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From small businesses to large-scale enterprises, the common goal is to increase sales and conversions. In the past, businesses would rely on email marketing, paid ads, and social media, to name a few.
However, in the last few years, a new way of marketing has emerged that has changed the way businesses handle sales and marketing - WhatsApp. Along with the rise of chatbots, WhatsApp’s Official Business APIs and the vast array of features they’ve started offering have helped businesses scale to levels that couldn’t be achieved with traditional methods.
So, how does WhatsApp help businesses achieve this growth?
With 2.5 billion users worldwide, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform in the world. That’s about 33% of the world’s population.
While that gives businesses a wide audience to reach out to, there are limitations in terms of WhatsApp’s policies, which enforce strict guidelines in terms of who WhatsApp can reach out to proactively. This means that just being on WhatsApp doesn’t automatically mean you can reach out to that wide audience.
Additionally, WhatsApp requires businesses to provide good customer experiences through the features they provide, like their integrations and message templates, that can be used to proactively reach out to users to get users to engage with the business in meaningful and effective ways.
While there may be certain restrictions in place, the numbers themselves are enough to prove how widespread and influential WhatsApp is for both businesses and customers.
Businesses being accessible on WhatsApp was something new just a few years ago. However, with more and more businesses getting onto WhatsApp thanks to their Official Business APIs, customers are not only seeing more businesses on WhatsApp, but they’re also slowly coming to expect it from them.
Just providing customers with the option to communicate with a business via WhatsApp can drastically increase conversion rates.
By creating more meaningful experiences on WhatsApp (for instance, sending rich-media of products to consumers, and links to be able to directly purchase products on WhatsApp) creates frictionless conversations on the platform itself, making it feel more like an experience, rather than a normal email or SMS marketing message.
Live chats are becoming the new normal for businesses and customers. A survey by Facebook reported that 40% of conversational commerce buyers started shopping online because of this.
To add to that, over 67% of these shoppers say they plan on increasing (or at least maintaining) their expenditure online. This just goes to show the importance and the impact that live chat has on sales and conversions.
Now that WhatsApp has introduced the payments option, it further changes the way companies would run their business on WhatsApp.
Another major selling point for a business to be on WhatsApp is the fact that they’re able to offer support in real-time to their customers. Around 35% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from a business that offers live chats.
It’s no surprise, considering the convenience live chat offers. The instant response times and quick resolution times mean customers can resolve issues and get their questions answered almost instantly, which plays a major role in boosting sales and conversions.
So, the main thing businesses need to focus on here is to keep response and issue resolution times as low as possible. It’s one thing to have a chatbot in place to serve customers, but it’s another to offer them live support immediately and effectively.
This is nothing new for a brand. However, with businesses shifting their services online, it becomes equally important for a business to provide excellent customer experiences online as well. Great WhatsApp conversations not only convert target buyers into new customers but also helps convert first-time customers into returning customers.
Just making your business available on WhatsApp gives your customers the idea that your brand is accessible. Add brilliant customer support to the mix, and that boosts your brand's image tenfold.
Loyalty to your brand not only means returning customers, it gives you more customers through referrals. This increases your brand exposure, which in turn translates to more sales and conversions.
To summarise, WhatsApp does increase conversions and sales. However, it needs to be done right from the business’s end. Having the option to let your customers reach you via WhatsApp doesn’t necessarily mean an increase in conversions and sales. It has to be enhanced with a brilliant customer experience and quality support to keep customers satisfied.
