How To Use Chatbots For Marketing On Social Media [8 examples]
Did you know that there are 4.9 billion social media users worldwide? Some of them are your potential customers. For example, the Burberry clothing brand has over 17 million followers on Facebook. So even if 5% of them DM brand daily, they should have an army of managers to answer these requests in time (ideally in 15 minutes).
The same situation is with growing startups. But opposite to big companies, they don’t have a budget to hire additional agents.
The fix?
Automate communication with consumers with personalized chatbots. Only Facebook Messenger has 300,000 bots.
Usually, they answer FAQs. But there are chatbots that recommend products, share the company’s news, announce sales, book appointments, etc.
Thus, they provide instant customer service and save your team resources. Generally, in 2023, chatbots brought business $137.6 million in revenue. So, discover eight tactics on how a social media chatbot can boost your business growth.
Let’s start with the most popular case 👇
1. Answer customers’ FAQs
Consumers tend to ask your managers thousands of questions. Most of these requests are straightforward and repetitive, but your team still spends time answering them instead of focusing on more challenging tasks.
Automate this routine with social media management tools. Delegate it to a chatbot — a simple rule-based chatbot would be enough to solve questions like:
● What is a ____
● How can I use it?
● Pricing plans description, etc.
So when a customer clicks one of the options, they receive a pre-saved text answer or link to a relevant article. Don’t forget to make the option “Contact a human agent.”
Look at the FAQ chatbot example from Google Ads.
This chatbot starts a conversation by offering a list of company products to talk about. Then, it continues with a list of specific issues a client may face and answers the question. Finally, the chat routes to a human manager if the question is too difficult.
2. Recommend products with a short quiz
Chatbots are great assistants. They work for every type of brand: SaaS, Fintech, eCommerce, Education, etc. If there is a list of products or features to choose from, chatbots will help customers to make a choice.
Usually, product recommendation bots start a chat with a short quiz to define customers’ interests. It can be up to five questions depending on the industry:
● What is your goal?
● Budget?
● Job title?
● Fav style?
Each question has three or four answer options (buttons). Thus, customers choose and eventually get a (link to) product that fits them best.
Look at the product recommendation chatbots from Original Coast Clothing and LEGO brands.
This screenshot shows a chatbot helping a customer find a perfect outfit. But first, it starts a short quiz to define their preferences about the customer’s style, location, and shipping needs.
Here is a similar example from LEGO:
As a result, customers get quick shopping, and company — data about their needs. So that marketers can personalize further communication with leads.
3. Collect and qualify leads
Support and sales aren’t the only departments that can benefit from chatbots. For marketers, chatbot captures leads. Depending on your social media strategy, to get contact data, they can share a free:
● ebook,
● PDF guide,
● consultation,
● website audit, etc.
If you want to be 100% sure that collected leads are relevant, use several lead magnets and a short quiz about the client’s job title, goal, budget, etc. Thus, you’ll understand what contacts go directly to the sales and which require lead nurturing.
Look at this lead generation chatbot from Susanta Manna’s Instagram:
This chatbot helps a digital marketer collect a lead base of people who want a growth hacking consultation. As you see, first, it provides a list of services and only then asks for contact info.
4. Nurture leads by sharing company news and blog posts
So what do we do with cold leads who need more time to make a purchase decision? Right, once or twice per week, send them helpful content like company news, and expert articles via email or schedule posts on Facebook. Eventually, they’ll ensure your expertise or product quality and buy.
And social media chatbot is one of the channels to do that.
There are two ways to deliver that content:
● Proactively via a sponsored message.
● Or send it reactively when customers initiate a chat.
Look at the examples:
This is an example of the proactive strategy from Mindvalley, a life transformation platform on Instagram. They used a chatbot to announce the upcoming webinar.
Sure thing, they put all the effort into converting its visitors into paid course subscribers.
The following example is about a more usual case when a client initiates a chat. Thus, The Wall Street Journal uses a chatbot to send its followers new blog posts:
To enhance customer relationships, they provide three topics to choose from and send a list of relevant articles.
5. Notify consumers of special offers
Can you imagine a holiday or a product launch without discounts? It is what customers expect from any brand. But the key to revenue lies in the correct announcement. Social media chatbots aren’t ChatGPT, so they can’t build a sales strategy for you. But it is a proven way to engage a target audience.
