You should be spending your web budget on Messenger

By the end of this, you might not even want a website.

Lori White
Paloma

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The real action on The Internet isn’t on your brand’s web domain. It’s in the interactions and relationships that your brand has with its customers. These could be in the checkout, in advertising, in social — all back and forth exchanges.

Websites are a pretty place to land, but — hear us out — websites are just confusing interactive billboards, even at their best! And they devour budgets while your brand’s marketing and UX team are constantly trying to figure out how to decrease the friction between point A and point B, the sale.

You know what doesn’t annoy your customers? Feeling understood, and developing a functional relationship with your brand. Scaling those personal sales connections has been difficult. We here at Paloma come from the world of marketing, design and UX, and those disciplines have done a LOT of the heavy lifting when it comes to creating web and digital environments built for connections and conversions. But it’s not enough.

Your customers, human persons themselves, require and deserve a personal relationship with your brand. Besides, any web UX can lead you down a funnel, but ultimately, it can’t make you buy. The surprising solution to the impersonal nature of digital conversion funnels is pretty old school. It’s a conversation. The format it takes — one-on-one direct Messenger conversations, scaled using automated platforms like Paloma — is quite new school. And when old meets new, exciting things happen.

How do messenger sales funnels compare to web?

1. Websites aren’t necessarily the BEST way to sell things!

You can never be 100% sure your website’s sales funnel is working.

Yes, it’s possible, but it’s difficult. Even if you do have a very strong sense of who’s coming to your site, even if you’ve invested heavily in strategic ad campaigns driving *exactly* the audience you want to your site, and even if you’re invested in analytics that will tell you exactly where potential customers dropped off — you can’t re-engage those folks without another expensive ad campaign.

In a Messenger sales funnel, you know when it’s working. You know when people have dropped off. And you can re-engage with them in the same channel, no new ad campaign needed.

Messenger can do the work of your website — but better.

2. More genuine brand equity

Not only are your customers visiting your Messenger platform, but they’re having a conversation with your brand. Millennials value collaboration when making purchase decisions, and a back and forth conversation is the heart of true collaboration.

3. Curated presentation of purchase options

Instead of presenting your potential customer with a menu of every thing you have for sale, with Messenger you can have a qualifying conversation with them, get to know what they’re actually looking to buy, and show them those wares.

4. Sales

In short — users can buy products inside a Messenger conversation.

Your brand can re-engage, upsell and retarget in the exact channel where the purchase happened. Think email, but actually not obnoxious. That’s in-Messenger retargeting.

5. Mobile and Desktop optimization on lock

All direct Messenger platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, to everything else, are optimized to shine on desktop and mobile, engaging your customers wherever they are.

Still want that website? ;)

Ok, we’re not necessarily saying drop your website. But imagine having your paid ad spend produce 3.5 times the value. Tommy Hilfiger saw 3.5x customer spend when the brand launched a Messenger marketing initiative. Sephora’s reservation assistant provided 11% increase in booking rates.

Tech has only recently caught up to the power of Messenger, and any brand that invests in an automated Messenger platform to scale the value of one-on-one conversations will be set up for success. If you’re wondering how it all begins, we tell you how your brand can connect to your customers on Messenger in this blogpost.

You know your sales funnel, and it’s going to be easy to translate all that work into Messenger in a way that gets you even better results for the same amount of effort. That’s what we’re here for.

Want to have a conversation? Request a demo, and sign up below for our monthly update with tips on how to make the most of the Messenger channel 😎

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Lori White
Paloma

Senior UX writer — alum: Coinbase, Daily Harvest