Facebook Ads that Click to Messenger (CTM) are reshaping conversations between businesses and consumers. In this article, we explain what CTM Ads are, their advantages, how you can set one up and how integrating with AiChat’s platform can improve the results of your CTM campaigns.

Conversational marketing, otherwise referred to as chat marketing or conversational commerce, is a concept of marketing centered around two-way conversations in a customer’s journey. Having genuine conversations with customers is crucial to building engagement and loyalty.

One of the easiest ways to carry out conversational marketing efforts is through Facebook Messenger.

In a study conducted by Facebook, it was found that 48% of respondents who shopped during the holidays are more likely to buy from businesses that are easily contactable through instant messaging.

While statistics clearly demonstrate that Messenger can facilitate conversations and generate sales, there’s a powerful opportunity that is often missed: creating Facebook Messenger ads.

With these types of ads, your business can increase connection and communication beyond the traditional Feed posts and engagement.

Image: You access Facebook Ads Manager to set up ads with different goals. For conversational marketing to happen, create ads that help you get more messages.

To amplify your conversations, Facebook (Meta) offers several options to run ads that encourage dialogue exchange.

1. Sponsored messages: these are direct message ads that show up in Messages with people who have engaged with your Facebook page before.

1. Click to Messenger (CTM) ads: where the call-to-action button of your Facebook ad leads a customer to open a Messenger conversation with your business.

In this article, we’ll be focusing on the second option: CTM Ads.With any Facebook ad, you’re looking to amplify your content to reach and connect to your ideal target audience.

With CTM Ads, there’s even more potential to reach out to prospects. As mentioned above, when a potential customer sees your ad, the ‘Send message’ button prompts an immediate opportunity for them to ask questions directly and kickstart a 1-1 conversation when the Messenger chat box is launched. From there, your customer can select questions from the guided flow, ask their own questions, or choose to speak to a representative directly.

Your business can benefit in even more ways than the above if you use Messenger ads like CTM:CTM Ads accelerate conversations between you and your customer. When Lotus's Malaysia (Formerly TESCO Malaysia) introduced an automated Messenger experience using AiChat, they witnessed a four times increase in digital catalogue views. They even managed to handle 85% of enquiries using AiChat.

If you automate responses using AI Chatbots, you can send instant replies to frequently asked questions. You can also live chat with them to answer their questions, provide additional information and automate special offers to entice them to purchase your product or service. This helps you reduce cost from sending offline messages that are not pre-populated and get a better bang for your buck with returns on your ad spend.

Don’t want customers in another district? Or want to target regional customers instead of just the ones in the same country as you? You got it.

With standard Facebook ads, you can specify where your ad will appear. From appearing in News Feeds, Stories, and even on Instagram, to targeting your audience based on geographical location and interests, you have control over who sees your ad and responds to you.

But with CTM Ads, wherever your target audience comes from, once they click on your ad, a conversation will immediately be initiated for them. For a more seamless experience, integrate your ad with an AI Chatbot for more automated responses.

With AiChat, you can extract customer interests and intent from the chat conversation, helping you profile your customers and do very granular targeting. For example, if someone interacted with a bot from the automotive industry, enquiring for a brochure on an SUV, AiChat’s chatbot can profile his or her interests. This information can later be used for retargeting purposes. We can help you segmentise those interested in SUVs and create a custom audience group, amplifying the reach with lookalike audiences. This narrows any barriers you have to entice people’s interest plus saves you cost by hyper-targeting your CTM Ads to those who are already interested in this area.

According to EY Future Consumer Index, 64% of APAC customers are willing to share personal data so businesses can customise their online experience. A CTM Ad can be customised not only based on your design assets and copy, but also according to previous customer engagements. Knowing what your customers want and offering them exactly that when chat marketing removes extra barriers for them to purchase from you.

For example, with AiChat, you can run retargeting campaigns to people who have displayed interest in your product or are previous customers. Retargeting campaigns are highly specific and cost less without compromising conversion rates.

Let’s say you have a regular advertising campaign where your customer opens up your standard web form where you capture their information. If the customer drops off halfway, leaving the form unfulfilled, you will not have a way, or it’ll be difficult to reach them again.

With CTM Ads, once a customer clicks it, their PSID (Public Safety Identification) will be captured and synced with the AiChat social CRM. This will detect those who dropped off from the form flow and retarget them again. Retargeting can be done by Sponsored Messages or putting them through a leads nurture sequence to reengage them.

If you’re ready to provide your customers with an engaging ad that can capture their attention and convert into business for you, here are the steps you can take.

• A Facebook (Meta) Business page

• A Facebook (Meta) Ad account

• Facebook Pixel setup for retargeting ads

• An AiChat account

• Objectives of your ad

• Design assets of the right size

• Advertisement copy

1. Go to your Ads Manager on Facebook (Meta) and click create

1. With the latest Meta update, there are now three types of objectives you can choose:
2. • Engagement: Find people more likely to engage with your business online or send a message.
   • Leads: Collect leads for your business or brand via messages.
   • Sales (if you’re focused more on Conversions): Find people likely to purchase your goods or services.

