WhatsApp group management for companies: 3 tips for not getting banned

Last night, amidst the soap bubbles in my shampoo (which, by the way, I bought it on the recommendation of a blogger I saw on Instagram) I reached an epiphany.

I discovered, at least in my entrepreneurial mind, the reason why social networks are the great enabler of sales and how they captivate thousands of new followers every day.

It may seem obvious, but it was a thought that never occurred to me before and it made me very concerned about the direction in which things are taking on current social networks.

Oops, hold on, I didn't even introduce myself, I'm Roberta Basto and I'm going to give you the same magic shampoo I used during that bath...

Have you ever stopped to think about why companies like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp call consumers “users”?

Well... let's reflect...

What other major niche market calls your customers “users”?

And before you think this is a Jigsaw, I tell you, the parallel drug market.

Very well, my dear reader, you've probably drawn the parallel.

Social networks have the same addictive stimulus as drugs because they release dopamine with sensory, auditory, and visual stimuli.

This even has a name, it's called compulsive loop!

This happens when we receive a positive reward (such as a like) and we want to continue following that behavior.

But think with me, is this necessarily a bad thing?

For example:

Is being addicted to eating vegetables bad?

By no means is having the habit of eating well healthy!

So, this means that habit is a super power, and that obviously it can be used for harm, based on unreasonable capitalism, or designed to Helping people.

So let's reflect:

Your business is probably about helping people, right?

Then, through habit, it is possible to turn your current customer into a user of your product, who, in addition to consuming it, can spread the pleasure of using your brand.

Don't you want to raise your business to that potential?

Probably yes.

But how to do that?

The ideal is to put your customer in a viral flow (with the pardon of the word at the current juncture) through the frequency of consumption and the usefulness of that product. And here it's important to make clear that it's not the utility itself, but the utility that the user sees (perceived utility).

Or as Nir Eyal says in the book Hooked:

A company can begin to determine the habit-forming potential of its product by establishing two factors: frequency (how often the behavior occurs) and perceived utility (usefulness and reward of behavior in the user's mind in relation to alternative solutions). (ROYAL, 2021)

Fine, but what does that have to do with your business? After all you are no longer developing a product... You already have your product ready and it has been on the market for a while...

This logic need not only concern the use of the product, you can engage your customer with your brand, in addition to your product, and make them a recurring consumer, or rather, a user.

Based on the logic of Instagram, the user must perform simple actions, such as touching their finger on the screen, so to have a viral product we have to remove friction from your product. And how can you do that?

Using WhatsApp to communicate with the customer.

If he already uses the WhatsApp to talk to family and friends, why make them log on to a website or install another app to talk only to your company? It doesn't make sense, no matter where your customer is.

In addition, the WhatsApp it has another great advantage: because it is an application designed exclusively for conversations (individual or group), there is less competition.

For example:

If you send an email and when you open your email, when your user opens the inbox, finds another important email just below. That's it, you lost your battle.

Or...

If your customer finds you on Instagram or Facebook, through stories, and didn't click on your advertisement in time, you lost too.

This is a game! So what do you need to do? Pay attention where your user has the fewest distractions.

But what do I mean by that?

I mean that in a WhatsApp conversation there are no advertisements to distract you, there's no little music playing, there's nothing to stop him paying attention to you. It all depends on you.

And to facilitate this conversation, I believe that the FBI sales techniques text can help you a lot to understand your customer and sell better.

But returning to the subject of engagement, you save your user time (they don't have to change apps), reduce physical effort (they don't have to travel to buy anything), reduce social deviance (they are alone to make that decision) and finally, you save brain cycles (without mental effort to consume your content or buy your product).

So it's enough to use WhatsApp to sell my product to go viral?

No.

You need to maintain a relationship!

And for that, data is very important!

Have cards that store customer information.

That way, your employee will know how to chat to introduce a new offer, also know when that customer's product is running out (this is not difficult, just make a baker's account starting from when he last bought it), save information such as birthday, child's name. Really have a relationship.

And now you might be thinking, “this requires a lot of work...”

In fact, there is a way to automate these reminders from Google Calendar and any collaborator can handle this. Delegating in this sense is the best option.

But make no mistake, having several telephones for several collaborators will not help you in this endeavor.

Can you imagine receiving messages from the same store by several different numbers? Which one will you answer for?

We need at all costs to avoid mental or physical effort (or any form of effort and focus on just one to make the sale), so all your employees must use the same telephone for this. And one solution that I recommend you see as soon as you leave this post is PinkApp.

Therefore, engagement is the only way to make your product viral through desire and dopamine. And here make no mistake, it's not about the reward, but about satisfying the desire. That's why using WhatsApp and maintaining a relationship is the easiest shortcut your company can take for a recurrence.

References

REAL, LOOK. HOOKED (ENGAGED) — How to build habit-forming products and services (p. 39). AlphaCon. Kindle edition.