Despite the diversity and success of marketing strategies across platforms such as (Facebook and Instagram) in e-commerce, WhatsApp has also proven its effective importance when it is included among the platforms used in marketing and promoting brands online.

So, we have prepared this article to be the comprehensive guide that online merchants and business owners need when they want to know how to use WhatsApp in e-commerce professionally.

But how you can use this WhatsApp Business application effectively to grow your online store and make a lot of money, this is what we will learn in detail below.

Using the WhatsApp Business application is a golden opportunity to improve the marketing strategy of your e-commerce business, and there are three positive results that consider the most important results that you can reach with the help of WhatsApp, the results are:

Strong relationships with clients:

Over 55% of all digital shoppers feel more connected to a brand if they use their favorite messaging apps.

And you can achieve this through the WhatsApp application, as it helps you build long and deep relationships with your customers and maintain this positive communication for a long time.

For example, you can send welcome messages or special offers and discounts for a birthday or any customer event in order to keep customers engaged with your brand.

More sales:

WhatsApp marketing strategies work professionally in order to increase your sales. Through some simple tricks of talking with customers and communicating with them intimately, you will succeed in gaining their trust more and thus will reflect on the sales rates and you will notice how much more purchases will be made in the future when using WhatsApp to communicate with your customers.

Low cost of marketing:

WhatsApp is a free marketing channel for brands, especially emerging and novices. It is an amazing opportunity that can be used to reach the largest possible number of customers at the beginning.

In general, WhatsApp marketing does not require a high cost, as there are no marketing expenses in exchange for its many marketing advantages such as building deep and strong relationships with your customers, and it helping you to maintain existing customers for as long as possible.

How to develop a WhatsApp marketing strategy for your store?

1. Set your goals:

Defining marketing goals is one of the most important and first steps when developing any marketing strategy. This step helps you focus your attention on the most effective tasks that you have to do in order to reach the specified goal.

2. Define key performance indicators:

Defining key performance indicators and metrics is one of the most important steps that will help you effectively to understand if you have achieved the goals that you have set or not. These indicators will also help you identify the strengths in your trade and work to improve them, find weaknesses and work to address them and turn them into strengths.

3. Define your target audience:

Knowing your target audience and their characteristics in detail is the basis for the success of all your marketing efforts, because if you target the customer who is already interested in your brand’s products or services, you will definitely ensure that he interacts with you and earns from it.

You can define your audience by answering some questions such as:

1. Why do people buy this product?
2. What is the audience looking for in your product?
3. What value do they want to get from it?
4. What distinguishes your product from competitors' product?

 

4. Get the WhatsApp Business App:

WhatsApp launched a standalone business app to ensure more professional and efficient tasks for merchants and business owners. The app includes several additional features that are different from the normal messaging app, and these features are:

-  A business profile that includes your business data such as (address, nature of business, e-mail address, online store link, catalog of your products)

-  Possibility to classify your customers' conversations according to the stage of the sales funnel.

-  Activate the chatbot for a quick and immediate response to your customers.

-  Provide statistics and insights to improve the performance of using the WhatsApp Business application in e-commerce.

“WhatsApp Business” gives you capabilities such as:

1. Customizing the name of the project and its details.
2. Setting the working times.
3. Using the initial and self-response feature and linking it with customer service and automatic response systems.

 

5. Create a personality for your brand:

Surely, you will not talk through WhatsApp messages with your customers about your opinions, personal thought and by your language, but you must create a personality for your brand that has a set of characteristics, attitudes and values. These characteristics are reflected in the language of communication between you and your customers.

This will benefit your customers in creating an impression of your brand and drawing a personal image of it, which will enhance the relationship between them and you, and this will have better results on your business.

• 5 Ideas to Use WhatsApp Business Effectively:

Now, after everything is set up on the application, and you know how to take advantage of WhatsApp in your e-commerce by linking your store via the VertexCart platform with the WhatsApp Business application, it is time to learn how to effectively benefit from the application in more than one way.

You can achieve a lot of business goals using WhatsApp Business, such as providing professional support to your customers, and sending them the latest updates in a timely manner to ensure their positive interaction with it, and here is what you can do below in detail:

1. Provide professional support:

One of the most important factors for the success of your e-commerce, is to track your customers and provide the necessary professional support to them which will help you to be succeed by providing individual support to your customers, i.e. talking to a every customer personally, and this will be more suitable for start-ups and small companies.

So, first, name the private conversations between you and your clients in order to know your clients' personal names later as possible when chatting.

By this way you will still be able to know who`s the person you are talking to, making the relationship between you and your customers more intimate and gaining their loyalty and trust towards your brand faster.

The application allows you to send audio clips, images and other attachments to your customers and vice versa, which helps your customers to explain their problems more clearly and to understand and solve them easily.

Activate a (Chatbot) or automated chat on your WhatsApp business application to deal with common and frequently asked questions in a professionally. The (Chatbot) can also send welcome messages to customers which will gain their trust and love quickly because the quick response is appreciated.

2. Display your products in a catalog:

The WhatsApp Business application allows all e-commerce workers to display their products in their own catalog, as there is a special section in the business profile that can display a catalog of products or services that includes a brief description of them such as prices.

You can enjoy several features when using the WhatsApp Catalog Tool, such as:

-  You can display up to 500 products or services in the catalog.

-  Each product or service can include a short description about it such as price, size, and a link to the product`s page on the store.

-  It can upload an image for each product.

-  Easily share a link to specific products from the catalog through your customers' conversations.

3. Send your store's latest updates:

WhatsApp Business can help you to send the latest and timely updates related to your business which ensuring positive interaction from your customers.

These updates may be specific to issue a new product or service. It would always be a good idea to let your existing and potential customers to know that at first class before announcing it to the entire online audience.

4. Publish WhatsApp cases to motivate customers:

WhatsApp Status provides a simple way to interact with your customers, as you can post short promotional videos for your products or promote temporary offers and discounts on your online store. Since this status will disappear after 24 hours, this will be a great way to create a sense of como or fear from missing the offers and get your customers interested in the products.

You can also take advantage of WhatsApp Status to post the opinions of previous customers to gain the trust of potential and new customers and motivate them to make a purchase from you at some point.

5. Announcing promotions and discounts:

Customers consider the WhatsApp messages is simpler and more intimate tool, which enhances their sense of belonging to your brand, and therefore you will notice a high demand for interaction with your services and offers, and thus achieve a lot of sales.

Conclusion:

WhatsApp marketing allows you to keep in touch with your customers. More than half of WhatsApp users check the app every day, so you can know that they will get your offers, as the open rate of text messages is 98%.

However, there are more reasons to use WhatsApp in your marketing strategy, as it helps you reach a huge audience, build strong relationships with your customers, and ultimately increase sales.