Facebook Messenger Marketing is Here to Stay

You must have heard: Mark Zuckerberg has spoken.

He says, and I quote, “future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp [are] to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network.” His words seem to stress the importance of speed, simplicity and usability on the one hand, and privacy, security and accountability on the other. You could rightly ask “What’s going on here, and is there something for me in this?”

So let’s take a look at what’s going on. First, the price of data has grown immensely in recent years. Facebook, along with other social media platforms, has been pushed to change the way it operates, become more transparent about their data use, and fend off ill-intentioned fraudsters and shady opinion hackers. The increasing value of our data currency also makes authorities uncomfortable all around the world. That is the public logic behind Facebook’s change of focus from social media to private sharing. This change will give them the opportunity to encrypt messages so that no third parties, not even Facebook, will be able to track them.

So Facebook is shifting their focus from a broad social media platform that is very difficult, if not impossible, to control. They instead will concentrate on smaller circles of trust. However difficult this may sound, business logic can support this direction. Facebook will not necessarily lose on the deal, and of course as a business, they’re very aware of the bottom line. However, businesses who do not follow emerging trends may find themselves facing a dire predicament. It seems that traditional media advertising tools will undergo some changes that may catch businesses off-guard.

The rise of messaging marketing

In recent years, brands have increasingly decided to interact with their customers over messaging services, such as Messenger or Viber, just to name the biggest ones. The number of active users on these platforms is in the billions globally, and people are much more likely to engage with over messaging platforms.

The immense growth of these platforms, plus Facebook’s imminent strategy shift, together make a very good case for taking messaging marketing even more seriously.

So what are the perks of using messaging marketing?

• Customers prefer live chat solutions for support. Over half of customers will be likely to repurchase from a provider who offers chat options.
• Engagement is a given in chat, which creates an easy avenue for direct upsale options.
• Quality chat solutions attract more customers, but clients who are kept waiting can damage the business. Once you introduce a direct messaging platform, it is in your best interest to provide timely and accurate answers to consumer queries.
• Live chat helps you win more customers. Speedy and accurate answers are an excellent way to contribute to great word-of-mouth statistics.
• Using a well-optimized and reliable chat bot will help you gain traction: you can use the bot as a sales assistant that can pass on the issue to your human colleagues only if it requires extra attention. And that is only a part of what you can do with a modern chat bot solution.
• Chat bots are also a perfect fit to tackle tasks such as customer surveys, to guide customers around seemingly complicated client paths, retrieve abandoned carts, and more.
• Businesses with AI-based chat bots hosted on Facebook Pages or other messaging platforms will certainly benefit from these changes.

We cannot say with certainty whether Facebook will follow through with the proposed changes. However, it’s a fact that the share of messaging marketing in the global marketing spending is on a steep rise, and enabling technologies, such as AI-operated chat bots, are on a roll.

The drive toward messaging marketing is taking place regardless of any proposed major changes in the market, and it looks like any changes in social media platforms will lead toward a greater use of messaging marketing.

Drop us a line if you interested in some new messaging marketing tips!