How to Best Market Your Messenger Bot

Once you've launched your chatbot on Messenger, what's next?

Last year, Facebook launched its newest marketing addition to the tech world, the bot. Although Facebook is not the only one to kickstart the new chatbot trend, it is currently seen as the most attractive platform thanks to its 1 billion active users a month, its integrated payment and advertising tools, and the ease with which marketers can develop bots via Messenger. However, once you’ve launched your chatbot on Messenger, what's next? As with any product, bots need to be promoted. To make your task easier, I’ve put together a chatbot marketing guide on how to best market your messenger bot.

Related: 10 Facebook Messenger Chatbot Marketing Expert Tips

Make your bot discoverable

 Facebook has made bots more discoverable by piggybacking on existing user's journeys on Facebook pages. To make your chatbot more discoverable, Facebook has designed a number of tools you should use. These include:

Messenger links

These are personalized links that when clicked on, send your audience directly to a conversation with your business on Messenger. These can be shared anywhere online.

Messenger codes

Messenger codes are similar to QR codes. They can be placed in real life situations such as events and stores, and when scanned by your audience, they open a Messenger thread with your business.

Message button on Facebook page

This button is the easiest and one of the most common ways for customers to approach businesses,  so be sure it appears on your Facebook page.

Message button on your website

These embeddable buttons can be placed anywhere on your website, and once clicked on, will fire up a conversation with your chatbot either directly on your website or on the Messenger mobile app. The two plugins have been made available by Facebook and come in the form of a “Message Us” button and a “Send to Messenger” button. I’ll go into more detail about these in the “Facebook Plugins” section of this post.

Related: How to make your Chatbot Suck Less

Messenger usernames

Give your bot a distinct username that customers can search for on Facebook. By keeping your Messenger username the same as your Facebook page username, you will make it easier for customers to find you.

Customer matching

Use the customer matching tool to transfer mobile phone conversations to Messenger. This process requires acceptance from the customer during the first Messenger communication but allows you to send your audience regular updates and alerts.

Use bot stores as public listings.

Facebook does not have a bot store, so customers currently have to search for you online. However, there are independent bot store listings such as Botlist, Bot Pages, Bot Family, and more.

Create a dedicated landing page for your bot.

Although you can search for bots on Facebook and bot listing sites, Google is still your best friend. Be sure to create a dedicated landing page for your bot that is optimized for search engines and includes a “Get in Touch” button that directly links to a conversation with your chatbot.

Related: Everyone's Getting Into Chatbots: Here's Why

Share relevant, informative and creative content.

  Create a story surrounding your bot that keeps your audience engaged. When creating your story, answer the following questions:

• Why did you create your bot?
• What makes it unique?
• What was the journey of its creation?

Once you have created relevant, informative, and creative content, share it on your website’s blog and push these posts on social media and through other channels. You can also share your stories with chatbot publications, popular tech publications, and publications relevant to your industry. It is essential that you keep your audience updated with your bot. Once you have started sharing your bot's journey, you can’t just stop. Continue writing content on its most important facets, any new features, its development, its involvement with customers, and relevant feedback and reviews. You do not have to limit your content to text. Make it fun and interactive by creating:

• GIFs
• Videos
• Audio content
• Sharing files from time to time
• Adding call to action buttons that link back to your site, products, or services

Get familiar with CAO

  Chat App Optimization, or CAO, is similar to SEO. Like with SEO, the CAO algorithm is yet to be fully understood. Some factors I believe to be influential include:

Audience engagement with the brand

It is thought that the engagement a user has with a brand strongly influences rankings in Messenger. For example, if your audience likes a post, shares a post, or contacts a specific page relating to “dog grooming,” it is likely that the next time they do a search relating to dogs, the page in question will rank highly in their search results.

Audience profiles and geo location

CAO is also thought to work according to location. This means that if one of your potential customer’s lives in the U.K., but is originally from the U.S., their search results will include both locations. For example, if they type “news” into the Facebook search box, news for both locations will appear. With this in mind, be sure to add your location(s) in your business’ profile details.

Keywords in profiles

It is likely that if a consumer searches for a specific term, brands with those terms in their brand profile will be at the top of the search results. As with any SEO, it is essential to use the appropriate keywords in the right places. For example, titles, description, posts, hashtags, etc.

Related: The How-To: Using Chatbots As A Tool For Customer Service

Facebook plugins

  As mentioned above, Facebook has made two plugins available for companies to add directly to their website to navigate customers to their chatbots. These include:

The “Message Us” plugin

The “Message Us” plugin takes the customer to the messenger application whether it be on the web or the mobile application. This plugin only notifies the bot once the customer sends a message, but no information relating to the customer, or the conversation, is forwarded to the bot.

The “Send to Messenger” plugin

The “Send to Messenger” plugin, on the other hand, gives the customer the option to receive information from your business. To do this the user has to confirm his or her account. The main advantage of this plugin is that the customer’s information can be sent to the bot which allows for further personalization, tracking, customization, and so on, in future interactions.

To Conclude…

When you embark on the journey of promoting your new bot, be sure to always obey the three unwritten laws of the chatbot world:

1. Make sure your bot is not annoying or spammy.
2. Be sure that your bot will respond in a relevant, timely, and polite manner.
3. Keep your chatbot focused on specific tasks, campaigns, products, or services.