WhatsApp is an untapped opportunity for every business!
Whether you are a bakery,
a small business owner,
an e-commerce store,
or a real estate developer!
Technology is evolving.
So is Facebook… with WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is slowly becoming a better communication channel than Facebook but with some challenges.
This post will give you a brief background on how marketing with Facebook is evolving and why I believe WhatsApp can and will deliver you more profits!
So, let’s go for a walk down memory lane (for a bit).
Do you remember the newspaper and the magazine?
Do you remember the mailings (A.K.A. snail mail)?
Before Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp – these platforms and mediums dominated how businesses marketed to potential clients.
The growing effectiveness of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp to reach and target individuals continues to slowly close the coffin on “print-material”).
I’ll be covering in this post why advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp:
- is much more effective
- easier (and way simpler today)
- delivers more explosive profits and
- With much lower ad costs (if you know what you’re doing)
What is Advertising? (Serious Question – I’m not joking)
With online businesses starting on a whim – because it’s so cheap and easy to do – we tend to jump into just doing thing without ever understanding why.
What most people need to ask themselves – first – is why are they advertising and what are they trying to achieve in their marketing funnel.
And depending on your funnel’s needs and business model, your reason will vary (more on this below…).
There are truthfully only two ways to grow your business.
One – organically, i.e., Google searches (also sharing) or two – via paid traffic.
And what advertisers did before the advent and meteoric rise of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp was buy traffic by posting ads on magazines, writing advertorials, and placing ads in Newspapers.
Essentially, you’re planting a sign in front of traffic telling people to “read-me” and get in touch with me.
Direct mail?
Same idea, except direct mail is considered the cold advertising medium.
You’re basically using demographic info via ZIP codes to say, these are the people based on demographic information that will most likely find the direct mail interesting and therefore likely to engage and convert.
Just like traditional marketing evolved.
So has Facebook marketing.
And now WhatsApp is becoming a bigger and bigger marketing opportunity for all businesses!
Here is why!
#1 Reason – WhatsApp Massive Growth
My #1 reason is that WhatsApp has achieved massive growth.
They just reached 2 Billion users worldwide!
That is a massive amount of users base you can reach.
And it’s the most dominant messaging app and has a presence in +180 countries.
WhatsApp is not only downloaded but used every day by most users.
According to a study by eMarketer, 90% of smartphone users in India, Brazil and Argentina will use WhatsApp this year!
Brazil also has a lot of users — 120 million. For a country with 210 million people, this is impressive.
The countries with the highest market penetration are Netherlands (85%), followed by Spain (83.1%), and Italy (83%).
So the potential market for using WhatsApp advertising for your business and getting amazing results is huge!
WhatsApp growth for small and medium size businesses is just getting started and does not look like it will stop anytime soon.
#2 Reason – Facebook is One Massive, Collating Data Machine (which is what you want)
It all comes to data.
And what Facebook (WhatsApp included) is, for your purposes, and many believe what it really is – is an algorithm machine – based on data and variables – all about you, me, and how we’re all interconnected.
It’s a money making machine that is crazy good in getting you results with your campaigns!
What I like?
What you like?
And even how you behave…
based on your purchase data gets bought up by Facebook and sold to advertisers like you.
Just look at how Facebook predicts my profile from +5,000 recorded through Data Selfie:
The biggest and most important data – 2.50 billion monthly active users (MUA).
Facebook considers an active user as anyone “who has interacted with their site by liking, sharing, commenting, messaging, or clicking through another link.”
To put this number into perspective for you, there are at this same time, approximately, 7.50 billion people – every man, women, and child on this planet – and Facebook has 1/3rd of the world’s population “actively” engaged on its site, at least once per month.
Meaning, if you wanted to profit from paid traffic, the quality of the data is there – you just need to know how to mine it.
What’s in it for me (you might ask yourself)?
Understand Facebook is not really a social network for our purposes, but really one giant powerful, algorithm marketing machine (a business).
