WhatsApp vs Telegram: Which is better for marketing?

01 Jun WhatsApp vs Telegram: Which is better for marketing?

What are the differences between WhatsApp and Telegram from the point of view of the marketing opportunities offered to companies? Which should be use to give an extra boost to the direct relationship with customers and customer care? In recent years they have become the most downloaded and used instant messaging apps, stealing the scene from text messages, Windows Live Messenger and Skype and constantly increasing their popularity thanks above all to the multifunctional aspect that has made them practically indispensable.

But contrary to what one might erroneously think, both WhatsApp and Telegram are not simple apps for chatting, but can also be used as business tools with a view to corporate marketing communication and customer care.

Chatvertising: An expanding phenomenon

Messaging on mobile devices is becoming the main tool used by users who spend more and more time on instant messaging apps. This factor in recent years has generated the phenomenon of chatvertising, or a new form of interaction between brand and customer based on applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

Obviously these apps are not substitutes for social networks in the management of the relationship between the company and the customer, but rather integrative. To the complex of direct relationships made possible by social networks and messaging apps, add real-time dialogue with fully customized one-to-one relational performance.

According to a recent study conducted in the USA by Instantly, 79% of companies believe that customers want to receive support via text message, 72% of professionals regularly use instant messaging apps to communicate with customers and collaborators and 15% say that more than half of the messages are intended for commercial purposes. The one-to-one relationship therefore allows to increase the customer’s trust in the company, allowing him to remain in his comfort-zone, thanks to the use of the same apps used daily for other activities.

So what is the role of these apps within companies? How can they be used to increase the company’s business? Which of the two is better to use to achieve greater success? Keep reading Webinar: How to best use them for lead generation

WhatsApp vs Telegram: Which app gives the most business opportunities?

The numbers tell us that WhatsApp, from October 18 2010 (date of launch of the app) to today, boasts over a billion downloads and is thus the most popular and used instant messaging app.

Telegram instead, born almost 3 years later, has over 100 million downloads. A not inconsiderable gap that therefore rewards the app purchased by Mark Zuckerberg in 2014 for 19 billion dollars.

But be careful not to be fooled by these numbers, because Telegram has business functions that compensate for this gap.

One of the main privileges of Telegram is the possibility of enhancing internal communication through the creation of a channel, where it is possible to add all employees to learn about all the company’s news by connecting from different platforms.

For external communication, however, groups and supergroups are more suitable, to which customers can register via links without sharing the mobile phone number with others, an important detail that increases the privacy level of the app.

Furthermore, both in the groups and in the channels, it is possible to appoint more administrators, in order to guarantee a more constant presence of the coordinators and consequently a more immediate resolution of any problems.

To these functions is added that of bots or virtual robots with a pre-set database of phrases and words stored, which allows you to create a Help Desk tailored to your customers, able to answer the most common questions in a way quick and accurate.

All these functions therefore guarantee total customer care, allowing companies to increase customer loyalty and satisfy their needs in a more timely and precise manner.

Just from the awareness that better tools are needed to facilitate conversations between companies and consumers, in January 2018 Mark Zuckerberg’s company thought it well to launch WhatsApp Business, or the professional version of WhatsApp, designed for the development of companies.

Since there are millions and millions of people who use WhatsApp regularly, the probability of finding their customers through a tool they already know increases. Also because one of the advantages of WhatsApp Business is that the messages sent from the business account will be received by the user on the classic version of WhatsApp. The main barrier to using the application is that to start an interaction or add a customer to a group, you must first have the user’s mobile number in order to insert it among the contacts.

WhatsApp Business allows you to create a company account in which you can enter:  the address, the opening hours, the reference e-mail and the website.

Each company account is marked with a badge. If the badge is green, it is a verified company. If the badge is gray, the company is confirmed. If instead the badge is gray with a question mark in the profile, it is a business account not yet confirmed or verified.

It is also possible, regardless of the type of badge, to view the statistics of the messages (how many have been sent, delivered, read and received) and to catalog contacts and chats with labels, to organize and find chats and messages.

With WhatsApp Business, however, it is not possible to take advantage of bots, help desks, super groups or channels. There are some option that approach these functions (available on Telegram instead) …

• Sending an automatic welcome message to users who write to you for the first time or after 14 days of inactivity in the chat.
• An automatic message in case of absence with the possibility of programming when it will be sent. If the opening hours are set in the profile, you can choose to send it in the closing periods.
• The rapid responses that avoid having to write the same thing. After setting the answers to the most frequently asked questions from customers, you can recall them by typing “/”. After that, you will only have to choose the one you need at that moment.

In summary, both apps in question enjoy advantageous and functional tools for the growth of a company, each with strengths and weaknesses, so the conclusions are yours.