5 Ways to Bring More Customers to Your WhatsApp Chatbot

Unlike other channels, like Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp has fewer ways to bring customers to your WhatsApp chatbot.

For example, with Instagram, we can automatically reply with our chatbot when somebody leaves a comment on one of our posts. But with Whatsapp, this is not possible.

So in this tutorial, I will show you 5 ways how you can bring customers to your WhatsApp Chatbot!

(By the way, you can use those 5 ways with any chatbot platform as long as they have WhatsApp as a channel)

Create a link

The first and most easy way to bring customers to your WhatsApp chatbot is by creating a link.

And I use Wa.Link for this. Wa.Link is a website where you can create WhatsApp links with a pre-filled message.

So just go to Wa.Link and click on Create a free wa.link:

Here, you need to fill in the number of your WhatsApp chatbot and a custom message.

And this custom message is pre-filled when someone goes to the link.

So, I will just put my phone number, set “Get Started with WhatsApp” as my custom message and click on Generate my link:

Then, Wa.Link automatically creates the link for me:

And when you go to that link, it automatically goes to WhatsApp and pre-fills the custom message:

So your customers only need to click on Send and then the custom message is sent to your chatbot.

This way is especially really good if you want to send users to a specific flow of your chatbot.

And you can put this link in a lot of different places:

• On your website
• In the signature of your emails
• Your Instagram Bio
• Share it on social media

 

Scanning a QR Code

The second way on how you can get more customers to your WhatsApp chatbot is by scanning a QR Code.

When you create a link in Wa.Link, you automatically get a QR Code with it:

And you can share this QR Code with (potential) customers so that they scan it and directly go to your WhatsApp Chatbot.

For example, if you are a restaurant you can put a QR Code on your restaurant tables and when customers scan that QR Code, they will automatically get your restaurant menu.

Also, when they’ve scanned your QR Code and are in your chatbot, you can send a message after 12 hours asking how their restaurant experience was. And that’s a way how you can improve the experience of your restaurant.

But there are more places where you can share your QR Code:

• On flyers or brochures
• Billboards
• Posters

One important thing I might add: Don’t share your QR Code on Instagram!

I’ve seen many businesses do this, but I would never recommend it. This is because users that are on Instagram are already using their mobile phones. And while they are using their mobile phone to scroll through Instagram, they cannot scan your QR Code with that same phone.

So, what can you do to get those Instagram users to your WhatsApp Chatbot?

 

Set up a WhatsApp Button on your Instagram profile

On Instagram, you can set up a WhatsApp button on your Instagram profile.

And when Instagram users click on that button, they will directly go to your WhatsApp chatbot.

So, just go to your Instagram profile on your mobile phone (You cannot set this up on desktop) and click on Edit profile:

Then, click on Contact options:

Select the WhatsApp Business Phone Number:

Here, you need to fill in your WhatsApp phone number and click on Send code:

Now, Instagram will send a text to your phone number so you can verify this is your phone number.

Once you’ve done that, the WhatsApp button will appear on your Instagram profile. And when someone clicks on that button, they will automatically go to your WhatsApp chatbot.

One disadvantage of using this approach is that you cannot send users to a specific flow of your chatbot.

So, if you want to send users to a specific flow of your chatbot, I would recommend sharing the link (we set up with Wa.Link) in your Instagram Bio. If you want to send users to your chatbot in general, you should use the WhatsApp button.

 

Connect your Facebook Ad to WhatsApp

The fourth way to bring more customers to your WhatsApp chatbot is by connecting a Facebook Ad to WhatsApp.

And we can set this up in the Ads manager of Facebook.

So, just go to Facebook Ads Manager and click on Create under Campaigns:

Set the campaign objective to Traffic and click on Continue:

Fill in the name of your campaign and click on Next:

Here, we can set where we want to send our traffic to. So, just select WhatsApp and choose the right Facebook Page:

And that’s it! Now you connected your Facebook Ad to WhatsApp. The only thing you need to do left is set up the right budgets and audiences and you can launch it.

There is only one disadvantage with Facebook Ads: you cannot send users to a specific flow of your WhatsApp chatbot, you can only send customers to your WhatsApp chatbot in general.

 

Create a WhatsApp button on your website

The last way how you can get more customers to your WhatsApp chatbot is by creating a button on your website.

And I think most of you are using WordPress, so I will show you how you can set this up using WordPress.

In your WordPress, go to Plugins, search for “Install Headers and Footers” and click on Install now and Activate:

Then, if you go to Settings –> Insert Headers and Footers, we need to paste this code under the “Scripts in Header” section:

<script src="https://kit.fontawesome.com/aa43c89ded.js" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

We need to use this code because this script gives us a WhatsApp icon that we are going to use in our button.

Then, go to Pages, add a new page and paste the following code on that page:

<style>
.whatsapp-button {
padding: 20px 40px 20px 30px;
    color: #fff;
    background: #2db842;
    font-size: 24px;
    font-weight: 700;
    border-radius: 37px;
    display: inline-block; }
a.whatsapp-button i {
    margin-right: 15px;
    font-size: 50px;
    margin-top: -7px;
    float: left;
}
a.whatsapp-button:hover, a.whatsapp-button:active, a.whatsapp-button:focus {
    color: #fff;
    background: #196725;
}
</style>

<a href="<wa-link>" target="null" class="whatsapp-button" rel="noopener"><i class="fab fa-whatsapp" aria-hidden="true"></i>Go to WhatsApp</a>

By the way, make sure that you paste this in the “Text” view and not in the “Visual” view!

The only thing you need to do is replace <wa-link> with your own WhatsApp link (the one we created with Wa.Link).

So, when I insert my link into the code, it looks like this:

Then, if you publish your WordPress page, the button should look like this:

And again, if people click that button, they will directly go to your WhatsApp chatbot.

 

Now It’s Your Turn

And those are the five ways on how you can get more customers to your WhatsApp Chatbot.

Now I have a question for you:

Which of the five ways are you going to use to get more customers to your WhatsApp chatbot?

Please let me know by leaving a comment below! 👇