Whatsapp Marketing is Cheaper Than Facebook Remarketing. Here’s Why!

While social media platforms like Facebook have established opportunities for businesses to reach their target audience through paid promotions, standing out from the noisy campaigns being run by thousands of brands is getting tougher by the day. As per statistics, the average click-through rate on Facebook ad campaigns across all industries is a mere 0.89% - which when compared to the 60%rease in spend ever since the pandemic, is too low.

Worse still?

The 0.89% of users who do click through the ad campaign and reach a website (in this case, an ecommerce store), don’t necessarily convert on their first visit to the website.

Owing to this behavior of internet users, businesses started to use Facebook remarketing to reach these unconverted visitors with reminders, offers and discounts to re-engage their interest and bring them back to the website.

Now as per statistics, retargeting ads are 76% more likely to get clicked by the 0.89% of users who showed interest in the campaign before.

What are Facebook Retargeting Ads?

Facebook retargeting ads are ads that allow you to re-engage an audience that has previously interacted with your brand in some way - this includes both on and off Facebook. These consumers could have shared their email address with you at some point through subscriptions, notifications or cart abandonment, could be your existing customers or have followed/ interacted with your Facebook page in some way.

Retargeting ads are essentially targeted at reaching out to those who have shown interest or intent in what your brand has to offer, making them more likely to be clicked on as compared to targeting someone who is entirely new to your brand.

Why are Facebook Retargeting Ads Not Enough?

In comparison to the first-touch ads, Facebook retargeting ads definitely offer a higher click through rate on campaigns. But let’s understand how this works with an example to put things in perspective differently.

Suppose you’re running an ad campaign that reaches about 100 people on Facebook.

Now 5 of these people reach the checkout stage on your store, sharing their contact details to receive order status alerts and shipping information.

But the 95 others who clicked, chose to browse through your website to explore the products, deals and discounts you offer and left without making an interaction that gives you their contact information.

In this case, your brand will have to run ad campaigns on Facebook all over again to bring back these 95 people to the website - with no guarantee on how many of them will engage with your brand in a meaningful way in their second visit, leading to a repeat of this cycle.

Now if you think about reducing a sales cycle or a purchase cycle for a consumer, think about the number of stages and the back and forth involved in the above approach.

In addition to that, the need to pay per click for their ad campaigns continually increases the spend on the campaigns over a period of time.

So, is there a better way to run retargeting ads for interested consumers?

Introducing WhatsApp marketing for ecommerce.

How is WhatsApp Marketing Better Than Facebook Retargeting?

Continuing on our example above.

Let’s assume you run a click-to-WhatsApp ad for your store, and get people to opt-in to your list on the messaging app - let’s say about 100 people again.

You now run a WhatsApp broadcast marketing campaign for promotions of a new product, discount or deal.

Out of this list again, let’s say 5 go to your website and complete a checkout.

But the 95 in this case have engaged with your message in some way - they have either replied to your message seeking more information or have clicked through to your website.

Now contrary to Facebook ads, this time you have the contact details of these 95 people, who you can reach out to individually with tailored responses and personalized campaigns - this could include sending product recommendations, offering shopping assistance, sending them checkout links of items they wishlisted and similar.

With a more conversational approach to marketing and retargeting in this case, businesses are able to see at least 17% more conversions.

Here’s why:

- WhatsApp campaigns see a 98% open rate on messages owing to its frequent use across all major demographics

- The messaging app offers a more 1:1 and personalized channel for communicating with interested consumers, as compared to the traditional one campaign for all retargeting logic used in Facebook retargeting

- With the help of the WhatsApp Business API, businesses can set up timely follow-ups and automated campaigns tailored for engaged/ interested consumers, leading to better personalization and hence, higher number of conversions

But that’s not all.

Another benefit that WhatsApp marketing offers over Facebook retargeting is the cost of running the campaigns.

WhatsApp marketing cost is fixed; a business API provider like QuickReply.ai charges $ 0.0076 for the first message to each contact and $0 for the follow-ups made to everyone who has engaged with the audience.

On the other hand, if Facebook retargeting ads cost you $0.5 per click to the website and the visitor still does not convert, you’re charged the same amount for every follow-up reminder you set up in the campaign, leading to $1 for just getting a retargeted consumer twice to your website - and you don’t know how many times you’d have to run retargeting campaigns to get them to convert.

Additional reads:

- WhatsApp marketing vs Facebook advertising‍

- How to optimize WhatsApp marketing costs for higher ROI‍

Different Ways In Which You Can Retarget Consumers With WhatsApp Marketing

Think about the last time you visited a website and started seeing the same products in ad campaigns across Facebook and Instagram.

A typical retargeting ad simply displays the products you may have visited or added to the shopping cart on a website, alongside a picture, product name and a generic description that usually offers a discount or creates urgency around its availability.

Here’s an example of the same:

But when it comes to retargeting interested and engaged customers on WhatsApp, let’s take a look at the different types of campaigns you can run using the WhatsApp Business API:

1. Send Follow-up Reminders

Simply remind them of the products they had visited on the store with a quick message like “You were looking for pink cotton kurtas on our website. Don’t forget to check out our new additions to the collections!”

2. Offer A Discount

Additionally, you can make the reminders more enticing to a consumer by offering a discount on the products they were viewing. Running a WhatsApp campaign that says “Hey Jane, there is an exclusive 20% off on the pink kurtas you were checking out for the next 24 hours” can get back a lot of online shoppers.

Looking for WhatsApp templates to set up marketing campaigns?

3. Close The Sale On Call (Telesales)

Since you have the contact details of the interested shopper, you can also follow up with them asking if they’d like a call from your team to help with the purchase. Combining telesales and WhatsApp marketing is a great way to get more customers to convert on the intent they have displayed. Read more about using telesales with WhatsApp to get more sales here.

4. Send Product Recommendations

Using the intent and purchase preference they have displayed by interacting with your WhatsApp marketing campaign, you can also send product recommendations. This could include a bunch of similar products or even deals that are similar to the products they liked; this individual approach can lead to a much higher conversion due to hyper personalization.

5. Offer Product Information

If you see a customer who has engaged with your WhatsApp marketing campaign, clicked through to the website but hasn’t made a purchase, you can actually run a campaign to help them make an informed decision. This could include sending product information like how-to guides, style guides, lookbooks, FAQs, shipping/ delivery policies and similar.  

6. Seek Customer Feedback

The typical Facebook retargeting ads are angled at pushing the same products to the consumer time and again to serve as a reminder to the online shopper. But with WhatsApp marketing, if you see a customer not converting on the follow-ups either, you can run a campaign that is simply designed to understand the reason - why they haven’t made the purchase, what would they like you to offer better, what would motivate them to make the purchase, and similar.

Learn more about collecting customer feedback on WhatsApp using interactive messages.

WhatsApp Marketing vs Facebook Retargeting - Which One Should You Go For?

If you ask us one channel to run re–engagement campaigns, we’d say WhatsApp marketing has a much higher ROI as compared to Facebook.

But at the same time, we do recommend running campaigns on both the channels as each comes with its own set of pros and cons, to see where your audience tends to engage with your brand the most and what helps you boost brand recall the most.

One way to integrate the best of both the platforms is to run click-to-WhatsApp ads, so that you use Facebook as a first-touch campaign to reach more people from your target audience, get interested shoppers to the messaging app and then leverage WhatsApp marketing automations to convert them.

Want to see how the two channels can work well together to boost conversions on your retargeting and remarketing campaigns?

Book a demo of QuickReply.ai.