It’s a finely tuned, data machine with access to an ENTIRE one third of the world’s population – that’s growing daily.
And the data is connected to WhatsApp!
As Zuckerberg announced last year:
The plan to link Facebook-owned messaging systems and make them inter-operable was confirmed Wednesday by the social network as a way to offer more secure, encrypted messages on all platforms.
Let’s add more astonishing perspective tid-bits for you.
If you wanted to, back in the hay-day, advertise on the largest newspaper publication in the state of California with a population, in the year 2000, with just shy of 34 million people, the process would be both time consuming and very SLOW by comparison to today’s standards.
You’d create the ad, post the ad, track the ad’s conversion, continually test (again another long process), and maybe months later you‘ll own a winning ad.
Whew!
Now that was long!
Today, with Facebook, for many marketers, the process of getting an ad up and running is so fast that marketers strategize with an emphasis on speed and devote most efforts on optimizing via testing to get to a highly-converting, winning ad.
Given that 1/3d of the world’s population is currently on Facebook & WhatsApp and that the following “Online Consumer Shopping Habits and Behavior” shows that…
“More than half (62%) of U.S. consumers with Internet access now shop online at least once per month.” – Invesp
“More than 8 in 10 people (83%) are satisfied overall with their online shopping experiences” – Invesp
One can assume that this online purchasing trend will continue to grow Facebook’s insanely powerful algorithm machine to deliver marketers with more precise data and better results.
And better data, my marketing friend, delivers laser-focused targeting to fulfill any aspect of your traffic buying funnel’s needs.
So, let me – now – ask you, if you had a dollar of ad spend, where would you put it?
Facebook – King Pin Croc’ eats Instagram and Whatsapp to Become the #1 Communication and Data Sharing Hub…
Let’s highlight the key metrics…
- Facebook – largest social network in the world (with one-third of the world’s population)
- Instagram – highest engagement of any social media platform (meaning higher conversions)
- Whatsapp – the largest communication Instant Messaging platform in the world
And, please, don’t forget Facebook’s Messenger and Instagram’s Direct Messages.
The amount of data flowing through Facebook is just unparalleled – rather untouchable by any other marketing platform – bar none.
#3 Reason – WhatsApp Business is becoming a core focus for Facebook!
Facebook recently announced that they will prioritizing their WhatsApp efforts on building features for businesses and pushing its payment services in other countries.
This is pretty exciting!
You will be able to communicate better with your customers if you are a current WhatsApp Business user for your business.
If you need help setting up your WhatsApp Business, make sure you get our WhatsApp Business Ultimate Guide.
WhatsApp Business encourages all businesses to respond to customers quickly and make it easy for you to have a verified WhatsApp account, have basic business info and a catalog within the app.
Here are some of the things you will be able to do with WhatsApp Business:
- Send appointment reminders
- Shipping alerts
- Order notifications
- Product demonstration videos
- Verification codes
- Boarding passes
- 2-way customer surveys and support messages
And soon send payments through the platform!
Simply put, WhatsApp Business allows companies to safely and securely message their customers directly within the WhatsApp messaging platform.
Almost 5 million businesses are already using WhatsApp Business according to a recent report.
Early tests with WhatsApp Business have shown that businesses are getting up to a 99% open rate and 40% response rate from their campaigns.
Banco Azteca in Mexico has a +6% conversion rate with their WhatsApp Business over other channels!
Finally – All of this Combined Data Gives Rise to Insanely, Accurate Targeting
Facebook and Whatsapp are algorithms that will spit out EXACTLY whatever it is that you’re looking for.
If you understand how to use Facebook’s data into WhatsApp, your marketing campaigns will deliver amazing results.
Yes, if you have a very defined set of audience, such as seniors then by all means put that in.
But for the most part, Facebook (and Instagram) will do it for you.
Pretty insane.
Next Chapter: Beginner’s Guide To WhatsApp Business Manager
