WhatsApp marketing is a quick and effective way of reaching over 2 billion active users on the platform monthly. Since WhatsApp allows businesses to add product catalogs directly to their accounts and even make payments from within the platform, brands can create significant sales via WhatsApp. However, this is possible only by implementing the right WhatsApp marketing strategies.
Explore the key aspects of WhatsApp marketing and how it can help you reach a massive audience and sell your products or services successfully.
Part 1: Overview of WhatsApp Marketing
Promotional or marketing activities happening on WhatsApp come under the category of WhatsApp marketing. The extent and type of marketing on WhatsApp are greatly dependent on the business’s type and requirements.
For instance, marketing with WhatsApp can be a simple marketing message or a full-fledged separate channel dedicated to providing updates to potential customers. Overall, WhatsApp marketing provides an effective way for businesses to establish a direct line of communication with customers and send them personalized and more conversational messages to ensure higher conversion.
Why use WhatsApp Marketing?
Marketing through WhatsApp has many benefits, including:
- As stated before, WhatsApp has over 2 billion active users. Hence, WhatsApp marketing is a way of reaching such a massive audience through personalized messages that you might be missing on other platforms.
- WhatsApp has an extremely high open rate of 90% to 99%, which ultimately translates into better conversion for businesses.
- WhatsApp business accounts can add their entire product catalogs to the app. Hence, your target audience can easily browse your products through WhatsApp without switching to secondary apps.
- Businesses can answer customer questions on WhatsApp in real time. Hence, WhatsApp marketing streamlines the process of customer assistance and marketing.
- When compared to other marketing channels like SMS, email, or push notifications, WhatsApp is still not explored by many businesses, so you get a competitive edge by marketing on WhatsApp.
Example
Many popular organizations and brands all over the world use WhatsApp for marketing. One such example is Netflix, which provides an opt-in option to users and sends them daily reminders and updates about the latest content. The purpose of such a marketing campaign is to make sure the users keep their accounts active and stream content on the platform.
Source:unicorn
Another example of a successful WhatsApp marketing campaign is by Maggi, a popular instant food item company that started a free cooking course to expand its audience.
Source:https://cdn.prod.website-files.com
Part 2: WhatsApp Business & WhatsApp Business Platform
When it comes to using WhatsApp for marketing purposes, there are two main products you need to be familiar with:
WhatsApp Business App
WhatsApp Business App is an instant messaging app that is available for free. It is ideal for small businesses and individuals who have just started their own startups. Generally, those businesses use the WhatsApp Business app, which only needs built-in tools to market their products and services and make more sales.
When compared to the WhatsApp Business Platform, the app is limited because it does not have multiple APIs. Instead, it is limited to a traditional texting interface with no options to manage communications at a large scale.
WhatsApp Business Platform
WhatsApp Business Platform, also called WhatsApp Business API, is a large-scale solution that helps all types of businesses market their products and services via WhatsApp. Unlike the simple WhatsApp Business app, the Business Platform is suitable for medium-sized and enterprise brands running marketing campaigns.
Source:googleusercontent
The accessibility, scalability, and flexibility available in the WhatsApp Business Platform are not possible in the WhatsApp Business App. So, if you are looking for a comprehensive solution to run a large-scale WhatsApp marketing campaign and also provide excellent customer service to your target audience, you should use WhatsApp Business Platform.
It is important to note that, unlike the WhatsApp Business App, the Business Platform is not free. Instead, you have to pay for each customer conversion. Moreover, the charges are also dependent on how you are using the API in terms of integrations with other chatbots, customer relationship systems, regions, and specific conversion categories.
Here’s a simple example that shows the conversation rate in the marketing category for the United Kingdom market:
You can easily calculate the specific rate and pricing structure as per your requirements from the official WhatsApp website.
So, in short:
- WhatsApp Business App is suitable for small businesses and solopreneurs who want to manage conversations with their target customers personally.
- WhatsApp Business Platform is suitable for medium- and large-sized businesses that want to market their business on WhatsApp on a large scale.
Part 3: How to Use WhatsApp for Marketing?
Before we dive into the key strategies for WhatsApp marketing, you must have a fully configured WhatsApp business account to run a successful marketing campaign:
How to Create a WhatsApp Business Account for Marketing?
You can easily create a WhatsApp Business Account for marketing purposes in 5 simple steps:
Download and install the WhatsApp Business App from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
Once the WhatsApp Business app is installed, you'll be asked to provide confirmation of whether you want to use the same number or create a separate one. It is recommended that you use a separate business number for WhatsApp marketing.
Source:https://autobizline.com
Set up your WhatsApp Business Profile by entering the business name, brief description, address, and category.
Once you have set up your WhatsApp Business profile, you can also add a catalog to showcase your products and services directly to the customers who get in touch with you through WhatsApp.
Source:cdn.prod.website-files.com
Now that your WhatsApp Business account is all set, let’s look at different ways in which you can use WhatsApp for marketing purposes:
Send Bulk Messages
As discussed before, WhatsApp has an extremely high open rate of up to 98%. In other words, it is a golden platform for businesses to expand their customer base and reach a massive audience to boost their sales.
