk away from the interaction with the reassurance that their service is of value and their time matters.
Ways to Use Messenger Marketing
There is an array of different functions in which chatbots can be useful. For one, chatbots can be used in lead generation. Chatbots are better equipped to reach out to leads and get a response, as well as able to determine lead authenticity and lead engagement. A chatbot can help bring in warm leads and turn them into paying customers.
Chatbots are also able to reach out to already established customers to let them know about new promotions or deals available for the products they use. In addition, they can provide customer service throughout the shopping and purchasing experience, which gives customers a sense of being catered to and valued.
In addition to marketing and sales, chatbots can also provide technical and customer support when customers run into certain issues along the way. They can perform basic troubleshooting and help customers escalate their concerns if the chatbot is unable to satisfy them, which reinforces the sense that they’re being supported throughout the issue they’re experiencing.
Perhaps the best part about chatbots is the fact that they are able to provide this level of customer service quicker than the standard staff member. They can speak to several people at a time, so even during high-traffic periods, your customers will be certain that their needs are your top priority.
There are plenty of marketing, sales, and support strategies that small business owners can approach with the help of Messenger Marketing. Though the initial process may sound challenging, the benefit makes learning about chatbots worth the time invested.
If you’re interested in learning about how to use chatbots in your business strategies, Automated Dreams is available to help.
