Bot Marketing

Social Media Marketing

These days it seems every business wants their follower numbers to skyrocket. But how can your social media following translate to money in the bank? Brands have become aware that social media channels are for more than cultivating their identity – they can affordably churn out high-quality leads and increase revenues.

Social media monitoring tools can help you put an ear to the proverbial ground by tracking any mentions of your business. Follow up, and you can potentially coax people into your sales funnel and convert leads. Some of the more obvious ways to generate leads are:

Competitions aimed specifically at relevant market segments, Gated content, Free samples, and Paid ads. The first three methods involve a give and take. They dangle carrots and hope that people will bite. When this happens, people pay for said carrots with their personal information, namely how they can be contacted. And so it comes to be that people are persuaded to part with their dollars. If nurtured, this relationship can be profitable and yield returns for years. And now there's a new tool in the arsenal of social media marketing.

Up, up and away with Facebook Bot Marketing

Chatbot marketing is taking off in a big way. During the last two or three years, major brands across industries have used this innovative method to increase sales. We're talking about the likes of Lyft, Mastercard, Pizza Hut and Sephora. What do they all have in common? Facebook Messenger Bots.

What is a bot?

Many people associate bots with shady goings-on. But 65% of bots are of a different ilk – they're the benign worker bees of the internet. "Bot" is short for "robot". The robot in question is a friendly automated customer service agent ready to take your marketing to the next level.

Chatbots are nifty – they're not called artificial intelligence (AI) for nothing. You can program them to operate within chat interfaces, and they quickly, intuitively and reliably answer queries from customers and ask lead-generating questions of their own. If they don't know what to say in response to a complex question, they connect to human personnel.

Chatbots store information about users and interact with them in one integrated platform, making them super-efficient at anticipating needs and lowering the drop-offs that would usually occur between adverts and webpages.

When operating through Facebook messenger, bots have access to all the information users have publicly posted. That's a whole treasure trove of data for personalised, micro-targeted, highly effective messaging.

Stats on chats

The Pew Research Center suggests that, amongst adults under 50, chat is the preferred way to communicate. Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion users, and that figure is growing – it beats out every other social media platform for active use. If you can't reach your customers on this particular app, they may be doomsday preppers living off the grid.

As it stands, Facebook Messenger users exchange approximately 2 billion messages with businesses monthly. That's an eye-boggling statistic for companies. And all the back and forth bears fruit. New York Times bestselling author Neil Patel mentions that colleagues who used a Facebook Messenger bot marketing campaign garnered an 88% open rate and a 56% click-through rate (CTR).

These are impressive numbers that indicate success rates far more significant than email marketing. People are 3.5 times more likely to open a Facebook Message than a marketing email.

In May 2018, marketers deployed a collective 300 000 bots through Facebook Messenger for conversational commerce, triple the amount from the year before. That's many businesses, sure. But given the steady growth, it's a fraction of what will likely be commonplace in a few years. According to an Oracle survey, 80% of businesses would like to be wielding chatbots by 2020. Savvy marketers (that's you!) would do well to harness this potential and capitalise on a first-mover advantage.

How can a bot make my life easier?

Chatbots are the best iteration of social and mobile marketing. The good news is that small to medium-sized businesses can get in on the action, too, because entry barriers are low. Although multi-dimensional chatbots are expensive, valuable but straightforward chatbots need not cost a fortune. So what are the benefits?