WhatsApp is a major customer engagement platform with over 25% of the world's population in its customer base. In this rapidly growing space, it is essential to have a plan for how you want to interact with your customers on WhatsApp - With a credible plan, you can rise successfully above the noise.
One way to cut through and ensure that you are engaging your customers in a meaningful way is to create a customer journey funnel using WhatsApp. By mapping out the customer journey and deliberately planning your engagement strategy at each stage, you can ensure that you are providing value to your customers at every touchpoint.
A customer journey funnel is an important tool that can be used to map out customer and prospect interactions and create a plan for how you want to engage with them. The customer journey funnel provides a framework for thinking about interactions and how they can be used to turn prospects into paying customers.
There are three main stages to the customer journey funnel - the awareness stage, where customers are made aware of your product or service; the consideration stage, where customers show some level of desire for your product or service; and the decision stage, where customers make the decision to purchase from you.
Let's take a look at how you can use the customer journey map to create a WhatsApp sales funnel.
In the awareness stage, customers are made aware of your product or service. This is typically done through marketing and advertising. It is important to make sure that your marketing and advertising materials are well-targeted so that they reach the right customer base.
At this stage, you want to make sure that your customer understands what your product or service is and how it can benefit them. You also want to pique their interest so that they are more likely to engage with you.
There are a few ways that you can do this on WhatsApp. One way is to create a WhatsApp group for your product or service. You can use this group to send out information about your product or service, as well as special offers and discounts.
Another way to generate customer interest in the awareness stage is to use a bulk WhatsApp or SMS service to send out messages about your product or service. You can use an initiator message to pique customer interest and include a WhatsApp link for the prospect to respond to if they have more questions.
You could also send out a short quiz or a fun questionnaire that would engage customers and let them discover your product.
You can drive traffic to your WhatsApp for Business platform using a variety of methods, including online ads, social media posts, email marketing, and links from your website. Once you have that traffic, it's important to engage with customers and get them interested in your product or service.
Next is the consideration stage, where the customer or prospect has shown interest in your product or service. They have decided that they want this type of product and are exploring more and are carrying out research about the features, variations, and suppliers.
At this stage in the funnel, your business can use some of the features of the Whatsapp API to provide more details about products the prospect has already shown interest in. This can be done by sending links, customer reviews, or product videos alongside standard text messages.
At this stage, be sure to respond to customer questions and concerns promptly, ideally through a live agent. This will show that you are responsive to customer needs and wants, and it will help to build trust. Research shows that 75% of customers value a company that is responsive to customer questions and concerns.
Utilizing Chatbots in the customer engagement stage can also be very helpful. Chatbots can automate customer interactions and free up your time to focus on other tasks. They can also help to scale your customer engagement so that you can reach more customers with less effort and can hand over to an agent if the customer or prospect needs more detailed support.
Finally, we reach the decision stage, where customers make a decision to purchase your product or service. This is typically done through a sales process. Your main priority here is to ensure that the process of purchasing your product or service is as smooth as possible. If there are any obstacles in the way of your customers making a purchase, you'll need to remove them.
Using the WhatsApp API with a chatbot will allow you to send a payment link for your product or service directly to the customer when the timing is just right, making it easy for customers to purchase from you.
Once the customer has made a purchase, it's important to follow up and ensure they are satisfied with their purchase. This can be done through customer surveys, follow-ups, or reviews which can all be sent via WhatsApp, perhaps by adding review request links to transaction receipts after purchase or delivery, or by reaching out with a personalized follow-up shortly after purchase.
To ensure repeat customers, it's also important to focus on customer retention. This can be done through loyalty programs, discounts, and other customer service initiatives that a WhatsApp API chatbot can help with.
WhatsApp for customer engagement can be a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. By utilizing customer engagement in the customer journey, you can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and drive sales.
If you're not already using WhatsApp for customer engagement, now is the time to start. Implementing a customer engagement strategy will help you to better understand your customers, build customer relationships, and drive sales.