Facebook Messenger Ads for Small and Local Businesses

The ability to target people who are actually interested in your product and located in your vicinity is a huge advantage for local businesses who use Facebook Messenger to promote their business.

Facebook Messenger gives you a direct way to persuasively market to a highly targeted audience in their personal digital space where they are communicating every day. Messaging through apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp is becoming the most popular way for people to communicate with people and businesses they know.

Small and Local Businesses Can Reach More Customers with Messenger Ads

There are over 1.3 billion Facebook Messenger users globally, and that number is expected to grow to 2.4 billion users by 2021. And more than 20 billion messages are going back and forth between businesses and users monthly.

Those are some impressive numbers, but you’re a small business, and all these billions and millions don’t matter too much to you, right? Well, let’s get into some more specific stats that will have you looking at Facebook Messenger Marketing differently:

67% of people indicated that they have made a purchase after seeing a social media ad (The Manifest’s 2019 Consumer Social Media Survey)
31% of consumers say they are using social media channels to browse for new items to purchase. (Aimia)
Facebook accounts for 50% of total social referrals and 64% of total social revenue. (Business Insider)
84% of millennials say user-generated content from strangers has at least some influence on what they buy. (Gartner)

Small and local businesses can get in on this action by digging into Facebook Audience Insights to learn more about the demographics and preferences of everyone on Facebook, but more importantly get detailed information about the people who have connected with your Facebook page to create highly targeted Messenger Ad campaigns that are hard to ignore.

Put Your Business in Messenger Inboxes

The easiest way to promote your business on Facebook Messenger is running ads that show up in people’s Messenger inbox. What’s awesome about Messenger ads is they capture such detailed information about people who chat with your business. Chatbots give you a ton of data you can monitor and analyze because once you get someone talking, Facebook gives you information such as name, photo, gender, location and messaging permissions.

Messenger ads work just like Facebook ads by automatically placing ads where they are most likely to drive results at the lowest possible cost. You can even use the same ads for Messenger that you’ve already created for Facebook and Instagram marketing campaigns.

People see your ads in the Messenger app Chats tab, and when they tap on it, they are sent to call-to-action within Messenger that takes them to the destination you chose when you created the ad. So, you could send them to a chat conversation with your business on messenger, but you could also send them to a website or app.

Sponsored Messenger ads can be sent directly to people’s Messenger inbox but ONLY if it is someone who has chatted with your business on Messenger before. This makes retargeting easy and highly effective.

What’s important is that you have a clear purpose for asking to start a conversation, you make the whole process easy and helpful for the user, and your ads are visually appealing. People are reading less and skimming more, so create “can’t pass this up” calls to action and give them a reason to click. Auto-play videos are especially effective for engagement, so if you can swing a short video for your Messenger ads, you should.

Facebook Messenger Marketing

While most marketing channels are one-way communication, Facebook Messenger marketing allows you to get personal and communicate with people in a way they are already using.

Facebook reports that more than 1 in 2 people said they’re more likely to shop with a business they can message, and 67% of people expect to message businesses more in the next 2 years. Chatting is already the preferred method of communication with friends and family for app users in the United States. Messenger marketing is experiencing rapid growth and your business can benefit when you join the conversation.

Whether you want to acquire new customers, retain valuable customers, or win back old customers, Messenger Marketing gets your business in front of more of the people that matter to you.