1. Once you’ve chosen the objective, name your campaign and click next

1. Under Conversion location, choose Messaging apps

1. Under Ad type, select Click to message

1. Under the Messaging apps section, select Messenger. You can also choose your AI Chatbot, once it’s programmed into your Facebook Messenger.

1. Choose your budget, audience, placements and cost controls, then click continue

1. Select your ad format and complete your ad setup

1. Click + Create to create your flow. Click Save and finish when you've finished.

1. Finish editing your ad, then click Confirm.

And you’re off to a great start.

By running CTM Ads, you will be able to increase conversion rates quicker than usual. However, having someone sit and reply to those messages might not only be time consuming but also not great for your cost.

To deliver maximum customer satisfaction, connect your CTM Ad to a chatbot like AiChat.

Here’s how you can do so:

1. First, you set up AiChat using our dashboard. Our team of experts will walk you through the steps, although our interface is quite user friendly.

1. Once configured, you can use AiChat to create a new Facebook ad.

Simple!

In general, there are 4 steps required to create new Ad:

• Ad Account

• Ad Campaign

• Ad Set

• Ad

To set up your Facebook CTM Ad using AiChat, first select Ad Account.

Image: Ad Account Page

Select from the existing Campaign list or you can click on the Create New Campaign button.

Image: Ad Campaign Page (Create New Campaign)

If you click on the Create New Campaign button, fill in the Campaign Name and click on the Next button to proceed to the next step.

Image: Ad Campaign Page (Create New Campaign)

Select from the existing Ad Set list or you can click on the Create New Ad Set button.

Image: Ad Set Page

Select Click to Messenger. Fill in the Name and select your Audience. Click on the Next button.

Image: Ad Set Page (Tab Audience)

Leave it as default unless you would like to edit the placement. Click on the Next button.

Image: Ad Set Page (Tab Placement)

Fill in your preferred Daily Budget.

Image: Ad Set Page (Tab Budget & Schedule)

You might also want to specify whether to run the ads starting today or within a specific date and time. Once done, click Next.

Image: Ad Set Page (Tab Budget & Schedule)

Fill in all the required fields then click Next.

Image: Ad Page (Tab Design Advert)

Add a minimum of one card. The card order will be in text, carousel and quick reply formats.

Image: Ad Page (Tab Create Message)

Once done, click on the Create button to Save.

AiChat allows you to set up and create all types of Facebook ads. But CTM Ads, when paired with an AI chatbot, can successfully deliver results throughout the customer journey.

Here are some examples of how regional brands have made conversational marketing work for their campaigns:M1, Singapore’s first digital network operator, was looking to drive awareness of its new brand initiative. To do so, they released a Create-your-own-video engagement experience in FB Messenger by working with AiChat.

To reach the right audience, the campaign was amplified through organic Facebook and Instagram posts, emails and CTM. When the audience clicked on the CTM Ads, they were taken directly to the Messenger Experience.

In two months, this campaign achieved the following:

• 398,000+ people reached on social media

• 4.1X new users acquired on Messenger

• 1,700 videos generated & shared on Facebook & Instagram

• 4.9X more open rate vs email

Read the entire case study here.FWD Thailand is a life insurance business offering insurance products. The team was looking to earn better quality leads at a lower cost for its “E-Cancer” campaign.

FWD Thailand partnered with Meta Business Partner AiChat to develop an automated experience. The “E-Cancer” ads had a Send Message call to action. When clicked, a conversation in Messenger opened up where people could ask questions about FWD Thailand’s products and receive quotes.

After A/B testing their CTM Ad versus a business-as-usual campaign of photo ads that directed people to its website, FWD Thailand discovered that CTM Ads received:

• 5.4X more quote conversion rates

• 5.6X lower cost per quote

Want to improve your CTM Ad? Read this article to help you measure your results for maximum output.When creating a CTM Ad, it’s important to have a strategy. Knowing how to set one up is just the first step.

To achieve optimal results from your CTM Ads, here are some things to consider:

1. Be clear on objectives and expectations - set up your CTM Ad with the right objectives and goals to achieve what you expect. If you are not getting your desired results, speak to Meta Business Partners like AiChat and tweak your campaigns accordingly.

1. Be available to chat - If you don’t have the resources to answer customer questions at all times, integrate AI chatbots like AiChat to help you maintain your engagement with customers for the optimal customer experience.

1. Provide info first, sell later - With conversational marketing, we are tempted to quickly answer questions and push the sale. Let’s not forget that customers are not just looking for details of your product and service but also an experience that is seamless, happy and easy. Make your customer feel good first and they will automatically want to buy from you and even come back for more.

Need help with setting up an effective Facebook Messenger ad? Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise, AiChat provides end-to-end partnership solutions to enhance your customer’s experience with your business. Improve your conversations and conversions through CTM Ads.