5 Strategies for using Whatsapp for Marketing and Business Campaigns

Whatsapp has become the most popular messaging platform in the world - with a user base of over 1 billion reported in Feb 2016. Beyond text messaging, it has enabled voice calling in 2016 and by June 2016 more than 100 million voice calls were made per day. Whatsapp has amazing reach and massive percentage of active users - thus making it one of the most promising platforms for social engagement and marketing for businesses. Though compared to facebook and twitter, marketing people find it tough to do marketing and viral campaigns on whatsapp.

Already large number of organizations, businesses and brands are using whatsapp for successful customer engagement and marketing. One of the amazing whatsapp success stories is its successful use by in India by Traffic Police. They have received thousands and thousands of queries as well as important insights by users on whatsapp. Users find it convenient to post messages as well as live photo of a problematic area and prompt response by traffic police authorities has ensured a repeated customer engagement.

Here are 5 important strategies for using whatsapp successfully for marketing:

Creating well known whatsapp Business Contact

One of the most important aspect of whatsapp marketing is to create a well known contact (or a set of contacts) for users to contact the business over whatsapp. Whatsapp is a very low friction mode and customer find it much easier to contact a company via Whatsapp than other existing medium. Many business owners have already started using whatsapp successfully for answering pre-sales queries and converting users.

Targeting Existing Customers via targeted whatsapp messages - Repeat Business

You can message your past customers about a new product or discounts available in existing products. While doing this, it is important to reply to customers query promptly and engage them. It is not only a great marketing strategy, but it is also useful to capture important customer feedback.

For example, a sample message may look like:

Thanks for visiting our store x days back. We have this and this product available at 10% discount currently for you. Let us know if you want to check it out.

Marketing Contests with Call to Action in Whatsapp

Many of top brands are using whatsapp to organize contests and increasing customer awareness. For example, a cloth brand can create a fashion photo contest by asking people to whatsapp their photo to a particular Whatsapp number.

Outbound marketing via Whatsapp - New Business

You can send well crafted whatsapp messages to your potential customers (e.g., a list of contacts acquired through some channel). It is important to ask customers to add you as a contact for future communication (otherwise Whatsapp will start blocking you after some time).

Please note while you don't have to worry about DND while using whatsapp for outbound marketing, it is important to use this judiciously. Otherwise users will start relating you as a spam company.

Viral Campaigns on Whatsapp

On Whatsapp, it is very easy for users to forward your message to their contacts and groups with minimal resistance. To create a successful viral campaigns, you will have to create content using multiple media formats supported by Whatsapp:

  • Text
  • Images
  • Videos
  • Vcards