Leveraging WhatsApp’s Functionality the Right Way to Facilitate Customer Communication

Identification and connection with prospective clients are essential components of effective brand communication.

WhatsApp’s widespread usage among consumers has become a popular platform for businesses to communicate with their customers. Brands can reach out to prospective consumers in a personalized manner and via a channel they are comfortable with. As a result, reducing friction to the greatest extent is feasible.

Market Opportunity for Using WhatsApp for Your Brand

WhatsApp helps communicate with the customers, and the fact that text messages are opened at a rate of 98% makes this even superior.

Additionally, the critical advantage of communicating with consumers using a messaging app like WhatsApp is that they develop a greater sense of confidence in you. For instance, 53% of consumers indicate they would purchase if they could only reach out by text or a chat app.

WhatsApp bridges this chasm by providing a secure, high-speed connection.

Apart from that, the following factors make WhatsApp a valuable tool in the marketing arsenal of profitable businesses.

• Use of WhatsApp to strengthen customer relationships.
• Use of instant messaging to accelerate the customer sales cycle.
• Ability to generate superior sales numbers.

How Can You Develop an Effective WhatsApp Marketing Strategy?

Having a solid marketing plan is critical to getting desired outcomes in the field of marketing. Read these suggestions on WhatsApp marketing strategy to help you prepare ahead of time and make tweaks if something doesn’t work out as planned.

1. Automated Messages

WhatsApp for Business allows businesses to use templates to develop and send customized messages. Users can automate messages based on the specific question a customer is asking, the information they seek, waiting time elapsed, and availability. This feature greatly reduces the burden on staff to respond to every single message. It also assures a timely response even if your support people are overwhelmed with other tasks. Based on a customer profile, your interactions can be personalized to acknowledge wedding anniversaries, birthdays, and other unique milestones. This adds a level of personalization that helps to cement trust and may also provide a CTA to the recipient.

2. Personalize the User Experience

Consumers benefit from two-way interaction between companies and their customers since it allows them to have a more personalized experience. This decreases the likelihood of drop-off, enhances engagement, and piques the customer’s curiosity. Communication through WhatsApp also allows firms to differentiate themselves by providing a unique after-sales experience, including monitoring updates to customer feedback.

3. Cross-Selling

As soon as a direct channel of communication has been established between a business and its customer, WhatsApp can be utilized by the business to offer product upgrades or bundled products in connection with potential or completed purchases. These suggestions might range from advocating more services to recommending alternative things of superior performance or quality than the original item.

4. Make Use of Multimedia and Voice Communication

To assist your consumers, you can use WhatsApp to share geolocations, send purchase confirmations, photos, and audios, and receive videos.

Videos and memes effectively inform customers about future events or new items, leaving a lasting impression on their thoughts. However, memes, videos, and audio snippets should be succinct and to the point. Additionally, you can try using WhatsApp’s new product catalogue feature, which is advantageous if you do not have a website. Create a WhatsApp product catalogue for your consumers to view up to 500 goods. They may contact you with questions about your product. You may also provide a link to the whole product catalogue and additional distribution channels if you choose.

Lastly, implement a WhatsApp video/voice call communication system to enhance engagement with new clients and address customer service issues. When clients communicate with you through video or audio chat, they get a more personalized experience, which boosts the likelihood of upselling. Reap the advantages of WhatsApp by delivering the correct voice messages to the right consumers at the right time, determining which voice campaigns work for you, and optimizing further for a greater customer experience.

5. Segment Your Audience to Provide Them With More Personalized Experiences

Using the WhatsApp Labels feature to segment your audience is a wonderful approach to guarantee that your users have a more personalized experience on your platform. Why? Because there are likely to be varying user demographics, one marketing message may not be as effective as another in reaching them. It is critical to provide the greatest possible user experience!

Final Words

In short, to retain current customers while also extending your customer base, WhatsApp Marketing is a smart method to cut down on acquisition expenditures. Consider taking advantage of this excellent, low-cost platform to improve your sales and income. WhatsApp Business offers exceptional levels of consumer engagement and the fostering of long-term ties with customers. A quick reply can assist in developing confidence and greatly enhance conversions. WhatsApp marketing can be personalized with numerous possibilities for specialized communications such as welcome messages followed by birthday greetings and incentive points.

