WhatsApp Marketing Playbook for Small Indian Businesses
The Role of WhatsApp in Your Marketing Strategy
For many small businesses in India, marketing does not have to begin with a big advertising budget. Many times, marketing can begin with an employee, a great product, and an offer. WhatsApp is rapidly becoming one of the most convenient ways for businesses to keep in touch with customers, provide answers to queries, showcase products, and drive repeat purchases.
This makes WhatsApp marketing for small Indian businesses a major growth opportunity. WhatsApp has the ability to integrate marketing and customer service for businesses of all kinds, from the local salon in Lucknow to the home based food businesses in Jaipur. However, sending generic bulk messages is not marketing. Businesses need to understand the audience, provide value, choose the optimal time, and guide with a clear next step.
Why is WhatsApp Marketing Perfect for Small Businesses in India?
Small businesses need to allocate resources effectively, all while working in a hypercompetitive environment. WhatsApp helps in bridging this advertising gap for the customer, as it is used for personal and business interactions.
The biggest advertising gap is smaller businesses wish to have control on. WhatsApp provides the ability to interact and have a personal and direct marketing piece. Unlike ads, WhatsApp provides the ability to market to customers and prospects, the pieces are personal, and are therefore more relevant.
- For instance, a regional company may utilize WhatsApp to:
- Notify customers of products and services updates.
- Distribute reminders of customer appointments.
- Respond to inquiries presented by customers.
- Provide notices of special, time-limited offers.
- Facilitate the process of sharing customers' opinions.
- Assist customers in making purchases.
- Assist customers in completing purchases.
Build your business's database of WhatsApp customers.
Your customer database is a significant factor of your company's value, however, customers' contact details should not be purchased or acquired in unethical ways. Make customers a valid reason to "opt-in" to your database.
One valid reason can be a special deal. For example, a discount for the next meal order from a restaurant, access to a private shopping opportunity of a new trousseau, or a tip or reminder of a scheduled appointment from a service business.
What Should You Collect?
You may want to collect customer's name, WhatsApp contact number, the product or service of customer's interest, the customer's location, and the customer's preferred means of contact.
Be transparent. Let your customer know what to expect from the communication. It will help encourage participants to "opt-in," reducing customers' dissatisfaction with the messages.
How to Create a WhatsApp Marketing Strategy That Works
Start with one clear marketing goal. When messages facilitate multiple goals, such as making a sale, generating reviews, marketing all product lines, and responding to all customer inquiries, the message becomes confusing.
Instead, campaigns should be based on a single goal. For example, one campaign can be dedicated to marketing a newly offered service, and another campaign can be dedicated to re-engaging customers who have not returned in a while.
A campaign can be constructed in a simple manner:
- Define a goal.
- Target a specific customer group.
- Communicate a clear and concise message.
- Create urgency.
- Send at reasonable times.
- Track responses and conversions.
- Use the improvements for future campaigns.
This method allows for easier measurement for WhatsApp marketing. It also helps companies understand what offers and marketing messages help generates customer demand.
What Should Be Sent on WhatsApp?
Promotional messages should not be the majority of the messages sent on WhatsApp. If messages are sent on WhatsApp asking customers to buy something every single time people will lose interest. It is important to have an even mix of the messages sent to customers that are promotional messages, messages that educate customers, and messages that help maintain a relationship between the company and customer.
An example of this is a local bakery might post a message on WhatsApp announcing the sale of a new bakery product one day and a message that gives a storage tip for bakery goods. A fitness studio posting messages on WhatsApp with the addition of a fitness class also supports sending messages that have other fitness related content. This provides customers with a reason to remain connected with the company even when they are not interested in making a purchase.
Good promotional content ideas that can be sent on WhatsApp are:
- New product announcements
- Customer reviews
- FAQs
- Event announcements
- Demonstrations
- Tips
- Behind the scenes updates
- Greetings
- Special offers
- Seasonal messages
To keep the interest of customers, messages should be valued.
Why Should Local Businesses Use WhatsApp to Increase Sales?
WhatsApp is great for answering customers questions that may be a barrier to completing a sale. Examples of questions that may be barriers to completing a sale are: what is the price, is it in stock, are there delivery restrictions, what is the appointment availability, what are the product specs?
Companies use WhatsApp to connect with people who exhibit interest in their products. A person who inquired about a product but failed to make a purchase can get a message later on. This message is sent in a friendly, not aggressive, manner.
This is especially useful for local companies.
Discovery → Enquiry → Conversation → Purchase → Follow up → Repeat Purchase
This is the purpose of WhatsApp in company communication: It is more than a messaging app. It is part of a company sales communication process.
Why Personalization Trumps Message Volume
Sending 10,000 same messages does not yield the best results. It is the opposite. The trust of the message recipients is lost because of the messages being sent. Personalization frequently results in a better message system, which leads to a better system overall.
A clothing store can start separating customers based on interest such as men's clothing, women's clothing, children's clothing, or festival clothes. A restaurant can separate customers based on their location or ordering habits.
Personalization, even in the simplest of ways, changes the way communication is perceived. Personalization can be as simple as using the customer's name or previous interest to provide an offer or relevant product.
Personalization improves customer engagement the most. A customer can be prompted visit the website, conduct a search for the business, or return to the physical store, providing the business an increase in visibility.
Best WhatsApp Marketing Practices for Small Businesses
The Marketer's Guide on WhatsApp messaging recommends keeping messages short, simple, and straight to the point. On reading the message the customer should know the offer and the next step.
