Facebook Messenger Bots

It’s a new age, the year 2019, and in today’s society, you’ve probably heard of two very common things that are used the most – Facebook Messenger, and Chatbots.

So what does this mean though?

When you hear of the two phrases together you often think of some auto-responder that’s not going to give you the right information, or just give you a very small set of responses. However, that isn’t the case anymore. Chatbots have been around since before the internet, and many of them were actually over the phone until the internet came about.

Today, you won’t see very many businesses not using chatbots of some sort, and in this Facebook Messenger bot guide, we’re going to tell you how to use one, and all of the great things you can accomplish with them.

 

Facebook Messenger Bots

When it comes to using a chatbot, there is a handful out there, but it’s important that you use the right one that fits your needs. We’ve found that ManyChat has the most options as far as Facebook Messenger chat bots go, and they offer the most ease of use. If it’s not for you, then that’s your prerogative, but the basics are pretty much the same.

It may seem like a daunting or overwhelming task, and most people who are considering using chatbots have a lot of questions about how to start.

It’s pretty simple really though. All you have to do if you have a Facebook business page is create your chatbot, connect it to your Facebook Messenger, adjust your settings correctly on Facebook Messenger’s settings (we’ll give some tips on that later), and then start editing everything on your chatbot’s control panel or dashboard rather than Messenger in order to get the most out of it.

There is a lot more to it though when it comes to getting the most out of your bot and designing it to help benefit your business. Let’s talk about that next.

 

 

 

Special Information About Your Bot

 

When it comes to creating your ManyChat bot (as I said, we use this chatbot the most), you have to make sure certain settings are correct in Facebook Messenger. You want to ensure your Messenger platform settings are set correctly in Facebook’s side of things. Make sure that you choose to automate all messages, and give your chatbot full control. Then you can literally use your chatbot for everything.

How do you do this?

Log into your control panel, and you can start editing customer responses to numerous chat triggers and rules. The important thing to consider here are things like your target audience and your bot’s personality. Having a chatbot with a personality creates a friendlier environment that gives your customers a sense of personalization for their conversation.

By using your chatbot flows properly, you can adjust things like timed responses (make it appear that it’s typing for a few seconds or so, then make the message complete and send) so the user on the other end feels like they’re talking to more of a real person instead of just an automated messenger. You can even program your chatbot to act like you, and there are some out there that you wouldn’t even know they are ManyChat bots.

 

 

What are the Benefits of Using a Chatbot?

 

When it comes to using chatbots, you get more integration than just Facebook Messenger. You can even add your Facebook Messenger chatbot to your website, and even get notifications through mobile devices by adding a widget.

This actually gives someone using a chatbot over the general helpdesk platform the upper hand, because, in Facebook Messenger, you can still get all of that person’s contact information, their photo so you know who you’re talking to, and more.

Another great thing is that when you use a chatbot like ManyChat, when a person contacts you, they can be automatically added to your subscriber list, so you can send mass messages and push notifications, follow-up messages, and so much more to them.

Not only that but since over a third of the world are active on Facebook at any given time, many people who join Facebook are loyal to the platform and are still on it today. Therefore, you get to maintain contact with them and most messages are actually read as compared to the old e-mail marketing campaigns where nearly 80 percent of them are just put into a user’s trash or junk folder.

Once you have a customer or client subscribed to your ManyChat bot, you can actually use things like suggestive sales and Facebook ads, as well as automate things to use suggestive sales tactics.

For example, if a customer asked where to find a bowl of soup, and you are an affiliate marketer for a restaurant or big corporate chain that has that on their menu, or even a meal delivery service, you can use suggestive sales to recommend the item to them, which in turn gets them to possibly by the product, earning you more revenue.

 

 

Why Are Chatbots Being Used More?

 

Most digital marketers know that in order to get more leads and get a better return on investment (ROI), they have to be able to use other means rather than just basic Facebook ads in order to be utilized.

This is partly because of the higher costs of advertising, while the users that your posts and ads will actually reach out to and be clicked is decreasing. The good news is that you can incorporate other advertising campaigns and marketing strategies by using chatbots like ManyChat.

Also, when you’re using a chatbot as a marketer, you can greatly save time and increase efficiency in your business by providing things like technical support, as well as helping to answer customers’ frequently asked questions so you don’t have to spend so much time doing all of the tedious communications yourself.

This means that a chatbot can literally be “programmed” to be a virtual assistant for your business on Facebook Messenger, and with the majority of people using it to communicate rather than using phones (and the majority of it being on mobile devices), you can maintain traffic consistently with proper automation, so you don’t actually have to even lift a finger.

 

 

Is Programming a Chatbot Hard?

