Whatsapp Promotion: Marketing Strategies for Whatsapp Marketing

Whatsapp Promotion: Origins

Whatsapp, a messenger service social media application is one of the most used platforms for communication. An average daily user base of 1.5 billion active users daily. It is used as an alternative to text messaging in over 109 countries with over 50 billion + messages sent every day which is roughly  60% of the World's population. Ever since the acquiring of WhatsApp by Facebook in the year 2014 for $ 19 bn the platform has only grown in usage. Marketing on social media platforms like WhatsApp after incorporation of business can open up a channel of the vast unexplored market for organizations to get accurate and high-return leads which can be converted into fruitful business. In this article, we're going to look at how you can attain a successful WhatsApp promotion for your brand/business.

Why should you do Whatsapp Marketing?

There are some staggering stats in support of WhatsApp marketing and how it can positively impact the businesses and how they function.

• 67 % out of all mobile users would rather communicate with businesses via chat and 53% say that they are much more likely to buy from a business which they can chat directly with.
• 42% Smartphone users between the age groups 18-29 prefer Whatsapp Messenger
• Messaging marketing Campaigns are bound to have high engagement rates as compared to other campaigns as 95% of all mobile messages are opened and read
• In addition to this, 90% of WhatsApp messages are either "Seen from notifications" or read within 3 seconds of being delivered
• Whatsapp is highly efficient for dark social engagement meaning sharing content via private communication channels

Whatsapp marketing is an efficient business tool and companies need to incorporate into their marketing strategies. Whatsapp promotion is efficient, personalized and easy to do. Here are some reasons in addition to the above stats why WhatsApp marketing is important for your business:

• Free! Free! Free! Whatsapp is a free application on the app marketplaces across various devices and hence is effectively a no-investment marketing tool.
• Helps communicate with potential customers in real time and helps in collecting data on your potential customer's opinions and personalized care.
• Can be used to organize meetings, events etc. by creating groups. Can add up to 256 members in the group
• Helps to share catalogs,  videos, brochures,  and additional promotional content.
• Perfect for sending reminders/ services, discounts, and special events
• Helps deliver a much more personalized  customer service experience

Whatsapp Promotion Examples

In order to market via Whatsapp, businesses need to acquire the phone numbers of their prospective customers and establish a wide customer base.

Whatsapp has been identified as a highly efficient tool in order to increase sales with none or limited investment. Many businesses have started utilizing the platform for effective business communication.

1) One of the examples of the same is of the brand Vodka Absolut in Argentina.  Argentina is one of the countries with high WhatsApp usage with 84%  of mobile users using the famous messenger service. Absolut decided to try out a WhatsApp promotion strategy in order to increase its brand recall and establishing a customer base by launching a special event, A party! In order to attend the party, the attendees had to convince a made up character by the company, called SVEN to include them on the guest list. People had to send in photos, text messages, audios, and all kinds of media and creative content such as GIFs, via WhatsApp Chat.  It resulted in high engagement and a huge success for the Absolut brand.

2) Another example of efficient Whatsapp promotion comes from Toyota.  Toyota made use of the Status feature of Whatsapp to promote their proposal through a contest. The participants had to put the word "hybridized"  in their WhatsApp Status.

[caption id="attachment_17585" align="aligncenter" width="367"] Toyota's Whatsapp Promotion Campaign[/caption]

Thus, in every week from October 25 until November in 2012, an iPhone 5 was raffled among users who registered on the website of the company and met the slogan. This lead to Toyota becoming a household name and thousands and thousands of users and managed to interest many segments of audiences for at least a few weeks. The number of sales for Toyota will surely have increased significantly in that period.

3) One of the great and innovative examples of Whatsapp Promotion strategies comes from the Mayonnaise brand Hellman. They started a marketing campaign called WhatsCook for the Brazilian customers of the mayo brand.

In this campaign, users had to signup online and they were asked to send pictures of their fridge items. Once they received the pictures, A chef from Hellman would guide them what they can make from the available ingredients.

Whatsapp was used as a mode of communication, the people were being serviced in an intimate and personalized fashion. They solved the dilemma of people's big question of what do I eat tonight?  Customers felt taken care of. The campaign generated 13,000 impressions and got approval from 99.5% of the people who had signed up. This marketing campaign was then launched in neighboring South American countries of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina etc.

WhatsApp Promotion Techniques

In order to use the WhatsApp platform for efficient marketing, promotion, and eventual conversions, a brand needs to carve out an effective strategy using some techniques. Let's discuss these in detail.

Ways to use Whatsapp Marketing Campaigns

Of course, in order to do Whatsapp promotion, you will need to install the app on your device whether is it on any platform be it Android, iPhone, Windows, Web, or desktop versions. Every Whatsapp account has to be linked to a single mobile phone number.

Whatsapp goes through the contact list and displays up-to-date directories of users who already know you. And anyone with your contact details will become aware of your presence on the messaging service. A user of Whatsapp also has the option of importing their Facebook information to set up the profile. In addition to this, you can manually add an image, profile name in order to activate the WhatsApp account.

There are many ways in order to successfully convey your Whatsapp Marketing Campaign to prospective customers.

One-to-One Chat

Direct chat with the users in the contact list, similar to how a chat program by business would work. This method can also facilitate the option of calling/ video calling to potential customers, sending recorded audio snippets to them.

