Ready to seize the seasonal moment? Holidays, Mega Sales Days like Black Friday and 11.11, and other shopping peaks can create big opportunities for businesses in any industry, but especially retail and ecommerce. These periods of increased consumer activity are great times to grow your audience and increase your customer base through smart strategies for lead generation.

As consumers actively seek out deals and explore new products, targeted lead generation experiences can help merchants build a valuable database of interested prospects not only for holiday sales, but also for the long term. Peak-season lead generation efforts can help businesses maximize revenue potential, support marketing strategies, and foster lasting customer relationships. But how do you do it efficiently during what may be your most chaotic time of the year?

Merchants need seamless and scalable ways to acquire, convert, and retain quality leads. That’s where WhatsApp for Business comes in.

In a study of nearly 18,000 holiday shoppers, more than half said they discovered brands or products during the holiday season using Meta technologies, like WhatsApp.¹ And during the holidays, 40% say they use business messaging because it’s the easiest and most convenient way to communicate with businesses.

Communicating with customers via business messaging during the holidays is not only convenient for them, it also makes things simpler for you.

WhatsApp makes lead generation efficient thanks to features like WhatsApp Flows, ads that click to WhatsApp, and the ability to design end-to-end journeys that help turn leads into revenue.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways merchants can implement efficient lead generation strategies during seasonal peaks using WhatsApp for Business.

WhatsApp is (literally) the ideal conversation starter. Ads that click to WhatsApp provide a highly effective acquisition engine for merchants during shopping seasons, when users are online and actively seeking out deals and ideas.

You can generate demand for your product offers and interest in your brand using ads that click to WhatsApp from Facebook and Instagram–and that’s when a personal conversation with your business begins.

Then, in the same thread, you can ask shoppers for opt-in permissions for marketing messages, offer coupons, or use customized or prepackaged flows to gather contact information and qualify leads.

Customized lead generation forms are especially easy to build with WhatsApp Flows. You can see in the example below how easy they make it for customers to share information without ever leaving WhatsApp.

Here’s how a lead generation journey for collecting purchase intent might look during the lead-up to Black Friday:

To streamline the lead generation process and ensure you make the most of your customer acquisition efforts on WhatsApp, you’ll want to implement integrations with your backend systems so leads automatically flow to your CRM. A Meta Business Messaging Partner can be a helpful resource for custom integrations like this.

And don’t forget to measure! Take advantage of the Conversions API to measure leads attributable to your ads, and run A/B tests to optimize your lead generation performance.

Effective measurement was vital to Pediasure Indonesia’s lead generation strategy on WhatsApp. The children’s nutrition brand tested whether ads that click to WhatsApp could generate leads more effectively than their previous strategy, and the results revealed a 64% lower cost per lead.

“Through this experiment,” said Henny Yuliandini of Pediasure Indonesia, “we’ve been able to see and measure how ads that click to WhatsApp can deliver not just a lower cost per lead, but also more efficient customer acquisition.”

Welcoming in qualified new customers during peak seasons and Mega Sales Days can pay off all year long. And lead generation is just one way Business Messaging can positively impact businesses and engage people throughout the customer lifecycle.

Explore more holiday and Mega Sales Day resources here, where you’ll learn about other ways to use Business Messaging, including:

• Personalized promotions
• Consultative selling
• Online-to-offline commerce
• Recapturing abandoned carts
• Fulfillment communications
• Cross-selling and upselling

Not yet taking advantage of WhatsApp for Business? Take the first step, and be on your way to stronger results and customer relationships during peak periods and every day of the year.