Facebook Messenger for Pages was introduced as a product into Business Pages back in 2015, but has evolved and broadened in functionality since then.

In this post I hope to help explain the context of the product so that you understand how it can be used for businesses who use Facebook. (Updated as of May 2020).

Why you should use Messenger for Pages

Today, people expect to be able to communicate with you on social media. You cannot pretend otherwise – because if you did, it would be to your detriment and result in lost opportunities.

You need to embrace the fact that you are able to have two-way communication with your audiences. Facebook gives you ample opportunity to leverage ways in which to attract and engage your followers on Facebook. Messenger is one of them.

The crux of marketing and communication today is to meet your audience where they are. This means, if they hang out on social media – then you need to be seen to be available if you want to be taken seriously.

I have known businesses in the past who completely ignore this element on social media. I urge you, especially in this day and age, to think brighter and clearer about how your audience wishes to communicate with you and grab any opportunity to do so.

Ways you can use Messenger for Pages

#1 Customers can message you directly

They can click “Send Message” on your Business Page to send you a message. Some things to note:

• You need to make sure you have messages enabled (check your settings)
• They will send it as a person (i.e. from their personal profile)
• You will receive it as a business (i.e. within your inbox of your business page)
• You will respond to it as a business (i.e. as your brand) even though you, as an admin, will be able to see which staff member from your business answered the message. (There is a setting however where you can choose for the actual person to be revealed who is answering on behalf of the business page)
• The conversation is private between you and the person

If you are not sure about opening up dialogue through your page, perhaps you need some support with solidifying your strategy? This really helps in gaining some clarity about what the future looks like for your brand online. (Check out our Strategy Session, and feel free to book a free initial conversation to see whether this is some thing worth doing.)

#2 You can automate responses

I would highly suggest setting up your automated responses. Facebook gives you the ability to be able to automatically answer each message. Some things to note:

• You can customise these (just check your message settings – there are a range of categories here: FAQs; Contact info; location; instant reply and away message)
• This helps cover you outside of office hours
• This helps to support you when you are really busy and can’t get to the messages quick enough (then you don’t lose the prospect / enquiry)

You can find these by going to ‘Settings’ of your Page, then looking for ‘Messaging’ in the left hand column and click on it. Once there – scroll down to find the section where it says ‘Set-up automated responses‘.

#3 You can PM people who comment on your posts

This was a frustration for many business pages, especially when they ran competitions and the only way they had of contacting entries was via a comment on their posts. Some things to note:

• This is a good way to take complaints (for example) offline.  You can personally message someone to sort something out or deal with some private information exchange.
• Great way to start a personal conversation with someone who has commented, when perhaps the full conversation is not really necessarily in the public interest.
• You can only message someone who comments on your Page within 7 days of them commenting (after that the Message option greys out). I think this is to ensure that it’s genuine, in-the-moment conversation happening.

#4 Integrate Messenger with 3rd Party Apps

You can choose to get more advanced with how you use your Facebook Messenger for Pages by using ChatBot tools like ManyChat or Mobile Monkey. Things to note here about what you could do:

• Look at automating much of your initial sales enquiry process (if done well and eloquently).
• Use the ChatBot to aid specific paid campaigns (i.e. to help with providing downloads or free giveaway content).
• You could use it as a tool to create mailing lists within Messenger. (Basically so you are gaining subscribers that you can actually market to, directly within Messenger)

Want to learn more about ChatBots?

ManyChat has free training to learn how to build a chatbot, and Mobile Monkey also has created a load of resources to learn more about creating chatbots and growing your business through using them.

#5 Use your inbox URL for marketing

Just as you would communicate with customers or clients by phone, email, Skype or such – you can also now provide a unique URL for your inbox for your inbox on your Facebook Page.

Your URL will be: m.me/[url of your Facebook Page name], so our’s for example is: m.me/harbour32

This is handy to use in marketing campaigns, email newsletters, email signatures, printed campaigns, etc.

In the screenshot below you can see what it looks like for the person messaging you (in their Messenger inbox). Note the automated response that happens as soon as the person clicks ‘Get Started’ to open the conversation. In this example – I sent my own Business Page a message:

And then on the flip side – the below screenshot is what it looks like in your Business Page Inbox.  Notice the right hand column – this is all the information you can get about the person who is messaging you. It’s like a mini-CRM system where you can add labels to the person. This helps when you have your team working on your page, as they can quickly identify a relationship if there is one.

#6 Integrate with your website live chat

You can integrate Messenger into your website as a live chat function. This is pretty cool and will help to manage your website live chat enquiries and questions and help streamline your online enquiries. (That’s if you don’t already have a live chat tool in place – even if you do, you can get them to work together).

If you want more detail on how to go about this, I found this handy blog post from Respond.io called ‘How To Add Facebook Messenger To Your Website‘ (published Feb 2019, so check what’s more up to date for you). Mobile Monkey and ManyChat also provide integrations for this (so that your ChatBot and LiveChat work together). Mobile Monkey have also put together quite a good, chunky post called: How to Use Facebook Messenger  for Business: Top 10 Marketing Use Cases which you may find a useful read too (they deep dive more on ChatBots for you there.)

Or you can obviously look at Facebook’s Help Pages  (written for developers though, so quite techy).

I guess my main message here is to activate Facebook’s Messenger for Pages and make full use of it. You never know how your audience will want to communicate with you. Meet them where they are.

This does not mean that you are available 24-7. It does mean that you are making your business available while they are on social media.

Need to refresh and invigorate your use of Facebook? Book a FREE Discovery Call conversation with me and let’s work on your Messenger plan together.