Wouldn’t it be great if you could let your customers know about a deal, special, or last-minute promotion instantly? Furthermore, how do you always stay connected to your target audience in an increasingly digital world, where users are spread across multiple social platforms? With people as busy as they are today, keeping your customers in the loop is not an easy task. Email marketing is not as good as it used to be and phone broadcast systems are intrusive, not as quick and rather expensive.
Brands today have to get creative when they’re thinking of ways to drive traffic to their websites. It’s about more than simply offering a best-value product or service, or even having a solid social media following. As you’re looking for ways to increase the number of visitors to your website, there is a new emerging trend for promoting your business – that of messaging apps.
Chat apps have functionality like no other technology before – within a single app, users can chat with friends, communicate with brands, play games, make calls, consume content, shop online and more. This level of functionality has seen messaging apps amassing over 5 billion monthly active users worldwide.
Driving Traffic to your Website with the Right Messaging App
As seen in the following infographic – there are several messaging apps that let businesses market to their massive, engaged user bases. Slack, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Kik are, by far, the most popular for content distribution and the execution of hyper-targeted and personalized campaigns. Their broad functionality provides companies with the option to offer timely customer service, send content to users, sell products, and advertise.
One of the most appealing characteristics of messaging apps for businesses and marketers is their higher retention and usage rates than those of most mobile apps. Communication, particularly for younger generations like Millennials and Generation Z, is the prime factor that dictates their conversion into regular consumers of a product or service. For this purpose, messaging apps like WhatsApp and Kik are particularly useful in driving traffic to your website as you’re able to engage with your target group a lot more than with traditional social media following.
The possible integration of social media profiles with a friend chat and favorite brand engagement is at the core of messaging app adoption among consumers. Ease of use, targeted ads about products and services they are interested in, and better control over the content they receive are all factors for mobile users today. Brands that take advantage of the features of messaging apps to optimize their ads based on user demographics and interests as well as deliver keyword-triggered responses and content have the most success in driving traffic to their blogs and websites.
With messaging apps slowly replacing traditional SMS (short messaging service) as a preferred method of text-based communication, companies that leverage their potential are reaping a host of rewards. Since 2017, online travel agencies such as Goibibo and MakeMyTrip have been using WhatsApp to share booked tickets and other travel-related information with customers. Goibibo has even developed an AI-powered chatbot, GIA, to respond to customers’ queries without human intervention. This has allowed the company to speed up response times and improve customer service tremendously.
Apart from customer support, chatbots can bring extra traffic to your blog by sending customers personalized bites of content. This can further lead to conversions.
Retailer brands are also taking advantage of these new conversation media since the majority of smartphone users are well-versed with mobile apps such as WhatsApp, Kik and Facebook Messenger. The conversational experience that companies are able to provide is the driving point behind increasing engagement with their target audience.
Retailer brands, such as H&M, Diesel, Kenneth Cole, and Zegna are engaging more in so-called ‘conversational commerce’ and using messaging apps to share pictures of products or other such promotions periodically. It is all about offering personalized services, and platforms like WhatsApp enable that.
Ways Messaging Apps Drive Traffic to Websites
As younger consumers move away from desktop experiences and towards mobile apps, messaging has emerged as the next breakthrough communication platform for brands. The unprecedented engagement helps them grow their user base and sales, and drive traffic through:
- Real-time Customer Service: Messaging provides a continuous thread between customer and brand, follow-up conversation is made easier and more natural. This increases opportunities to cross-sell encourages sharing, solicits input and creates a seamless flow between commerce and support.
- Personalization: Customers value personal offers and direct engagement with brands. Messaging apps give more freedom to control and personalize the interaction with your customers using one-on-one communication. This helps you build a direct relationship, where customers can message you if they need a particular product, have a question or need support.
- Target Advertising: Approaching those groups that are potentially interested in your product or service is much easier with messaging apps. They allow you to create or target people that are interested in related topics based on certain keywords. The result is more users consuming the content, joining the group and eventually becoming customers.
- Organic transition: With only 32% of consumers sending an e-mail or calling a customer helpline if they have an issue or a query, messaging apps provide a smooth transition from automated chatbots to live support. Using messaging apps as the central interaction point with consumers not only reduces call and email volume but provides a singular view of the customer’s journey. As a result, it is easier for brands to deliver the personalized customer care today’s shoppers expect.
As messaging apps continue to grow in popularity, brands would be wise to adopt them as they engage consumers in the quickest amount of time and best way possible. Given the evolution of customer expectations, messaging apps are the most suited way for brands to provide fast, convenient and truly useful assistance. This results in better engagement and greater affinity with shoppers who then drive traffic to your website and increase the economic benefits associated with loyal customer relationships.
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