Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
What is WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is a messaging app owned by Meta. It is the most popular global messenger app worldwide. With over two billion active users, WhatsApp is more than likely where your customers connect with family, friends and maybe even your competitors across the globe.
As well as being a messenger app, WhatsApp is the third-most-used social media network in the world, behind Facebook and YouTube. So, using WhatsApp for marketing can both modernize your approach to customer care, and allow you to create an exclusive community experience.
Communicating with customers
Increasingly, users of messaging apps such as WhatsApp are willing to engage with businesses. This applies particularly to younger customers. According to Nielsen’s Facebook Messaging Survey in 2018, 67% of mobile messaging app users said they expect to use chat more for communicating with businesses over the next two years. What’s more, 53% of respondents say they’re more likely to shop with a business that they can message directly!
WhatsApp Business
WhatsApp Business is a free professional version of the app allowing brands to use a separate WhatsApp profile for business communication. This enables businesses to communicate directly with an audience or customers for sales and customer support, once they share their WhatsApp contact number.
Some brands have been very successful at using WhatsApp:
- Cathay Pacific uses WhatsApp to offer real-time customer service to its airline passengers.
- The Financial Times shares highlights from its markets news in a WhatsApp group titled FT Markets WhatsApp Group. It’s free to join and is run as a broadcast so other subscribers are not public.
- Carrefour, the multinational hypermarket chain, uses WhatsApp Business Platform to offer digital coupon catalogs to its customers across France, helping shoppers buy the products they want at the price they want.
WhatsApp key features
Here are some of the key features of WhatsApp:
- Messages: Users can share text-based messages, files, images and videos and voice notes.
- Calls: WhatsApp supports free voice and video calls.
- Broadcast lists: You can send alerts to anyone who has your number saved in their phone’s address book. Users see the message appear as normal. However, unlike groups, they cannot see who else has received the message and, if they reply, this won’t be sent to anyone else in the broadcast list.
- Communities: Communities on WhatsApp enable users to organize and bring related groups together under one umbrella. Community admins can reach members with important updates by sending announcements, and community members can stay connected by exploring and chatting in groups that matter to them.
- Community announcement groups: The community announcement group allows admins to broadcast announcements and other relevant messages to all community members in the announcement group. Only community admins can send messages in the announcement group. The announcement group can have up to 5,000 participants. There is added privacy for phone numbers.
- WhatsApp Business API: The WhatsApp Business API allows larger businesses and service providers to integrate WhatsApp into their systems and communicate with their customers at scale. While it’s not a direct advertising platform, it enables businesses to send notifications, alerts, and transactional messages to their customers.
Primary WhatsApp users for marketing
As a marketer, you can use WhatsApp to meet your business and marketing goals. For example, you can:
- Elevate your customer experience with automation.
- Provide a personalized one-to-one customer service.
- Use WhatsApp for internal communication and social media content gathering.
- Create an announcement or broadcast channel.
- Network with industry colleagues in designated groups
Alison Battisby
Alison is a Social Media Consultant with Avocado Social, she is a Facebook and Instagram accredited social media expert and founded Avocado Social in 2014 having worked in the social media industry since 2008. Alison has worked with a wide range of brands including Estee Lauder, Tesco, and Pringles. Alison has traveled the world training companies including the BBC, Etsy, Canon, and Cambridge University Press. She offers social media strategy, training, and consultancy at Avocado Social across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok.
