Messenger Marketing has become a godsend when it comes to promoting businesses. From Marketers, to Consultants to Dentists and Restaurants, Messenger Marketing has already advanced as a brilliant strategy for businesses to promote their services using Facebook Messenger.
As with every form of marketing, evolution is an important part of the process. The older, less successful forms of marketing are steadily dying. Email marketing once had fantastic figures, open rates and conversion rates, but over time, it’s fallen down to a crawl with many businesses reporting less than a 5% open rate, which means that very few if any people are converting with these emails.
So What Is Messenger Marketing?
In simple terms, Messenger Marketing is using a form of software called a Chatbot in order to take advantage of one of the world’s most powerful communication platforms: Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger has over 1.2 Billion monthly users making it the most powerful messaging platform in the world!
Chatbots can be programmed with a variety of features. I like to think of them as a Digital Secretary, which give pre programmed responses and perform simple tasks. Chatbots are pretty similar to human beings in that they are only as good as their training, or in this case programming.
A basic Chatbot can give pre-programmed responses to pre-programmed questions or notify an admin if more information is required by a potential customer. This can be really useful if the customer just needs to know opening times for your business or where you are located, or maybe even your phone number or web address. Advanced chatbots can do more complicated things like handling bookings and reservations.
So How Can This Help Restaurants?
Time is one of the most important aspects of running any business, and a reliable automated service can be incredibly useful, freeing up the time of the business owner and the staff. Chatbots have been used to take bookings, reservations, run competitions, loyalty schemes and provide a plethora of useful services.
If you have a staff member who handles social media as well as doing their restaurant based job, Social Media might be taking up a lot of their time in which they could be providing useful services to benefit the company. Let’s say they’re a waiter and they are dealing with a busy night, let’s say: Friday. They get a message asking about opening times for Saturday. This might distract them because they might think the message is about booking in and could create a problem with service.
Let’s say someone does want to book in for Saturday. The waiter might miss it because they are so busy handling their job. With attention spans being so low in the information age, you could lose a potential customer which could end up costing you business. If you are handling Facebook messages as the company owner, you could be doing many other things to help your business run efficiently.
A system where generic questions could be answered easily without sending people to an FAQ is a much more personal way of the restaurant responding to a customer who needs information, even if this process is performed by a chatbot. More complicated chatbots can even be programmed to take orders in advance, which would allow kitchens to pre-prep, and even book people in!
A simple chatbot to fulfil the basic needs of your restaurant can be easily built in Manychat! These chatbots are incredibly simple to design and can be set up by anyone. They have a free version and a pro-chatbot. Each of these can handle functions quickly and easily so you and your staff don’t have to making your lives easier for a much slicker business!
So How Do We Use Chatbots To Help Restaurants?
We use a unique advanced system called the Restaurant Growth System to help get restaurants business through advertising on Facebook! Whilst a simple chatbot is easy to code and many templates exist in order to build the aforementioned functions, at OSA Digital, we are taking chatbots and messenger marketing to a whole new level.
Imagine a system like this: You see an advert for a restaurant, you click the link in it, a message is received which offers you an amazing deal which can be claimed in the restaurant. It gives you the additional option of joining a VIP club where you will get access to many more deals! Upon accepting, you are added to a chatbot mailing list so the restaurant can contact you with offers and also to an emailing list where the customer will get the same offers.
The customer can even benefit from an additional loyalty scheme, getting offers for repeat business using messenger marketing – and this isn’t all! We’ve also constructed a fantastic ordering system which increases profits for companies using services like Just-Eat! This is only the beginning of the things that we can do to help your restaurant!
The Restaurant Growth System requires quite a lot of work and patience to set up and integrate with a multitude of different softwares but can yield fantastic results when the system is fully merged into your business. To find out more, get in contact with us here! (contact page)
I am an SEO specialist and Digital Marketer with many years of experience working in Restaurant Marketing, Legal Marketing and more! I run Ramro Synergy, Fantasoft and SECT.News. I am a business owner, and part of the team at: Grow Your Restaurant!
