Messaging and chat is the future of marketing; a lot of businesses just don’t seem to know it yet.
In fact, more than 1.3 billion people use the chat app Facebook Messenger each month to send 20 billion messages and 17 billion photos with their family, friends, and even businesses.
Most people prefer messaging as their chosen method of communication, and that includes communicating with businesses.
Facebook Messenger marketing using chatbots is a great way to automate day-to-day marketing tasks that can eat up so much of your time. Chatbots don’t need to be reserved for automating FAQs (although they’re great at that) as you can use bots to improve your content marketing strategy.
Chances are you already have an audience and a strong content marketing strategy, so why not consider some ways to use chatbots to maximize your work and benefit your brand?
Using chatbots for your CM strategy means:
1. A more personalized user experience
One of the most popular traits of chatbots is that they can provide a more personalized user experience than say, for example, an email marketing campaign or generic Facebook ads.
Chatbots can be customized to have personifying traits. For example, humanizing a chatbot means sending things like images and GIFs and asking leading questions to help customers get to where they want to go.
A content marketer can create a chatbot to meet a variety of needs, from B2B lead generation bots to e-commerce sales supporting bots, to even the merely playful. The best part is that chatbots can more easily and accurately obtain information from users which can then be used to personalize their experiences even more.
More personalized experiences lead to increased engagement and higher conversions.
Above, you see how the MobileMonkey bot immediately engages the user with a menu of different options to choose from.
2. Leading customers through a sales funnel
Chatbots are an incredible way to automate marketing tasks that might otherwise churn potential customers.
If a customer has to scour your website for the product they want, they might sooner click out of the site than find and purchase your product. This is an easy way to lose potential customers.
Chatbots solve this problem in a unique and exciting way, by talking to the customer about their needs. With a little bit of creativity, you can easily build a sales funnel in Facebook Messenger.
Let’s imagine you run a flower shop. Instead of browsing the site searching for the right info, wouldn’t it be easier for your customers to tell your chatbot what’s the occasion and their price range, and let the chatbot to suggest the perfect bouquet? I think so too.
Add chatbots to your content marketing strategy so that they can be used to lead customers through a sales funnel by asking them questions about what they need or want.
3. Offering unbeatable Facebook ad ROI
Users scroll by dozens of Facebook ads every day, and there’s a good chance your organization is running Facebook ads.
One of the most revolutionary changes to Facebook advertising in the last few years is the ability to replace static landing pages with engaging Facebook bots.
When sending Facebook traffic to a website, you can expect around a 2-5% conversion rate.
Chatbots can revamp your content marketing strategy through your advertising by delivering a 100% conversion rate. That’s right, everyone who clicks from the ad to interact with your bot becomes a contact in your database that you can send follow-up messaging to. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will buy whatever you’re offering, but they will become handy contacts that you can remarket to.
Typically, a Facebook ad has a call-to-action button that a user will click to take them to a business’s website. Sometimes, it will take them to their Facebook page.
Of course, these are great moves as businesses want to drive traffic to their website to help engage users and convert them into customers.
And it’s good for a business’s content marketing strategy because it displays their product and content right away.
But they’re often not the most effective way to promote your great content. Once those users click the ad and are taken to your website, unless they make contact or purchase your product right then and there, they are lost forever.
They can’t be remarketed to in any significant way as their contact information has not been saved.
With click-to-Messenger ads, the call-to-action buttons do something new: they bring the user straight to a Messenger chat with the chatbot that you’ve created.
This means that you are immediately able to interact with the user that engaged with your ad and gather their contact info. Then you can message them back on Facebook, capitalizing on Facebook Messenger marketing to boost your content marketing strategy.
4. Distributing your content in a new, engaging way
Let’s face it: customers are tired of seeing the same boring moves from every single brand or business. So why not stand out?