BroadCast Lists

A broadcast list is similar to BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) in emails, it can be used to send out mass messages to the contacts in your list. These messages appear as a normal one-to-one message to the recipient but it saves the organization loads of time as they can announce events, offers to a wide customer base. The broadcast list can be custom made i.e. you can have multiple broadcast lists similar to having multiple groups. That means you can customize the promotional messages according to demographics of the intended target audience and help inhighlyy targeted and effective campaigns. Amax total of 256 people can be sent a message via the broadcast list.

Groups

Groups are basically a platform interpersonal communication between the members of that particular group. Everyone can chime in and interact with other customers, find out the closest stores, go on shopping sprees together, interact and socialize with other users of your products. It is a fun way of pushing promotional content. At max, 256 contacts can be added in a group.

It is, however, important to note that there's a very thin line between personalized customer service and spamming. Customers have the option of  BLOCKING FOR LIFETIME and that is a scenario no marketer should have to face.

Status

Whatsapp has introduced the facility of posting "Statuses" as images and multimedia attachments as messages which disappear in 24 hours. Businesses can carve out attractive offers valid for 24 hours and use statuses as a great promotional tool. It will probably work better with smaller firms like MSMEs.

[caption id="attachment_17590" align="aligncenter" width="658"] Status for Whatsapp Promotion[/caption]

Campaign Specific Techniques

Customers should get an enriching virtual experience when they interact with your brand via messaging. Here are some tips for the same:

• Engaging Brand Persona in Whatsapp which is "fun to chat with" and creates hype for your brand
• Offer one-to-one help to inspire new uses for a product
• Interactive engagement techniques which offer great values to customers  and help build your database
• Discreet Advice and Promotional Offers to high-value customers.
• Encouragement of user opt-in options, providing simple and clear  instructions
• Provide on relevant content for free
• Speedy Customer Service
• Thorough Consumer Research

Know your Tools

Mobile Marketing and specifically messaging mobile marketing tools are pivotal to the way that businesses market themselves to prospective customers.  Here a few tools that a WhatsApp marketer should be aware of in order to effectively create an  "awesome" persona for your brand on the world's most used messaging platform:

Whatsapp Bulk Sender

This is basically a marketing software which gives you the most active users from the list of contacts. In addition to this, you can send scheduled Text, Videos, Images, Audio Filed, and GPS locations over WhatsApp. The tool offers options for changing status, replying to incoming messages with automated replies, Changing the Display Picture or "DP".

It has been deemed as one of the best Whatsapp Marketing tools and solutions and helps run highly successful WhatsApp marketing campaigns with high returns. This tool allows you to find the following solutions for marketing via WhatsApp :

• WhatsApp Channels
• WhatsApp Marketing Suite
• WhatsApp Marketing panel
• WhatsApp Marketing Services

WA Panel

It is essentially a web-based WhatsApp Marketing Panel allowing you to run Whatsapp Promotion campaigns via the cloud. A Whatsapp Marketing scripts which can be run from anywhere and can help scale your campaigns to highly large numbers.

BulkWhatsAppMarketing.com

It's a premium WhatsApp Marketing Service ensuring accurate and 100% guaranteed delivery. Marketing packages for resellers are also included in this tool.

WhatsAppChannels.com

A tool which lets you have channels to all the script, software, and tools. The tool offers Whatsapp Channels all around the world inclusive of countries like India, China, Phillippines, US, Canada, Egypt etc.

 WhatsApp for Internal Communication

WhatsApp is a messaging service used by most of the people in an organization. While working within an organization using a unified platform for the management of business activities.  Everyone knows how to operate WhatsApp there is no need for external training for using the platforms and nobody needs to be reminded to check their WhatsApp like they need to be reminded to check their e-mail.

Whatsapp for Customer Satisfaction

A great tip for salespeople is that if they take their follow-ups via WhatsApp the chances of getting any kind of response shoot up by 40%. Not many people like to answer phone calls from an unknown number. However, people are much more likely to respond to personal messages. Clearer communication and better engagement were achieved as soon as businesses started using WhatsApp for business dealings. It also makes the business setting an informal one helping clients take relaxed and well-thought-out decisions in a peaceful manner.

Customer Service via WhatsApp

[caption id="attachment_17595" align="alignnone" width="1600"] Customer Service is an efficient strategy for effective WhatsApp promotion[/caption] WhatsApp can act as a great platform for customer service and great interaction. Many websites and businesses like NowFloats, provide customer support via the usage of WhatsApp.  Another great example of a WhatsApp customer service is a company named JustHerbs who offer skin care and product consultation via WhatsApp. Businesses like Wazapper provide tools and API integration for customer support via Whatsapp.

Multimedia Usage

WhatsApp is a great platform to share images, videos, recorded clips etc. In addition to this, the introductions of GIFs and Smileys mean that WhatsApp can help provide a holistic and satisfying customer experience and higher engagement for longer times. Interacting with brands has been made fun with the introduction of WhatsApp for business. Due, to all these reasons, it has been touted as the 'SMS of the smartphone generation'.

Innovative Solutions

WhatsApp can be used to provide innovative marketing solutions and societal solutions to many problems faced by consumers on a day-to-day basis. Some of these might include

• Concierge Service
• Food Delivery
• Medical and Healthcare Consultation
• Government Services

In conclusion with its' many benefits, I think it is safe to say that in today's day having a WhatsApp strategy is not a luxury but a necessity in order to shoot ahead of the competition. About LegalRaasta: