Chatbot Marketing: From Facebook ad to conversion

Editor's note: This blog post was originally written on the Flow.ai website. Flow.ai was acquired by Khoros in 2021 to advance Khoros' conversational AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities and data science expertise. This blog post has been adapted to be on the Khoros blog.

Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms and a proven instrument for online marketing. Using advertisements that redirect users into a messaging channel increases conversion compared to traditional landing pages.

Advertisements on Facebook work well to generate traffic. Moreover, the cost per click is a lot lower compared to advertising on for example Instagram.

In this article, we will show how you can use a Facebook ad in 4 steps to go from an ad to conversion using a chatbot that gives advice and immediately gives an option to place the selected product in a shopping cart.

1. Facebook Ad

The first step is to create a Facebook “Click to Messenger” ad. These ads are Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger Inbox ads that send people into a conversation with a business in Messenger.

The most important part of setting up the ad is the payload sent back to the bot. This works comparable to using Facebook m.me links. Any engagement with an ad would directly trigger a specific flow.

2. Facebook Messenger Chatbot

After setting up the ad and having a customer pressing the “get started” button, it will open the conversation and trigger a flow that will opt-in the user.

During the conversation, we can start by collecting data so the bot can give personalized advice. Gender, shoe type, color, material and size are parts that are included in the advice and can be gathered with the help of buttons and text.

3. Integration with backend services

By using all the collected data, an API call can be made to generate a personalized advice for shoes. It’s also possible to for example check if they are still in stock.

4. Call to Action

After the shoe advice, there are different follow-ups possible, depending on the use case. For this example you can select a pair of shoes and add them to a shopping cart. Another possibility might be to directly allow purchasing using a payment link

Chatbot Marketing on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Web

Besides the Facebook Messenger channel, you can also use conversational ads or apply conversational marketing for WhatsApp. Depending on your target group, you can choose to select 1 channel or go for an omnichannel approach.