Did you know that since 2015, Adidas has been using WhatsApp for answering product-related questions and promoting new products? Also, to gain credibility and awareness from younger audiences globally, Absolut ran a WhatsApp Marketing campaign, which was so successful that even people who did not engage were aware of it!

Closer to home, Singapore Airlines (SIA) is maximizing WhatsApp Business API, which allows their customers to receive the timely updated information. In Malaysia, Celcom became one of the first companies to use WhatsApp for customer service.

WhatsApp Marketing is increasingly becoming an integral and mainstream aspect of marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes across Southeast Asia and beyond. If you are a small/medium business based anywhere in the region or the world for that matter, it is high time you consider adding WhatsApp Business to your marketing stack.

To help you get started, we have come up with this comprehensive guide on WhatsApp Marketing, covering the fundamentals and benefits of this marketing tool, how to use it and more.

An increasingly popular form of chat marketing, WhatsApp Marketing simply implies promoting a brand through WhatsApp. A marketing strategy that entails leveraging the WhatsApp Business API to reach out to and engage existing customers as well as target new users, is called WhatsApp Marketing.

One of the main reasons behind the increasing popularity of WhatsApp Marketing is the simple fact that this platform, which is statistically the most popular messaging platform in Singapore, Malaysia and around the world, not only enables brands to communicate with consumers one-on-one in real-time but can also help businesses amplify consumer experiences with the help of automation and AI. WhatsApp has left behind its popular counterparts like Messenger, WeChat, Telegram and Snapchat globally.

Image: WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app in 2022

Furthermore, despite the easy and efficient communication opportunities, the platform is based on permission marketing, hence, the customer chooses to engage with the brand and thus, is more likely to engage.

Studies have found that WhatsApp still dominates in Singapore, with around 98 percent of Singaporeans utilising it as their main messaging service. Plus, did you know that Malaysia is the biggest user of WhatsApp in the whole world? A recent study found that there are currently more than 25 million active monthly users of WhatsApp in Malaysia. As of January 2022, WhatsApp sees the highest number of users with a penetration rate of 93.2 percent in Malaysia.

Image: In Malaysia, WhatsApp is the most popular social media platform

Small businesses can discover more customers by meeting them where they already are. As such, companies, especially startups and SMEs that do not always have big marketing budgets cannot miss out on this incredible platform for business growth and scalability. WhatsApp Business makes interacting with customers easy by providing tools to automate, sort and quickly respond to messages.

In a nutshell, WhatsApp Marketing is fast, secure, cost-effective, has a wide demographic reach, uses conversations to drive personalized experiences that accelerate the buyer journey, helps gain consumer insights and facilitates automation and FAQ. Hence, the question should not be “Why WhatsApp Marketing”, it should rather be “why not”.

If you are not marketing on WhatsApp, you are not marketing at all. The open rate for WhatsApp is 98 percent, which means out of 100 messages, 98 are being read, whereas, based on a recent Mailchimp study, the open rate for emails is just 21.33 percent.

With rich messaging experiences, WhatsApp supports engaging communications and keeps prospects and customers on the path to purchase, building long-lasting customer relationships.Curious to learn about some quick and savvy WhatsApp Marketing stats every marketer should know? Read our previous article here.Now that you understand the scope of WhatsApp Marketing, let us explore what makes a winning WhatsApp Marketing strategy. First things first, there is nothing out of bounds when it comes to WhatsApp.