The post 5 WhatsApp Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Brands in 2022 appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

What is virtual real estate?

Thanks to the advent of VR technology, the concept of virtual real estate is on the rise. In fact, it can be a major game-changer for the real estate industry in the coming years. Reports suggest that the VR industry is already worth a whopping 15.81 billion as of 2020.

According to a survey, nearly 54 % of potential homeowners search for properties on the internet first before scheduling a meeting. The amalgamation of virtual reality with the online transformation of the real estate sector is bound to deliver amazing results.

To further demonstrate its amazing benefits, here are five ways in which virtual reality can help transform your real estate business.

1. Home Touring and Selling Efficiency

Perhaps the biggest and most significant benefit of VR is the ability to tour properties from the comfort of your home. Prior to VR, a prospective client had to drive or walk around the area and explore the properties in person.

However, many software companies have now created cutting-edge VR software that provides a very realistic, interactive rendering of the property. These VR software packages can help prospective homebuyers and renters alike in virtually gauging the property online.

Furthermore, it offers incredible comfort not just to buyers but realtors as well. They don’t need to travel incessantly to make a sale. Overall, it has led to an exponential increase in property viewings. With VR, selling a home and improving your business is nothing short of a cakewalk.

2. Virtual Staging

Conventional real estate home tours involve walking around empty rooms in a house. As a realtor, it can be a struggle to sell an empty apartment or house to a potential client. The prospective buyers or renters can struggle to visualize a home when they have little to fuel their imagination.

To mitigate this, staging a property with nice furniture and fixtures is much more appealing to a customer. Almost 77 % of active realtors agree that aptly staging a house helps clients feel more connected to the property. The only caveat is that it is quite expensive to stage it physically for each property.

However, virtual staging blows both of these problems right out of the water. Realtors can now showcase their properties through virtual staging and impress potential clients to close the deal.

3. Virtual Commerce

The fantastic benefits of VR technology don’t just end with home tours and virtual staging. It also promotes virtual commerce to a whole new level. You can help the client with ideas to decorate the space by tastefully staging the property with decor and furniture.

One can click on a particular item during a home tour to reveal its price and vendor info. This helps the customer to purchase items for the home online at a moment’s notice. They can also replace a particular product or decor setting with another online purchase that suits their taste.

This offers an incredible level of interaction with the property which might not be possible during a real-time viewing. Overall, it boosts the virtual commerce aspect as well as bolsters the reputation of your business.

4. Architectural Visualization

Virtual staging is a great tool to sell already-built homes. But what about yet-to-be-built properties?

Traditionally, realtors showcase small, layout models of the property and the locality to paint a better picture. For the interiors, however, real estate businesses often create showrooms where they display full-scale models of the property.

This is, of course, not ideal from an economic standpoint.

Thankfully, VR technology has a solution for this problem too. With the help of virtual reality tools, realtors can impress customers with incredible detailing of the property’s interior and exterior.

Thus, architectural visualization through VR can be done at a fraction of the cost of the physical setup. This can ultimately help real estate companies to drum up more business.

5. Improved Client Communication

Finally, with the advent of VR, spotty client communication is a thing of the past.

When it comes to renovation projects, this technology helps in keeping the customer updated about their property. Through a virtual tour, all the concerns regarding the particular property can be addressed with ease. It also helps realtors to convey these problems to contractors and the renovation team with ease.

Sometimes, when a new tenant moves into a property, they can have queries about operating certain appliances or plumbing. This problem is especially common where there is a massive communication gap between the property owner and the tenant. The vacation rental industry has been plagued by issues of flawed communication for years.

This can all be easily mitigated with the help of a virtual tour and an interactive video. The importance of VR in vacation rentals is even more pronounced as these properties have a massive turnover rate. This further emphasizes the role of better communication with tenants.

Concluding Thoughts

These aforementioned five points make a convincing statement regarding the importance of using virtual reality in the real estate sector.

If you’re still on the fence, it might help to remember that VR is still in its infancy. The technology is set to evolve by leaps and bounds in the coming years, potentially impacting all aspects of life. As a result, it’s best to stay ahead of the curve.

