Should Your Business Advertise In Facebook Messenger

A good chunk of the lives of those working in digital marketing is spent trying to get as close to their target audience as they can. That often means looking at the biggest trends and hopping on right away.

One of these trends nowadays is Facebook Messenger, a new social media app which currently has more than 1.3 billion active monthly users. Roughly 20 billion messages are exchanged between users every month, and a majority of these messages are sent through mobile devices.

But Facebook Messenger is just a way for people to talk to each other. How does this impact businesses? Well, through Messenger ads, which allow you to start a conversation with your audience. Here’s everything you need to know about it.

You might also be interested in SHOULD YOU KEEP YOUR OLD SEO CONTENT?

How Do Messenger Ads Work

Since Messenger is so popular, it didn’t take long for Facebook advertisers to select Messenger as the new tool to increase their business’ profile.

Messenger ads are very similar to Facebook ads and other ad sets you may run on Facebook affiliated platforms like Instagram. You can even use the same creative for all your ad campaigns, and Facebook will use automatic placement to deliver the ads where they are most likely to get results.

Users can see these new ads in the Chat tap of the Messenger app, or in the Messenger Stories section. If they click on your ad, they will be redirected to a more detailed version of the ad, complete with a call to action that can take them to the landing page or other pages you want (you will choose that during the ad creation process.)

So far, there are two types of Messenger ads to speak of:

1. Ads in the Messenger Inbox

These ads appear in the Messenger app between the conversation a user already has.

2. Ads in Messenger Stories

Similar to what Instagram has, Facebook also started rolling out a Stories feature, and has one even for the Messenger App. Your ads can appear between other stories of the people or pages the user already follows.

Should You Run Messenger Ads

Messenger ads are certainly a new, exciting way to promote your content or brand, but it’s also possible they won’t do much to help you reach your goals. Like with any digital marketing tool out there, it’s important to analyse what it does, and see if it can have a genuine impact on your business.

Currently, Messenger ads run on only certain types of formats and with only certain objectives. If your goal matches its availability, then yes, you can use Messenger ads to promote your brand. Otherwise, it’ll be just a nice test, but your result won’t help you reach your business goals.

As a general rule, Messenger Stories ads support the image and video format, while the Messenger Inbox ads allow images and catalogue type of ads. Here are the objectives available for Messenger ads:

1. Increasing Reach – Getting your content or posts to as many people as possible. Currently only available in Messenger Stories ads.

2. Brand Awareness – Getting more recognition for your brand. Currently available in Messenger Stories only.

3. Increasing Traffic – Help redirect users to your landing page. Available both for Messenger Inbox and Stories ads.

4. App Installs – Gets more people to download and install your app. Currently available in Messenger Stories only, in image and video formats.

5. Conversions – Gets people to do something once they see the ad. Available both for Messenger Inbox and Stories ads.

6. Catalogue Sales – Gets people to see the products you are offering and potentially buying them. Only available in Messenger Inbox ads.

7. Messages – Send direct messages via ads. Only available in Messenger Inbox ads.

So, if any of the three objective options fit for your business, Messenger ads can have a positive impact. However, this type of ad will not influence your bottom line that much if you have other objectives in mind like lead generation or increasing video views.

How They Can Help Your Business

Messenger ad campaigns aren’t a way for Facebook to make its advertising tool more complicated for nothing. They can truly have a positive impact on your business. Here are some of their most notable benefits:

• “A Whole New World” – With such a big potential customer base, it’s simply a good move to advertise on Messenger from a business point of view. While everyone is fighting for a spot in news feeds, Messenger ads aren’t yet as widespread, so you could benefit from less competition on this medium.
• They’re Great to Target Locally – Messenger ads feature a local awareness option that perfects the location-based targeting of Facebook advertising. It’s now much easier to reach the real-life customers in your area and get them to visit your business.
• They Can Be Personalised – You can send users relevant content you know they want to receive, particularly through the Sponsored message ads, we’ll talk about them later on in this article.

Messenger Ads vs. Sponsored Messages

You’ve probably heard of sponsored message ads, and were wondering why we did not include them in the type of messenger ads above. Well, that’s because they are slightly different.

Though they are technically ads in the sense that you pay for your content to be shown to certain users, they don’t operate the same way as Messenger Inbox and Stories ads do. Sponsored message ads let you send offers, promotions or updates about your brand directly to the users you already have a conversation with, in Messenger.

So, if one of your followers has already sent you a message, or you have reached out to one previously, you can leverage that open line of communication to re-engage with them.

You can use sponsored messages for:

• Sending important information about you, or content relevant to your followers like discounts or promos;
• Re-engage customers who left a conversation;
• Get people you’ve connected with to check out a product or service.

How Do You Create Messenger Ads

The thing about anything related to Facebook ads is that it’s very simple to use. You can create all your ads directly in the Ads manager, and the difference between setting up Messenger Ads and Sponsored Messages is just a few clicks.

Select Create ad and choose the right type of ad and objective you want to run. Set the timeline and the budget you want, put in the visual and the copy of the ad, go through targeting options, and you’re basically done. You can run multiple Messenger ads within a wider Messenger ad campaign at the same time.

After that, you just have to monitor the results to see if your ad sets are doing their job helping you reach your goal. It’s best to keep a close eye on the results while the campaign is still active. If it’s not generating the results you expected, you may want to tweak a few details like the target audience, edit placements or improve ad creative.

Final Thoughts

As long as your business objectives overlap with the available Messenger ad objectives, you have a lot to gain from running these ads. Facebook is all about helping brands to get closer to their audience, so ads in their messaging app make a lot of sense.

Plus, it’s a great way to diversify your advertising efforts and leveraging a new, growing network of potential customers. And who doesn’t want that?

Ready to tackle this new ad tool? Let us help! Get in touch with Australian Internet Advertising right now and let’s perfect your Facebook marketing strategy!