How to Get Painting Leads Seamlessly Using a Facebook Messenger Bot

 

Facebook data shows that 53% of people are more likely to interact with a business they can message directly.

How long does it take for you to respond when someone contacts you via Facebook messenger?

In most cases, the longer it takes for you to reply…

…the less likely they’ll want to do business with you.

In fact, with everyone and their moms on social media,

they’re able to contact another painter who can respond much quicker.

Yet it is perfectly understandable that you, as a painting business owner, 

aren’t going to be able to sit around 24/7 waiting for someone to contact you.

That’s where Facebook Messenger bots come in!

What Are Facebook Messenger Bots?

Facebook Messenger bots are automated scripts that communicate with users on your behalf.

They’re able to answer a lot of repetitive questions you get on a daily basis.

They’re also able to gather useful information from a user and hold onto it for you to personally respond to on your own time.

Here’s a simple example of how a messenger bot would appear on the bottom corner of your website:

In the example of MobileMonkey, this message pops up on their website after browsing for just a few seconds.

By implementing this tool, you’ll have the ability to initiate a conversation with a prospect as soon as they land on your site!

And the best part… 

once they click that “Continue as [Name]”,

 you’ll be instantly connected to them via Facebook messenger, 

so you don’t even have to ask for an email to message or advertise to them!

[Related – 17 Ways to Generate Leads Using Your Painting Blog]

Here is a video tutorial on how Facebook Messenger bots work:

Depending on how you want to go about setting up your Messenger bot, 

there is a variety of phrases that you can have it say/ask your potential customers.

You can even ask them questions depending on the answers that they give.

Here’s an example of a conversation that might happen between a painting contractor and a prospect:

Looking at the example, you can see that you have the ability to ask helpful questions prior to booking the estimate.

This allows you to prequalify each customer ahead of time.

In this example, we asked what year the house was built,

to know whether or not lead paint was used.

Note that the bot in this example is talking about “exterior” painting,

because of the keyword that was in the prospect’s message.

Likewise, if the prospect mentioned “interior” or “cabinet repaint” for example, 

you could then have a different set of questions for those keywords.

If he or she had not said anything about a home, 

the bot might have asked a followup question about whether the job was to be a commercial or a residential paint job.

The Facebook Messenger bot can also ask things like:

“Can you describe your project?”

Or, “How soon were you hoping to have this completed?”

Check out this example of New Haven Painters asking prequalifying questions for a painting estimate:

Once you’re connected with a prospect via Facebook Messenger,

you can also broadcast to all of your subscribers at once whenever you post something like a new blog post,

or when you want to announce that you’re going Facebook Live in order to get the best outcome!

[Related – Painting Contractors: Steal My 471 Blog Post Ideas]

How Do You Get a Facebook Messenger Bot?

Now that you know that Messenger bots are a great addition to your platform, 

how do you go about getting one?

Here are the two main ways to get a Facebook Messenger bot:

#1 You can learn how to program Facebook Messenger bots through an online course.

Here’s a video on how to make a Facebook Messenger bot in 10 minutes:

#2 The alternative is to have someone make the chatbot for you.

Here’s an article with many different options for outsourcing the customization of Facebook bot for your painting business.

Alternatively, you can turn to web sites that can help you make the bot for you, using templates.

I’ve found a tool called ManyChat that will help you make a good Facebook Messenger bot at no cost to start.

 

The neat part about ManyChat is that it gives you a preview when you create messages:

And since I’m crazy about automation, I went ahead and discovered that ManyChat integrates with Zapier!

Here are a couple of zaps that would be helpful:

Here’s a full list of the Zapier automations using ManyChat.

Bottom line:

Facebook Messenger chatbots are one of the newest marketing tools that not many businesses have taken advantage of yet -strike while the iron is hot!!

Happy messaging!!