For the last several years, companies have become increasingly aware of the importance of social media in their marketing efforts. For many business owners and marketers, social media marketing largely supplanted directed marketing using traditional mail or email. Interestingly, the trend may be coming full circle as many marketers are now looking at using direct messaging apps in conjunction with their other social media marketing.
In an article for Entrepreneur, Alfred Lua discusses the growing popularity of messaging apps, advocates for incorporating these apps into online marketing mixes and looks at strategies to maximize their effectiveness. We’ve picked out a couple of his tips that might be most useful for small businesses.
Send Content Via Application Messaging
Sending whitepapers and other content through email has been a tried and true practice for years. Lua points to research suggesting the same strategy using messaging apps can be even more effective. He points to HubSpot as an example of how Facebook Messenger might provide a better alternative: “…instead of just asking people to fill out a form and get the gated content via email, they offered the option to skip the form and get the content via Facebook Messenger. After four weeks of testing, they found a clear winner.”
According to the HubSpot research, the Messenger strategy resulted in a 242 percent higher open rate and a 619 percent higher click rate.
Send Reminders and Updates
If you have an upcoming event, product release or announcement, keep your followers engaged by sending reminders through messaging apps. These can be set up to send automatically with many applications.
Advertising with a One-on-One Feel
Lua notes that Facebook News Feeds can get cluttered with too many ads to realistically expect customers to sift through, but suggests that Messenger ads can help cut through the clutter by targeting specific customer lists. “People will see your ad in the home tab of their Messenger mobile app,” he writes. “When they tap on the ad, they will be brought to your preferred destination — your website or a Messenger conversation.”
Marketing media are constantly evolving and adapting. While many marketers have moved away from traditional marketing efforts to favor the use of social media, it’s interesting to see social media platforms develop effective marketing tools so similar to the channels they themselves displaced.
What marketing tactics are working best for you these days?
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Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We are adept at evaluating and analyzing communication efforts and working with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content, through both on- and offline media to achieve desired results. Our background in business journalism, marketing, PR/media relations and online communications makes us well-positioned to serve the needs of 21st-century marketers.
We serve clients who are looking for help creating content for a wide array of channels—from social media posts to full-length manuscripts, and everything in between. We focus primarily on service-related B2B topics and work with a number of independent consultants interested in building their thought leadership through online channels. For ongoing content management, our first step is to fully understand your goals, objectives and competitive landscape.
Then we’ll conduct a thorough analysis and assessment of your digital presence, compared to competitors, and recommend a communication strategy to achieve your goals. But, we also regularly take on individual projects – white papers, blog posts, contributed articles, etc. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know!
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Tags: chatbots, Facebook Messenger, marketing communications, marketing mix, messaging apps, Social Media, Strategy, Technology