Facebook Messenger Ads: How to Set Them Up & See Results

Are You Using Facebook Messenger Ads To Promote Your Business?

1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger each month and they send 8 billion messages a day.

That means if your audience is on Facebook, they’re more than likely using messenger too.

So, you can use Facebook Messenger ads to put your business in front of more targeted eyeballs. 

And because it’s an under-utilized ad campaign, we’re seeing higher engagement rates with it.

Specifically, Facebook Messenger marketing has 10-80 times better engagement than email and organic posts on the Facebook News Feed.

So today, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about Facebook Messenger ads…

…including how to set them up and start seeing results. 

2 Ways To Run Facebook Messenger Ads

First, we think it’s important to clarify that there are technically 2 ways to run Facebook Messenger ads.

1. Messenger Inbox

There’s the Messenger Inbox placement which is a placement you can select in the ad set level for many different campaigns – be it conversions, traffic, etc.

These can appear in Messenger Inbox between conversations and between Stories.

But it’s important to note that ads in Messenger Inbox are currently unavailable in the:

• United States
• Canada
• Australia
• France

2. Messages campaign

Then secondly, there’s the Messages campaign, which is what we’re going to talk about today.

What Are Facebook Messenger Ads?

Facebook says: “Messenger ad solutions help send people into conversations with your business, which helps you drive the results that matter.”

So this campaign shows people ads that allow them to engage with you on Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram Direct.

So when people click on your ad, it takes them to 1 of those 3 messaging apps.

Before we start to dive more into how to set them up, check out our new social media ads training course next to master social media advertising. 

How To Set Up The Facebook Messenger Ads Campaign

Step 1: You’re going to head to business.facebook.com/adsmanager and click the green Create button, and select the Messages campaign. 

Step 2: Name your campaign in a way that makes sense for you so that you’ll know what it is at a glance and keep your Ads Manager nice and organized.

Then click the blue Continue button.

Step 3: You can set your campaign settings up the way you normally would and click through to the ad set level.

Here you’ll first need to select your ad type, which can be:

• “Click to message”, which starts new conversations, or
• “Sponsored message”, which reengages existing connections.

Sponsored messages can only be utilized via Facebook Messenger…

…which makes sense because you’re re-engaging conversations with Facebook users on that platform.

On the other hand, click to message ads can be run on messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram direct (since Facebook owns all of them). 

You’ll also want to make sure you have the correct Facebook business page selected. 

From there you can set your target audience, budget, and schedule the way you normally would.

Now if you need further help with setting those things up properly…

…you can read our how to create Facebook ads post which will give you a more detailed tutorial on how to set up a Facebook ad, in general.

But in this post, we’re specifically covering the Messages campaign.

So, we want to keep moving and focus on the parts that are Facebook message-ad specific. 

Back to our screen, one thing we noticed was that it let us select all the automated placements.

But then, when we got to the ad level, it said the Messages campaign was only compatible with the:

• Facebook Newsfeed,
• Messenger Inbox, and
• Instagram feed placements. 

So we’re telling you now to save you the trouble of having to click back and forth.

Those are the placements you’ll need to select on the ad level screen.

Step 4: After that, you can click forward to the ad level.

If you selected the Instagram placement, you’ll need to make sure you have the right Instagram account selected here.

From there, you’ll want to choose your ad creative like normal, and add your text.

For the CTA, you’ll want to choose Send Message.

And you can see Facebook is prompting us to use “Chat in messenger” as the headline…

…because you do want to qualify your audience and make it obvious as to what to expect.

And that is when they click your ad, it’s going to take them to messenger, not a website.

Step 5: Now here is where we start getting to the message ads-specific setup of Facebook Messenger ads.

Under Message Template, you’ll see the options to:

• Start Conversations,
• Generate Leads, or
• create an Advanced Setup.

So essentially, when someone clicks on your ad to chat with your page via Messenger, it’s not going to be you responding in real-time.

Because that would be extremely time-consuming and not always practical. 

