In search of enhancing its services and focusing on a personalized practice between companies and clients, the popular WhatsApp communications platform has launched a new tool: WhatsApp Business or WhatsApp for Business.
This application seeks, through its business management functions, to ensure that companies and small businesses can communicate effectively with their customers and transmit information, as well as establish an effective means of internal communication.
WhatsApp Business offers a series of benefits and utilities that will allow to consolidate communications, increase sales and negotiations, and have greater control through a series of statistics that quantify effectiveness.
With its implementation in business, it is sought to avoid the loss of potential customers, lack of information, and misunderstandings.
It is worth knowing more about this tool that will help companies manage a large volume of WhatsApp messages, keep up to date, and take advantage of everything it offers to the business world.
What is WhatsApp Business?
WhatsApp Business is a free application, compatible with Android and iPhone, developed to facilitate the interaction that companies establish with their customers in a fast, fluid, automated, and organized way.
It works in the same way as WhatsApp Messenger and maintains the same characteristics, but additionally offers the following functions:
Availability of a company profile. That keeps basic information about the company such as an address, email, and website in view.
Statistics management. To view the total messages sent, and how many of them were delivered and read.
Messenger service. To respond quickly to customers, even in an automated way.
Undoubtedly, WhatsApp Business is a communication channel with which you can maintain a simple, constant, and direct communication with the client, and also develop authorized marketing.
So if what you want is to provide a 24/7 service to your customers, offer an after-sales service, and even spread advertising campaigns, this is the perfect means to achieve it.
WhatsApp has more than 1200 million users around the world and that it already exceeds 75 million downloads, so this launch of WhatsApp Business is committed to being the preferred application for SMEs.
Origin
WhatsApp Inc. was founded by Jan Koum in 2009, initially, it was only available for BlackBerry, later for iPhone, and it was programmed only to make the availability of the personal public and disseminate the statuses to their contacts.
In 2013 it launched its version for Android, also announcing the service charge after 365 days of use, which caused a decline that was favorable for other competitors.
In 2014, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg made the purchase of WhatsApp in search of expanding its number of users.
And finally, in 2017, WhatsApp Business is announced, created especially so that companies can offer better service to their customers through this application.
What benefits does WhatsApp Business bring to my business?
WhatsApp Business has various functionalities that can be used to benefit the business strategy, so it is convenient to know each one of them to make the most of them.
WhatsApp Business as an ideal communication channel
Because today’s competitiveness increasingly requires business strategies that facilitate processes for users, which will affect sales.
Also, thanks to the simultaneous translation through GBoard you can send messages in 92 languages. As well as successfully spreading your campaigns due to its high conversion rate.
Integrate landline lines to the account
So that you can continue to use them as a means to communicate with your customers and vice versa.
Quickly answers
Since it is possible to save and use the answers to frequently asked questions, which can later be sent to other users.
Profile only for companies
Through this application, WhatsApp gives the user greater confidence, since it validates the companies and guarantees that they are communicating with a real company. It includes a profile that can be consulted, indicating the basic data of the company such as address, type of business, email, and website.
Tone of messages
It allows you to establish a professional tone, which is equally close and friendly, without neglecting the style of the company.
Automatic responses
Using this option ensures that customers will be served at all times, despite the company being offline. For this, it is necessary to establish an absence message in advance and it is also advisable to create a welcome message that allows you to publicize your business with new users.
Variety of content
WhatsApp Business also makes available to companies the possibility of sharing various types of content such as photos, videos, links, texts, and much more.
Groups
A very useful feature is being able to segment clients into groups to establish a specific target. As well as being able to unify them quickly.
Immediacy and status of messages
Like its standard version, WhatsApp Business provides immediate delivery of messages, as well as viewing their status to verify if the message was sent, received, and read.
Whatsapp web
It offers the convenience of simplifying tasks as it can be downloaded to any computer through WhatsApp Web.
Internal communication medium
This option allows for reducing costs since it allows instant communication with employees when they are out of town, apart from the fact that it can be used as a means to send motivational messages to the team.
Statistics
Measuring the impact is a very important step, which reveals relevant information related to the messages, indicating the amount sent, delivered, and read in a certain period of time.
How to set up a business account?
The next step, after downloading the application through the Play Store, is to create a WhatsApp Business account and configure the business profile:
- Enter the name of the company making sure it is spelled correctly, as it cannot be modified later.
- Indicate the exact physical address of the company.
- Provide the company website and profiles on social networks if you have them.
- Select what type of offer you will offer to meet the needs of customers (products/services).
- Indicate the opening hours.
- Describe what the business objective is.
With the information provided, potential customers will be able to locate you more easily.
How to use WhatsApp Business?
