Discovering and adopting new platforms into your social media strategy can feel like an ongoing battle. They seem to spring up overnight and can just as quickly fade into obscurity. WhatsApp is in a unique position as it’s been an important app in person-to-person communication for a very long time and is only now becoming an important marketing platform for businesses.
If you’re a bit lost, don’t worry. WhatsApp Business is a relatively new development and is only recently beginning to gain some serious momentum. To get you up to speed, we’re going to walk you through how WhatsApp Business works as well as how it could benefit you. We’ll also cover how to seamlessly fit this new platform into your marketing strategy.
Have you read this far and realised that your social media strategy is lacking a bit of definition? At redPepper Marketing, we specialise in helping small to medium-sized businesses create an energetic and successful social media marketing strategy. If you’re looking for help, give us a call on 01787 223850 or email us at info@redpeppermarketing.com.
Why should I use WhatsApp for marketing?
Before we even start talking about the applications of WhatsApp within your marketing strategy, it’s important to lay out its importance in terms of platform power and reach.
Over 2 billion people use WhatsApp at least once per month. That’s almost 1 billion more than Facebook messenger and over a quarter of the world’s population.
Over 500 million people use WhatsApp every single day. That’s more than the entire population of the United States and the United Kingdom combined.
The United Kingdom is 3rd in the world in terms of new WhatsApp app downloads, just below the United States and Brazil.
How can WhatsApp help my business?
The first thing to recognise is that WhatsApp isn’t appropriate for every business. Primarily, it’s best used by businesses that have a catalogue of products or services, especially those that require ongoing customer support or frequent automation requirements, such as order updates.
An example of a business that would benefit from WhatsApp marketing would be a bakery. A bakery often has a large catalogue of items available for purchase and many now offer online delivery. WhatsApp would enable them to advertise and sell their products and also provide automated updates on the status of the delivery or click-and-collect for their customers.
The key here is that WhatsApp will be very useful for businesses that market to individual customers. If you’re a B2B business, the usability is probably going to be limited and not worth the time or monetary investment it takes to get set up on WhatsApp.
To summarise, here are the main things you can do on WhatsApp as a business:
- Create a catalogue of products and services that customers can buy directly through the app
- Use special tools to automate, sort, and respond to messages from and to customers
- Provide automated or personal customer support
- Deliver important notifications to customers, such as order/status updates
- Communicate and collaborate with employees or colleagues, similar to a program like Slack
How to market your business on WhatsApp
Getting started on WhatsApp Business is easy. Firstly, you just need to download the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Once you’ve downloaded it and reviewed and accepted the terms and conditions, you just need to enter your business phone number and general details. These include what industry you’re in, your business’ name, logo, other contact details, opening hours, location, your website, and more.
After this, you’ll be set up and ready to explore the platform further. The App has some built-in tools that guide you through the process of setting up your profile, a product or service catalogue, and the app’s messaging automation functionality. These tutorial guides are a great place to start if you haven’t used the app before. We’d also encourage you to have a good look through the settings on the app to fully explore what you can achieve with it!
