How to Market with WhatsApp
Did you know there were over 1 billion active users on WhatsApp as of February 2016? And over 1 million new users registering daily?
It may be time to consider marketing on WhatsApp!
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As marketers, we like to engage in platforms where our customers are active and we can stand out. With numbers like this, it’s clear that WhatsApp is a contender.
As it stands, WhatsApp hasn’t given businesses many obvious ways to use their powerful platform for sales and marketing. However, this will soon change. In early 2016, Whatsapp announced they will be testing tools to help business and organizations communicate with users.
In the meantime, you can take full advantage of the platform. You just have to be creative in order to leverage WhatsApp as a business tool.
Reasons to Use WhatsApp in Your Marketing
Marketing on WhatsApp may not be getting a lot of attention now, but you have good reason to explore the possibilities.
- It’s free.
- It lets you send images, ebooks, brochures, and catalogs.
- Survey tool! Ask for feedback directly from customers.
- You can use it for group discussions and meetings.
- As a messaging app, it lets you send alerts about new events and sales.
- Messages won’t be lost: offline message alerts ensure users know when a message is waiting.
The WhatsApp homepage features a description written by a co-founder Jan Koum titled, “Why We Don’t Sell Ads.” What he means is there are no branded profile pages. In order for your audience to be aware of you on WhatsApp, you need to tell them.
As Koum says, “…you the user are the product.”
It’s for this reason that the lines between private user and corporation become blurred, making them interchangeable. Smart advertisers are seeing opportunities to capitalize on this unique attribute.
Now let’s look at smart ways to optimize WhatsApp.
A well-made strategy underlies the effectiveness of every marketing channel. It enables you to plan your steps and change paths if something goes wrong. Here are a bunch of tips to help you craft your WhatsApp marketing strategy and get great results.
1. Define your goals and KPIs
To get your WhatsApp marketing strategy started, determine your marketing objectives. This step will help you focus your attention on meaningful activities and draw the line on unnecessary things.
Start by revising your marketing funnel and finding weak spots. Try to think of business goals you can pursue with your WhatsApp marketing strategy. Pinpoint the KPIs that will help you understand whether you have met these goals.
Here is an example to help you get your head around this scheme: If your business has issues with retaining customers, you can tackle them by sending promotional messages through WhatsApp. In this case, your KPIs might be clicks, engagement, and customer retention rates.
2. Pin down your target audience
Knowing your target audience underlies all your marketing efforts and defines their success. You can try several approaches to determine your target audience. A classic one is customer profile creation. To explore it, follow our guide on building a buyer persona.
Another way is to use the jobs to be done (JTBD) framework. If you decide to stick to this one, ask yourself these questions:
- Why do people use your product?
- What value do they want to get from it?
- What outcomes do they want to achieve?
Whatever approach you choose, avoid guesses and speculation; explore your audience instead. To start with the JTBD framework, interview 10-15 of your current customers who made a purchase lately.
For customer profile creation, you can conduct surveys on social media and add data from Google Analytics, your CRM, Facebook and Google Ads, and so on. These tools will help you spot demographic and geographic characteristics of your typical customers.
3. Get the business app
To meet small and large firms’ needs, WhatsApp launched a stand-alone application, WhatsApp Business. This tool has some helpful extra features, such as:
- A business profile with essential information: your address, business description, email address, and website.
- Catalog – a virtual showcase of your products.
- Labels to organize your chats with customers. For instance, you can label conversations according to the stage of the sales funnel.
- Quick and automated replies to stay in touch with customers and provide answers immediately.
- Statistics to track sent, delivered, received, and read messages.
4. Create a brand persona
People prefer to communicate with other people, not an impersonal business. Thus, to undertake successful WhatsApp marketing, you need to form your brand persona. A brand persona is a kit of traits, attitudes, and values your brand shares.
Remember market leaders? All of them have personas. For instance, Apple appears to be creative and intellectual, Fanta – jolly and easy-going, Nike – passionate and vigorous. Your brand probably also has some personality; try to explore it and spot the most meaningful traits. This persona will underlie your tone of voice and communications with prospects on WhatsApp.
Create a feeling that your customers are dealing with a person. Try to use a person’s name as a signature; it works better than a company’s name.
5. Build a contact list
If you’re going to use WhatsApp as more than a customer support channel, you need a contact list. The best way to get one and grab new contacts is to use subscription forms. Place them on different pages of your website and offer a lead magnet – such as an eBook or discount.
Consider going for multichannel forms – they allow your subscribers to choose where they want to receive updates – via email, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, and so on. This move lets you communicate with customers through the channels they prefer. In turn, such an approach creates higher engagement and boosts conversions. To create multichannel forms in two clicks, try the SendPulse form builder.
Remember to segment your audience to send the most relevant campaigns and deliver personalized experiences. Follow our guide on mailing list segmentation – though we’ve created it with email marketing in mind, you can apply the same tactics to WhatsApp marketing as well.
6. Design your communication
WhatsApp messages have impressive open rates in comparison with other channels. However, if you offer irrelevant or poorly produced content, your marketing on this channel will be dead in the water.
Start by pinpointing your main topics and the messages you want to deliver. Try not to limit yourself to only promotional messages; remember to entertain and educate your audience. Keep your communications short and sweet – people often check WhatsApp on the go and have no time to read long messages.
Reinforce your messages with multimedia files, such as videos, animations, or pictures. Emoji are also appropriate in WhatsApp marketing. If you want to play around them, choose smiley faces or people rather than business-themed objects.
Another point to consider is message frequency. If you bombard your readers with messages every hour, chances are it will make them annoyed with your brand. It is best to adhere to the commonly used practice of sending 5-10 messages weekly.
7. Deliver great customer service
Most customers use messaging apps to get brand support. 59% of people believe they get responses faster via messengers, 50% find better advice and care in this communication channel. Here is the point where WhatsApp marketing comes in handy.
WhatsApp allows your brand to get queries immediately and provide customers with real-time support. This feature becomes crucial, as long as 28% of customers expect to get help within an hour, and 18% anticipate an immediate response.
Keeping such a pace seems arduous, but WhatsApp allows you to provide customer support round the clock. All you need is to employ a chatbot and feed it with typical questions and answers to them. Such an approach may help you cut customer support costs by 30%.
To sum it up, creating a WhatsApp marketing strategy encompasses setting goals, exploring your audience, delivering great content, and maintaining good relationships with your customers. Some brands have mastered these techniques flawlessly. In the next part, we’ll delve into some examples and ideas for your WhatsApp marketing.