WhatsApp Marketing: Grow Your Local Business Presence [2024]

As we all know, WhatsApp is currently the go-to messaging app for people across the globe.

Over the years, it has amassed over 2 billion active users and thus making it one of the most popular messaging apps used worldwide.

Businesses irrespective of their size and sector have realized its potential as a marketing and communication tool to reach out their customers.

In this blog post, we will discuss why use WhatsApp as your marketing channel, how to grow your WhatsApp audience, and the how to use it to grow your local business presence.  

Why Use WhatsApp for Your Marketing Efforts?

Once started as simple messaging app, WhatsApp is now loaded with features that made it more of a ‘social media platform’ (after it got acquired by Meta in 2014).

For example, Meta has integrated payment feature into WhatsApp (especially in India) that enabled users to transfer money to their peers and businesses as well.

According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2022 Global Overview report, 15.7% percent of users (aged 16 – 64) rank WhatsApp as their most favourite social media platform outranking Facebook and Instagram.

As it is free to use, businesses started using it as a primary communication channel to interact with their customers directly.

When you compare WhatsApp’s average open rate with that of email and SMS, it is staggering 98%!

When you use it properly, you have higher chances of sales conversions at a low marketing cost.

This all makes WhatsApp a great marketing platform if you are looking to establish a strong local business presence.

This is applicable to both small businesses (like a restaurant, beauty salon, gym, grocery store, etc) and multinational enterprises (like a fast-food chain, retail chain, bank, shopping mall, etc) that want to build their presence in a local community.

WhatsApp Marketing Tips to Grow Your Local Business Presence

You can consider WhatsApp as a digital marketing channel to build brand awareness for your local business.

For this purpose, you don’t need the usual WhatsApp app that is used for personal messaging.

Instead, Meta has already rolled out a separate app for business owners called WhatsApp Business and you can download it from Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

Let’s deep dive into how to grow your WhatsApp audience and use it build your local business presence.

1. Create Your Business Profile

First, you need to create an awesome business profile on your WhatsApp Business app.

Once you downloaded and installed the app on your mobile device, follow the instructions to set up your business profile.

Make sure that you are setting up your WhatsApp Business account using your office mobile number.

Add all the necessary information such as business name, logo, business category, office address, email address, and your business website URL.

As an example, here’s the WhatsApp Business profile of Indian automobile company Tata Motors.

You can add working hours (depending on your business category), showcase your products/services, and a short description about what your business.

2. Promote Your WhatsApp Business Number

The next step after creating your business profile is to promote your WhatsApp number on your business website (as a contact info) and social media pages.

If you have business email, you can add it in your email signature as well.

Meta has introduced the option of integrating WhatsApp Business on Facebook and Instagram pages.

You can add your WhatsApp number in your Facebook/Instagram profile page.

You can also leverage Facebook Ads to generate considerable clicks to your WhatsApp number.

3. Build Your Contact Database

The next step in your WhatsApp marketing campaign is to build your contact database.

You can start by adding your existing customers and potential customers.

You can find the latter who make enquiries via website contact form signups, emails, social media messages, and via WhatsApp.

Make sure to update your database yearly or quarterly so that you can get rid of inactive numbers from your list.

4. Push Out Your Latest Updates as WhatsApp Statuses

Just like Instagram/Snapchat Stories, you can leverage (24-hour only) WhatsApp statuses to push out your latest updates.

Your updates can be:

• new/product launch, festival offers, discount sale announcements etc.
• your participation or sponsoring upcoming local events.
• your team meetup photos, behind-the-scenes photos, etc.
• customer testimonials as write ups or 15 ~ 30 sec videos.
• share your website urls such as product/service information pages, new blogs, referral program links, contact form link, etc.
• links to your recent social media posts.
• personalized messages for your loyal customers, as well.

You can even reuse your highly engaging social media posts to create WhatsApp status updates.

5. Integrate WhatsApp as a Chat Widget for Your Website

Another Whatsapp marketing tactic you can consider is the integration of WhatsApp on your website.