Perhaps you use a chatbot to drive traffic to your latest blog posts. Or maybe you use a chatbot to direct your customers to your various social media channels, like Instagram. Or integrate chatbots into your emails to increase email engagement.
Chatbots are great for your content marketing strategy because they are not widely used for this yet. Additionally, chatbots talk to customers directly, 24/7, quickly and easily displaying your content, gathering leads, and making sales.
On top of that chatbots extend the reach of top-performing content by using Facebook sponsored messages to push content to existing contacts who have interacted with your bot.
When someone interacts with a Facebook bot, the business has a 24-hour window to send free messages to them.
A great way to use this time to benefit your content marketing strategy is by having your chatbot reach out with relevant content. You can set up a chat drip campaign to send a few free messages sharing your content within that 24-hour period.
After the free 24-hour window closes, you can still pay to send messages to your contacts. This is called sponsored messaging.
Whether you’re sending existing contacts your best unicorn content through free drip messages or through Facebook sponsored message ads, you should be using your best blog and video content to re-engage your current contacts!
5. Getting higher engagement rates
A lot of brands and businesses are spending tons of money on their advertising campaigns but are not getting optimal results. Their ads simply aren’t engaging, or they are unable to engage with their potential customers through those ads.
We already discussed click-to-Messenger ads, which are fantastic for driving engagement and benefiting your content marketing strategy. But there are other ways to boost engagement rates, too.
For example, consider adding a Facebook bot autoresponder to your organic Facebook marketing. A bot that replies to Facebook post commenters increases engagement on your posts as well as in Messenger.
A Facebook comment guard is simple: create a post that people will engage with and comment on. The post can even ask them to comment. It can be a riddle, a contest, an advertisement for a webinar; anything that will get people interested enough to comment.
Then, after they comment, the Facebook autoreply bot that you set up will message them. Simple as that!
So, if you set up a post about a webinar, it can say something like “comment here for your free ticket.” Then, once the user comments, the autoresponder chatbot – or the comment guard – will send them a message including their free tickets.
Another tip: If you get the user to engage with the chatbot before providing them with what they were looking for, then you have the opportunity to remarket to them at a later time.
This turns your already-engaged social media followers into leads in your contact database and boosts your engagement rates, all while improving your content marketing strategy!
In this example, you can see a demo bot posting about a contest. Those who want to enter the contest comment the name of their favorite football team. After commenting, the Contest Bot reaches out to them regarding the contest!
Notice how the bot asks a question before providing any of the prizes — this is how you get users to engage with the bot so that you can remarket to them later on.
6. Less effort for your team
There’s nothing better than finishing up your workday and being able to spend time focusing on other things, no matter what that means for you.
Want time to hit the gym? Want to hit happy hour with coworkers? Maybe want some extra time to invest in employee appreciation?
If this sounds like you, then you should definitely be utilizing social media marketing helpers and chatbots in your content marketing strategy.
Using the previous suggestions, you could automate a significant portion of your daily, weekly, and monthly content marketing strategy, all while converting more leads and boosting company revenue. You won’t have to spend extra money on the tasks, so that money can go to improving employee satisfaction.
Or, you can finally have time to meal prep after work.
The future of your content marketing strategy
Using chatbots for your content marketing strategy is a move that will save you time and money. Chatbots automate all of your basic, day-to-day marketing tasks, but they can go even further.
If you already have audiences and a strong content marketing strategy, it might be time to push it even further by throwing chatbots into the mix.
Get real results all while improving the company’s day-to-day schedule and budget and having happier customers than ever. Using chatbots in your content marketing strategy is sure to push you to new heights.
Larry Kim is the CEO of MobileMonkey, the World’s Best Facebook Messenger Marketing Platform and free chatbot builder. He’s also the founder of WordStream, Inc., the leading provider of Google Ads, Facebook Ads and keyword tools used by over a million marketers worldwide. In order to get the most out of the tips provided today, please enter the free bonus area where you will receive some extra treats!