WhatsApp marketing 101: grow your brand with WhatsApp Business

With WhatsApp dominating the global messaging market, businesses can no longer overlook the potential of WhatsApp marketing. By utilizing WhatsApp Business, brands can access powerful marketing tools that enable personalized engagement at scale. From leveraging WhatsApp marketing chatbots to streamline conversations, to adopting digital marketing strategies that enhance customer retention, companies are tapping into this platform to stay competitive. With advanced WhatsApp marketing software and automation tools, brands can create seamless customer journeys, effectively nurture leads, and maximize conversions in today’s fast-paced marketplace.

What is WhatsApp marketing?

WhatsApp marketing is the strategic use of the popular messaging platform to effectively engage and reach potential customers. With nearly 3 billion monthly users worldwide, WhatsApp provides businesses with an extensive audience to connect with. This makes it an ideal tool for direct, personalized communication—whether for sharing information, offering customer support, or promoting products and services.

There are two versions of WhatsApp designed for businesses, each offering more advanced features than the personal WhatsApp app:

• WhatsApp Business App: Tailored for smaller businesses with basic tools.

• WhatsApp Business API: Designed for medium and large businesses, offering advanced tools and automation.

For business owners, setting up WhatsApp marketing campaigns is a powerful way to reach and engage customers. Here are some tips and tricks to help you make the most of the world’s largest messaging platform!

How to build a WhatsApp marketing strategy?

WhatsApp plays a crucial role in guiding customers through various stages of the sales funnel, enhancing their shopping experience, and fostering long-term engagement with businesses.

1. Awareness

To help businesses reach customers on Facebook, WhatsApp introduced click-to-WhatsApp ads. When customers click on these ads on Facebook, they are directed straight to WhatsApp. This feature allows customers to initiate a conversation with the brand with just one click, sparking interest and curiosity.

Businesses can also use WhatsApp links and QR codes to make it even easier for customers to reach them. Additionally, the WhatsApp Manager helps businesses effectively manage the surge in conversations!

2. Consideration

Once customers show interest in a product, they can engage in a seamless conversation with the brand. Using the WhatsApp API, businesses can send customers a product catalog througha  WhatsApp chatbot or AI Agent, allowing them to ask questions or receive additional information without human interaction. This real-time communication fosters trust and transparency, making it easier for customers to evaluate their potential purchases.

For those using the free version of WhatsApp Business, you can send pre-filled messages to minimize follow-up communication.

3. Purchase

WhatsApp enhances the purchase experience by enabling customers to make purchases directly within the app. By integrating with existing e-commerce platforms, businesses can share in chat payment link, allowing customers to make payments without leaving WhatsApp. This creates a frictionless and convenient shopping experience, streamlining the path to purchase.

4. Retention

After a successful purchase, WhatsApp remains a valuable tool for customer retention. Brands can offer post-purchase services like automated delivery updates, shipping reminders, and personalized product recommendations—all within WhatsApp.

Furthermore, businesses can continue engaging customers by sending personalized broadcast messages to announce promotions or product updates. This ongoing engagement boosts customer satisfaction and keeps them connected to the brand.

How to start your first WhatsApp campaign?

1. Set Clear Goals and KPI’s

• Define what you want to achieve with your campaign. Examples include increasing brand awareness, boosting sales, promoting a new product, or enhancing customer engagement.

• Establish which KPI’s you're gonna use to measure success. KPI’s might include open rates, response rates, conversion rates, and customer feedback.

2. Understand Your Audience

• Divide your audience into segments based on demographics, purchasing behavior, and preferences.

• Create Personas, develop detailed profiles of your ideal customers to tailor your messaging effectively.

Explore how market segmentation can benefit your business in our latest blog.

3. Build Your Contact List

• Gather contacts: Collect WhatsApp numbers through opt-in forms on your website, in-store sign-ups, or other lead generation tactics. Ensure you have permission to contact them via WhatsApp.

• Compliance: Ensure you adhere to privacy regulations and get explicit consent from users to send them marketing messages.

4. Create a WhatsApp Business Account

• Download WhatsApp Business App: Set up a profile for your business with relevant details like business name, logo, description, and contact information.

• API Integration: For larger businesses, you must use a WhatsApp Business API

5. Craft Your Messages

• Tone of Voice: Ensure your messages align with your brand’s tone of voice.

• Value Proposition: Focus on delivering value to your customers through your messages, such as special offers, useful information, and engaging content.

• Personalization: Use customer data to personalize messages. Address recipients by their names and tailor content to their preferences and behaviors.

6. Use Visual Aids

• Images and Videos: Incorporate images, videos, and GIFs to make your messages more engaging.

• Polls and Quizzes: Use polls and quizzes to interact with your audience and gather insights.

7. Plan Your Campaign

• Scheduling: Decide the frequency and timing of your messages to avoid spamming and ensure they are sent at optimal times.

