6- WhatsApp ways for better Customer Loyalty

I have been writing about Social Media, Inbound Marketing and Customer Loyalty. Let's have a look today specifically on (using) WhatsApp.

WhatsApp has been growing in leaps and bounds:

In 2015, WhatsApp had 1 billion monthly users who...
...Who (the users) exchanged 42 billion messages
....and 1.6 billion photos a day.
The WhatsApp platform supports 53 languages, which makes it a powerful marketing tool.
If as a business- owner or entrepreneur, you haven’t considered WhatsApp Marketing its time to start reviewing your marketing plan. Constant communication with your clients is the key to brand awareness and delight. Now, before you run off to create a WhatsApp platform for your business, there are certain key- things which you must consider. Most business- owners and entrepreneurs usually hit these pitfall therefore they get to clear these thorny issues out of the way, before instituting a WhatsApp marketing platform/campaign.

Here here are 6 How-to Tips on using WhatsApp to improve your Customer Loyalty outcome:

#1 Have a Unified Brand Message

It is imperative that your display photo has a clean and clear picture of something that represents your brand. Therefore ideally, your WhatsApp image must have a photo of the business- logo. If as a small business you don’t have a logo yet, images of what you do should be used as the display picture so that when a conversation is initiated or a message is sent, it could help a potential or existing customer to easily identify your business.

For example, a 2nd-hand car- dealer whose business does not have a logo, can use an image or a collage of the dominant car brands for which his core customers know him for. Likewise, a hairdresser can have images of neatly coiffured hair. The ‘Status’ portion of WhatsApp also gives you the opportunity to introduce your business. ‘Use that space effectively’.

#2 Content

Your WhatsApp marketing content must not only consistently talk about your brand promise and how it solves problems. If that is what the customer constantly receives, they might get bored easily and not bother looking at messages when you send them. Therefore your content must be a mix of new product offerings, special offers and discounts, insights into your business and experiences of other customers etc.

Basically, do please research further into the term ‘Branded Content’ and find ingenious ways you and your team can create branded content which does not get stale easily. Research by social media analytics firm Social Bakers shows that people interact better with images and videos therefore you can find images that better communicate your brands promise and integrate it to the marketing effort but all things in moderation. Sending a pointless 60mb video which is poorly edited does not help anyone.

#3 Sign your Messages

Your content has to be signed in order for clients to know where the message is coming from. Especially when your brand is not easily recognizable for your display photos. Details of the signature can include your name, the full name of the business, what you do and where it is located. This feeds into the first point of having a unified brand.

#4 Have a Dedicated Phone for WhatsApp Marketing Purposes

To eliminate the chances of sending unintended private messages to your clients, it is important to have a dedicated phone for your WhatsApp marketing purposes.

#5 Ask for permission before adding a client to a group

This point cannot be over emphasized, there will be 'die hard' customers of your product who might request you to form a group for them to share their experiences and joys of using your product. When that happens, please celebrate because it one of biggest opportunities your clients have given you. But in your excitement, be mindful!

Add only customers who explicitly requested to be part of the group. There have been cases where business owners have created large WhatsApp groups of their customers only to see them leave the group one person after the other in just a day.

Do not let this happen to you; be mindful of adding people to the group. Having 10 people who are your number 1 fans is better than adding 50 people out of which 25 leave and the remaining 25 do not leave out of respect for your business and they do not interact nor contribute to the group.

#6 Schedule your messages

There must be strict time- limits to the content/ messages you share with your clients.

For example: sending branded content to a customer at 11 pm is rather inappropriate, regardless of the business you are into. When you are not sure about the time to send messages, stick to the normal time- frame, when most businesses are supposed to be open (which is usually between 9am to 5pm) unless your customer specifically tell you to contact them at any time.

In Conclusion

Delighting your clients with educational, engaging and creative content is the key to winning at WhatsApp marketing.

A winning WhatsApp marketing strategy increases brand engagement and conversations which constantly puts your brand etched in the minds of clients. When it is time to make another purchase, they will come to you.

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Thank you and Good Luck,

Spiros

Spiros Tsaltas is associated with a unique Customer Loyalty Startup : HireLoyalty (www.HireLoyalty.com) which is coming out of stealth mode in the next few months.

Spiros is also associated with HIREghana (www.HIREgh.com)

We welcome all your comments/ remarks/ feedback at Press@HireLoyalty.com

© 2017 Spiros Tsaltas and © 2017 HireLoyalty