Last year’s World Cup football tournament was a huge success, in terms of viewers and engagement. Official statistics from FIFA show that five billion people engaged with the month-long tournament. The final between eventual winners Argentina and France achieved a global reach of close to 1.5 billion viewers while almost six billion engagements were made on social media.
There were some great advertising and marketing campaigns during the World Cup in Qatar and plenty of innovative concepts. One that stands out is from Vodafone Qatar which launched a GigaHome Click-to-WhatsApp World Cup Lead Generation campaign in November 2022. Click-to-WhatsApp ads allow an audience to send a message directly from an ad they saw on platforms like Facebook or Instagram by providing a call to action to send a WhatsApp message. It creates an immediate connection with the brand and initiates a high intent user conversation. The conversation can either be completely human-led or automated.
“For Vodafone Qatar, their main objective was to increase the number of quality leads through users who initiated a WhatsApp conversation and as a result, increase the number of sales for the GigaHome internet product.”
Vodafone Qatar relies primarily on online channels to sell their home internet product, known as GigaHome. To help do this, it invests consistently on Meta’s platforms to generate leads and sales. Vodafone decided to launch a campaign using Ads that Click-to-WhatsApp (CTWA) to drive users on the WhatsApp channel so they can learn more about the product and eventually complete a transaction. They chose the WhatsApp channel to increase the number of quality leads and accelerate their sales.
For Vodafone Qatar, their main objective was to increase the number of quality leads through users who initiated a WhatsApp conversation and as a result, increase the number of sales for the GigaHome internet product. For the target audience, Vodafone went for broad targeting, focusing on the entire Qatari population.
To measure the performance of the campaign, Vodafone ran a brand lift study to measure the impact of the campaign. The results were as per the following: 3.6 pts lift in campaign awareness / 3.2 pts lift in recommendation / 710 new conversations in 4 weeks. This was the first globally measured CTWA campaign.
Businesses are shifting to WhatsApp to promote their products or services for a number of reasons such as the deeper relationships with customers that it builds along with improving customer retention. Another compelling reason is that it boosts conversions and opt-ins.
Elie Antoun, Head of Telecom and Media, Meta MENA
“The results of Vodafone Qatar’s Click to WhatsApp campaign across the funnel reinforce the importance of the WhatsApp channel and its ability to generate quality leads and accelerate sales. We look forward to deeper lower funnel measurements with the support of 360 Dialog to turn this activation into an always-on lead generation play”
Selda Bostancioglu, COPS and Digital Director at Vodafone Qatar
“At Vodafone, we are committed to maintaining our leadership position by offering an advanced customer experience, making world class infrastructure investments, operating our business with integrity, and focusing on data protection. We are proud to have partnered with Meta to create the first conversion focused channel on WhatsApp; along with 360 Dialog and Tars Platform. WhatsApp interaction is creating the moment of truth up to 50 times a day on the mobile screen; supplying a convenient onboarding journey to Vodafone Qatar, supporting the sales process with real time feedback, whilst providing a world
class customer experience at the heart of these interactions- furthering our position at the forefront of technological innovation.”
Justin Harper, Editor, Campaign Middle East
“Marketers are regularly coming up with innovative ways to find, reach and convert a wider audience at the lowest cost possible. Messaging apps are proving to be a valuable tool to achieve these goals. As the most popular messaging platform in the world, WhatsApp has now become the ‘go-to app’ for marketers to generate high intent leads and boost conversion rates thanks to its wide audience reach and a high volume of daily active users.
The Vodafone Qatar CTWA campaign is simple to follow and available in both English and Arabic. It is clear to understand and improves the user journey in my humble opinion. It has the benefit of real-time responses and feels personalized to the user’s needs. We can expect to see more campaigns like this which should boost first-time sales and repeat purchases.”
