How To Create An Effective ChatBot On Facebook (Part I)

As you may have seen lately, there is a lot of talk about BOTs, especially Facebook BOTs.

What once seemed to be a novel tool that was only available to major brands is now available to entrepreneurs, infoproducers and any type of company for free or paying very little.

Today I want to share this guide so that you understand all the possibilities you would have if you created and launched a Facebook BOT with your brand.

What is a Facebook BOT?
What are BOTs for? Main advantages
Facebook BOT features
- 3.1 Chat on your website
- 3.2 Welcome message
- 3.3 Gifts / Lead Magnets (downloadable)
- 3.4 Automatic messages to users who comment on posts or ads
- 3.5 Broadcast (BOT newsletters)
Tools to create Facebook BOTs
Mini dictionary of terms related to Facebook BOTs
How to create a Facebook BOT
When to use Facebook BOTs

1. What is a Facebook BOT?

A Facebook BOT is a program that combines different technologies to automate tasks and interact automatically with users.

The best way to understand how a BOT works is to compare it with the switchboard we hear when we call large companies, this switchboard gives us different options and if we want to end up talking to a human.

The same happens with BOTs, we automate messages but then there is always a way to talk to a person.

2. What are BOTs for? Main Advantages

The main advantages of creating and implementing a BOT on a Facebook fan page are the following:

You will be able to improve the customer service you offer
You will increase traffic to your website or mobile application.
You will be able to pre-filter users interested in your products and services.
Increase your sales
You can integrate your Facebook Ads ads with your BOT to sell and inform 24 hours a day.
You will decrease the basic support

3. Facebook BOT features

As you have read previously, BOTs can be our best ally if we implement them correctly.

Next I would like to show you some of the functionalities that you can implement with a Facebook BOT.

3.1 Chat on your Website

Chatting on your website is fine, but imagine sneaking into the personal Facebook of your potential customers and being able to keep talking even when they close your website.

Here’s an example of what Facebook Messenger chat would look like on your website. The best thing about using this chat is that we can personalize the first message from users who try to start a conversation with us and subsequent messages.

3.2 Welcome Message

The welcome message is the key piece before launching a BOT. Although through the configuration of our fan page we can have predefined messages, the welcome message of a BOT allows you to implement advanced segmentation strategies.

The welcome message will depend on your business objectives.

3.3. Gifts / Lead Magnets (downloadable)

The best BOT is the one that is focused on helping before selling. That’s why it’s so important to keep our subscribers loyal with content of interest to them.

3.4. Automatic messages to users who comment on posts or ads

This is definitely my favorite feature. Since we use it we can distribute our lead magnets massively, not to mention that with Facebook Ads we have managed to increase our sales.

3.5. Broadcast (BOT newsletters)

With the broadcast we sneak into the mobile phones of our potential customers in a matter of seconds.

It’s no secret that many users use Facebook chat as if it were Whatsapp, something that undoubtedly comes great to us as brands.

Every time we send a broadcast to the users, they get a notification and sound on their mobile and computer.

This causes the opening rate of our message to skyrocket (between 70% and 95% we usually have). This opening rate is impossible to achieve with other marketing techniques such as Email Marketing.

4. Tools to create Facebook BOTs

Every day new tools arise to create BOTs without programming knowledge. I share with you the most interesting ones.

https://chatfuel.com/ [Free]
https://manychat.com [Free and Paid]
https://botsify.com [Free and Paid]

My favorite is Manychat because in addition to creating and implementing all the powerful features of BOTs I can manage the customer support of my fans in an advanced and semi-automated way.

5. Mini dictionary of terms related to Facebook BOTs

Before creating a BOT we will need to know the basic concepts that are related.

Subscribers. When a user interacts with your BOT messages he becomes a subscriber. In this way you will create a list of users to whom you will be able to send communications in a massive or personalized way.

Broadcast. They are the massive or personalized messages that we send to the subscribers of our BOT.

Default Reply. Is the response that users will receive when they respond to your automated messages (not required).

Keywords. Are the words to which we configure automated messages. Example: IF a user writes “HOLA”, the BOT will write “HOLA, HOW ARE YOU?”. This is playing with artificial intelligence, is a model through which we predict what our users want and then automate it.

Persistent Menu. Is the menu that appears when a fan page has the BOT installed. These menus resemble those of a website and serve to give quick answers and draw traffic to our website.