How to Use WhatsApp For Digital Marketing: A Complete Guide
Businesses focus a lot of their marketing activities on various social media platforms. One of the reasons is that there are a huge number of active users on those platforms. But what about a messaging platform that has over 1.5 billion active users who often use it several times a day to communicate with their connections?
Yes, WhatsApp is more than just a messaging app for people. It can be a great platform for businesses to communicate with their prospective customers as well as existing customers. How? That is what this whole article is about.
But before we discuss how businesses can use WhatsApp, let me warn you against many third-party bulk WhatsApp messaging service softwares/tools. Using them can lead to the suspension/ban of your account by WhatsApp, and probably a legal action too. Also using such third-party spammy applications can give your business a bad image among your customers and prospects.
Let’s now look at how businesses can communicate with their audience on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp Business App
WhatsApp launched a Business App which was “built with the small business owner in mind” according to them. With the help of WhatsApp Business App, “businesses can interact with customers easily using tools to automate, sort, and quickly respond to messages.”
Using the WhatsApp Business app, you can
1. Create A Business Profile
WhatsApp allows businesses to create a verified business profile through which businesses can display important information regarding them like the business description and category, website address, physical address, opening times, etc.
2. Organize And Label Your Contacts
Businesses can organize and label their contacts so that they can easily segment their leads or audience, and communicate with them easily. For example, you can label and segment your audience as “prospects”, “existing customers”,”pending subscription”, etc. to help distinguish your audience and send messages to each of the labels accordingly.
3. Create Automated Messages & Greetings
You can use automated messages or automated greetings to answer your audience when you are away, or unable to answer. An automated message can be something that says you are away right now and will be getting back to them by a specified time. Similarly, automated greetings can be used to automatically greet your audience or introduce your business when they message you for the first time.
4. Use Quick Replies
You can set certain messages that you use often as ‘quick replies’ and quickly use them whenever you need to while communicating with your audience. You can set your brand messages, product/service offers, introductions, etc. as ‘quick messages’ and use them with your prospects and customers.
5. Use Analytics
The Analytics provided by WhatsApp Business are still basic in nature, and might probably be developed further. But they are still useful. You can know the amount of sent messages, no. of messages delivered, and no. of messages read.
WhatsApp also has a Business API service which helps businesses build their own official WhatsApp messaging experience for efficiently communicating with their audience. This is meant more for medium and large enterprises. Businesses can partner with one of the Facebook partners who are messaging experts. Also, it is more likely that Facebook is going to introduce more features for marketing on WhatsApp sooner or later. However, businesses have enough opportunities now on WhatsApp.
Ways To Utilize WhatsApp for Your Business
Provide Customer Service
A great way to use WhatsApp for your business is providing customer service. Businesses are already using messenger platforms like Facebook Messenger to provide customer service. For example, Dominos offers its customers to place orders on Dominos’ Facebook Messenger bot. While WhatsApp is not as advanced as Facebook Messenger bot, it is still a great platform for your customers to place orders, make enquiries, etc.
Updates
You can use WhatsApp to send updates to your audience. If your business is product-based, you can send updates regarding new product releases or upgrades, or if you are a restaurant or a cake shop, you can update your audience on new items, or if you are a blogger or vlogger or a YouTuber, you can update your audience regarding new content. Think of WhatsApp as a modified form of email marketing. The possibilities are endless. You can use Broadcast lists to send messages to multiple contacts at once. However, a broadcast list is limited to 256 contacts.
Create and Promote Offers
You can create and promote offers, freebies, discounts, etc. on WhatsApp. Make sure that they are relevant and useful to your audience. Let your audience know when you seek their contacts that you wish to send them seasonal offers and discounts. Of course, do it sparingly. You can use broadcast lists for this.
Make Use of Stories
Stories are always interesting, no matter who they are. That’s the reason why almost every social media platform started to incorporate ‘stories’ since Snapchat introduced the feature and made it a success. WhatsApp stories are really a great way for businesses to communicate to their audience regarding almost anything. You can introduce new products, promote offers, promote your events, give sneak-peeks, show inside pictures of your workplace or restaurant, and so on.
Create Groups & Form Communities
You can create groups on WhatsApp and build communities around your brand. Using groups, you can interact with your audience effectively, and they too can interact among themselves. Groups can be highly effective, especially if you are a blogger or vlogger or a YouTuber with a dedicated fan base.
Using groups, businesses can discuss their events, seek feedback from their audience, make use of user-generated content and interact with the members on various things. B2B businesses can use groups to network with their clients. However, a group can only have a maximum of 256 users. You can create multiple groups if you need, depending on your purpose.
While these are some of the ways you can use WhatsApp for your business, you can get more creative and make use of this platform in many different and exciting ways. It all depends on your business, your brand and your audience.
Tips for Effective WhatsApp Group Management
Seek Permission From Your Audience
WhatsApp marketing is completely a form of permission-based marketing. You need to get the contact numbers of your audience in order for you to contact them through WhatsApp. You can seek their WhatsApp numbers on your website, social media, ‘thank you’ of your e-commerce store, etc. wherever you communicate with your audience depending on your business.
When you seek their contact numbers, it is important that you inform them how you are going to use their contact numbers. Let them know in a brief that you want to send them seasonal offers, or updates, or use it for customer service, whatever you are planning to use WhatsApp for.
Provide Value & Maintain Relevance
Once you get the contact numbers of your audience, who could be prospective customers or paying customers, you might get tempted to send them uninterrupted offerings and promotions. Don’t! Don’t annoy your audience. Make use of the platform sparingly and appropriately. Make sure to provide value to your audience and maintain relevance in your offers, promotions or communications with them. That’s what they expect when they give you their contact numbers.
Focus on the First Line of Your Message
When you send a WhatsApp message to your audience, the likeliness of them opening your message depends on the first line of your message, which also appears on the notification bar and the WhatsApp chat dashboard too. Treat the first line of your WhatsApp message as the subject of an email.