3 Tips & Tricks To Use WhatsApp For Marketing

The popular messaging channel has taken over our personal lives. We use it on a daily basis to chat and engage with our friends, family and even coworkers and business associates. So why should brands not be able to use it for engaging with their customers who are already so active on the messaging channel?

Using WhatsApp for marketing includes engaging with your audience and promoting your products and services via WhatsApp. Unlike other marketing channels such as SMS, Instagram or Facebook, WhatsApp marketing is a pull strategy where the first move is made by the person (by texting first) and the marketer only gives him an offer with an incentive to start a conversation on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp was created by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009, who both used to work at Yahoo!. Years after it was launched, WhatsApp became the fastest app to ever reach one billion users and eventually got acquired by Facebook for $19 billion dollars. The company has since hit a billion active users per month!

WhatsApp thrives by offering its users features such as enabling sending texts anywhere in the world for free. It also serves as a formidable business tool for customer-facing roles. For example, if you want to get in touch with a driving school, then using WhatsApp can help you get in contact with your driver located across the city easily and quickly by sending them messages through the app which is free of charge. They can even share additional information over a message, like location information, which helps you navigate through traffic faster, find a shorter route, etc.

Marketing on WhatsApp has manifold benefits. Users can send messages to people in multiple countries for free using WhatsApp. It removes the cost of expensive text messaging. Want to send a text message from US to UK? It costs $0. A text from Canada to your friend in Hong Kong? It costs $0.

Getting started with WhatsAp Business is as simple as using regular WhatsApp.

Tips to get started

To get started with your WhatsApp Business App, you need to first set up your account. The WABA app is available for free to download for Android as well as iOS mobile device users. Lets understand the process in a step-by-step fashion:

1. Search for ‘WhatsApp Business’ on your Google Play/App Store.
2. Accept the ‘Terms and Conditions’, and tap ‘OK”.
3. Once the app gets downloaded on your mobile device, add the required information like business phone number, business information, etc.
4. View the business settings and set your parameters/requirements.
5. Set up the WhatsApp pay option. This is required, in case you want to send and receive payments via WhatsApp itself.

Your WABA account is now set up. You can get started by sending messages to your contacts; notifying them of your new business number.

Some more important points to keep in mind include:

• Information is key
  Keep your business profile information factual and detailed. Include details like business hours, website, location, description, etc.
• Messaging tools
  Use messaging tools such as away messages, greeting messages and quick replies to secure and maintain customer engagement.
• Chat labels
  Label your chats for better tracking of customers. You can even add custom labels and keep segregation or adding users to groups.
• Create groups
  You can create different groups for different purposes. For example, regular customers for regular discounts, new product samples for new customers, etc.
• Message broadcasting
  Broadcast messages, greetings, notifications and offer announcements should be sent to customers to create awareness of your products and services. This will also aid in boosting your brand recall.

Tricks To Use WhatsApp Marketing To Your Advantage

If you want to improve your chances at getting people to start a conversation with you, you should make sure you’re careful when crafting your copy so as to avoid writing messages that sound like spam in any way.

1. As with all forms of communication and more so when it comes to marketing via social platforms especially, the content needs to be easily digestible for the users who will receive what’s being sent out. It’s not about who sends it out but about how it’s done. And probably most importantly when it comes to WhatsApp marketing – always make sure your messages come from someone reliable which means having enough time to train your team(s).
2. Virtual classified ads have shown to be marketing efforts that are relatively inexpensive if you go about it right. They’re still a powerful way to get the word out there when used correctly. The good thing about classified ads is they can work great in tandem with things like SEO or digital marketing campaigns which means the list of people who have seen your ad will expand over time at no extra charge. A great tool to use along with Classified Ads has been LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Ads as they can target specific demographics or locales.
3. Customers here are the ones who initiate the action, and then marketers can push them forward by enticing them with a call to action. Brands should mention a default keyword in the link so they’ll be able to reach out and start chatting. One thing to keep in mind is that people should respond to the offers with the same tone of voice as any other channel (for example by mentioning a default hashtag that everyone can use). A brand’s marketing team working on the WhatsApp strategy should work in tandem to create messages that align with the company’s brand personality across all channels.

Gupshup Away

If you are a company looking to integrate WhatsApp into your business, the easiest way to do it is with a seamless, low-code platform like Gupshup. Once you do this, you can immediately start engaging with customers, addressing their questions and concerns, encourage conversions and repeat sales, and even send automatic updates, alerts and notifications.

#LetsGupshup to get started.