Beginner’s Guide to Whatsapp Marketing

Although almost everyone uses Whatsapp for communicating with friends nowadays, only a very few know how to do Whatsapp Marketing for promoting a business, product, or service. 

While most brands are turning into social media marketing strategies to reap the advantages of social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, Whatsapp can be equally as important as other social media channels if utilized properly. 

In this beginner’s guide of Whatsapp marketing, we’ll cover each and every step of WhatsApp marketing ranging from easy account setup to advanced marketing strategies. 

Before we get started with advanced marketing strategies, it’s important to learn about what is WhatsApp marketing and why it is important.  

What is Whatsapp Marketing? 

Whatsapp marketing is a form of social media marketing, which involves promoting a business, product, or service using the popular messenger app “WhatsApp”. This channel may help businesses reach a large group of targeted audience, manage deep relationships with prospects and customers, and increase sales as well as profits. 

Why Use Whatsapp for Marketing? 

Whatsapp is a free and reliable messenger app that is not only limited to text messaging, but also popular for voice calls and video calls, voice messages, sharing images, photos, documents, videos, and locations. 

Here’re some important stats that will help you understand why you should consider using Whatsapp for marketing:  

• It is the most popular messenger app for mobile users globally. Around 2 billion people use WhatsApp worldwide at least once a month. 
• It is the 3rd most used social channel in the world. 
• Whatsapp has more than 390 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India alone.
• It is available across 180 countries with around 60 different languages.  
• Around 60 % of Whatsapp users use this app more than once a day. 

Benefits of Whatsapp Marketing? 

Whatsapp marketing has been found very effective for promoting brands, products, and services. Using WhatsApp is a perfect opportunity to improve marketing strategies. 

Here are a few benefits of using Whatsapp for promoting a business. 

Vivid relationships with prospects or existing customers 

Studies found that more than 55% of customers feel better connected to a business if they use messenger apps. Therefore, WhatsApp marketing is a proved strategy for building a vivid relationship with existing customers as well as prospective customers. Properly managing strong relationships with customers, in turn, helps businesses cut huge costs as customer retention is much cheaper than acquisition. 

Besides, Whatsapp offers personalized messages such as birthday congratulations, welcome messages, personalized special discounts, and so on. These personalized approaches help brands maintain relationships on a deeper level. 

Significant conversion rate

Choosing a perfect option for initial contact with prospects is essential. While phone calls often displease people and emails remain inaccessible, WhatsApp can be a great option for an initial connection with prospective customers. As per reliable data, around 40% of prospective customers reply to their WhatsApp messages. 

However, good connection through messaging helps brands drive conversions. Studies suggest, well connection with prospective customers after initial contact through messaging may increase the conversion rate by 112 %. 

Free or very low-cost marketing 

Whatsapp is mostly free and very cost-effective for some special features. For this reason, Whatsapp marketing is very enticing for small businesses as they often struggle with their tight budgets. With free versions, Whatsapp offers a lot of excellent marketing options for business owners. 

Better sales  

Whatsapp marketing has been found significantly effective for increasing sales. A tiny trick of including Whatsapp numbers on the website may raise sales around 27 % more. 

How To Do Whatsapp Marketing? 

Whatsapp has 2 different apps – regular app and business app with some added business features. Though WhatsApp regular app is very useful for connecting people efficiently, I recommend the Whatsapp business app for marketing as it is more beneficial with some super useful business features. 

Here’re the steps to get started with WhatsApp 

Step 1 – Download the WhatsApp business app

Search WhatsApp business on the Google Play Store for Android and on the App Store for iOS and download it. 

Step 2 – Agree to the developer’s terms of service  

When you will click on the WhatsApp icon for downloading it, WhatsApp will ask you to accept the terms of service. Click on the “Agree and continue” button. 

Step 3 – Enter a business phone number 

It is always better to have a separate business number rather than providing a personal number. After entering your business number, you will get a verification message for verifying your contact number. 

Step 4 – Fill in your business details 

After verifying your phone number, you will be automatically directed to your business profile page. Fill in the details of your business such as business name, category, and add a profile picture. 

Step 5 – Explore WhatsApp business tools and set them up 

Next, you can learn WhatsApp business tools such as advance messaging tools and product catalog by exploring them. Or you can simply skip the tutorial and go to the settings straight away. 

Before you set up advanced features such as automated messaging, make sure to provide more details about your business. In the Business Profile settings, you can include addresses, websites, business hours, and more. 

Step 6 – Add WhatsApp payment option 

Whatsapp business offers an easy payment option. You can send and receive payments through the WhatsApp payment method or you can use a separate payment gateway for your business, it is up to you. 

To activate Whatsapp payment click on the 3 dots setting option, then select “Payments” and finally choose “Add Payment Method”. Then provide your financial details such as bank name, account no. etc. to create a Whatsapp UPI. 

Step 7 – Connect with your prospects and customers 

That’s it! Now you can use WhatsApp business for marketing your brand, product, or service. It’s a great idea to notify your existing business contacts about your new Whatsapp business account with a sweet informative message.

Whatsapp Marketing Strategy 

A carefully crafted strategy underlines the fruitfulness of every marketing channel. It enables business owners to plan steps efficiently and helps to adjust paths when something goes wrong. 

Here’s a complete WhatsApp marketing strategy that can generate great results. 

