Disclaimer: To start selling on WhatsApp is quick and easy, but making this sales channel profitable isn’t that simple. It requires integrity, discipline, and experience. Like anything valuable in life.
The structure of this blog post is the following:
A) The goal of this post.
B) Why you should sell on WhatsApp.
C) The framework used to sell on WhatsApp successfully.
D) The actions that you have to take.
The aim of this post is to help you get started
Unfortunately, I’m not a magician that will make your business skyrocket its sales in less than 24 hours. But this baby step will make you closer to your goal. And that already makes ME happy. I hope that it also makes you happy to know that you are on the right path.
However, why should you sell on WhatsApp anyways?
Because your business will be able to retain more customers than ever before. Not just any customer, but the most profitable customers. And their experience will be so good that those customers will do the best marketing that’s ever existed (Word-of-Mouth) for your company. And they will do it for free.
You will be able to increase your recurrent revenues by retaining high-quality customers and reinforcing your relationship with them by getting real-time feedback on their preferences. And it will all take place in the same channel we use every day, WhatsApp. Read more about the top 5 reasons why your business should start selling on WhatsApp here.
But you need a strategy to make WhatsApp profitable. You need a framework.
But not only that, you need to understand this framework and adapt it to your business needs. The framework I’d like to introduce to you is HubSpot’s Flywheel Marketing framework. From my experience, it almost guarantees success if used right.
It was introduced back in 2018 by one of the founding fathers of inbound marketing, Brian Halligan. This Flywheel has 3 stages: attract, engage, and delight. I’ll try to adapt Hubspot’s Flywheel to WhatsApp and explain it in my own words.
1. ATTRACT
If you want to attract people to your brand you need to have integrity.
Your motive shouldn’t only be to monetize the channel because if you do that you will SPAM customers and it will be counterproductive. You can’t use this channel as if it was a regular email. People are a lot more sensitive to the idea that your company has access to their private life. That’s why every message should be concise and value-adding at the same time.
You must also keep in mind that transparency and respect for the customer are synonyms for integrity. If customers want to stop receiving messages from you or change the frequency with which they receive them, make it easy for them.
Remember, integrity builds trust. Trust builds influence. Influence turns into results.
2. ENGAGE
Not only do you need to send concise and value-adding messages, but they also have to be convincing.
To persuade customers into buying your products you need to build a relationship. I’m not talking about anything fancy. People buy from their friends, not from strangers. Customers need to become familiar with your brand. Familiarity is built on repetition and interaction. That’s why performance marketing stopped working after some time. Because it only helps with repetition but potential customers can’t interact with Instagram ads.
Therefore, WhatsApp is key to interacting with your customers and helping them feel heard.
3. DELIGHT
In 2022, people don’t have time for bullshit. You need to captivate their attention in seconds.
You can’t just sell them anything you have in stock. You need to add value through meaningful and personalized recommendations designed to improve your customers’ life. You can do this by leveraging data like past purchases and profile comparisons. Trust me, you don’t need to be a great fashion retailer like Zara to do this. With 500-1000 customer profiles you can start building something useful. But that’s not enough…
Because if you really want to delight your customers you need to sell stories of the outcomes they will get from using your product. And they need to feel touched and identified with this story. That’s real personalization right there.
Once you've laid down these foundations, you need to take action
The only preset for selling on WhatsApp is creating a Facebook page and verifying your Facebook Business Manager account.
Then you can choose to test this channel manually or try to automate this process with software.
MANUAL TEST
1. Download WhatsApp for Business on your device.
2. Create a product catalog for your top 3 products.
3. Contact your most recent customers to check how the purchasing process was and if you can help them with anything. Try upselling a product to them. Improvise it. Talk to them as if you were talking to a friend.
4. Install a widget on your webpage with a killer value proposition and call-to-action to attract traffic to your WhatsApp DMs. If a customer starts a conversation with you this will mean that they are giving implicit consent to your company to reply to them on WhatsApp.
5. Ask them if they want you to send them exclusive info and sales through WhatsApp (Explicit consent).
The pro of this manual test is that’s easy to do but the con is that it’s not scalable at all. It’s very labor intensive.
WHATSAPP MARKETING AUTOMATION
1. Get a virtual phone number to talk to your customers.
2. Use this phone number to apply to WhatsApp’s API through one of WhatsApp’s certified partners. Once this phone # is approved you will never be able to use it again for regular WhatsApp convos. That’s why you need a virtual phone number in the first place.
3. Use chatbot-building software to create a quick use case. For example promotions, shopping cart abandonment, or upselling a product.
4. Install a widget on your webpage with a killer value proposition and call-to-action to attract traffic to your WhatsApp DMs.
5. In the checkout process add a box with a killer value proposition for them to give your company explicit consent to send them exclusive info and sales through WhatsApp.
The pros of this option are that this is scalable and efficient. The cons are that, like every sales channel, needs some maintenance, hence a plan, and some expertise to make it as profitable as possible.
if you want me to go further in-depth to explain what Softwares would I use and why, let me know!
And if you need help, I can guide you through this process for free!
You can schedule a call with me in the next coming days, send me a WhatsApp Message (click the WhatsApp icon below in the footer section), or shoot me an email (contact info in the footer section).
I will be more than HAPPY to help!
Take care,
Alberto Lazarov