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Marketers ruin everything. It is true. And it is ok.
Think about emails when it first came out. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. You can communicate with infinite people instantly without any postage or costs to you!
Then marketers ruined it — at least mostly. So much so that email services built spam filters and many emails are now deleted before they are even opened. (Side note, we're trying to fix how emails are used in commercial real estate, more on that here: Stop Sending eBlasts)
Or think about banner ads back in the day. When you saw a flashing ad at the top of a website, you used to click it. Now? You have trained your mind to ignore them.
Eventually marketers will find what is working and then they will squeeze the life out of it.
Guess who is smart enough to know this and prevent it from happening?
Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg knows that if he doesn't protect Facebook Messenger it will be ruined as well. Facebook has built the following guardrails to prevent overloading the number of messages businesses receive:
1) Limiting the number of "cold" Facebook messages that can be sent at a time (for more on this, read: 6 leads using Resquared and Facebook).
2) Creating a spam inbox to send messages to if they have "spammy" copy or if the same exact message is copied and pasted over and over again. (Yes, there is a spam folder on Facebook that you didn't even know existed!).
This makes using Facebook Messenger bad for sales right? Wrong! Here are 7 reasons why Facebook Messenger is the holy grail of small business prospecting.
How many Facebook messages a week does a small business?
They are typically getting hundreds of phone calls and emails, but are receiving less than 30 Facebook messages. It is much easier to stand out from the crowd.
Think about the mindset you have when you get a cold phone call. You are defensive. Who is trying to sell me? Who is trying to get my time? You are protecting your time and being defensive.
A business owners mindset on Facebook is much more laid back, and most of their messages are coming from customers. Even if a message is coming from someone trying to sell them, it displays their personal FB profile picture, which reminds them that they are being contacted by a regular person. Their mindset is far less defensive.
Facebook pages get rewarded for responding quickly. Every business is given an average response time that is front and center on their page. So they are incentivized to respond!
Depending on what types of services or products you are contacting the business about, it may be a red flag if they are not active on Facebook. Remember when people were hesitant to get websites for their companies? Times have changed! Nearly 80% of local businesses have an active Facebook presence — and those that don't probably should.
In this blog post, I share how I sent out 27 Facebook messages and received 6 "Yes Im interested in learning more" and only 1 "No thank you". The reply rate alone is incredible. The lead rate in this example was 22%. Find me a better conversion than that!
To ensure you are following Zuckerberg's rules, you have to slow it down and do some personalization, but with Resquared training you can send 10 messages in under 5 minutes!
Facebook Messenger has become popular in retail leasing, but from our research, fewer than 20% of retail leasing reps and brokers have started using this powerful channel.
Sometimes we hear people say they "will never do facebook prospecting." We promise, it's much easier than you think. We have have a free guide on setting up your Facebook account to start doing this.
There's no doubt, Facebook Messenger is the highest conversion rate channel to get local business leads. It's a competitive edge. You can do it on your own, or feel free to schedule time with our team if you'd like our help or a way to make it easier & even more effective.
