Facebook launched Messenger ads back in 2016 and a lot of people have reported being very impressed with their effectiveness. Facebook messenger is a free instant messaging and voice communication service which allows users to communicate with each other instantly and privately.
A Facebook Messenger ad can appear on mobile devices, on Desktop computers or both. And a Facebook Messenger ad can appear in Facebook and Instagram newsfeeds and in the home feed of the messenger app. When messenger ads are clicked on, they open up Facebook messenger with a message.
There are 2 types of Facebook messenger advertising. Click to messenger and sponsored message.
Click to messenger ads appear as regular ads and when people click on the call to action, it will open Facebook messenger and start a sales conversion with your prospects.
Sponsored messages on the other hand, appear inside of the Facebook messenger inbox. They look the same as what a message from a friend would look like, but instead it’s a message from a business. Plus, with sponsored messages, you can only target people who have previously messaged your Facebook page in the past.
To create click to messenger ads, login to your Facebook account and from the drop down menu, select “create ads”. Then, choose “messages” as a campaign objective. Then, select “click to messenger”.
Typically, with Facebook messenger marketing campaigns the most common call-to-action is “send message”.
To create sponsored messages, login to your Facebook account and from the drop down menu, select “create ads”. Note that sponsored messages are only shown to people you’ve had a conversation with in messenger but you can refine that audience further.
In the ad creation process you’ll have two ad options. A text only ad, or a text and image ad. You can even personalise your ad by adding the person’s name. Then choose your image if applicable and write the text for your ad. And finally, set up quick replies for customers to tap, or buttons to send people to send people to a destination outside the messenger conversation. Or you can connect your bot so people receive instant responses based on what they message back. Manychat.com for example, is a tool that allows you to create a Facebook messenger bot.
If you’d like to run facebook messenger marketing campaigns using sponsored message ads but the number of people who have messaged your page is too low, you can create other Facebook ads with the call-to-action “send message”. This will increase the number of people who message your page, and therefore increase the number of people you can target with sponsored messages.