The Complete Guide to ChatBots for Messenger Marketing Funnels – Part 4
What Facebook Messenger Marketing means for companies & CMOs
What if you could go back to the golden days of email marketing… getting 70% open rates and 30% Click through rates? What would that mean for your business? Right now maketers are getting 80%-90% response rates with Messenger Marketing
Want to know if Messenger Marketing is right for your business?
Get your Messenger Marketing Match Score…
Here’s how most brands and companies are using chatbots and
Why it’s Wrong for Marketing.
Most companies are creating bots that people come to when they need something. Right now a typical bot is purely sales bot OR customer service bot.
The intent is for customer to come and use the bot as an alternative to calling or using the website.
Why is that wrong?
Let’s use an example.
The Iceland Air Example:
Iceland Air decided to create a Messenger bot. It’s cool. It’s hip.
It’s what all the tech savvy people are doing
They even proudly display it on their website. Though the button doesn’t actually take you to the messenger bot. Ugh.
The problem is that they forgot to ask one BASIC question before building the bot:
Why the hell would someone go to their site to find out about the messenger bot then go book from messenger?
It’s not an easier experience for the user.
It’s purely a sales bot.
“Here’s what we sell. Go buy it. And use my bot to do it”
When’s the last time you purchased an airline ticket on a whim without checking other sites and ticket aggregators?
When’s the last time you said to yourself:
I need to buy a ticket to Iceland. I better go to a chat window.
(Credit to Andrew Warner of Mixergy for inspiring the example)
It just doesn’t happen. Ever.
Because of that, the “sales first” bot approach is typically wrong for most companies.
How should companies approach Chatbots instead?
The Rules:
- Assume that NO ONE wants to come and use your bot.
- Give people a reason to subscribe to your bot.
- Reach out to those people on a regular basis.
- Give them the opportunity to buy
The business case for chatbots and Messenger Marketing
Chatbots are lower cost and easier go-to-market than apps.
If you decided just a couple years ago, that you wanted a more immersive mobile first way to interact with people – you had to build an app.
Mobile apps are up to 7x more expensive to bring to market vs. cchatbots With the average cost of an agency built app ranging from $150,000 – $450,000 dollars.
How much does a chatbot cost?
There are five main factors :
- What type of business are you running: enterprise, medium-large, SMB?
- What is your business goal: marketing, customer support, retention, upsell, subscription?
- The number or different sequences and messages you need.
- The number of messaging platforms you’re building for: Facebook Messenger, Kik, Telegram, etc.
- What volume do you expect your chatbot to have: hundreds, thousands, or millions of users and/or conversations?
And 3 main options to build your bot:
- Software development companies.
- In-house team:
- Self-service platforms
Here’s a ballpark range for Setup fees for software development companies.
Typically there’s also an ongoing monthly maintenance fee.
Lower usage -Simple Bot (No API calls, No NLP, Using a software platform)
Medium Usage – Custom Bot (Basic Linking to API’s)
Large Scale – Custom Bot (Custom work)
Should you develop a custom bot internally or hire someone to do it
Let’s clear the air…
I build Messenger Marketing Funnels for professional bloggers, SaaS companies, and Online Marketers.
I have a vested interested in telling you to outsource. I’m biased toward it.
Instead of telling you the pros and cons of each. I’m just going to present a non-exhaustive look at what the person in charge of your messenger marketing will have to do.
Job Responsibilities:
- Keeping up with the constant platform (Messenger) changes.
Messenger bots are so new, facebook is changing things ALL THE TIME.
A button or function that works today may not exist tomorrow. It takes at least one dedicated person to keep up with the modifications that facebook is constantly making.- The person NEEDS to understand Facebook’s intent and direction. Do something against the Terms of Service or even something that FB doesn’t like and you risk your account being deactivated.
- Copywriting for messenger
It’s a beast unto itself. You may know how to write a killer email or blog post.
But, can you translate it in a way that works on messenger? It’s much harder than you think.
What works in typical marketing mediums does NOT work on messenger- Not only do you need text, but you need graphics – images, gifs and videos
- Creating sequences & broadcasts in Messenger
- Sequences that are aimed at moving leads down the funnel.
- Monitoring and optimizing the funnel.
- From landing page to sequence and eventually the sale.
- The person you have managing should be good at creating:
- Landing pages
- Opt-in tools
- Ref links
- FB json Ads
- Faceboo0k Comment to messenger actions
- Opt-in boxes
- Modals
- Page takeovers
- View in messenger buttons with checkboxes
- Passing hot leads to sales
- Keeping up with the constant platform (Messenger) changes.
Bottom line: Unless you’re going to have a dedicated person or team in charge of your messenger marketing, you’re better off outsourcing.
Messenger Marketing Benefits
Easy coordination between marketing and other departments (sales & customer support)
From marketing lead to sales prospect has traditionally been a tricky handoff.
Marketing attracts prospects and sales has to close them
But how do you get hot leads to your sales team quickly?
Response time matters.
After just five minutes, the odds of qualifying a new lead decrease by 10x.
Now, people expect an instant response.
Doesn’t matter if you run an enterprise business with a 50 person sales team at the ready or a small 5 person business. People expect a response within 5 minutes.
It’s unreasonable to think that a company will always respond so quickly. But, those are the expectations. If you don’t meet them you risk losing the sale and alienating a potential customer.
Messenger bots let you respond instantly at scale.
And you don’t have to hire more customer service or sales reps to do it.
Messenger Marketing Funnels Always deliver a consistent on-brand experience.
Company reps vary in experience and knowledge. A customer can even have a wildly different experience with the same rep depending on his or her mood.
With a chatbot, users take a personalized journey through the funnel, while at the same time getting a consistent level of service and consistent messaging that only a bot can provide.
Chatbots create a better user experience that can increase sales.
Most lead interactions follow an 80/20 rule.
The most common questions and objections come up 80% of the time.
That’s the reason we can use sales scripts and FAQ sections.
But, instead of forcing users to hunt down answers in your website FAQ, a bot can automate 80% of interactions successfully.
As for the remaining 20%, the chatbot can pass the conversation to a human.
A Messenger Funnel is a business asset.
A messenger funnel is a foundation for a great lead and customer experience.
You’ll have the opportunity to engage and provide value to your community forever. As you optimize your messaging and sequences your Messenger Funnel will get better at converting leads to sales.