For example, who would think that an age-old publication known for long-form content could succeed on this instant-messaging app, right? Blurring boundaries between traditional and modern, in late 2019, the Financial Times, a subscriber-only publication, posted two free daily articles on its WhatsApp Group. Reports suggest that by sharing content on WhatsApp, they were able to gain more conversions than other social platforms, more brand awareness, and insight into what topics are important to their potential subscribers.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what kind of business you are running- big, small, old, or new- as long as you have a specific goal in mind and you know your target audience, WhatsApp Marketing can help you realize those goals. However, it is important to keep a few things in mind to build a winning WhatsApp Marketing Strategy. Here’s a quick checklist:

What to do?How to do it?Define your goalsTo define your goals, analyze the existing marketing funnel. Identify weak spots and set clear, realistic goals accordingly.Identify your target audienceWho is this campaign meant for? Existing customers or potential new ones?Build a brand personaWith this step, pinpoint your target audience more clearly. Know who they are- what’s their age, where do they live, what do they do, why would they like your product, how would they engage, what do they respond to?Get WhatsApp Business APICreate a dedicated Business Account and enjoy WhatsApp’s amazing marketing features like insights, automation and so on. Learn more about WhatsApp Business API here.Create a contact listCurate a list of consenting contacts who are willing to receive updates from you. Remember to segment your audience to send the most relevant campaigns and deliver personalized experiences. Develop your communicationReinforce your messages with multimedia files, such as videos, animations, or pictures. Emojis are also appropriate in WhatsApp marketing. If you want to play around with them, choose smiley faces or people rather than business-themed objects.Engage existing and/or potential audiences With automation by employing a chatbot, so you can engage customers round-the-clock. Integrate a reliable chatbot and feed it with frequently asked questions and answers to them and build up a knowledge base over time. Such an approach may help you cut customer support costs by 30%.Get customer feedback and improve accordinglyIdentify unhappy customers and work towards improving their experience. Try to understand what worked and why. Also, analyze what didn’t work and what could’ve been done differently. Leverage these learnings in your next campaign.

According to Statista, in 2021, the number of global consumers and companies using WhatsApp Business surpassed 1.2 billion users. APAC was among the top regions estimated to have the highest number of users on WhatsApp Business with approximately 779 million WhatsApp regular users and company accounts estimated to have interacted on WhatsApp Business last year alone.

So, if you are looking to win the race or at least stay ahead in the game, you cannot afford to miss out on WhatsApp Marketing. With a well-thought-out strategy, the world is yours to take but the next step would be knowing how to promote your business on WhatsApp. Let’s explore that.WhatsApp message templates allow businesses to use pre-created and pre-approved templates to send out structured messages to existing and new customers who have opted in to receive notifications.

Image: Automated messages are great for broadcasting promos for sales

These messages are a great way of promoting your business on WhatsApp as you can send out a wide range of information, including appointment reminders, delivery updates, issue resolution or payment notifications.

You can use this feature to create automated welcome or greeting messages to engage with new customers. You can also use this tool to create and set away messages to let customers know when you’ll be back, as well as for building quick replies to answer frequently asked questions.

These are types of advertisements where users are able to connect with your business by simply clicking on a WhatsApp call-to-action button. Creating these ads is quite simple and these are great tools for promoting a business on WhatsApp.

One great example of a brand leveraging Click-to-WhatsApp ads for generating sales is the Malaysian real estate company EcoWorld. The property developer found that click-to-WhatsApp ads helped them reach out to more prospective homebuyers and delivered high-quality leads compared to its business-as-usual strategy, generating a 6.5X return on ad spend.

In the digital era, being able to communicate with anyone, anywhere at any time is probably one of the biggest boons for businesses. However, responsible marketing is important to help you stand out from the noise and also set a precedent that you respect your client’s privacy.

Image: WhatsApp’s permission marketing model ensures better engagement

As such, consent is key for WhatsApp Marketing and this is where an opt-in can help. An opt-in is when your customers agree to receive messages over WhatsApp from your business by providing you with their mobile phone number.

While some businesses might think of this policy as a hurdle but actually, it is a boon in disguise because it results in helping create access to a segmented and targeted audience ensuring that the company gets highly interested leads and more conversions.

By leveraging the broadcast list feature, you can send messages to a list of selected contacts at once. You can create saved lists of message recipients that you can repeatedly send broadcast messages to without having to select them each time. Creating broadcast lists on WhatsApp is very easy.

