In 2019, it is a given that social media marketing is part of your Calgary marketing strategy. But it is time that brands started including social messaging apps as an important aspect of their overall marketing plan. Social messaging app traffic has exceeded the traffic on social media since 2015, and the gap continues to widen. If you are looking to grow your business connecting with potential customers on messaging apps is essential! Keep reading if you want to learn how to harness the power of social messaging apps for your business.
Messaging apps are designed to help people send (and receive) messages. Examples include WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and WeChat. Social messaging apps originally created to allow private individuals to communicate. However, as technology has evolved more brands are utilizing messaging apps to connect with customers.
Consumer engagement on messaging apps is growing and one of the many uses for these apps is in the area of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The management of most organization’s interaction with its potential (and existing) customers are increasingly being conducted on messaging apps. This makes a lot of sense especially seeing that recent surveys show that about 68% of consumers prefer to conduct their business interactions via social messaging apps. Calgary marketing strategies leverage on this statistic and create social messaging app focused strategies for reaching out to existing customers, and scouting for potential customers.
Social messaging apps offer businesses the potential to interact with existing customers and to reach out to potential customers. One of the main reasons for this is the sheer number of people who use social messaging apps, an estimated 4.1 billion people around the world use the four main messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber), as opposed to 3.4 billion users on the four largest social media networks.
There are numerous examples of brands using social messaging apps to enhance their customer-relationship management. This is because just about every major business or organization use these platforms. Some rather more famous examples include the beauty retailer Sephora which became the first beauty retailer to use a social messaging app for reaching out to its customers by introducing a chatbot that offered makeup tips on Kik.
Another example of a company that used a social messaging app to great effect is Hyatt Hotels Corporation. The multinational hospitality company decided to offer real-time customer service to its customers via Facebook Messenger. So, users can make hotel reservations, order room service, check vacancies in any location and more all from the comfort of their Facebook Messenger app. Even The Washington Post – a news publication – utilized messaging apps by creating its very own news bot for users to interact with on Facebook Messenger. The bot offers information to users when they ask questions by providing them with five news items related to the question and an option to go beyond the headlines.
As time goes on and technology gets more sophisticated, the means of communicating with customers over these platforms get more sophisticated as well. Nowhere – perhaps – is this seen more clearly than in the rise of the use of chatbots in websites, social media pages and social messaging apps to communicate with customers. Calgary marketing strategies have evolved to include these more sophisticated means of customer interaction!
The use of social messaging apps offers businesses a variety of benefits in their relationships with customers. One such benefit is the loyalty it creates by driving valuable, quick, two-way engagement between the business and the customer. This is important in a world where there are dozens of brands carrying any given product on the market. Customer loyalty is hard to come by and must be protected at all costs. Also, the use of messaging apps gives a personal feel to customer relationships, as opposed to the other seemingly distant platforms for building a customer relationship. In contrast, platforms like WhatsApp make communication seem personal and intimate. If done correctly, this leads to a higher level of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Another benefit social messaging apps offer businesses is the possibility of reaching out to a large number of people on mobile devices. We live in a smartphone age and everyone is either already using, or migrating to mobile devices. Therefore, every business must have some sort of mobile strategy. Every product or service today needs a mobile-friendly platform to reach the growing number of mobile users. Messaging apps are mobile friendly and using them to build a customer relationship appeals to a large number of people.
Calgary businesses and organizations have implemented social messaging apps into their marketing strategies. No marketing strategy is complete if it does not include a means of connecting with customers via social messaging apps. Social messaging apps have lots of users are easy to use and offer mobile-friendly, intimate, real-time customer engagement. Any business that does not utilize messaging apps is missing out on a huge piece of the pie. Calgary businesses and organizations must implement social messaging apps into their marketing strategy.
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