Ramadan is fast approaching and Nigerian business owners are seeking ways to keep their businesses running smoothly while maintaining strong customer relationships.
With the popularity of WhatsApp for customer communication, businesses can take advantage of the platform to drive sales.
According to Kantar’s Business Messaging Usage Research, commissioned by Meta in April 2022, over 6 out of 10 (66%) people globally prefer to message a business than email them.
Here are five WhatsApp strategies Nigerian businesses can use to drive sales during Ramadan:
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- Create a great messaging experience for customers
For many small business owners in Nigeria, WhatsApp is their business – their website or virtual store counter to showcase their products, answer customer queries, and drive sales. To make the most out of this platform during Ramadan, it’s essential to create a great messaging experience for your customers. Update your business hours in your WhatsApp Business app profile to let people know when you’re open during the month, especially if your operating hours are different than usual. Also, put up an away message to inform customers when you’re available or when you might be in morning or evening prayer.
- Make customers feel more connected to your brand
Personalized messages create connections and enhance the relevancy of your messages. You can guide your customers through their journey using buttons like quick replies, lists, and calls to action. Additionally, consider including product messages with in-thread cart and product selection to build interactive experiences that increase stickiness and quality. Highlight any special items, deals, and promotions during Ramadan in your catalog so people can easily find what they might want to buy.
- Attract new customers
To keep your business growing, you need to find more customers. Once you’ve built a valuable experience for your customers, it’s time to drive more people to your WhatsApp channel. To start, add a QR code to your storefront, website, product packaging, marketing materials, or anywhere else where people can easily scan to connect with you on WhatsApp. You can find your QR code in Business Tools and Short Link. You can even share your QR code with others easily from the app.
- Drive traffic from social media
A lot of small and medium businesses are present on Instagram and Facebook. From Business Tools, add a WhatsApp button to your Facebook or Instagram account. When customers click it, it opens a chat on your WhatsApp Business app. This way, customers browsing your business on those platforms can easily start a conversation with you on WhatsApp to ask questions or place an order. To find brand new customers, businesses can also create Facebook or Instagram ads that click to open a chat on WhatsApp. These ads are an incredibly effective and powerful way to attract new customers and get them to start messaging with your business.
- Stay organized
Ramadan can be an extremely busy month for businesses, especially with so much commerce condensed into a few hours of the day. With a potential influx of chats from new customers, it’s essential to keep your business and chats organized. One trick is using catalog Collections to group and organize products into specific categories so it’s simple for customers to browse your offerings.
To stay on top of your chats, label specific ones with customizable descriptions to keep track of things like pending payments, new customers, and more. The labels are visible only to you and not to customers. As your customer base and chat volume grow, businesses can even graduate from the WhatsApp Business app to the more powerful WhatsApp Business Platform where they can engage with customers at scale.