• Content Calendar: Develop a content calendar to plan and organize your messages ahead of time.

8. Automate and Optimize

• Chatbots and AI agents: Implement chatbots to handle common queries and automate responses for efficiency. AI agents can be used to automate responses, and score and qualify leads. 

• A/B Testing: Test different versions of messages to see what works best and optimize accordingly.

9. Monitor and Analyze

• Track Performance: Use WhatsApp’s analytics tools to monitor the performance of your messages.

• Feedback Loop: Gather feedback from recipients to understand what’s working and what isn’t.

• Adjust Strategy: Continuously refine your strategy based on the data and feedback you receive.

What are the benefits of WhatsApp Marketing for business?

Massive Global Reach

As of June 2024, WhatsApp boasts approximately 3 billion active unique users worldwide, making it one of the most popular mobile social apps globally . This extensive user base enables businesses to connect with a vast audience across different regions and demographics

Cost-effective marketing

WhatsApp allows businesses to send rich media content like videos, images, and GIFs, enhancing the excitement and engagement of marketing campaigns. This can be achieved at a relatively low cost compared to traditional advertising channels, providing a high return on investment.

Seamless CRM Integration

Integrating WhatsApp with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems enables businesses to streamline communication, track customer interactions, and maintain a personalized approach. This integration ensures that customer data is centralized, facilitating more efficient and targeted marketing efforts.

Real-Time Customer Interaction

Messages sent via WhatsApp are delivered instantly, allowing businesses to engage with customers in real-time. This immediacy fosters a more personal connection, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Higher engagement & conversion rates

Studies have shown that WhatsApp marketing campaigns can achieve conversion rates between 45% and 60%, more robust conversion rate of 45-60%. significantly higher than the 2% to 5% typical of email or SMS marketing . This high conversion rate underscores the effectiveness of WhatsApp as a marketing tool.

Additionally, WhatsApp messages have an open rate of 98%, with 80% of messages opened within the first five minutes of delivery . This high open rate indicates that messages sent via WhatsApp are more likely to be seen and acted upon by recipients.

Examples of WhatsApp Marketing

Pristine Aroma

Pristine Aroma, one of Singapore's top online home fragrance brands, faced many challenges in their early days—just like any international e-commerce business. But with a well-executed campaign, they turned things around, gaining 217 followers and 947 post interactions, successfully building traction and expanding their presence!

Cats College

International College of Creative Arts Technology (CATS College), a leading higher education institution in Malaysia, has spent the last two decades nurturing future-ready talent through innovative creative arts programs powered by cutting-edge technology. However, despite their success, they faced challenges in finding an effective marketing channel to connect with prospective students.

That’s when they turned to WhatsApp for their marketing campaign. Using personalized broadcast messages, they informed potential students about scholarships and programs offered by the college. The results were impressive—within just 30 days, CATS College generated over RM50,000 in billings through a single WhatsApp broadcast campaign targeting UPU applicants.

WhatsApp proved to be a game-changer, guiding students through the application process, enhancing their experience, and fostering lasting engagement with the institution.

WhatsApp Business marketing: Grow and manage your audiences

1. Present an attractive brand persona

To make sure your customers can spot your brand quickly, you need to develop a strong, impressive, warm-blooded brand. You must create and incorporate your brand's tone of voice in all the campaigns you conduct. One way to ensure your brand is aligned with your business goals and effectively communicated to your audience is through smart business planning with AI.

2. Build a contact base with broadcast lists

Cold call messages are not allowed on WhatsApp Business to avoid spam.

Businesses can only send messages to customers under 2 scenarios:

•  The customer initiates the conversation

•  The company’s phone number is on the customer’s contact list. 

To gain permission to contact your customers on WhatsApp, it’s worth considering incentives such as coupons, promotional codes or a giveaway to encourage people to give permission for you to contact them on WhatsApp.

To overcome the limitations of WhatsApp Business, you can use WhatsApp API to broadcast messages to an unlimited number of contacts and without the risk of being blocked.

3. Offer relatable content to customers

Customers may come to you for specific reasons, in other words, you can’t use only one type of WhatsApp marketing content to keep every audience member engaged. Don’t forget to make good use of the label feature. You can create labels with different colors or names, and add them to an entire chat, group, or certain messages within a chat. 

By targeting those who are interested in particular topics and feeding them with relevant content, you can eventually expand your customer base.

4. Deliver excellent customer service

24/7 customer service used to be a luxury, but with WhatsApp Business, even a small companies can now provide real-time support with a limited budget. No doubt, speed matters in customer service. Fortunately, WhatsApp Business can send quick replies. 

With quick replies, you can create keyboard shortcuts for the messages, which is especially useful when you have to answer the same question over and over. This provides a considerable benefit of saving time but still being able to actively connect with customers. 

You can also consider setting AI agents within your WhatsApp workflows, so other than just replying to queries your AI agent can guide your customers through the customer journey funnel and hand them over to your team when they are ready to convert.

