3 Strategies to Use Messenger Bot and Facebook Ads For Lead Generation

Automate your marketing with Messenger Bots and Facebook Ads by creating some powerful strategies that grow your business

Hi there! My name is Dmitry Chistov, CEO and Co-founder of WhatsHelp.io. Every day our customers reach out to us with the same question: How to build the right Messenger bot for the lead generation with Facebook Ads?

In the beginning, this was our internal guide for our own customers, based on the experience of more than 30+ custom leadgen bots. Considering that using Messenger for lead generation is something new for most business, we decided to share what we learned from these marketers and entrepreneurs.

If you haven’t heard about WhatsHelp — it’s a Messenger Marketing Platform for automating a sales funnel, growing subscriber base and broadcasting — all in one simple solution. Feel free to try it out. And, if you haven’t done so already, I would appreciate if you give some feedback and share your own experience in comments below.

WhatsHelp - Messenger Marketing Platform

In September 2016, Facebook has introduced an exciting new feature to their Advertising system. By allowing Messenger as a destination for your news feed ads, you have now have unlimited potential communicate instantly with prospective customers. You can learn more from the Facebook docs.

Instead of waiting for messages to come to you, this Messenger as a destination for your ads allow you to start messaging right away.

To do this, there are a variety of techniques you can use with your Messenger Bot to create a powerful lead generation campaign. This guide will review some examples for setting up your Messenger Bot with Facebook Ads that takes full advantage of Facebook’s marketing capabilities.

Why Messenger is better

Before we start I’d like to pay your attention to some not very obvious benefits of using Messenger over landing pages. For some business it’s not so clear. The average conversion rate of the landing page in most cases is not more than 5–10%. That means you lost 90–95% potential customers you already paid for.

This is where Messenger Bots has unlimited potential for increasing conversion rate and enhancing the user experience, especially on mobile devices.

Key benefits:

1. You don’t need a landing page anymore. Your Bot can work as a marketing landing page + form.
2. Conversion rates are significantly higher. Filling out the form via Messenger is much more easy and convenient for users than redirecting to a website just to do the same thing — remember, 90% of people on Facebook use mobile devices.
3. We don’t lose 90% customers we paid for because the moment a user clicks on your opt-in message they are an immediate subscriber. Compare this to a traditional landing page where 90–95% website visitors leave the website. Using this messaging system allows you to follow-up with everyone even if they don’t send you their phone number or email.
4. Messenger allows customer support without switching to another channel to get information about your products or services. They can ask questions and receive a response immediately.
5. Messenger is a much more personal way for communication. The bot flow can be changed right while chatting. A Bot can know the name and some previous history in the communication. The landing page — can’t.

Using Messenger Bots with Facebook Ads eliminates much of the design related issues that can use up a lot of your marketing budget. As well, the instant messaging platform is carefully regulated and well-designed by Facebook.

How to come up with a good bot idea

Every successful campaign requires strategic preparation before setting things up. Our own approach looks like:

1. We are figuring out what products and services company provides. And which of them are already adverted on Facebook. If you already have a successful Facebook Ads campaign you just may start with improving it by using Messenger and bots.
2. We define the goals of the campaign. Are you trying to schedule a test drive? Offer customers a discount coupon on their next vacation? Arrange a consultation to improve their sales conversions? Knowing these goals can help you come up with great ideas for bots and Facebook Ads campaigns.
3. Finally, consider how these bots can be used throughout your entire sales funnel and buying cycle. This Messenger as a destination allows you to run campaigns which were never available to you before. For example, you can now offer a personal chat via Messenger only for customers who abandonment their cart or leave their application form blank.

You can set up your bots to work:

• at the top of your sales funnel by collecting the leads you need (i.e. email, phone numbers, etc.) to start the sales process;
• at the middle of your funnel to provide a follow up message and an added nudge;
• at the bottom by offering a clear and motivating call to action leading directly to the sale.

Source: mailmunch.co

Once you have taken a few minutes to consider your strategy and approach, you’ll be ready to put it all together in your Messenger Bots.

Types of campaigns to generate leads

For past few months, we have tried tens of different approaches. In this guide, we will cover just three of the most common and effective ones. However, you can also combine them in many ways and test out something new for yourself.

Let’s take a look at those 3 approaches you can start today.

1) LIVE CHAT FLOW

Overview. Potential customers click on your ad and activates your bot. The Bot asks several questions requiring specific responses to proceed. Once that is completed, a conversation with a live agent will start.

Why use this? This kind of campaign allows you to screen for quality leads that are genuinely interested in your service or product. When the live chat begins, you can continue to nurture and direct that relationship to where the places you want it to go.

Benefits. By introducing leads to a live agent, you can increase engagement and conversions at your business.

Let’s suppose you are offering an all-inclusive trip to Europe. Setting up the Bot Flow:

• Step 1: Facebook Ad. Want to go to biggest cities in Europe? Get free advice from our travel expert and receive 3 amazing offers for Paris, Amsterdam, or Berlin — enjoy the travels of your dreams.

• Step 2: Opt in message When a user clicks on the ad, they will receive an opt-in message via Messenger. If he doesn’t click on it or make a reply, the bot flow will not be activated. To increase the engagement, your opt-in should be relevant to the Ad and motivates the user to perform a specific action (click the link or reply).
• Step 3: Provide some useful information& If your opt-in was successful, you should provide a few value driven questions to engage the user. In this example, we would ask questions about their travel plans, motivations for visiting, places they want to see, and so on.
• Step 4: Offer a free consultation/chat. Once the customer has submitted their answer, and they are clearly engaged with the bot, you can offer a free consultation via live chat with the agent/expert. This is an ideal moment to introduce an estimate for the trip’s cost in a friendly and unintrusive way.

