In addition to using Facebook Messenger Home Screen ads, you can leverage Facebook Messenger for your business by running ads that drive potential customers to start or continue a conversation with your business within the Messenger platform.

These ads are known as Sponsored Messages ads in Facebook Messenger. With Sponsored Messages, you are able to show up as a “contact” in customers’ Messenger inboxes. These ads allow you to stay engaged with people who have already expressed interest in your products or services.

How to Create Messenger Ads

You can create Messenger Ads that deliver in either the Messenger app or in the Facebook or Instagram newsfeeds. To create ads for Facebook or Instagram, just select Messenger as the destination for the ad, as shown below:

Facebook Messenger ad type in the platform example of how a messenger ad click opens

To create the content that appears in the message once the user has opened the message for either Sponsored Messages or Messenger ads for Facebook/Instagram newsfeed, select the “Set up Messenger Content” button in the Links section at the ad level. You will then see the below wizard, in which you can select the format that you would like to use, write your message and load any images or video you would like to use.

Facebook quick reply setup

Why Are Messenger Ads Valuable?

An understandable objection you may have to trying Sponsored Messages is the opportunity cost of using your marketing budget for purposes other than generating website traffic. Website traffic provides numerous benefits, such as remarketing across multiple channels to those users, so why would you want to spend money on other efforts?

Well, to start, one point to consider is the power of interacting with a user in the Messenger thread that you began via your ad. You can view using a Messenger thread similarly to how you engage your email subscribers through a drip sequence of emails. This gives you the opportunity to increase the number of users that receive your informative and fine-tuned messaging about your product, information that was previously only accessible via your email program. Given the effectiveness of email marketing, this may in fact be more valuable than the site traffic you would have otherwise generated with your marketing dollars.

Something else you may have been noticing is that your email campaigns are getting less effective over time. That is in part because users often have more than one email address and have become more cautious about providing their primary email address when they are uncertain about whether or not they want to maintain an engaged relationship with your business.

While some users may have more than one Facebook profile with an associated Messenger profile, it is far less likely than encountering people with multiple email addresses, especially with Facebook’s recent efforts to purge its site of fake accounts. This means that you are much more likely to capture a user’s attention with a message than an email.

Even though ads driving to Messenger conversations do not result in direct website traffic, they are worth testing to determine how much value they can provide for your business.

 

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