How to create a winning B2B WhatsApp strategy

Nailing your content is crucial to unlocking the highest possible engagement WhatsApp has to offer

Simply starting a WhatsApp channel and posting without a plan won’t deliver the best possible return on investment for your spend – that can only be achieved by developing a clear content strategy.

Taking the time to plan out the type of content you’ll send, the best time to reach customers with messages, and judging what success looks like are all crucial elements.

To help with this, we’ve created five steps to consider when it comes to sending effective WhatsApp messages to your customers.

1. Create a forward-thinking content plan

A WhatsApp channel is just like any other content project in that it needs a clear plan to get the best possible results, so you know what messages you’ll be sending when.

This will help when planning the frequency of the messages you’re sending, ensuring any posts are well spaced out and have maximum impact. Laying out your content plan in a clear grid will also help with varying what you’re sending.

A monthly content plan can be made on a simple Excel table. Making a forward-thinking plan gives you time to create posts and adapt if anything new or unexpected comes up.

2. Know how you want your audience to act

It’s important to have a clearly defined idea of what you want a customer to do or feel before planning to send a WhatsApp messages – it sounds obvious, but is often missed when crafting the perfect piece of content takes centre stage.

Start by considering if you want people to buy a product, visit a certain destination, sign up to an event or any number of other things with a business benefit. Next up, think about how someone will complete that action from a WhatsApp message.

Once that’s in place, build your message with that in mind – it’s amazing how much easier it’ll be to get the results you want.

3. Get the tone of your message right

Tone of voice is crucial if you want your messages to be read on WhatsApp because most people primarily use it as an informal place to chat with friends and family.

As a result, avoid the temptation to be too formal in speech (even if you’re using it for a business message) because it’ll feel out of place on WhatsApp and likely to turn people off.Use more colloquial language while retaining your business’s own way of speaking to customers. Also consider extending that approach into the type of messages you send too.

Lots of messages on similar topics that are too salesy in tone can eventually cause engagement to drop off, unless it’s clear from the outset that this is how you’ll use the channel – for example, a deals-only channel will resonate with a certain type of audience.

4. Don’t be afraid to try different things

Content is rarely a one-size-fits-all thing, so segmenting your customers depending on their preferences could be the best way to maximise engagement.

Segmentation paves the way for personalisation in messages, whether that’s targeting a certain group of customers with a promotional campaign, sending messages at a different time to suit them, our using different types of language.

This also allows for testing different messages to see what resonates best, as it provides an easy way to A/B test approaches and track the elements that make communications more or less successful.

5. Monitor message performance

WhatsApp Business API platforms have access to read analytics in a way free WhatsApp messages don’t produce, so use them to work out what’s being engaged with most to refine your strategy in the future.

It’s also possible to add UTM codes to your WhatsApp messages to see the direct impact of what you send on sales or other engagement metrics.

While it’s important to keep an eye on how messages are performing, try not to be too reactive. Make sure you’re understanding what you’re seeing, consider the different factors that might be having an impact, and leave enough time for trends to bed in so you can be sure what you perceive to be happening is accurate.

IMAGE CREDIT: Igor Omileav on unsplash.com