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The best online marketers do everything in their power to bring the physical store experience into their ads.
Online shopping is great. But nothing beats the brick-and-mortar store experience. Because in real life, you actually get to talk to a real human being.
Real-life store assistants can answer your questions, suggest products, and even persuade you to buy more than you were planning on when you walked in. No matter how well-crafted your marketing landing pages are — they’ll never be that effective.
That’s why top-notch marketers are bringing conversations into their digital marketing. With click to WhatsApp ads, prospects get sent straight to a WhatsApp conversation with a digital store assistant instead of a landing page.
Before we all get swallowed up by the metaverse, click to WhatsApp ads are your best shot at making your online marketing more conversational.
Wait. What is a click to WhatsApp ad exactly?
A click to WhatsApp ad is a Facebook or Instagram ad with a ‘Send Message’ button that opens a conversation in WhatsApp Business. This enables your customers to start a conversation right after learning about your brand or product.
Exactly like they would start a conversation after seeing your store and deciding to enter.
Here’s a quick overview of the process:
You can easily set up an ad like this ☝️ in your Facebook ad account.
How to add a WhatsApp button to your ad
Gowtham Palanisamy, Trengo’s performance marketer, knows a thing or two about setting up ads. That’s why I asked him how to successfully set up click to WhatsApp ads. 👇
First, go to your ad account and create a new campaign. Give the campaign a name and choose ‘Messages’ as your campaign objective. You’re also asked to pick a budget. When doing so, make sure to also choose ‘campaign budget optimization’.
You can also set up A/B tests to see which content gives the best results.
Next, click on WhatsApp.
Fill in the phone number that is associated with your WhatsApp account.
And enter the code that has been sent to that specific WhatsApp account.
Now it’s time to set up the actual ad. You can pick a single image, a video, or a carousel. The images will be automatically cropped. Make sure to edit them to your liking. Also, add a primary text and an optional description.
Below ‘Message Template’, click ‘Create’ and fill in a greeting message. This will be the first message from your business in the WhatsApp conversation.
Done? Time to hit ‘Publish’!
What type of content works well with click-to-chat ads?
Good, so that was the technical part. But that’s the easy work. What really sets you up for success is the quality of your creative. Customers are used to streamlined e-commerce experiences, and having to chat can feel like a drag.
But not if the ad copy looks like this:
“Send us your holiday destination, budget, and favorite activities (skydiving, surfing, shopping — you name it) and we will send you three accommodations that fit your wishes within an hour.”
If I’m looking to go on vacation - and I always am - I’m clicking that ‘Start a chat’ button right away.
Why?
Because I feel compelled to start a conversation. It seems easier, more convenient, and simply more special than the usual way of scrolling through hundreds of hotels. I’d rather just speak to an expert who can tell me exactly where I need to be, which hotel to pick, and which restaurants to go to for lunch. It’s the experience you would get at a brick-and-mortar travel agency, but it’s on WhatsApp. Perfect.
Try to take the above example and see if you can find a variation for your business. If you can, these ads will work like a charm.
OK, the messages are coming in. Now what?
Congrats! Your click to WhatsApp campaign is a success. You’re being flooded with potential customers ready to talk.
It is now crucial to make sure you make the conversation is a great experience for the customer.
If it isn’t, you might as well flush your ad budget down the drain.
With our customer service platform Trengo, managing WhatsApp messages will feel like a breeze. Here’s how:
Enable your team to answer WhatsApp messages together
The first thing you need is the ability to answer the messages efficiently.
The regular WhatsApp Business app can be used by four people at the same time. This works for small businesses but usually gets limiting for bigger companies. Unless you want to pass a phone around the office all day.
With Trengo, you can use the WhatsApp Business API. This allows you to:
- Reply to messages with more than four users
- Assign messages to colleagues
- Ask your colleagues for help within a WhatsApp thread with a customer
With Trengo, your team can keep a clear overview of all WhatsApp conversations and work together efficiently.
Reply to messages after 24 hours with templates
WhatsApp doesn’t like users being spammed. That’s why businesses can only send messages after 24 hours by using a Messaging Template. These templates first have to be approved by your WhatsApp partner.
Be aware that the messaging templates have to comply with WhatsApp’s commerce policy. Only transactional content is allowed.
Some approved use cases of messaging templates are:
- Appointment updates
- Shipping updates
- Payment requests
- Ticket updates
Connect your webshop platform for marketing automation messages
Trengo integrates with WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and more webshop software platforms. This enables you to automatically send order notifications, shipping updates, and payment requests via WhatsApp.
This brings the entire customer experience to WhatsApp. No need for a customer to visit your website, open their email, or use any other app outside of WhatsApp.
Create chatbots to reply to messages
Your ads will be running outside of business hours too. So messages will come in outside of business hours too.
And no one likes to sit around waiting for a reply. Especially on WhatsApp.
That’s why you can build no-code WhatsApp chatbots to pick up messages outside of business hours. They can collect leads, answer questions, and even help your customer make a purchase.
But they can also just give customers a warm welcome and inform them when they’ll be replied to by a human.
Time to build your first click to WhatsApp ad
Now that you know how to set up an ad and how to manage the incoming messages, it’s time to get started. Go get ‘em.