Image: Create broadcast lists in three simple steps

Leveraging the broadcast feature, marketers can make up to a 256-member group including the most valuable clients and use this group to send over exclusive offers and early-bird promo codes to celebrate their loyalty and keep them engaged. The broadcast feature also allows you to send video announcements to multiple contacts at once.

Image: WhatsApp stories are a great way to engage users

Through WhatsApp stories, you can share text and multimedia files with all your contacts and receive their feedback. The feature also allows you to auto-share stories on Facebook. The status expires in 24 hours.

You can use WhatsApp statuses to share upcoming promotions, special offers, product launches, feature updates, promo codes, and so on. For example, you can set up a one-day flash sale for WhatsApp users only. However, do note that this feature is only available in WhatsApp Business App, not with WhatsApp Business API. For brands utilising WhatsApp Business—including the likes of Netflix, Hellman's, and Absolut—the Stories feature has proven to be incredibly effective at engaging with customers.

People love contests and research backs this theory. Based on a study done by HubSpot, 33 percent of contest participants say that they are open to receiving more information about the brand. While another study suggests that on average, 45.76 percent of contest participants share the promotion without a prompt while 99.31 percent of participants do so if the contest or promotion awards them for it.

WhatsApp is a great platform for running brand-related contests and campaigns. The key to a successful campaign is to encourage your audience to engage with you directly on WhatsApp. Furthermore, in 2019, WhatsApp launched product catalogues that allow you to showcase up to 500 items. Customers are able to easily browse through it and share links to some products or ask questions about them.

WhatsApp Automation is the use of the WhatsApp Business App or WhatsApp Business API to automate conversations with customers. WhatsApp automated messages are pre-set replies to messages received from new or existing customers on WhatsApp. Automation in WhatsApp is a cost-effective marketing tool that helps brands engage with customers round-the-clock and respond to queries in real-time.

There are multiple benefits of automation in WhatsApp marketing. It helps businesses thrive in today’s cutthroat competition where instant responses are increasingly becoming the standard as automation reduces response time dramatically. Furthermore, automated chatbots help businesses guide customers down the sales funnel and improve conversion rates.

From automated welcome messages to timely reminders and order updates to FAQs- automation helps you take your WhatsApp Marketing to another level. Plus, you are able to free up the team’s time so they can focus on resolving more complex and important tasks.

Last but not least, chatbot-driven WhatsApp contests and campaigns are also extremely popular and efficient. These automated contests are easy to run with everything being handled by AI and can be of any kind- from product launches to opt-ins through landing pages and one-chat contests to “caption this” games.

WhatsApp Business API is indeed a boon for businesses, but in a crowded ecosystem like Southeast Asia where unicorns and decacorns are fighting for customers’ attention day in and day out, how can you as a small business in Singapore or Malaysia stand out? This is where AiChat comes in to help you take things further by integrating your WhatsApp Marketing with an AI-powered chatbot.

Image: Mydin WhatsApp Business Chatbot, powered by AiChat

With AiChat, your WhatsApp Marketing will be on point and ahead of the competition. Here’s a quick list to show you how:

• Offer automated round-the-clock customer service to your user base.

• Leverage our AI-assisted live chat to reduce the cost of human resources.

• With our Drag-and-Drop Bot Builder, bot building is easy and quick.

• Get access to a shared team inbox for efficient communication.

• Earn more leads with smart routing to agents.

• Re-engage, cross-sell and upsell with broadcast messages and automated follow-up sequences.

• Offer features like appointment booking for a better customer experience.

• Utilize our survey builder and chat analytics to get deeper insights and a 360-view of your customers.

AiChat’s WhatsApp Business API is one of the best solutions for SMEs and enterprises in Southeast Asia. We can help you create a seamless customer experience and grow your business exponentially.

Our conversational commerce solutions are built to value real business goals and project a brand experience that will help you win new customers while retaining existing ones. Today, we are trusted by many Fortune 2000 brands across Asia, and you can trust our solutions to give you the power to connect with customers through business messaging.