The morning was mild, it came with a frenzied cold that made the hair on my body stand and a fever that wouldn’t subside with mere taking in of a pain reliever gulped down into my bowel with a cup of hot coffee. Added to the fever was the green notification light that seemed to blink till eternity. I knew few of the notifications were emails, while the ones that constituted the bulky part of them were my WhatsApp messages, specifically, my WhatsApp Business messages. You can understand, as a business person, how deals are going on, and you are just there, decapitated, and watched from afar. But amid all of these, despite I might not be physically available to respond to chats, I still felt confident that I wasn’t losing out on deals. I know you’ll want to ask me how?
WhatsApp, unarguably is the most popular instant messaging app, with 2 billion active monthly users as of March 2020. Ever since it was acquired in 2014, WhatsApp has undergone so many changes, from the littlest of features like the freemium service it provides and the User Interface being more friendly to more popular features like status update, which, undoubtedly, has become an integral part in the lifestyles of its users. This features and many more have been the marketing strategy many business owners adopt to further expand their reach. Since every business craves for customers who will not only make impressions but also take actions, WhatsApp, unlike other social media apps, has proved to be more effective in this aspect. Yet, as a business person, there’s still a probability you haven’t tapped into the advantages of these features effectively.
Why Use WhatsApp For Your Business?
The first question you might want to ask is, why should I use WhatsApp for my business? According to the Global State of Digital in 2019 report, at least 85% of Nigeria’s 24 million active users of the social media are on WhatsApp. Consequently, this has made WhatsApp to be the most used social media platform in Nigeria. Beyond the scale of its users base, below are the listed reasons why you should really use WhatsApp effectively for your business
- Useful Customer Service Channel: As the trust of customers evaporate quickly these days, it is essential that you be at a chat away from your customers. This will not only give your Brand the presence you want, it will also solidifies the belief and trust your customers have in you.
- WhatsApp Marketing: This is one aspect of marketing many business owners have not explored fully yet. With the WhatsApp status update, many businesses are able to reach potential customers that are on their contact list, but beyond that, they are able to reach more customers through group chats they belong to. The latter, group chats, is also effective, but it is more like other platforms – it is target at impressions most times, and not actions.
WhatsApp Business, Not WhatsApp
Earlier on, we talked about how it is relatively important to use WhatsApp for your business. This, many might interpret the WhatsApp to the one they use in their day-to-day instant chatting or conversation with friends and family. As much as this WhatsApp is valid to use for your business presence, but if you want to build trust with your business, stay in touch with customers without necessarily replying chats, and at the same time have simple personal conversation with friends and family, then you should consider to opt-in for a WhatsApp with more powerful features. And that WhatsApp is WhatsApp Business. available on both Android and iOS devices.
WhatsApp Business allows you to build trust with a business profile which can be publicly viewed by any potential client or customers. It also enables you to have basic analysis report about your business activity, gives room to organize your chats and send bulk messages at a go beyond the 256 Broadcast limitations. These are few among many fantastic features it holds.
WhatsApp Business can be entirely transformed to your marketplace, substituting totally, the need for your e-commerce website as a small business owner, and still display your goods or services for customers to interact with and make payment without you having to jostle from from chat to the other, telling the price or giving the description of a particular product.
Despite having known all of these relative to using WhatsApp Business for your business, there are still more to know with the WhatsApp Business Labels and Broadcast, the Greetings, Quick replies and Away Messages, and making use of the group you belong to further expand your customers reach.
How Then Are You Not Using Your WhatsApp Effectively?
If you are a business owner, and have already integrated WhatsApp Business into your business, I need not tell you more about why you need to, but rather clear your curiosity on why you are not using it effectively. Similarly, if you are a business owner and would be considering integrating WhatsApp Business into your business, then you might sure need to definitely get it right from the beginning.
Click on the button below to join the WhatsApp Bussiness: Converting It To Your Marketplace where you will learn about:
- WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API
- Labels and Broadcast: Understanding Their Symbiotic Relationship
- Automating responses beyond the messaging tools
- Cataloging Products to sell
- WhatsApp Business Synchronization With Facebook
- BONUS: Growing your customers database through groups contact extraction.