• Step 5: Chat. If your customer agrees to chat, send them a notification that an agent will contact them shortly. This also a chance to ask additional questions your expert might need for the consultation. For instance, what city do they prefer to visit or what is their travel budget.

2) LEAD GENERATION FLOW (with integrated with CRM)

Overview. This method works exceptionally well for automotive dealerships, real estate agency and other businesses requiring leads to be contacted at a later time.

Why use this? This kind of campaign allows you to collect a lot of lead information (i.e. name + phone number + important information) which you can use for direct selling techniques.

Benefits. Collecting a large list of leads to be sent to your sales team capable of closing the deal.

Let’s suppose we promote a free test-drive for the new Mercedes E-class.

Setting up the Bot Flow:

• Step 1: Facebook Ad. Create an image or video Ad offering a free test-drive.
• Step 2: Opt in message. Similar to the instructions above, write a relevant and convincing opt-in message. Here, we use a photo of the new E-class and ask, “Do you wanna take this for a test drive?”
• Step 3: Provide some useful information. Provide the customer with more details about your offer. Focus on highlighting the benefits of your offer and why that customer should use it or buy it now. “We have been shipping just 5 of these trendy and sleek E-class coupes. There’s only 3 remaining. Come give it a test drive right now before it’s gone!”
• Step 4: Qualify a lead (not required). Here you can ask the customer some relevant questions about your offer. You can set up some categories to get the details you need. “When can you come in for a test drive? Today? This week? Next Week?”
• Keep in mind, you do not want to ask too many questions. Doing so can draw out the process and reduce the amount of leads you collect. Try to ask one or two and focus on getting a phone number to make a direct and personalized sales effort.
• Step 5: Gather customers contact. As mentioned, this is the piece of information you need. In most cases, getting a phone number is all you need. The first and last name will be collected automatically. However, we strongly recommend that you don’t ask their address or anything else. You can get this information during the phone call.

When the customer finishes the bot flow, the lead information should automatically be sent to CRM, email or Google Sheets (depending on your output) for you to proceed to the next step.

3) CONTENT + FOLLOW-UP

Overview. This bot flow allows you to promote useful content, such as articles, eBooks, and informational video, which is followed by a unique offer.

Why use this? This kind of campaign allows you introduce value to your potential customer and engage.

Benefits. Create a strong impression of your business or brand and begin nurturing a positive relationship with your lead.

Let’s suppose we promote a resourceful guide for choosing the right real estate agent. Setting up the Bot Flow:

• Step 1: Facebook Ad. In the Ad we can offer a free guide.
• Step 2: Opt in message. A relevant opt-in message.
• Step 3: Qualify a lead (not required). Before you offer the content, you can ask one or two questions to get a better understanding of your customer. This is not required as the focus should be on providing the content right away.
• Step 4: Provide a content. This is the step where you provide the content that you promised them. It can be as simple as a message with a PDF version that can be downloaded right away. Depending on your product, you can even offer promo-codes and coupons if it fits your goals.
• Step 5: Follow-up message. You already have a subscriber to your Messenger channel, however the main goal is to generate a lead. According Facebook policy, you should follow-up with a customer, with any offer, within 24 hours..

You should experiment with this number and try following up 1, 3, 12 and 23 hours. Your follow up message to the content should be relevant to your offer. In this case, we would provide a free consultation with a real estate agent.

In other situations, you can offer a test drive, a vacation package to paris, or something like it.

How to create a bot and connect it with Facebook Ad campaign

1. Create a bot using one of the Bot flows described above. To build a bot you can use any services or solutions you want, but keep in mind that not all of them offer the all needed features. Some don’t allow to the ability to chat with customers while others collect leads and send them to your CRM system.
2. Create a Facebook Ads campaign with Messenger as a Destination. If you have a successful campaign from the paste, you may want to copy it and change the destination to the Messenger.
3. Link the bot to your Facebook Ad by using the JSON code.

To build your own bot and experiment with our Messenger marketing platform— please go to WhatsHelp.io.

If you’re unsure about the instructions above, we have a special guide “How to setup a Messenger bot and Facebook Ads to generate more leads” with more details about that.

Hints and tricks

The right bot flow is only the one part of the lead generation process. We also need to have a great UX. Here is a summary of the article “How to create a great Messenger bot for lead generation” which give you some hints and tricks for creating your bot UX.

• Opt-in message should be clear and relevant to the Ad. Ideally it should have a 70–80% click through rate.

• Before asking something, the bot should provide value to the prospective customer. It should be useful content or relevant information.
• If you ask for a phone number or other data, explain to the user how they should input that information. For entering some predefined answers you can simple use the “Quick replies” feature.
• If you don’t get an answer from the customer within 10 or 30 minutes, you should try to asking the question in a different way. This significantly increases the number of responses and will increase your leads.
• People prefer to communicate with people. Since you’re using a bot, make the most out of the experienced by personalizing messages and using the customer’s first name.
• Don’t send more than 2–3 messages simultaneously. Separate these blocks of messages with buttons like “Got it”, “Next” and so on.

Source: developers.facebook.com

• Precisely define the next step when the bot flow is finished. If the customer has to wait for their live chat, tell them a manager will be in touch within 15 minutes. Otherwise, proceed with the live chat immediately.
• Don’t use menus in bot. This reduces clicks on opt-in message and also decreases twice the amount of leads!

Conclusion

If you like the idea of running Facebook Chatbot campaigns, please comment below and let us know what you think about it. We’re more than happy to share more ideas to help you. And if you think anyone else would enjoy this guide, please share it. Thanks!

Feel free to try out our platform — whatshelp.io