Sending the right message at the wrong time can also work against you. Test various time slots and monitor the response.
Best practices to follow
- Always get customer approval.
- Keep the message short and to the point.
- Use a single call to action.
- Avoid bombarding the customer with messages.
- Avoid long wait times for support.
- Send offers to segmented customer groups.
- Use offer variations to get the best response.
- Use opt out functionality.
- Avoid false claims or promotions to create urgency.
Trust built from repeated interaction with your customer will always be more rewarding than any isolated sale.
How can WhatsApp help with Local SEO?
Many small businesses rely on local customers. WhatsApp can help businesses connect all the customer engagement touch points, from the initial search to the enquiry and purchase.
A potential customer searching Google for a local business may visit the business website and then use WhatsApp to contact the business. The customer may be more likely to leave a review and recommend the business to others.
To facilitate this communication, make your WhatsApp contact easily accessible through your website, Google Business profile, all your social media profiles, and any other relevant landing pages. Consistency in your Business information across all these platforms will enhance your local SEO.
Lessons From SMS Marketing For Small Businesses
Not all interactions should migrate to WhatsApp. For some instantaneous communications, SMS can be a better option e.g. for transactional updates or when customers prefer receiving the information over SMS.
For instance, a business could carry out its interactions and product discussions via WhatsApp, and use SMS to send appointment reminder messages and/or other time-critical notifications. In the absence of WhatsApp as a preferred channel, local businesses in Lucknow can rely on a good bulk SMS service provider to offer them the flexibility to reach out to their customers.
A more effective approach would be to develop a communication strategy. This would entail you integrating multiple channels and using them to send messages in the manner that the channel was intended to be used.
Metrics That Matter When Analyzing WhatsApp Marketing
Measurement brings clarity. At this developing stage of a small business, over-complicated metrics would simply serve to muddle your efforts. Simple metrics can deliver significant value.
Consider measuring the following:
- Opt in rates
- Delivery rates
- Response rates
- Click through rates
- Questions asked
- Leads
- Orders
- Repeat orders
- Order value
For instance, if a campaign has a number of clicks, but no one is buying, there could be an issue with the landing page, the offer, the pricing, or the selling. If the response rate is low, the message should be reworked.
Why Periodic Promotional Spells Do Not Work
A typical pitfall of WhatsApp use for small businesses to communicate with their customers often is only to notify them of promotional offers. From a customer standpoint, this approach is highly rel transactional, as they could receive promotional messages at the outset and the notifications could then dry up for months.
A realistic communication schedule helps maintain a healthy balance between contact frequency and customer needs. Some businesses, like restaurants, may need to communicate more frequently than others, like furniture stores. It is important for the frequency balance to remain and not to overwhelm customers.
Once the balance is achieved and maintained, businesses help customers create a mental catalog of their offerings and services, making it more likely that customers will think of them the next time they are needed.
What is the Direction of WhatsApp Marketing?
WhatsApp marketing is becoming increasingly integrated with technology concerning customer service, sales, and payments, as well as automated, personalized communications. As more digital technology is adopted by small businesses, WhatsApp will become a small business customer acquisition and retention tool.
Marketing fundamentals need to be applied even with more technology. Sophisticated marketing techniques require useful communication to the target audience, and an ability to serve the customers.
The marketing fundamentals of small Indian businesses are especially well supported by WhatsApp. Local trust and relationships drive customers to small businesses. WhatsApp helps maintain the personal relationships at scale.
Closing Remarks: Converging a Communication Tool Into Your Marketing Growth Strategy
WhatsApp marketing offers a multitude of straightforward, actionable techniques for small businesses. Begin the process of building a permission-based customer list by providing value and rapid response to customer inquiries. After each campaign, measure the results of customer communications.
Building strong customer relationships rather than simply increasing message volume is the most effective marketing technique. WhatsApp, combined with local SEO, social media, email, and SMS marketing as needed, allows businesses to enhance their digital presence and receive more valuable customer interactions.
The major principle of WhatsApp marketing in India is knowing your customer and being useful to them while optimizing each interaction to your maximum preference.
FAQs
What does WhatsApp marketing for small businesses entail?
It involves using WhatsApp to sell, facilitate repeat purchases, generate leads, and offer support to customers.
Is WhatsApp marketing for small businesses in India worthwhile?
Absolutely WhatsApp marketing is worthwhile since customers are on WhatsApp and businesses are able to interact with the people they want to interest.
How can I use WhatsApp to market my small business?
Create a list of customers who opted in to receive messages, distribute offer promotions, useful messages, respond to inquiries, and include CTAs.
How frequently should a business use WhatsApp for marketing?
The frequency for marketing over WhatsApp is subjective. Always seek to provide value in your messages and limit the volume of direct promotions.
Does using WhatsApp marketing influence Local SEO?
It does, but only in a roundabout way. After a business is discovered via Local Search, WhatsApp marketing can help with customer engagement, inquiries, reviews, and conversions.
What are the effective WhatsApp marketing strategies in India?
Effective strategies in India include customer segmentation, messaging with permission, personalization, valuable content, timely follow-ups, and campaign tracking.
Is it possible for small businesses to use WhatsApp for lead generation?
Definitely small businesses can use WhatsApp for lead generation using website buttons, marketing, QR codes, and WhatsApp links along with supporting social media and paid promotions.
Is WhatsApp more effective than SMS for marketing?
The preference for marketing over SMS and WhatsApp to a large extent is a user choice. WhatsApp is more suited for marketing that requires a two way conversations and rich media, while SMS is suited for marketing that is short and transactional.