The post 5 Ways Virtual Reality Can Transform Your Real Estate Business appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.

In fact, studies suggest that they conduct at least 12 online searches before making a purchase. They move in and out of the sales funnel before making the final purchase. Cross-sell and upsell are two methods that help B2B marketers sell more than what they intend to.

What is cross-selling?

Cross-selling is a selling technique where customers buy a product that is related to an already bought or soon-to-be bought product. Example: Selling earphones along with a smartphone or a keyboard or mouse with a laptop.

What is upselling?

Upselling is a selling technique where the seller tries to sell an upgraded or premium version of a product that the customer is considering purchasing. Example: Selling a higher version of a smartphone that has more RAM, storage specs, or camera capabilities. 

How do cross-selling and upselling differ from each other?

Cross-selling and upselling differ from each other in several aspects. The very purpose for which it is done, the objective, the elements involved in the transaction, the end result, and so on. 

Here is a snapshot that explains the key differences between cross-selling and upselling. 

Importance Of Cross-selling And Upselling In A B2B Scenario

B2B selling is not easy. The sheer involvement of too many decision-makers elongates the purchase. This makes it super important for businesses to focus on existing customers and to squeeze maximum revenue from them. In fact, studies show that the probability of selling something extra to a customer is 60% to 70% higher than selling one item to a new customer, the probability of which is 5% to 20%. 

So, what makes cross-selling and upselling possible?

There are a few elements in every B2B transaction that makes them possible. They are discussed in detail below.

1. Knowledge of customer journey

Cross-selling and upselling cannot be carried out at random junctures of the customer journey. It must be properly planned for. This calls for a thorough understanding of the customer journey. 

When do they move past the awareness stage onto the interest and decision stage? Also, when in the decision stage, what kind of questions race through their minds? When would it be appropriate to suggest a cross-sell offer or an upsell offer?

Suggesting an upsell offer when a cross-sell offer is appropriate might actually backfire and cause the customer to churn. Such situations can be avoided only if the customer journey is understood in detail. 

2. Real-time support

eMarketer found that more than 80% of millennials have made an impulse purchase. Most millennials do not plan for too long to make a purchase. What makes them impulsive shoppers is also the fact that online stores have made it extremely convenient to make a purchase without taking too long. 

However, the case is different with B2B companies. In B2B eCommerce, the decision is taken after due consideration by many stakeholders. They also look at every possible information before arriving at a conclusion.

Hence, the need to offer real-time support. In a website that provides B2B-targeted products and services, it is best done with the help of live chat software. Why? In addition to providing real-time support, it can also give deep insights into what customers are looking for. This can further fine-tune the business offerings to customers, just like how HLC improved its digital customer support with its live chat software. 

3. Deep Product Knowledge of Support and Sales Team

End of the day, it is the customer-facing personnel who can put cross-sell or upselling into place. Also, they need to have deep product knowledge so that they can help the customer with the right product or service, be it a cross-sell or an upsell based on their needs.

The purpose of cross-selling or upsell is not to make an additional sale, but also to provide the customer with the right product that solves their problem or a combination of products that will deliver a better customer experience collectively.

4. Personalized Content Strategy For Every Stage Of The User Journey

Like mentioned earlier, B2B selling is a convoluted process. It also requires that the buyers be best informed about the product, its pros and cons, and also what makes it unique compared to competitors. 

In the past, traditional marketing communication like brochures helped with this. Today, product literature and also marketing content is best created and published digitally. A proper content strategy ensures that customers are empowered and educated to make a well-informed decision. Also, the content strategy cannot be a cookie-cutter one. 

Instead, it must appeal to customers who are traversing through various stages of the user journey. There must be a proper blend of awareness content, problem-solving content, and also decision-making content. 

Bringing it all together

Cross-selling and upselling are not new-age marketing strategies. They have been around since the beginning of B2B marketing. Today, they are carried out in a different mode. Website, social, email, and chat help B2B marketers sell more products to an already existing customer. 

In fact, selling to an existing customer is easier than selling to a new customer. The probability of the customer purchasing is also higher than a new customer making a purchase. The key is in knowing the various elements of the content strategy and in using them to your advantage. 

The post 4 Key Elements of a Cross-Selling and Upselling Strategy for B2B appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.