Saturday 25 November 2017

Facebook Messenger advertising – an absolute evil or a necessary mean?

During the past year, Facebook has developed several features for advertisers to use the Messenger app to communicate with customers and potential customers. Molly Pittman, Vice President of the online community Digital Marketer, wrote a blog post on how to use these ads in your business.

As a background, the author presents a chart that reveals that since the beginning of 2015, the global monthly active users for the top four messaging apps are more than those for the top four social networking apps. She claims that, “we must not only enter the conversation that’s already taking place in our customer’s head, we must BE in the places where our customers are having their conversations”. Accordingly, as this is the place where people communicate with family and friends, marketers need to go in to this channel to better serve their customers. Or else they will lose business to their competition.

There are two ways to advertise on Facebook Messenger. Either, you can use the app as a destination, or you can use the app as a placement. Destination ads are comparable with regular news feed ads, the only difference is that instead of sending traffic to a URL those who click on the ad are transferred to the messenger app. Once there, the users receive an initial question which aims to start off the conversation. According to Pittman, this ad type can be used in two ways. Either, it could be used for retargeting people who visited a website’s sales pages without purchasing, by requesting the user to chat with representatives from the company. Or, it could be used for cold traffic, in order to raise awareness and acquire customers who have never heard of the brand. In that case, the ad could be to ask a seemingly general question such as, “if you could fix one aspect of your home, what would it be?”. Then, the company can turn it into a sales conversation, which hopefully can end in a sale. The second way to use the Messenger app for advertising is to use it as a placement. In this case, you produce sponsored messages which appear in targeted people's’ inboxes. The message can include links and images, but you can only target those who have messaged you previously.

In our opinion, the idea of Messenger ads is not a positive. Clearly, with ad blockers increasing in usage, and people moving from open environments into the dark social media channels, marketers need to update their ways of advertising. However, we do not believe that the increasing usage of instant messaging programs will be the end of regular social media channels. Instant messaging programs are currently in the process of outplaying the traditional text message, but for social media, they play a complementary role rather than being substitutes.

We argue that using Facebook Messenger as destination could be beneficial, but using it as a placement could be directly harming for the company. In the first case, there is an actual outreach effort made by the customer, through the click on the ad in Facebook. Thereafter, given that the actual execution of the conversation is handled with care, it could in fact increase the level of customer service. Either, by explaining any unclarities in terms of offering specifications, or by raising awareness by presenting customized suggestions for cold traffic. However, using Facebook Messenger as a placement is to invade in your potential customers’ private rooms. People go to there to communicate and exchange information with family and friends, and do not expect interruptions. And when interruptions are unannounced, especially when they take place in a private setting, they are not appreciated. In terms of marketing, this was lastly made evident by the reactions to home sellers and telemarketers. So, if you are a company and prefer your customers to have positive associations of your brand, use Facebook Messenger as a destination and not as a placement!

Source: http://www.digitalmarketer.com/how-to-use-facebook-messenger-ads/

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