WhatsApp and Telegram: Business Opportunities
Messengers are one of the key channels of business communication with customers and an integral part of the marketing mix, which works effectively at all stages of the marketing funnel. Also, messengers allow you to comprehensively solve various problems of brands - from building knowledge to retaining an audience and automating business processes. SR expert on SMM and permanent speaker of the business program of the Euro Shoes Premiere Collection exhibition Ekaterina Diveeva has prepared for you, our readers, a very interesting, practical article about WhatsApp and Telegram messengers and their possibilities for the retail business.
Ekaterina Diveeva - digital expert of Fashion Consulting Group. Professional experience: Director of Development and Promotion Department of SELA Corporation, Head of Department in the Russian office of H&M, Marketing Director of Baby Sensory Russia, specialist in visual merchandising and window dressing in various companies and at the CPM exhibition. Since 2018, he has been promoting businesses, companies, brands and individuals on social media.
The popularity of instant messengers as a sales channel has almost doubled over the year, and the shopping experience is becoming more digital. People search and find anything on the Internet, and most importantly, they pay online, and most often, users do it from smartphones. According to statistics, in 2 they accounted for 2020% of payments on invoices, and messengers - 76,7%. In addition, 57% of invoices are by email and 19% by SMS. Among young people aged 24 to 12, the number of mobile Internet users approached 24%, and among those under 100, it exceeded 44%.
Most often, messengers, as sales channels, are used by online stores of clothing and footwear, souvenirs and hobby goods. These sites account for almost 40% of all accounts. Interestingly, more and more users are going online from mobile devices - the main platform for instant messengers. According to statistics, in 2020 the average daily audience of the mobile Internet in Russia amounted to 65,2% of the country's population.
In Russia, messengers are used by tens of millions of people, and this sales channel is actively developing. According to research data, the Russian Federation is among the top 10 countries in which the number of messenger users is growing the fastest. Companies and entrepreneurs are increasingly conducting transactions in messengers, because more and more people prefer to buy goods and services in one place. With the growing audience of the mobile Internet, entrepreneurs can now receive additional income from sales through instant messengers.
In 2020, the turnover of payments for invoices issued via instant messengers, e-mail or SMS increased by 1,8 times compared to 2019. At the same time, the average check decreased by 294 rubles - to 6 rubles. According to research, 146% of users would prefer to place an order from a company that can be contacted in a messenger. In 53, the global chatbot market was $ 2019 billion and is projected to reach $ 17,17 billion by 2025.
For Russian Telegram users, messengers ranked in the following popularity ratings: WhatsApp (with a fantastic 81%), VKontakte messages (47%) and Instagram Direct (40%). Among messengers known primarily for audio and video chats, Zoom (20%), Discord (17%) and Skype (15%) stand out.
In Belarus, WhatsApp takes only fourth place, and historically Belarusian Viber occupies the first place. Skype in Belarus overtakes both Zoom and Discord; every fourth Telegram audience uses this tool.
In Ukraine, the distribution is more similar to the Belarusian one, but with its own specifics - VKontakte is blocked in the country, and therefore only 11% of respondents use it. Instagram (59%) strives to overtake Viber (70%), while Discord (similarly, 27%) competes with Zoom (27%).
Promotion via WhatsApp
WhatsApp is an instant messaging service between users online.
The messenger allows you to send text, audio and video messages, images, electronic documents, and also supports voice and video calls. It will automatically sync your contact list with your phone's phone book. This is possible due to the fact that all users are registered with their phone number.
In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $ 19 billion, and the service became free in 2016. The company has two applications, WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business, which can only be used on one device if they have two different phone numbers. The first application is intended for ordinary users, individuals, the second - for business. At the same time, people will be able to communicate with business in WhatsApp Messenger accessible to them.
WhatsApp Business APP allows you to:
• create a company profile and add basic information (address, description, email, website link)
• make templates with quick answers to quickly answer the most frequent customer questions
• add shortcuts for each chat and contact so that it is easier to group and find them
• set up automatic messages (for example, when you cannot respond promptly)
• view statistics of sent and read messages (this will help analyze the effectiveness of mailings).
WhatsApp promotion methods
• Sending messages is available to those users who are in your phone contacts. In order to build a customer base, it is important to collect offline and online contacts. You can create a group chat and then invite participants to it using a link. Group chats and messaging in them can be used to notify customers about promotions, special offers, new arrivals of goods, as well as to provide useful content. When offline, use a WhatsApp contact in business cards or other publications.
• To build a subscriber base, you can promote WhatsApp through targeted Facebook ads. By clicking on ads on social networks, the user can go directly to the chat window in WhatsApp, where he will be greeted by your chatbot. To do this, in the "Ad group" section in the targeted advertising settings, select "WhatsApp Business".
WhatsApp can help businesses:
• Get more quality leads
• Increase conversion to sales
• Improve the quality of technical support
• Get more feedback on your product / service / website, etc.
• Reduce personnel costs
• Make more repeat sales and increase customer LTV
• Get more clients from social networks
• Make mailings more effective than email and sms
• Attract significantly more subscribers
• Reduce the average duration of transactions, thanks to automation
• Increase customer loyalty and simply get closer to them
Telegram
Telegram is not only a messenger for the exchange of personal messages, but also a whole communication platform that includes:
- Private chats
- Public channels
- Community chats
- Chat-bots
- Application bots
Telegram's Russian-speaking audience is over 30 million people.
The core of the audience - 65% - is people over 25 years old.
Online sales for 2021 via Telegram amounted to 1,1 billion rubles.
Why do users choose Telegram?
75% of respondents note that Telegram is their main source of news. Almost 70% of users choose Telegram, among other things, because, in their opinion, it is more convenient than its counterparts (with which, indeed, it is difficult to argue).
Only 45% of respondents have most of their personal online communication in Telegram: this is less than half of the users, and there was no growth of this indicator in two years (43% in 2019). Although Telegram has more than doubled, the messenger still remains for a significant part of users, rather, a secondary than the main means of communication.
Interestingly, many people use Telegram for quite utilitarian needs: sending files or links from one device to another (almost every second), creating notes (35%), cloud storage (27% of respondents).
By 2021, Telegram is becoming more and more prevalent as a business messenger, although it has yet to feature paid advanced business opportunities. 38% of respondents use it for work correspondence with colleagues, 17% - for correspondence with clients. One in two communicates in group chats, and one in three uses bots - a little less than 42% in 2019.
Telegram bots are often associated with useful mini-programs for content selection, account management, or joke generators. But with the help of tools and mechanics that will help you create a bot without programming skills, you can reach a previously inaccessible audience and increase profits.
What you need before starting to build a bot or auto-funnel in Telegram:
- Understanding of your business structure, sales funnels and a well-thought-out product matrix
- Telegram bot is initially created directly in the messenger
-
An application for creating bots without programming. For Telegram, we often use the BotFather system. The application will be needed so that the created bot learns to follow simple scripts, respond to commands and buttons.
- Additional materials. It is necessary to prepare in advance all the content of the future bot: images, links with utm tags, texts, and so on.
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