Can the Future of Digital Marketing go through Whatsapp?
Today, instant messaging apps are at the heart of citizens' lives. Some of them, such as Whatsapp, have surpassed social networks in number of users.
Messenger and Skype are already widely used in marketing actions and it is common to find these applications in the brands' digital strategies.
But nowadays no instant messaging platform is more common than WhatsApp, which has more than 1.3 billion users around the world. Whatsapp users can talk in writing, make calls, swap files and photos, send audio messages, and more. One of the great attractions of this app is group conversations.
Why should you use Whatsapp in your brand's digital strategy?
First, you should use whatsapp simply because the number of people who use it daily is very high. Every day, more than 50 billion messages are exchanged on the platform and 98% of the messages are opened and read, and 90% are read a few seconds after they are sent.
How can I use Whatsapp for Marketing?
There are ads in Whatsapp, but there are no professional accounts in the app, such as Instagram and Facebook. Whatsapp is a peer-to-peer communication platform, but still brands can take advantage of the app's potential for its digital marketing.
Some examples of good marketing campaigns are those of Absolut Vodka and Hellmann's Brazil. The Absolut Vodka brand launched a limited edition bottle in Argentina with a WhatsApp campaign where they created a persona named Sven, which would reward the most creative user with a ticket to a party hosted by Absolut. More than 1000 people sent images, videos and audios in an attempt to gain access to the party. In the end, a community was built around the brand.
Another great idea was that of Hellmann's Brazil, who decided to talk to their fans and show them new uses of their product. The brand invited visitors to its site to leave their mobile phone number along with a photograph of the ingredients they had available in the refrigerator. Hellmann's hired kitchen chefs who, through whatsapp, gave cooking lessons online with videos and pictures to people who left their contact.
More than 13,000 participants interacted with the chefs. The campaign was so successful that it was replicated in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
Supermarket chains such as Continent in Portugal already use whatsapp for real-time customer support.
In short, Whatsapp is more in vogue than ever. It's up to companies to be creative and use this instant messaging platform to their advantage