Include a chatbot in your sales campaign and notify potential customers about your deals in a sponsored message. It is a unique feature some chatbot platforms provide in addition to a standard script.
Look at this example from a grocery store:
As you see, Sponsored Message works proactively. It means a chatbot starts a conversation by sending your sales announcement. Thus, customers see a +1 in DMs and a short text message with an image, landing page link, and some answer options to continue a conversation.
You can personalize this message as a “Thanks for visiting our store last week, here is your 20% off coupon” to boost repeated purchases. Remember to segment your lead base accordingly.
6. Automate booking process
To ease the clients’ lives, brands provide their service on socials in addition to websites and apps. Thanks to the chatbot evolution, they can quickly help your followers book a hotel room, restaurant table, webinar seat, doctor or beauty master appointment, consultation, demo, etc.
If a process doesn’t require adding a credit card, it is simple:
● Choosing a product type,
● Adding the client’s name and contact data,
● Choosing the date and time (add it to a calendar).
Sure thing, there is a payment chatbot, but businesses don’t use them in this case.
Looks at the examples:
This is how the Auto Gelleria chatbot helps its clients to book an appointment.
After finishing a conversation, a chatbot instantly sends this data to your CRM, team admin panel, or managers’ emails/calendars.
Sephora had a similar assistant chatbot. When the brand ran a targeted Facebook campaign for US women ages 18–49, it helped customers schedule a makeover session.
A chatbot uses a user’s GPS location to offer the nearest store location. As a result, this campaign had 11% more appointments than were made in-store.
7. Guide customers through a simple product-purchase process
In addition to product recommendations, chatbots are excellent at taking orders. With the help of pre-defined questions and answers, they can capture data about the item, its type, customer phone number or email, delivery time, and address, and route it to your managers.
Sure thing, it requires CRM integration, but it is an excellent way to provide automated self-service on the channel where your audience is.
Look at this example from Pizza Hut:
This is a chatbot for ordering pizza. Not only does it navigate clients with f button options but also provides an opportunity to answer with text, for example, at the step of the pizzas quantity or delivery address.
Additionally, it delivers updates on the order status and fulfillment.
This method works for post-payment products delivered by your managers. However, there are examples of brand chatbots that process payments during a conversation.
8. Provide instant purchase experience
Usually, communication with a chatbot on social media ends at the step when it provides a link to the recommended item. After that, clients follow it and proceed to checkout or not.
But as you know, the fewer steps in the funnel, the better conversion it has. So, ideally, clients pay for the product directly in the chatbot.
Look at this eCommerce chatbot example:
This is how payment chatbots work on Facebook. When clients choose an item, the bot offers them to pay, then they check all the info and choose a pre-integrated payment option at the checkout step. Easy.
Speaking of, Viber and WhatsApp also have this feature.
To summarize
Now you are full of inspiring ideas on social media chatbots. But not all chatbots are as successful as those listed in this post. The reason? No personalization, too long copy, tech bugs, etc.
So where to start?
Here is a short guide on building your first social media chatbot.
1. Why do you want to launch a chatbot? You may have a great lead magnet to collect target leads, learn more about followers’ interests, make sales, or need more demo requests for your service. It will help you clarify the bot’s exact role, write a chatbot flow copy, and track results.
2. Who are your target buyer persona? You should know your customers’ interests and pain points to personalize your offer and chatbot copy.
3. What chatbot scenario will help you to achieve that goal? For example, you want qualified leads. There are several ways to accomplish that:
● offer free consultation,
● several lead magnets,
● free trial,
● discount, etc.
Think about what fits your audience best.
4. Where to launch a chatbot? Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp?
5. What service to use to build a chatbot? How to integrate it with preferred socials?. It should also integrate with your CRM, lead cards to store all your customers’ data and replies, and a visual builder for a no-code chatbot.
6. What should your copy look like? If the message is long, break it into two. Ask five questions at most during qualification. The maximum number of button answers is four or five. That is, keep the copy short and engaging.
7. How to monitor the chatbot’s performance? In addition to a significant metric, pay attention to the chatbot message sequence. For example, at what step do clients abandon a conversation most of all? Thus, you can fix the issue.
Follow these steps to plan and implement your first chatbot. Remember to experiment. Chatbots are excellent assistants that will save you time and money.