5. Conduct customer research

You must first have an in-depth understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members before achieving the goal.

Generally, people react more positively to images than blocks of text, so do try using visual aids in your Whatsapp marketing questionnaire. Polls are also fun as they can give the respondents a glimpse of how they compare to others. With WhatsApp Business API, you can create interactive buttons for your customer surveys pools, and make it easier for them to respond.

Read more: WhatsApp Business API: pricing, functions, and all you need to know

Unlock WhatsApp marketing potential using the API 

WhatsApp Business API enables advanced personalized interactions, for large and medium size companies, that guide customers toward making informed decisions.

The multi-agent workflow access provided by platforms like SleekFlow ensures that customer inquiries are directed to the appropriate agents or teams, ensuring efficient handling of queries. This personal touch contributes to a positive customer service experience, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Besides automated marketing campaigns, such as abandoned cart messages or personalized sales promotions, WhatsApp marketing automation helps businesses reconnect with customers, and sustain their engagement. This strategic approach not only fosters an enhancement in brand loyalty but also serves as a catalyst for driving purchasing behavior, consequently leading to a notable surge in overall sales performance.Create advanced WhatsApp  chatbots to interact with your audience, in all the sales funnel stages.

WhatsApp Business API streamlines the purchase process by offering features like ecommerce integration, and  one-click checkout link. Customers can complete transactions directly within WhatsApp, reducing friction in the buying journey. This convenience encourages customers to finalize their purchases without the need to switch to external websites or apps.

You can also integrate your WhatsApp platform with your CRM software and other messaging apps. 

The customer journey doesn't end after the purchase; it extends into the care phase. Businesses can continue engaging with customers through WhatsApp Business API by providing post-purchase support, order tracking updates, and addressing any concerns.

Building customer loyalty is crucial for sustained success. 

By collaborating with a Business Solution Provider (BSP), such as SleekFlow, businesses can leverage the automated WhatsApp chatbot feature to provide a more personalized and efficient customer experience. This, in turn, leads to increased customer engagement and enhanced retention rates.

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Why choose an official WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP) for managing business conversations

SleekFlow is a Meta-verified Business Solution Provider, a trusted platform that enables businesses to manage customer conversations in a secure, reliable way. 

Other benefits of SleekFlow as a WhatsApp BSP include: 

• Easy onboarding and support from SleekFlow

• Ensure the best pricing for enterprise customers who need to manage a large volume of contacts

• Be the first to experience the latest features from WhatsApp as BSPs work closely with Meta

Manage other social messaging channels, including Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messages, and other channels in an omnichannel inbox

Case studies -  integrate WhatsApp Business API into marketing strategies

1. TKD Lingerie

TKD Lingerie operates in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and holds a unique position as the only specialist for D-K cup lingerie in the Middle East. Their core emphasis is on women's lingerie, swimwear, sportswear, maternity wear, and nightwear. The brand has established a strong digital footprint, amassing a substantial Instagram following of over 10K users. 

TKD upholding customer privacy, comfort, and preferences is of paramount importance to TKD Lingerie. They extend their service beyond understanding customer needs by offering convenient virtual or in-person fittings through WhatsApp.

Yet, TKD Lingerie faced challenges in managing diverse customer information due to their wide product range. They also aimed to cultivate post-purchase customer relationships and ensure seamless WhatsApp communication for customers across locations. To overcome this, they adopted the WhatsApp Business API via SleekFlow. 

A 7-day WhatsApp Broadcast Campaign was launched, reaching 4500 contacts, promoting a 3-for-2 promotion from their customer database. Utilizing social CRM features, customer segmentation based on preferences streamlined personalized marketing, alongside accessible insights for cross-channel campaign evaluation. 

By leveraging these features, the marketing campaign yielded remarkable outcomes: 

• a 74% message open rate, 

• 78 closed online-to-offline sales attributions, 

• an outstanding Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) of 40X.

A lot of people prefer being contacted via their mobiles over email. We have seen a better open rate with SleekFlow Broadcasting and a really good return on Broadcasting messages.

Kate Kikano

Founder of TKD Lingerie

2. Bossini

bossini, a well-known fashion brand, achieved remarkable success in their O2O marketing strategy by utilizing WhatsApp broadcast campaign via SleekFlow. They employed this approach to overcome the limitations of their mobile app's push notifications, which people opt out of mobile app push notifications and lack customer insight. 

bossini proactively sought an alternative solution, turning to WhatsApp for its interactive messages and quick reply button for their first O2O marketing campaign. The results achieved were impressive:

• Efficiently distribute 10,000 coupons within just five days,

• Achieve 80% promotion message open rate and over 14% response rates,

• 18% increase in in-store membership sales.

By relying on this data-driven strategy, bossini was able to not only enhance customer engagement and interactions but also experience substantial business growth.

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