How to Create a WhatsApp Marketing Strategy

From promoting new products to sending welcome sequences, WhatsApp can help elevate your marketing campaigns. But before you press send on your first WhatsApp messaging campaign, you'll need to know how to build a WhatsApp marketing strategy.

That's why we're here. By illustrating the steps to creating a WhatsApp marketing strategy, we'll show you how to get your campaign off the ground faster than you can say conversational commerce.

• Determine Internal and External Constraints
• Set Goals & KPIs
• Build Audience
• Create Message Templates
• Execute Strategy

What Is WhatsApp Marketing Strategy?

In short, a WhatsApp marketing strategy is simply the route your brand takes to achieve its WhatsApp marketing goals. For some brands, this route may be long, combining several message types. For others, this route may involve only one or two message types.

Knowing your goals and the steps you need to take to reach them can help you save:

• Time – Having a marketing roadmap will take you on the shortest route toward achieving your goals.
• Money – Knowing your goals before you press send for the first time helps cut down on expenses.

How to Build a Successful WhatsApp Marketing Strategy

Step 1: Determine the Campaign's Internal and External Constraints

A business's internal structure and external operating conditions largely determine a goal's attainability.

Internal constraints refer to a business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Performing a SWOT analysis can help your WhatsApp campaign reach its full potential.

External constraints refer to the sociopolitical, economic, environmental, and technological factors that may affect your campaign's effectiveness. A PESTLE analysis looks at the following external factors:

• Political
• Economic
• Social
• Technological
• Legal
• Environmental

Step 2: Set Goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Once you understand the internal and external factors that can affect your marketing campaign, it's time to nail down your goals and KPIs.

Common goals include:

• Increase subscribers – WhatsApp marketing campaigns focused on welcome messages and discounts can help boost subscribers.
• Generate sales – Use WhatsApp to promote new products or offer holiday discounts.
• Boost ROI – The best marketing campaigns offer high returns on investment.

Common KPIs include open rates, conversion rates, clicks, and customer retention rates.

Step 3: Build an Audience

Like traditional SMS campaigns, WhatsApp campaigns rely on large contact lists. Attaching subscription forms to your website is a cost-effective way to add subscribers. Once you build your contact list, segment contacts based on demographics and buying habits.

To nail down your target audiences, consider surveying recent purchasers:

• Why did you make the purchase?
• How did the purchase alleviate your pain points?
• Which marketing tactics most influenced you to make the purchase?

Step 4: Create Message Templates

Once you've identified your constraints, selected your goals and KPIs, and built a solid subscriber list, you're ready to create message templates. Templates allow you to send the same message to all subscribers within a target demographic.

Common message templates include:

• Welcome sequence messages – Greet new subscribers with warm emojis and new subscriber discounts.
• Promotional messages – Promote new products and incentivize purchases by offering discounts.
• Informative messages – Offer information of importance to the receiver.
• Abandoned cart messages – Remind customers they still have items in their cart with emotion-themed emojis that inspire urgency.

Step 5: Execute Your Strategy

With your constraints identified, goals set, audience built, and templates created, it's time to launch. Monitor your KPIs closely in the first weeks, iterate on what's working, and double down on the message types that drive the best results.

Start Executing Your Strategy With Connectly

Connectly's no-code tool allows you to implement your marketing strategy and drive conversational commerce without learning complicated programming languages or processes. AI-powered tools do the heavy lifting, so you can spend time enjoying increased sales and engagement rates.

Get a free demo today and see how our personalized plans can unlock your full potential.