Integrate WhatsApp Business on your website as a chat so that it helps your visitors to make enquiries, information requests, or connect directly with a customer-support or sales representative.

This way, you can connect with your target audience quickly and directly, even after they exit your website.

Here’s a screenshot below how WhatsApp chat widget appears on Wati.io website.

You can use third-party tools like AiSensy, Callbell, Userlike, or Wati to integrate WhatsApp Business as a chat widget or link-to-chat in your website.

6. Reach Out to Your Loyal Customers

Use WhatsApp to directly reach out to few of your loyal/existing customers to bring more referrals to your business.

Also, you can request them to mention your product/service/business on their respective social media channels.

That’s because some of your loyal customers might have considerable number of social media followers. In other words, they might be nano-influencers in their own right.

You can do all of this in return for discount coupons, gift card vouchers, or freebies.

You can also request them for testimonials/feedbacks (preferably as a video) about their purchase experience with your business.

Use these videos as your WhatsApp status and share them on your social media pages.

7. Use Broadcast Lists to Push Out Messages in Bulk

You can use broadcast lists to push out promotional messages in bulk to your target audience.

In a broadcast list, a group of recipients (your existing customers) gathered together.

Also, the recipients in a list cannot see each other and receive your messages separately, which makes them similar to segments in your email lists.

For instance, you can use a broadcast list catered to your existing/loyal customers and implement the tactics mentioned in tip #6.

8. Leverage WhatsApp Groups

One of the best tactics in WhatsApp marketing is leveraging groups.

That’s because it helps in growing and nurturing your target audience. Thereby, you can build a strong community around your business.

Currently, WhatsApp allows an admin to add 1024 members in a group. You can create one group or multiple groups based on your requirements.

For example, you can create a group exclusive for your existing (or loyal) customers. Or, create a group for general audience who is interested in your business.

In your group, you can allow members to interact with each other and have discussions around your business or your industry.

Also, you can share survey forms, coupon codes, news articles (about you or your industry), product/service landing pages, and blogs from your website.

The latter part helps in increasing your brand awareness via SEO as well.

This way you can make your group highly engaging and not a place to push out your own messages only.

Make sure that you get full consent from your customers before adding them in your groups.

If you are already well known as a personal brand in entrepreneurial space, you can leverage that position to invite people to your business’s WhatsApp group.

9. As a Customer Support Service Tool

Being a direct messaging platform, you can use WhatsApp as your primary tool for providing customer support service.

Try to respond to all customer queries you get on your WhatsApp and keep in touch with them in the same platform, till their respective issues are resolved.

This helps in building trust and your audience will start considering you as a reliable brand among your competitors.

Now comes the question of replying customer queries when you away from your phone, tired of answering same questions, or you are too busy with other things.

WhatsApp Business app have 3 customizable messaging tools to deal with above situations.

• Use away messages so that your customers will receive an automated yet customizable message when you are busy or away from phone.
• Use quick replies to create shortcuts for the messages you send to your customers most frequently.
• Use greeting messages to start a conversation with your customers when they first message you.

You can also check out this YouTube tutorial on leveraging these 3 messaging tools on your WhatsApp Business app.

Do you know that you can use Twitter as a customer support tool as well as a social media channel to amplify your brand reach? Check out this article to know more.

10. Automate Your Messaging Tasks with AI Bots

It will be overwhelming when the WhatsApp customer base you manage manually becomes larger and larger.

So, it’s better to automate (simple and repetitive) messaging tasks such as responding to common customer queries, push out promotional messages, and generating sales leads.

For example, India-based wealth management platform Upstox uses WhatsApp bot to handle queries from their customers.

There are low-code, chatbot builder platforms such as Wati, SendPulse, Landbot, gupshup, and haptik that help in creating customized bots for your WhatsApp Business account.

Each platform has an easy-to-use dashboard where you can monitor the performance of your customized WhatsApp bots, provide live chat support to your customers, manage/nurture your leads, etc.

Final Thoughts

Hope the above-mentioned WhatsApp marketing tips help you in building a local business presence and generate more sales opportunities.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.