How to Use WhatsApp for Business: Tips and Tools

WhatsApp’s move towards becoming more business-friendly has made direct communication with your audience easy and effective. In this article, we’ll be sharing the various tips and tools on how you can use this platform to its fullest potential. 

WhatsApp for Business

It’s a no-brainer for businesses to chat with their leads and customers on WhatsApp, the most popular instant messaging platform in the world, with more than 2 billion users worldwide. WhatsApp Business has been around for a couple of years now and has steadily improved over time. 

WhatsApp Business profiles have access to a range of useful features to help instantly connect with audiences. These include a product or service catalog, shortcuts for quick replies, labels, and message automation. Sales also readily take place via WhatsApp, which goes to show that this platform presents massive opportunities to businesses. Users will also have access to messaging metrics and labels that help to organize the sales functions.

It is an especially helpful platform for:

• eCommerce businesses: Since you can create a more intimate and one-on-one interaction with your customers; and 
• International businesses: As you can communicate easily and cost-effectively across borders.

But really, all businesses stand to benefit from direct chats with their customer base. 

To get started, you’ll need to create a business profile that includes all of the relevant details like your name, trading hours, category, description, address, and website link. This is what will be presented to people who engage with your profile, making it easy to understand what you offer and how to take the conversation further. Business accounts get verified by WhatsApp to show that their account is accurate and authentic. 

Tips and Tools for Using WhatsApp Business

Welcome customers

WhatsApp makes it easy to share a greeting message when people get in touch with you. This is a warm way to begin the relationship with your new contacts and give them a sense of the instant response that they seek. 

Categorize your chats

Creating groups is a helpful tool to ensure that you are sending messages that cater to the needs of various segments within your audience. For example, you can group together a certain age category and send relevant messages to them. 

Broadcast messages

As your profile groups, so too will your interactions. For standardized messaging, it Is best to create broadcast chats to reach all your content. For example, sending regional specials to contacts in the relevant areas. 

Integration with eCommerce

Having a WhatsApp Business profile allows your audience to share products from your website via the app. This increases traffic to your site, improves the customer experience, and can make it easier for them to reach out and ask questions that they may have. Additionally, your business can integrate WhatsApp with its CRM to automatically share the data and contacts. 

Product catalogs

To maximize your use of WhatsApp Business, create product or service catalogs. These include the name, image, price, description, and link to your website. It makes it very convenient for the customer to see what’s on offer and follow through to the next stage in their customer journey. 

Think about lead generation

New contacts are should be considered leads for your business. By capturing and using this data, you can begin the customer journey with them. To do this, you should use the app to build a relationship through conversation. 

Share specials

Promotions are an enticing way to reach out to your customers. Using this direct method, you can share relevant coupon codes and specials. This generates interest and can help boost sales. 

Quick Messages

Quick replies are standardized answers and questions in textual form that you can send with ease. This makes your communication standardized and the process of replying to your contacts quicker, which is important when building relationships with customers. To do this, create shortcuts that continue frequently used phrases. Aim to respond to messages within 24 hours of receipt for optimal customer satisfaction. 

Communicative avenue

You can use WhatsApp to ask for and receive feedback. This can strengthen your relationships with customers and you can use this as input for improving the customer journey and brand’s perception. 

Offer support

Text messaging is a comfortable alternative to a phone call for many customers. This can be used to create engaging and ongoing conversations that help understand your customers better. You can also offer them additional customer support and service to increase engagement, follow-through, and satisfaction.

Share a Story

WhatsApp Story allows you to share short-term content that can increase visibility and serve as a reminder to your contacts. This may spur your contacts to find out more about what you’ve posted and thereby re-ignite ongoing interest. 

Share a range of content

WhatsApp allows you to send a variety of content to your contacts. This means you can spice up the texts with photos, videos, locations, voice messages, GIFs, and PDFs. 

Create a community

You can build communities among your customers. To do this, treat your WhatsApp contacts the same way you would an email subscriber - they’ve signed up to join a club hosted by your business for exclusive chats and offers that others are not privy to, or are missing out on. In other words, ensure your profile has a purpose. 

Share your contact info

Be sure that your profile has enough visibility. You can reach out to contacts via links, shares on social media, and a unique QR code. This makes the connection between your business and customers that much more efficient. 

There you have it - all the tips and tools to help your business become WhatsApp marketing pros. If you need help developing direct messaging campaigns, or WhatsApp integration with the likes of HubSpot, look no further than us at Nexa. Get in touch to find out more about what we can do for you.