The good thing is that WhatsApp also allows users to send promotional messages, such as discount offers, product launch dates, and any other marketing messages, to users who have opted in to receive such messages.
Automate Conversations
A significant benefit of using WhatsApp for marketing is that it supports automating conversations with your target audience by providing answers to frequently answered questions. You can send pre-defined answers to save time and boost customer satisfaction by making sure potential customers get the answers to their queries immediately so they can make a buying decision.
Source:tidio
Incorporate WhatsApp Catalogue
The feature of WhatsApp Catalogue is highly useful for businesses to market their products directly via WhatsApp. Yet, many business accounts often make the mistake of ignoring its importance.
Therefore, businesses should incorporate WhatsApp Catalogue in their business profile to market their products and services. It allows businesses an opportunity to showcase their catalog directly and even allows customers to make purchases directly without leaving WhatsApp.
Integrate Payments in WhatsApp
WhatsApp supports adding different types of payment methods, including WhatsApp Pay in some countries, to ensure your customers can pay for the products or services they buy directly through WhatsApp.
It is recommended that you integrate these payment gateways where possible to facilitate your customers and make sure they are able to make payments directly without switching to external payment or banking apps.
Source:www.sammobile.com
Conduct Events on WhatsApp
Another way of effectively marketing your business via WhatsApp is by conducting different events, such as quizzes and challenges on WhatsApp. These challenges include simple trivia quizzes, live Q & A, and other such events.
You can reward your target audience with special discounts or offers in exchange for their participation. Such events are useful for branding purposes and making a lasting impression on your target audience.
Part 4: Best Practices for WhatsApp Marketing
If you want to get the maximum benefits of WhatsApp marketing, you should follow these best practices:
Analyze Your Target Audience: WhatsApp has a massive user base. However, the entire base is not likely to be your target audience. Therefore, it is recommended that you closely monitor and analyze your target audience to make sure you are making WhatsApp marketing strategies that can convert them into loyal customers.
Write a Compelling Welcome Message: Attracting your target audience to your WhatsApp Business profile or channel is just one step. You also have to greet them with a compelling welcome message to make them feel welcome and comfortable enough to browse through your catalog. You can easily create a new message template within EngageLab to ensure brand consistency.
Provide Value: Your WhatsApp marketing messages have to provide some kind of value to the customers if you truly want your marketing campaign to be a success. Otherwise, there is a high chance your marketing message will end up getting ignored by the recipient.
Send Personalized Message : A significant benefit of WhatsApp marketing is that you can send personalized messages to your target audience. So, you should benefit from this use case and make your brand stand out from the competition.
Use Engaging Visuals: You can make your WhatsApp marketing messages highly engaging and interesting by including relevant visuals. They can truly make or break your marketing campaign by grabbing the customer's attention and making an impact. The extent and type of such visuals are dependent on your type of business. EngageLab allows you to attach different types of visuals with your WhatsApp message to maximize engagement:
Monitor and Analyze: There is no point in running a long-term WhatsApp marketing campaign if it does not provide the results you need. Therefore, it is important to keep track of your WhatsApp marketing campaign and tweak it from time to time to ensure it aligns with your brand’s marketing goals and yields relevant results. You can view the complete history of sent WhatsApp messages within EngageLab:
Overall, WhatsApp marketing can be an engaging and successful process if you follow the strategies and best practices discussed above. Most importantly, you can take WhatsApp marketing to the next level by using a modern customer engagement platform like EngageLab.
Part 5: Unlock the Power of WhatsApp Business API with EngageLab
EngageLab is a comprehensive customer engagement platform. It is also an official WhatsApp business solution provider that allows businesses, brands, and organizations all over the world to use WhatsApp Business API to reach a massive audience of over 2 billion users anywhere in the world with quick and personalized messages.
Some of the key benefits you can get by relying on the WhatsApp Business API in EngageLab to run a marketing campaign are:
- Send a variety of messages, including simple text, video, images, buttons, location, attachments, and images in HD format without any delays.
- Users can start conversations on multiple channels, including WhatsApp or Facebook Ads, so EngageLab enhances your chances of acquiring new users and expanding the customer base.
- The terms and working procedures of EngageLab are fully compliant with the relevant standards, including Google Play data security ensuring all of your WhatsApp data is safe and secure. EngageLab does not collect personal addresses or payment information and uses strong security protocols to ensure you can benefit from WhatsApp Business API without any security concerns.
- EngageLab’s WhatsApp Business API can be combined with other services, such as email or SMS, to make the platform an omnichannel messaging platform.
Overall, EngageLab supports running a successful WhatsApp marketing campaign by managing everything from creating message templates to sending them in bulk and analyzing their performance, all from the same dashboard.
Conclusion
Now that you are familiar with the key strategies, tips, and best practices of WhatsApp marketing, the entire process should be a breeze for you. The key thing to remember is that setting up a WhatsApp business profile is just the start.
Once your business account is ready, you need to focus on implementing the right marketing strategies and using the right tool like EngageLab which can elevate your marketing game and get maximum benefits from WhatsApp.
So, without any further delay, definitely check out the platform and see how it can help you in WhatsApp marketing.