What is WhatsApp marketing? It’s a unique type of marketing that falls under the category of conversational marketing. It is a recent addition to it and gaining traction for the reasons you’ll see why. Messenger marketing is solely done through the use of mobile chat apps for the purpose of conducting a company’s business, fully virtually with just a click from your phone. It utilizes mobile messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, or WeChat to reach a wide audience, foster good relationships with the customers, and finalize sales.
What is WhatsApp marketing?
WhatsApp marketing is essentially an established direct channel of communication with an individual user for the purpose of sales of goods, or services. Since the medium of communication is done through WhatsApp, it is aptly called WhatsApp marketing.
What are the benefits of WhatsApp marketing?
It is done on a secure encrypted platform that doesn’t share its user information with other third-party apps. It only keeps track of your payment and shopping history exclusively to the business you’re conducting a transaction with.
Since it is a direct channel from a customer to a business representative, search and sale of goods, or services happen together. There is no middle man to interfere in the process
It is based on a highly engaging digital medium, used by the young and old alike, and therefore offers a business a wide range of audiences of all age groups.
Since the app itself is communication-based, interactions with business accounts and any queries posed by the customers can happen in real-time.
How can WhatsApp marketing help you to grow your business?
Marketing through WhatsApp is a unique opportunity, given that WhatsApp is one of the most well-known and common messaging platforms in the world. In the year 2020, alone, it has accrued over 2 billion active users per month. Given its well-established field, it is a gold mine for businesses to reach out to customers worldwide, and as a result, a soundproof method of marketing to help grow a business.
With the added benefit of reaching out to such large numbers of potential customers, comes the opportunity to form, and maintain, a relationship, by connecting with the customers. And customers once maintained successfully, will have a higher chance of purchasing again, therefore helping a business to retain its customers.
How to set up a WhatsApp Business account
Setting up a WhatsApp Business account is fairly easy, and the app is free. Since the app is available for PC, Apple, or android, all you need is a stable internet connection and a hardware product to run the account on.
Once you’ve searched and installed ‘WhatsApp Business’ from the internet, you need to look through and accept the terms and conditions.
Now, the app will be asking for your mobile phone number for the business account. There are two ways to do this: you can make your main (personal) account into a WhatsApp business account, or you can create a brand new WhatsApp business account entirely.
If you choose to make a brand new business account, you will have to use a separate number from your personal main account to set it up. If you wish to continue with your main account and want to convert it to a business account, keep in mind, that you will no longer be able to operate as a personal account, and can only access WhatsApp through your business account.
Now, the app will require some official details like your phone number, place of conducting business (along with the address on a map), category of the business, a basic description of the business, the opening and closing timings of the business, the preferred choice of email address, and website links ( limited to only 2).
After completing the previous steps, you will now receive an OTP (one-time-password) to verify the number upon which the business account will be used. Once you’ve verified the OTP, you will then have successfully registered with WhatsApp business.
How to start WhatsApp marketing using a WhatsApp business account
Having successfully set up the business account, WhatsApp has several in-built features, to help streamline the customer service experience.
For ease of use, the app works the same way as your normal main account and has the same user experience, apart from a few perks, as discussed below:
By now, you’d have set up a basic business profile for your account, you can now view business analytics like statistics from total messages received, sent, delivered, and read).
There are also shortcuts to automate fast replies like a greeting message, out-of-delivery message, or a quick standard message. And you can decide how to use them on a case-to-case basis.
This type of information is useful for current and future customers who want to understand the credibility of a buyer as well as be able to contact the seller when needed. People you message through the business app will definitely be able to understand that the contact belongs to a WhatsApp Business account.
WhatsApp marketing ideas and examples
Having done the hard work of reaching a large audience, it’s hard to maintain touch with every single person, so to maintain constant and relevant engagement, make use of the automated reply features, provide answers to questions immediately, and make use of the message statistics to see what works and what doesn’t, to further refine your marketing communication methods.
Another useful idea is to create group chats and foster a sense of community. Example: there’s a new launch of your company’s product and you posted it to your customer group chat. This will start a discussion and help, not only the customers discussing it but all of the customers who see and become aware of it too.
As with any business, there is a need to visually depict the product or service, and so it becomes important to make use of the catalog feature. Once you’ve uploaded the necessary photos, you can make use of the messaging statistics, or through trial and error, find the optimum way to deliver them to customers.
WhatsApp Marketing Tips
The most basic marketing tip is to set up a proper and professional business account, with accurate representations of your business brand, product, or service, so people can know they can trust your brand. A little bit of credibility goes a long way.
Apart from putting out catalogs, it’s handy to post WhatsApp statuses to keep the brand image alive in the customer’s mind, by occasionally posting a product, or service, every now and then. The WhatsApp status is live for 24 hours. This kind of relevant kind of engagement should prove helpful when you have to announce a flash sale, promo code, or an arrival of a new product, or service.
Keeping the auto-reply on is a good idea, especially if you have customers across different time zones. Suppose you go to sleep, and you get a business inquiry, the customer should receive a pre-made set of replies conditional to their questions. This shows you are interested and would help supplement good customer relationship management.
As your business grows, your needs and demands will also grow. Keeping this in mind, WhatsApp business offers a paid version of the app, with better features to keep up with the growing demands of your business account.
With the paid version, you can use an API ( Application programming interface), it’s similar to the automated replies but is capable of continuing the automation and carrying out conversations (charged per conversation of only over 24 hours), and delegating more of the marketing work, freeing you up to deliver better and detailed responses.
Conclusion
WhatsApp business is literally a digitalized form of shopping for products. And marketing through a business account taps into the untapped potential of customers near and far. Browsing and transactions are conducted all in one go, without needlessly going here and there, when all the information they need is at their fingertips, in real-time. With features like this, WhatsApp marketing will suit your business from small scale to large scale.
At a glance, we’ve seen the wide scope appeal of digital marketing, it comes with its rewards and its own set of issues. And as such, digital marketing stands out as a field of its own, and there are companies that understand its importance and come up with their own solutions for it. Internet Entry is one such company working in the digital marketing field, with experience across different digital marketing platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram Marketing as well.
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