So what you’re doing in this step is setting up the automated messages your audience will receive when they click on your ad. 

a. Start Conversations Option

On the left is where you set everything up.

And then, on the right is your preview window that will update in real-time to show you what things will look like to your audience.

So first, you need to decide if you only want to allow:

• text messages,
• text and image, or
• text and video.

Then you’ll want to put your opening message.

You’ll see that FB automatically has the conditional blue box in there for you…

…which updates for each person to use that person’s first name (which is great and makes it personal).

But otherwise, it’s important to note that everything you’re seeing on our screen are things Facebook has already put in there as a suggestion to use.

We didn’t type those in, we clicked the Create button and this was what the message template opened with. 

So we would advise in addition to adding your own questions…

…tweak the opening and closing messages to be specific to your business and target audience.

Under Customer Actions, this is where you can suggest questions or replies for your audience to choose from, or add a button to send them to your site. 

So you can set up the responses for your audience to choose from.

And then, depending on which response they choose, you can set up the corresponding response for FB to send “from your page.”

Now again, FB is auto-filling some suggested prompts and questions, but you can and should edit these to be specific to your business and target market.

b. Generate Leads Template

The biggest difference with this template is the approach.

Instead of giving your audience responses to choose from, you’re asking them questions first.

And since this is a lead generation template, FB actually gives you the option to disqualify people depending on how they answer your questions. 

So if they answer one way, it will lead them to the next question.

But if they answer another way, aka if they choose the answer that makes it obvious that they wouldn’t be a good fit for your business…

…you can disqualify them and end the conversation.

And of course, you get to set up what the disqualification message says.

This is so that you’re exiting people in a gentle way that won’t do any brand damage for your business.

The advanced option of this template gives you the ability to customize your confirmation to pause messages and reminder messages…

…as well as set up any tracking parameters, if necessary.

Once you’ve got everything the way you want it, you can preview in messenger, or save and finish.

By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about Facebook Lead ads, then be sure to check out our post for that.

c. Advanced Option

We would advise against this unless you really know what you’re doing here, because it requires you to input your customized JSON code.

Step 6: Now before we move on, we want to quickly go back and select the sponsored message ad type, and then click back to the ad level.

You will see the ad level screen looks a little different as it only gives you the 1 message template option.

You can set up your opening message with or without an image, and you can give your audience responses to choose from.

If you choose this ad type, you’re following up with people who previously had a conversation with your business page.

So you can think of these as retargeting messages.

Step 7: Once you’ve got everything the way you want it, you can hit the green Publish button.

So that’s how you set up a Facebook Messenger ads campaign.

If you want to see the full walkthrough guide for these steps, then watch the video at the top of this post.

And if you want to learn how to create Facebook ads that stop the scroll, here’s the perfect tutorial for that.

Before we wrap up, we want to leave you with the following notes.

3 Things To Keep In Mind If You Decide To Use Facebook Messenger Ads

1. One study found that Facebook Messenger campaigns helped them achieve an 88% open rate and 56% click-through rate.

Additionally, on average, businesses are earning a 60-70% open rate within the first hour.

These stats are insanely good.

And we’re sharing them with you because it’s important to know how powerful FB messenger marketing can be to garner leads when utilized properly.

2. Part of the reason this campaign works so well is because you’re making it easy for the user to give you their information and answer their questions.

They don’t even have to type, all they’re doing is tapping.

Tapping on your ad, and then tapping your pre-set questions and responses.

So remember that as you’re setting everything up – the quicker, the easier, the better.

3. We would advise running a click to message ad in one ad set and a sponsored message ad in another.

This is so that you can be actively following up with leads that didn’t message you back or answer all of their questions in a timely manner.

Check out our Facebook ad examples post to get some ideas for your next FB ad campaigns.

Wrapping Up

And that’s a wrap! We hope you learned something new and useful when it comes to using Facebook Messenger ads!

If you want to maximize your Facebook ad campaigns, then our Facebook advertising services is what you need!

Talk to one of our Business Development Specialists today.

The post Facebook Messenger Ads: How to Set Them Up & See Results appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.