For those who want to expand their business quickly, finding a good way to reach their potential customers is vital to their future. There are many ways to find customers such as, holding some marketing activities, distributing samples, roadside ads, advertising on traditional media like newspaper, TV and so on. But we all know the cost of traditional advertisements is high, especially to small businesses who can’t afford such a large sum of money. Fortunately, we are living in the information era now. New media seem to have overtaken traditional media, and they reach customers of a wider scale and at a higher speed, which makes new media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram a better choice. As we all know, Facebook has 2.167 billion active users. Instagram has 800 million active users and Twitter with its 330 million active users. However, today I will tell you another better channel here. It is WhatsApp marketing.
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app worldwide, with more than two billion active users. WhatsApp is the most popular chat app in many countries, including Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Turkey, and especially in Argentina, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, and Spain, where the penetration of users exceeds 50%. Hence, if you want to expand your business in these areas, it is surely the best option.
Another fact we need to know about WhatsApp is that who are using WhatsApp. In UK and Germany, teens are the fans of WhatsApp and in the US, the majority of users are adults in the age 25-44.
More importantly, the levels of engagement are higher than on Facebook. The fact that the average text message gets an open rate of around 98% makes it a ideal marketing channel.
After learning these features of WhatsApp, now comes the point—how to find your customers on WhatsApp?
1. Create a WhatsApp Business account
WhatsApp Business app is free to download and free to use. As a separate application from the regular WhatsApp app, small business owners can use WhatsApp Business on their personal devices, if needed. Simply connect your phone number to sign up for a WhatsApp Business account, set up your business profile, detailing your business and type of industry, and get started with connecting to your customers.
2. Update business catalog
The next step is to utilize the special feature in WhatsApp Business — a business catalog.
Here, you can detail the product and service offerings of your business with photos, descriptions, pricing and website links.
This in-app business catalog will allow customers to easily refer to your products and services within WhatsApp itself, and is a helpful tool to let your customers easily refer to your business offerings.
Although customers cannot make purchases through the business catalog, don’t underestimate the potential of this business catalog. It serves a mini-webstore where you can share your products and services in a more natural manner when conversing with customers on WhatsApp.
3. Identify marketing goals
Before you jump into your WhatsApp marketing efforts, take time to first identify your marketing goals. Are you doing WhatsApp marketing to improve customer satisfaction? How will you measure it? Or is your business looking to increase its sales through WhatsApp? Perhaps your business is struggling with customer retention, or perhaps you’re just starting out as an entrepreneur and want to get the word out there about your business. Once you’ve identified what goals you want to get out of your WhatsApp marketing efforts and the KPIs to measure them, you can begin crafting your WhatsApp marketing strategy.
4. Get people to add you
Get your WhatsApp Business number out there and let prospects and leads add you.
WhatsApp Broadcast can only reach users who save your business number as their contact. Before you start sharing marketing messages about your business, you’ll need to overcome this challenge as people seldom save business numbers in their contact list.
To start off, you can use existing marketing efforts like social media, emails, advertisements or website articles to encourage people to add your business number and text you first. You can try to attract your customers by promising some discounts if they add your number to their contact. Also don’t underestimate other places to insert your WhatsApp number as well, such as in email signatures or LinkedIn profiles.
you need to explore various ways to incentivize users to send their numbers or add you as a contact and reach out to you. It might be tricky, but at least you will be sure you have an audience that is engaged and genuinely interested in your brand.
Basically, you need to create a lead magnet. Provide something valuable — it can be a discount or a subscription — and ask for a phone number. Suggest that users sign up for daily tips or use QR codes printed on promo materials if you sell a physical product.
You can also choose one of these ways:
- suggest that users opt-in to receive notifications and updates right after resolving the customer’s problem;
- add a pop-up with the opt-in option on your website;
- let your customers know you’re available on WhatsApp via SMS and send a link to opt-in;
- suggest that users opt-in at the final stage of the purchase process to receive shipment status updates;
- include a checkbox in a data entry form to give customers an option for opting in when they sign up.
As long as you give a good reasonas to why they should save your number and text you first on WhatsApp, you can effectively use this method to cast a wider net to reach more leads and customers.
5. Use website widgets
Alternatively, you can embed widgets into your business website to route users to immediately text your WhatsApp Business number.