By Ciara Brady on 25 Nov 2019
Wolfgang Bites: Watch - The Future is Private
Wolfgang Bites: Read - The Future is Private
Al: So Roisin, Mark Zuckerberg has pronounced that the future is private.
Roisin: Yes. This was a big announcement earlier this year, but I guess there's two ways of looking at it. The first way is that of course Facebook are going to be more secure with their data, so they're going to keep your private data more secure. But, there's another train of thought here. I think it also indicates there's going to be a huge focus for Facebook on private messaging.
Al: Private messaging. Okay, so what's the Facebook family doing to position itself in this new privacy private era?
Roisin: Yeah, so that's an important distinction. In the Facebook family of apps, we're talking about Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. A big announcement recently was that in 2020 they're going to be combining your Facebook Messenger, your WhatsApp and your Instagram direct message as well. So it's going to be much easier for users to communicate through these platforms in messaging.
Al: Okay and you've come up with a cool name for this new platform?
Roisin: Insta-what-enger. There you go, you heard it here first!
Al: What can marketers do to start preparing? This is coming in 2020, Insta-what-enger, what can marketers do now to give themselves an unfair advantage when this lands next year?
Roisin: I guess the first thing you can do is just get really used to using Messenger for your campaigns and your ad campaigns. This is as simple as creating an ad, driving people to your Messenger to chat, or it could be putting ad placements in Messenger. It could also be as advanced as creating chatbots as well.
Al: Chatbots. Now, that sounds scary. Can your everyday digital marketer create chatbots?
Roisin: Yeah, I think people are a bit afraid of chatbots and they can be really advanced and sometimes need developers to set them up. However, Facebook has made it really easy for the average marketer to create their own kind of chatbots. For example, I tried this out the other day and I set up a very simple chatbot campaign. It was for a client of ours who are running a free event, so it directed people from Facebook into Messenger to a Facebook ad. I had a series of questions like if they replied yes or no, they were prompted with a reply. It honestly took me 10 minutes to set up and the results were great. The client came back to say, "God, we're getting too many messages. I don't know if these people are legit, or if they're just trolling me in Messenger."
Al: They thought the robots had gone rogue, perhaps.
Roisin: Maybe, but actually, the people turned up at the event and it was one of their most successful events to date. There was a queue to get in! I think this really shows the power of Messenger, that people are really adopting it and are really comfortable with talking to brands in Messenger. That was a really good example of this and very easy to set up as well.
Al: Brilliant. Great examples. Thanks very much Roisin.
Roisin: No worries. Thanks!
