Description: The ubiquity of Whatsapp has amazed marketers and industry experts alike. Most people consume a high volume of their daily information through Whatsapp. We discuss a few ways companies can use Whatsapp marketing to their advantage.
Whatsapp Marketing
Viewing Whatsapp as simply being as a messaging service is a big mistake in the current context. With close to 1.5 billion active users across the world, Whatsapp is more than just a messaging app. It has gone on to become a massive information-sharing machine.
Recent studies pertaining to Whatsapp have shown that users prefer using text services for interacting with businesses. The age of waiting for customer care executives to respond is slowly fading away. Whatsapp’s ease of access makes it a very popular tool amongst the masses.
In this article, we will go over the steps businesses should follow to run a Whatsapp marketing campaign.
Know Whatsapp
There is a difference between using and knowing an app.
On Whatsapp, users interact with each other through three main ways.
- One-to-one chats allow users to interact with each other. No third party is involved in such communication. This is not the ideal format for Whatsapp marketing.
- Group chats involve a maximum of 256 people in the same group. Groups can be a great way of promotion for small start-ups and businesses to quickly reach customers. This is because people are much responsive to Whatsapp than other channels of social media.
While promoting a product on group chats, marketers should be careful about their number being saved by people on the group. Bombarding messages as an unknown member of a group is considered spamming.
- Broadcasting is a tool through which one person can broadcast a message to everyone in their contact list at once. The pre-condition is that the contact must also have saved the sender’s number. One user can send a message to 256 people at a time.
Interact with Customers through Whatsapp
Use a personal number or a Whatsapp business account to interact directly with your customers. Many small businesses and start-ups have turned to Whatsapp as the key channel for promotion.
Whatsapp’s USP lies in its simplicity. Instead of going through cluttered social media channels, reaching a customer’s inbox directly is a much better way of marketing.
Many businesses are now revamping their models to provide direct service to their customers through Whatsapp. These businesses include primarily service-based companies.
Some important things to remember while using Whatsapp marketing as a key channel for promotion include:
- Maintaining a brand image during chats. This refers to engaging with the customers politely and sticking to the brand’s voice.
- Reply promptly and provide fast solutions
- Provide information about new products and features
- Use content as a tool of inbound marketing
Networking
Ultimately, Whatsapp marketing comes down to being in the right groups and promoting the right content at the right time.
However, one cannot simply get access to Whatsapp groups. To join premium Whatsapp groups with prospective target customers requires digital marketers to be adept at networking.
Networking refers to maintaining real-life connections with people of the same industry. For instance, a digital marketer who is a member of ten popular education-based groups would naturally be a valuable asset for an education-based company.
Networking is a tenet of old-school traditional marketing, and still maintains a healthy level of influence in an otherwise digital world.
Knowing the right people in the right places is a talent which cannot be taught. Typically, digital marketers have to interact with their peers, gather contacts and be an affable part of the community.
Though networking is not exclusively a tool for Whatsapp marketing, it is uniquely placed for being crucial to this particular social channel. In the coming years, Whatsapp marketing will be one of the most used channels for customer outreach in the world.
About the Author– Gaurav Heera is a well-known digital marketer and training professional with many years of experience in the field. He currently heads work at DelhiCourses.in, an institute best known for its digital marketing training in Delhi. The institute also offers courses in ethical hacking, business analytics, and other fields.