 

The truth is, programming a chatbot can be very meticulous, but it doesn’t require any programming language knowledge at all.

ManyChat, for example, is all programmed using their growth tools by posting rules, actions, and triggers appropriately as responses to certain keywords, phrases, and even sentences.

With that being said, even though there are a lot of details to consider when trying to make the best chatbot possible, there is also the factor that you don’t have to actually program it completely from scratch as some people worry about when they hear the words “program your chatbot”.

When this is done correctly, you can get actually blast every single one of your subscribers if the need arises with a special promotion, and you don’t have to worry about any filters, such as Facebook News Feed filters. At the same time, Messenger messages convert up to five times more than the Facebook ads when it comes to returning conversion rates.

 

 

Is There a Facebook Messenger Bot Tutorial?

 

There are actually a lot of ManyChat tutorials out there, but many of them fall short. Most users who you’ll find on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms that use ManyChat are actually getting commissions from people signing up for ManyChat, and by using their tutorials, you’ll definitely get the basics, but you can always get those just simply by signing up for ManyChat, or your respective chatbot of choice.

That being said, a lot of people who provide “Facebook Messenger Bot Tutorials” are actually just giving you some basic information, and then telling you what worked for them. Getting the basics is great as we mentioned earlier, but every business is different, and their business isn’t your business.

That’s why you need to look at the proper ManyChat tutorial and get the proper chatbot courses in order to get the best training possible and be able to tailor it for your needs, so you can build a better bot that will allow for higher ROI and revenue to be brought to you, your company, and even your customers.

You need to understand your target audience (we briefly mentioned this earlier, but this needs to actually be an enforced mindset), and know what they’re going to be looking for the most. At the same time, consider your bot’s personality as well.

 

 

 

 

What Does it Mean to Give My Bot a Personality?

 

Nobody likes talking to automated systems, but they’re becoming more and more prominent on Facebook Messenger than any other platform. The difference is that many people don’t mind getting their automated response if they’re done right.

You can use things like animations, emoticons, gifs, and much more to give your bot a personality so that your customers are happy to chat with your bot. You may even get your customers to laugh, and build a relationship with them through your bot if you utilize the right responses correctly.

 

 

What About Multiple Target Audiences?

 

The good thing about a chatbot is that it grows with your subscribers, and so does your target audience. If you have a broad target audience, then you’ll want to set your chat bot to have certain default responses that are literally for everyone.

But what if you’re wanting to target a younger crowd for one product or response type, but target an older crowd for another type of response?

Fortunately, with a chatbot this is actually possible. You can literally make special responses, actions, and even mass “blasts” for a select audience category based on certain factors, like their age, personality, gender, and so much more using a chatbot.

 

 

Do Big Companies Use Chatbots?

 

The truth is that there are a lot of major names that use Facebook Messenger chatbots, and some people don’t even realize it. For example, Lyft, Spotify, Fandango, MasterCard, Staples, and even the Wall Street Journal all use chatbots like ManyChat in order to get the most out of their sales.

There are literally more than 300,000 bots active on Facebook Messenger, so why shouldn’t you consider using one?

 

 

Chat Bots Can Integrate with Other Marketing Apps

 

One of the best things about chatbots is that you can actually use other platforms and web applications for automation and marketing and integrate them with your chatbot. For example, if you are a user of Zapier, Integromat, or Automate.io, you can actually combine actions, ads, and other campaigns and let them work together to build a complete network of automated tasks.

For example, anytime that you add a new product or advertisement for a product to your inventory, you can automatically have your chat bot send messages to literally all of the subscribers of your new product and boost additional sales.

You can even integrate affiliate marketing into your chat bot which can give you even more passive income in the process.

 

 

Screening User Messages

 

When you own a business, it’s not a surprise that you’re going to have potential scammers, hackers, and other harmful individuals like spammers that are going to try and contact you, all of them trying to “give you the best product to help your business”.

While some of these aren’t really legit, there are some that may be of interest to you. At the same time, when a customer asks a question, and they aren’t getting the answer that they want to receive, it’s important that you have a chatbot that does allow you to speak with your customers in a one-on-one basis as well.

ManyChat offers the ability to do this, and allows a Live Chat window that you can use in order to actually speak to your client or customer, so you can know when to interrupt your chatbot and actually keep those dedicated consumers dedicated.

By adding some real personal interaction into the mix, you can also help to give the users contacting you that “personal” touch that they need in order to maintain contact with you.

 

Conclusion

When it comes to getting the best chatbots for Facebook Messenger, you no longer have to be afraid, and with all of the knowledge that the right Facebook Messenger bot tutorial can provide you all of the information you need to generate up to 400 percent return on investment and revenue!

So why not use a Messenger bot to increase your net worth?