7 Reasons Your Business Needs a Chatbot Right Now

If you follow marketing industry news you must have heard about Facebook Messenger bots.

Whether you already have them or still on the fence, you owe it to yourself to read this post to hone in on the real reasons to use them. Possibly in ways you have not yet tried. Messenger bot is not just another shiny object – the right strategy and implementation can transform your business.

Instead of boring you with technical details or marketing stats, I picked the real reasons they are game changing.

If Your Business Does Not Have a Chatbot, You Are Falling Behind

1) Proven Results

Are you tired of constant claims how this or that “innovative technology” is “changing the world“? Me too. I don’t care about innovation per se, and that’s why I did not jump on Facebook Messenger Platform when it was first announced 2 years ago. But by now, the verdict is in. Numerous case studies across industries (both B2C and B2B) demonstrate some very impressive numbers. The name of the game is reducing cost of acquisition (CPA), increasing customer lifetime value (LTV) and streamlining and scaling customer engagement.

2) 90% Open Rates

The most telling stat about chatbots are the typical message open rates. Most marketers feel extremely lucky to get 10-20% open rates on email. That’s because inboxes are overflowing with spam, so recipients are trained to ignore everything. But Facebook Messenger is a curated platform, that aggressively polices spam. Private messaging still feels private and therefore gets user attention. If you play by the rules, your messages will be read and acted upon. Attention is scarce in most places, but available on Facebook Messenger.

3) Conversational Selling

What do sales people do all day long? Ask their prospects leading questions, and depending on answers follow up with more information and questions. Successful sales operations have their sales scripts and processes down to a T. But if you already know the standard questions to pre-sell and pre-qualify your customers, do you really need a human to ask them? In most cases the answer is a clear NO. With Facebook Messenger, you can turn a sales script into an engagement sequence. Once you collect the red-hot leads, send them to closers.

4) Subscription Lead Nurturing

Not everyone is ready for a sales sequence right away. But just like email lists, Facebook Messenger audiences can be used for lead nurturing. Once a Messenger user authorized your bot, you have the ability to message them repeatedly over time. For smart marketers this means engaging and warming up their audiences with relevant contents – that gets massive attention. This provides multiple shots with multiple offers to get the fence-sitters off the fence. Customer Journeys happen over time and Messenger is the ideal medium.

5) Automate Customer Service

There are way too many front office processes that are clunky, tedious and frustrating to your customers. Generally speaking any process that involves a web form, could be replaced with a chatbot asking the same questions, in a much smoother flow. This goes beyond selling and may involve registrations, surveys, reviews, promotions, giveaways, etc. Best of all, these engagements provide multiple opportunities to gently remind your audience about your products, services and latest offers. The best service also sells.

6) Easy Integration with Ads

How do you get people into your chatbot? Messenger integration with Facebook ads makes the process smooth and seamless. The ad targets your ideal customers and sets up the angle with the hook. Once users click and authorize the bot, they are directed to a conversational sales sequence that illuminates their needs and wants, and then makes an offer based on what the prospect just affirmed. You can acquire contacts once at low CPA, and then sell them over time at a higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

7) Build Rich Applications

Last but not least, chatbots can host full-featured applications with potential to replace native mobile apps. The best user experiences must excite, engage and delight. This requires going beyond the basic conversation format. Chatbots can host and open websites without leaving Messenger. This lets you serve rich dynamic data, like savings calculators, store locators, appointment booking, interactive maps, etc. Webviews may embed calls to action that return users back to conversation flow. Engage, profile, segment and finally PROFIT!

Now, how can YOU get started with Facebook chatbots?

If you just want to dabble and test the waters, you may do so this with any one of the several proprietary chatbot hosting platforms. The functionality will be rather limited but easy to try for newbies. You might not achieve everything you hope for, but you would get a good idea of the possibilities. You will also be relying on a 3rd party system that may change their rules any time (as they had done in the past).

On the other hand, if you are serious about getting results, you want a custom-made self-hosted bot, based on open source software. This would enable you to create highly differentiated customer experiences that drive sales. Moreover, you could keep the source code and stay in control.

Right now we aim for EVERY project we get involved with to include a Facebook Messenger bot. If you are ready to invest in transforming your business, get in touch.

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Dmitriy Kruglyak

President at TargetChoice LLC

Data Geek. Process Fanatic. Growth Hacker

Making Advertising Profitable for Businesses

Building Marketing Tech since 1998