Back in October 2014, when Facebook had acquired WhatsApp for a whopping $19 Billion it had created a lot of buzz in the tech industry. Last week, Facebook announced its new version of the messaging app called as "WhatsApp Business" for verified accounts.
Here are few statistics on WhatsApp
Often, students asked me a question "How will Facebook monetize Whatsapp?" and my reply used to be "With a Facebook Business like App for Whatsapp."
Globally, small businesses will benefit from it as it will help businesses communicate with customers easily. Also, it would be an affordable tool in their marketing resources replacing the likes of MailChimp, Third Party Apps, etc. To me, the newly launched WhatsApp for Business application is WhatsApp version of a Facebook page.
In 2017, the app started rolling out the beta version that verified and assigned Green check marks to business contacts. Starting today, SME's and large corporations can sign up with a business profile with the app. With over 1.3 billion users, marketers can enhance communication with their target customers. Over the period of time, I am hoping to see it more as a Customer Service tool and Promotional app (similar to Twitter and MailChimp). With WhatsApp Business account, companies can set-up automatic greetings (Chat Bots), analytics (impressions, clicks, conversions, etc) and payment gateway. With this, Facebook will finally start monetizing on WhatsApp. Now, that my friend is how Facebook works (pun intended).
According to a report from TechCrunch, over 80% of small businesses in India and Brazil said that WhatsApp helps them communicate with customers and grow their businesses. If you have separate business and personal phone numbers, you can have both WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp personal messenger installed on the same phone, and register them with different numbers.
Here is a glimpse of how WhatsApp for Businesses will work:
In addition to all existing features of WhatsApp messenger such as the ability to send multimedia, free calls*, free international messaging*, group chat, offline messages, and much more, businesses can now use WhatsApp Web to efficiently respond to customers
As a marketing faculty and a marketer for my college, I am thrilled and super excited about this news. Do share your thoughts on the same in the comments. #WhatsApp #WhatsappBusiness #Facebook