2022-09-14 | 1416 Print PDF
Whatsapp Marketing is the use of the Social Messenger App for Businesses to create business and brand awareness among their phone contacts, via the status update and the integrated WhatsApp business advertising on Facebook. You have to own a Facebook Business page to be able to execute a Whatsapp promotion strategy, how you get around all this will be explained in this article with enough step-by-step guide on how to execute a Whatsapp Marketing campaign without using any Whatsapp Marketing software.
Whatsapp Business Marketing Promotion Strategy is not a new marketing advertising approach, since its acquisition by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion. It became the world's most popular messaging application by 2015 and had more than 2 billion users worldwide by February 2020. By 2016 it had become the primary means of Internet communication in regions including Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa. The potential of Whatsapp for marketing can be seen with its adoption by businesses and users as part of their cheapest means of communication.
Step 1.) To be able to execute a Whatsapp business for marketing you are required to download the Whatsapp Business Messenger on your phone via Google Play Store (Andriod users) or App Store (IOS users) and then connect all your contacts to the application by allowing the application to read through your contact list.
Step 2.) After this has been done, you need to click on the settings icon, which is located on the right-hand side of the phone screen, represented by three dotted vertical icons, and click on the Business Tools Tab.
Step 3.) This should take you to the Whatsapp Business Tool page as shown in the image below, where you can configure and set up your business catalogs (This includes your product/service image and descriptions then add an external link to your product page for purchase could be a payment gateway), Business hours, address, and website and include your best option for message replies.
Step 4.) If you have an active Facebook Page (at least) and an Instagram page for your business then you can create ads that lead to your WhatsApp messenger and don't forget to link your accounts to your WhatsApp by adding your WhatsApp number on the business page, so as to aid your page visitors to see this call to action as a better means to reach you.
When you do this, it replaces the most used and popular call-to-action button on your Facebook Page eg "Learn more", "Contact us", "Shop Now" etc with a Whatsapp Messenger ICON, I believe Facebook noticed the choice of users preferring WHATSAPP to its traditional Messenger app that is why WHATSAPP MESSENGER was officially added as part of its Advertising and Marketing strategies.
To commence this marketing strategy, you must have followed and set up all the steps explained in How To Setup Whatsapp Business For Marketing and Promotion above.
For every marketing strategy for business, the first rule of thumb is to have a flow or pattern you need your web visitors' actions to take and lead them to your destination goals or goal, read through the steps highlighted below and guess what is the goal of the illustrated set up.
Step 1.) You need to have one of the social accounts (Facebook and Instagram) created for your business, depending on your kind of business (service or product) you can create a Facebook Business page or Instagram business account, although it is more advisable to have both social accounts so as to link them to your Whatsapp business messenger.
The merit of this is that it will enable you to place adverts for your Whats App Business number (in some cases ordinary Whatsapp messenger, which is not advisable to use as most people commit these mistakes) and incorporate useful business marketing tools, this should not be mistaken for the Facebook Whatsapp call to action button located at your Facebook Cover page, it has no impact here.
Step 2.) You need to create your business catalog either for products or services, you need to do this professionally by placing them into categories and adding descriptions for each item, it is advisable to include a link to your product page or better still your product checkout page for purchase if you don't have any of this you can simply integrate a payment button that takes the visitor to a mobile payment page for your goods and services.
Remember that the catalog has a direct link which you can notice on the right screen of your mobile phone, copy that link and use it for your auto-reply message settings.
Facebook has added a new feature to Whatsapp Business Marketing to aid with sales, this is the ADD TO CART button, which allows your contacts to add more than one item of your product when messaging you with their product cost purchase.
I can foresee a more developed case study for this feature as it doesn't do anything more than add the number of products the user has chosen from your product catalog.
Step 3.) Create a Facebook Campaign ad targetting Whatsapp Messenger, even if it is from your page post. You can create a Post and attach a Whatsapp messenger to it (not Facebook Messenger) then boost that post from your Facebook page without creating a campaign around it, just as seen in the image below.
Step 4.) Edit your auto-reply Whatsapp messages to direct your Whatsapp marketing campaign to your catalog page.
As soon as you start getting messages you are to create a flow path of call to action for them to follow, you edit the auto-reply message with your catalog link, they click on it and they have a glossary list of your products and services they can choose from.
When they select the service or product of their choice, they have an option to either follow the link you provide in the item description or use the Whastapp Add-to-Cart button.
If they select the add-to-cart button then you are required to respond to their message with the pricing information of the product or service they have selected, hence why I feel there will still be future development with the Whatsapp add-to-cart feature.
You can get more viewers and contact lists well organized when you utilize the WhatsApp Business Tools provided for you, eg when you create the Facebook ads campaign for WhatsApp messenger and start receiving messages for your ads, you need to use Whatsapp marketing tools like Creating Groups, Broadcasting and Labelling.
For you to determine which of the tool best works for you I will be explaining their usage;
What is a WhatsApp Group? If you use WhatsApp, you're already familiar with a WhatsApp Group. It is a place where you can invite people, and everyone can chat. A WhatsApp Group is a great place to arrange events, plan a night out, or have a discussion with colleagues.
You can limit how people interact from everyone to simply the admins, you can appoint admins and share the invite link from the group to external viewers to join the group.
You can add up to 512 people to a WhatsApp group, up from 256. The limit increase was announced in a WhatsApp blog post on May 5, 2022, and will gradually roll out.
The Broadcast List feature allows you to send a message or media to several contacts at once. The broadcast message will appear to be an individual message from you. Broadcast message requirements: Make sure all the contacts in the Broadcast list have saved your number in their address book.
There is no limit on the number of Broadcast lists you can create. You can select up to 256 contacts in each Broadcast list.
How To Use WhatsApp Labelling
Labels help you organize and quickly find your chats and messages. You can create labels with different colors or names, and add them to an entire chat or certain messages within a chat.
If you utilize the Whatsapp Business Tools provided for you and organize your marketing accordingly you will find out you have already created a strategy that increases sales and customer retention as well.
This should make it more obvious why businesses should consider Whatsapp Marketing as an ideal mode of marketing their brands and businesses and not only for communication or customer service as it is being used currently.
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