• Defining goals and marketing objectives
• Specifying target audience 
• Leveraging the WhatsApp business app 
• Creating a brand persona 
• Building a list of audience
• Designing effective communications 
• Delivering great customer service

Defining goals and marketing objectives 

Defining marketing goals is the most crucial part of developing a WhatsApp marketing strategy. This step enables business owners to focus on meaningful activities and keep each task on track. 

Start developing a marketing plan with specific and time-bound goals on each step of the funnel and set up KPIs (key performance indicators). KPIs will help you evaluate your performance on your marketing journey. 

For example, if you are sending promotional messages to your target prospects, your KPIs could be replies, clicks, or any type of engagement. 

Specifying target audience 

If you are approaching everyone, you won’t be able to get results. You will need to approach a specific group of people on the basis of your business niche. Specifying your target audience enables you to unite your all marketing efforts into a wholly unique brand strategy and helps you develop your own brand identity. 

Leveraging the WhatsApp business app 

Whatsapp launched a unique Business app to cover small and large businesses’ requirements – Whatsapp Business. 

This tool offers some extra features, such as – 

• A business profile – in your Whatsapp business profile you can add your business details like physical address, email id, and small business description. 
• Catalog – catalog allows you to showcase your products or services in one place. 
• Automated and quick replies – this feature lets you save a lot of time and efforts by setting up automated messages that you frequently send to your customers. 
• Labels – you can level up your customers as per their activities such as “new customer” or “order received”, etc. 
• Away messages – this feature allows you to inform your customers that you are not available and let them know when they may expect you are going to be available to respond. 
• Greetings – this feature helps you to welcome your customers when they connect first time with you. You can introduce your business or brand with a little bit of details and let them know the chatting timings. 
• Statistics – by Whatsapp statistics, you can track activities and measure results by knowing how many messages have been sent, how many messages were opened, and so on.   

Creating a brand persona 

People love to connect with other humans, not an impersonal business. Therefore, to undertake an effective Whatsapp marketing, you will need to develop your own unique brand persona. A brand persona is a set of humans like characteristics of attitudes, traits, and values your brand always shares. 

Try to develop a tone of your brand voice that makes your customers feel that they are dealing with a person. Also, try to a signature name that fits with your brand persona. 

Building a list of audience 

When it comes to promoting a business with social media channels, it is always a great idea to build a list of your audience. This list is your lifetime business asset and you can monetize this list as many times as you can by maintaining a strong relationship. 

The most popular method of building a list is to collect subscriptions offering lead magnets such as eBooks, tutorials, or reports. You can create a subscription form and place it in various relevant places. 

Designing effective communications

Whatsapp messages have comparatively higher open rates compared to other social channels. Proper communication with customers with the right content at right time is the key to social marketing. 

You should keep in mind that most people often check Whatsapp messages while on the way and are very short in time for reading a long message. Thus, reinforce your brand messages with scannable visuals such as infographics, animations, and pictures. 

Delivering great customer service 

Most customers connect brands through Whatsapp for getting supports for issues. Whatsapp allows businesses to get messages quickly and to offer prospects or customers real-time support.  

It is highly recommended to solve customers’ queries within an hour to create a positive impact on your brand. Besides, prompt actions help businesses retain more customers as well as increase sales.  

 Whatsapp Marketing Tools and Software 

A large number of Whatsapp marketing software and tools are available on the market for making the tasks of the Whatsapp marketing process easy and effective. 

Here’re a few Whatsapp marketing tools to consider – 

• WhatsAuto 
• Sperkcentral 
• Whatsender Profile 
• Whatso 
• Rapid Planner 
• WhatsHash 
• Rapbooster 
• Waam-it 
• WappBlaster 
• Lead Myntra 

These tools are mostly paid with a limited trial option. You can opt for the trial version to check out if the tool matches your requirements. 

4 Whatsapp Marketing Tips 

We have covered almost all the necessary points for creating a successful WhatsApp marketing strategy. Now, here are a few more practical tips that can ease your overall Whatsapp Marketing strategy. 

Leverage Whatsapp group chats 

You can use the Whatsapp group feature to segment your customers according to your convenience such as hot prospects, existing customers, or related to your specific product or service. 

Create broadcast lists

You can consider creating a broadcast list to promote your offers and discount updates. Also, you can consider segmenting your customers in multiple broadcast lists as per priority like VIP customers, one-time customers, or regular customers. 

Craft a product catalog 

A product catalog is an essential feature for brands that sell multiple products or services. With this feature, you can showcase all your items in a single place. This feature is immensely helpful for people who do not have any website for their business.  

Use Whatsapp status

Whatsapp status is a great feature for sharing text or multimedia files with all customers as well as receive their feedback on the same thread. This feature expires in 24 hours; hence, you will need to update it from time to time. 

Final words 

Whatsapp marketing is no doubt a great opportunity to build brand awareness and reinforce overall marketing strategies nowadays. The best part of Whatsapp marketing is that it helps businesses to build strong and long-lasting relationships with both prospective customers and existing customers.  

To achieve the maximum results from Whatsapp Marketing, it is recommended not to be limited to only Whatsapp, instead develop a complete integrated social media marketing strategy using several digital marketing skills. 

To learn social media marketing or complete digital marketing skills, check out our popular digital marketing courses here.