Changes in user habits mean that the digital world is constantly evolving, so our strategy must adapt accordingly. In 2020, WhatsApp was positioned as the third social network with the most users in the world, only surpassed by Facebook and YouTube, making it clear that it should not be ignored.
In February 2020, it already had more than 2 billion users, according to data from the messaging app itself, and it is a tool that we use daily and on numerous occasions. It is used to talk to family, send memes to friends and, in some cases, even as a line of communication for work-related matters.
Contrary to what many may initially think, WhatsApp can be much more than just an instant messaging application . Its usefulness goes much further and can be a marketing tool as effective as applications such as Pinterest or Tik Tok.
Automatic responses, mailing lists, company profiles… Whatsapp offers us more possibilities than it may seem and a parallel application has even been created to manage it in a much simpler way, its Business version.
What is WhatsApp Business
If you want to make your company's communication with its customers easier, WhatsApp created a free application designed for small businesses and companies . The idea is to facilitate communication and the promotion of products and services, as well as help in the purchasing process because it has built-in tools to automate, organize and respond to messages.
What possibilities does your business profile offer you? You can publish information about your business such as opening hours or website, offer a product catalogue, organize chats and contacts with different labels, configure quick responses (messages that you send frequently and that allow you to answer frequently asked questions more quickly), and automatic responses, for example welcome messages. It also has access to application statistics that allow us to check whether or not our actions are working, something essential in any marketing strategy.
For larger companies, you can use the WhatsApp Business API . KLM, Uber and Booking are some of the companies that have integrated WhatsApp into their marketing and customer service campaigns.
How can we use WhatsApp in marketing?
A direct and personalized customer service
One of the advantages of WhatsApp is the personalization it offers. It is a means of communication with your clients one-on-one that can allow us to offer attention and support to clients in real time. In this way we build loyalty and provide solutions to our users more quickly.
A means of communication
Whatsapp offers the possibility of sending promotions, offers, news or updates through groups or mailing lists, which could be comparable to an email marketing campaign, for example, but with one difference: the opening rate of Whatsapp marketing is much higher. Consider that we open the application an average of 25 times a day, so it is difficult for our message not to be seen if we send it through Whatsapp.
It is an ideal spokesperson for your company to communicate with regular customers and allows us to use it for different types of content, because it allows us to send everything from videos to text messages, including PDFs, photos or audios, among others.
A channel to increase traffic
Not only can we send advertisements via WhatsApp, but hong kong gamblers phone number data we can use it as a means to generate traffic to other media, such as our website's blog, for example. If we offer relevant and interesting content for our users, we can increase traffic to our website.
Another way to sell
WhatsApp allows you to adapt your product or service catalogue to the tool and since its implementation, and according to WhatsApp data , more than 40 million people consult them every month. Users who enter a company profile can share both the catalogue and the products with a click.
In addition, a shopping cart has also been recently implemented, which aims to facilitate the purchasing process carried out through the application. Here is an example of how it would work.
A small film and TV merchandising store in Valencia has posted its catalogue on WhatsApp. We passed by their window on a Sunday and fell in love with one of their products, but the shop was closed so we called their phone for enquiries via WhatsApp. It is a quick way to communicate with them and when we get there we see their full catalogue and we give in to the temptation by adding a Baby Yoda stuffed animal, the poster for the film “The Godfather” and an “ET” mug to our cart. When we complete the order, the company receives a single message with the three products, two more than we were planning to buy when we passed by their window.
How to start using WhatsApp as a marketing tool
As with any marketing strategy, before we get going and send messages to our clients, it is important to study not only the competition but also our own clients. What can we offer them that will be interesting? It is useless to bombard them with messages through a channel if the message is not well targeted. Once we are clear about who we are going to address, we can get to work following a series of guidelines:
- Set the objectives to be met. Each of the social networks you work with must have independent objectives. Maybe on Instagram you are interested in increasing your number of followers, on Pinterest you are interested in increasing traffic to your website and on WhatsApp your objective may be to build customer loyalty. Think about what you want to achieve so that your actions are directed there.
- Increase your database. If we want to communicate via WhatsApp, we need to have phone numbers. We can work with other social networks to increase this number of data, but we must ensure that the client includes us in their contact list. This way, the communication will be more accepted since it comes from someone we already know. One way to achieve this is by creating raffles and promotions that are only active via WhatsApp, for example.
- Plan your content. If we are going to use WhatsApp as a means of communication, it is important to do a little prior planning of content, just as we would do with any other social network. And be careful, it is not good to go overboard with the quantity. We run the risk of being annoying and becoming a SPAM account that everyone avoids.
- Use clear, fast-consumer messages. WhatsApp is an ideal medium for fast content , so use simple, impactful and engaging messages, and stay away from long monologues and podcasts that no one will listen to.
- Use valuable content. If we create a group or a mailing list to share information, it must be relevant information for the user. If we do not comply, we will probably end up on the blocked list. If, for example, during registration on our website, the client chooses which topics are of interest to us, we can create different groups according to those interests. For example, a chat for offers and promotions, and another for news and updates.
- Speed is vital. If you are going to use WhatsApp as a means to improve your customer service, remember that your response must be fast, even if it is to reply that you are already studying their case. Remember that it is instant messaging and the customer demands speed in its use. Few things are as annoying as someone leaving you on read and not answering until three days later.
- Use all the means at your disposal. You can use not only chats to communicate, but also WhatsApp status, for example, or the app's statuses or stories. A more discreet and even less invasive way of communicating.
- Analyze your results. To know if any action or campaign on social networks is effective, it is essential to analyze its results. This step will tell us what is not working so we can change it and improve it.
Using a medium that continues to grow is a new opportunity. And if you still feel lost and are not clear about what your strategy should be, we can help you along the way. You just have to contact us to get started and begin to get the most out of an application as common in our daily lives as WhatsApp.