To implement WhatsApp Business successfully it is necessary to follow the following steps:
- Segment your database. To make the most of the leads, it is necessary to prepare a database to segment your customers according to type and thus offer them personalized communication.
- Define the message and style. In this step, not only the text should be taken into account, but also creativity and originality, using in your favor the various formats and sending of files that WhatsApp Business supports, and even the use of emojis.
- Avoid becoming spam. For this, you can schedule the shipments, and ensure that they are messages of interest to the user, so attractive that they want to share them with their contacts.
- Build your contact list. You should not create groups to share the messages, but contact lists according to the type of client or degree of loyalty, with this action you can share fully personalized messages. This in order not to infringe the General Data Protection Law.
Get the most out of your profile
Every business profile must be attractive so that it can appear on social networks, and in the case of WhatsApp Business it is worth following the following tips:
- Pick a good profile picture. Make it distinctive of your brand and you can adapt it on special occasions.
- Update your status periodically. With relevant information of interest to the user, such as recent news about the brand, news, schedules, contests, among others. Keep in mind, that the states represent a trend when it comes to marketing.
- Use tools properly. To perform customer management and schedule shipping tasks.
Measures to follow to avoid being Spam
There are some measures that you can put into practice to reach your potential customers in a less intrusive way and avoid being considered a Spam, so you can introduce the use of this new service channel through:
- Social networks. You can use this medium to advertise the advantages of using WhatsApp Business, you can even do it through promotions, discounts, surveys, fun tests, and more, to quickly get new contacts.
- Newsletter. Through this strategy, you can inform customers, suppliers, and distributors about the use of this new communication channel, also, you could even obtain new leads and expand your database.
- Website. You could implement the use of pop-up for users to provide their data and confirm you as a contact on their agenda.
WhatsApp Business Analytics
So far the analytics provided by WhatsApp Business is very basic but quite useful since it shows the number of messages sent, delivered, received, and read, as well as segmenting users by interaction groups.
It is expected that in the future a connection with social networks such as Facebook can be established, visualize the conversion rate, or the number of clicks.
Automate your answers with this application
As already mentioned, automating responses is possible with WhatsApp Business, which would bring great benefits to the business.
With the help of keyboard shortcuts, it is possible to preset various quick messages such as welcomes, greetings, farewells, answers to frequently asked questions, thanks, absence message, among others. This option also allows you to disable specific notifications. The characteristics that these automatic messages cannot lack are the following:
Welcome messages
They are created to give a cordial message to those users who are contacting us for the first time. These messages allow a maximum length of 200 characters and allow adding emojis.
Absent message
This option can be activated when we are not available or establish an activation time. Its maximum length is 200 characters. It is important to note that it only works as long as the phone maintains an Internet connection, so it could happen that customers do not receive it every time we are absent.
Quickly answers
They are previously saved phrases that can be activated by just typing a word or character, which greatly speeds up this type of process.
WhatsApp Business success stories
Several success stories show the usefulness and benefits that this application can offer to the business world. Here are some of them:
Cacaolat
This is a smoothie company, which through WhatsApp carried out a campaign to strengthen the image of the brand, managing to link the use of billboards with this application.
The campaign was called “Looking for Pepi” when finding her on the billboards, one had to send a WhatsApp with the photo and the hashtag #cacaolat, to participate in a raffle of 180 products of the brand. This promotion lasted 3 months and achieved the participation of 380 thousand users.
Bifruit
This brand offered a promotion that consisted of buying 2 brand products to participate in a raffle for a motorcycle. The purchase receipt had to be sent via a photo to WhatsApp. This action managed to increase sales, with a participation of 38 thousand users.
Whats Travel
It took advantage of the WhatsApp functionality to manage flight reservations since users could do it directly quickly through this application.
Hellmann’s
He used WhatsApp to create a recipe chat for newbies. To participate they only had to give their phone number and use Hellmann’s mayonnaise as one of the ingredients. The prize would be a cooking masterclass with chefs.
Conclusion
Currently, immediacy has a lot of value, and WhatsApp Business has managed to offer a range of possibilities, both on a personal and professional level, that it is recommended that companies know how to make the most of it to streamline their services and responses.
For small and medium-sized companies and even larger ones dedicated to a more global business, WhatsApp Business is presented as a solution to improve communication, which can often become deficient, causing the loss of potential customers and other problems.
However, it is necessary to warn that excessive sending of messages can cause the opposite effect, and even lead to the closure of the account. So it is fair to use it with caution, and above all, a lot of creativity launched in advertising campaigns that manage to raise the level of sales and profits, generating new opportunities that benefit both users and the brand.
The tool exists and is waiting for the appropriate strategy according to the style and approach of each company, but it is also necessary to know how to sell through WhatsApp Business without neglecting that customer satisfaction will affect the achievement of the objectives of the company.
