The current marketing scenario is very different from say, 5 years ago. Today, you are no longer confined to the locations of you customers when you want to reach them but you need to find them and figure out where they are hanging out. And we are not talking about physical locations here.
Enter the future in Messenger Marketing
One thing for sure, you need to go where your customers are going. And they are most likely be hanging out in cyberspace or some form of digital space. Your customers could be avid fans of paid channels like Fox Sports or Disney and you need to be there when they are.
How big will Messenger Marketing be?
To put this in a simple sense, Messenger Marketing could well be the SOLE largest marketing channel the world has ever seen. And this is expected to happen in the next few years. In the process of getting there, you might see the diminishing popularity of conventional media and even some modern ones.
Messenger Marketing – What it means?
What you are trying to do in Messenger Marketing is that you will want to leverage on chat platforms, mostly on mobile devices in order to create a connection with you customers and potential ones. Although email and SMS marketing are still being widely used, you need to start using messenger apps like:
- Facebook Messenger – Popular in the US and many developed markets
- WeChat – Very popular in China
- Line – No.1 in Japan and Thailand
- Whatsapp – pretty much the leader in the entire world.
- iMessage – Popular among iPhone users
- and many more
Why use Messenger Apps
When it was once popular and very effective using SMS for marketing, it is now the world of messenger apps. No matter which platform you use, you are bound to enjoy this because it is the quickest, possibly most efficient and convenient and would most likely be the cheapest way.
What then, you might ask makes Messenger Marketing so effective? Here are the main reasons why?
- You can send your message to thousands of recipients in a single transaction
- You can target your recipient based on their demographics, location and other related data
- Your message gets delivered instantly
- You can track whether your recipient has received or read your message
- You can interact with your recipients and engage them
Never before has there been any media that gives you benefits like this the way Messenger apps do. This simply means that you get some really crazy click-through rates. If you are wondering by now that this might sound a lot like SMS marketing, the truth is, it is! The main difference here is that, it is more accurate and you get to send richer content.
Through most (if not all) Messenger apps, you can send all types of media which include:
- photos and images
- videos (isn’t that the main buzz word now?)
- audio files (messages, recordings)
- documents
- CTA (Call-to-Action) buttons
- hyperlinks
- or just about anything you can think of
Putting it all together
It is easy to assume that when it comes to Messenger Marketing, it means Whatsapp or Facebook. After all, the two names are market leaders in their own environment. Like any other form of marketing, you would seriously need to consider:
- Target Audience – Not everyone uses Whatsapp and not everyone is a WeChat owner. You need to know the profile of your target audience before sending it out. The younger users might most likely be LINE or Viber users. You need to know who they are
- Location – Make no mistake about it. Whatsapp is available across the world but they might not be the most used apps in every country globally. If you are targeting Japan, you might want to go for LINE instead
- Cost – Most messenger marketing efforts can be quite affordable but they might not all be absolutely free. Find out the costs involved and if you might need to inject certain funds into your campaign prior to mobilizing it
- Alternatives – In certain markets, Messenger Marketing might not be your best option. It sounds good on paper but you might need to revert to an older technology, like SMS
