WhatsApp Business has been already launched in India. This could be very useful for businesses. Now the lead generation process is going to be much more streamlined. This new WhatsApp for Business is much helpful for small business who can not really invest in landing pages, who can’t invest in a good website. You can actually make use of WhatsApp for Business and gain immediate conversion. So what is WhatsApp for Business (WhatsApp Business)?
WhatsApp for Business (WhatsApp Business)
It is a new version of WhatsApp. There’s not much difference that I’ll tell you. Basically, this is a separate App for business purposes. So you’ll have to download WhatsApp for Business (WhatsApp Business) in case you want to use this particular feature.
It allows you to directly drive inquiries from Facebook Ads to WhatsApp. If you don’t know how to create Facebook Ads 2018, read the step-by-step tutorial. If you remember, “In December 2017 there was a message that people can send you messages directly by clicking on your Facebook advertisement”. When people click on “Message Us” feature they can direct message you right there in WhatsApp. Now Facebook is providing a “Send Message” button for an advertisement with WhatsApp logo. This WhatsApp logo is just an indication that people can directly WhatsApp you instead of sending you a message on Messenger. However, currently, this particular Call-to-Action button is not available for everyone. So I’m waiting for that feature as well I’m sure most of us are waiting for this in India.
Currently, WhatsApp for Business is going to allow you to create an “auto-reply”. WhatsApp Business allow you to create an auto-reply especially when you have a lot of messages flowing. This makes it a lot easier and it can become a part of marketing automation chain and here I’ll tell you how?
How to activate WhatsApp for Business?
To activate WhatsApp for Business first you will have to download and install the WhatsApp Business and you need to have a subject number for this. In case you are using your same number then you’ll have to say Goodbye to your personal WhatsApp account. So you’ve to take a wise decision. But the best part of converting your personal WhatsApp account into WhatsApp for Business is you already have contacts up there who would want to chat with you. So you don’t have to do any kind of changes. I mean audience would be ready to here you.
So what I’ve done? I have converted my personal WhatsApp account into a business account because it is so easy for me to now communicate and test this feature. So you also have to download the WhatsApp Business. Once you download you need to register your company name for once and this can’t be changed. I saved TopKhoj as company name and that’s my website name also, so you’ll have to decide your company’s name and you’ve to save that up because you can’t change this again.
I’m sure maybe two years, three years down the line this feature will differ. Currently, there’s no customized URL option for your business account, unlike Twitter or Facebook. So maybe that would be one of the features that WhatsApp will be soon launching as well.
Now let’s take a look into the features of WhatsApp for Business
When you launch WhatsApp Business, for a minute you’ll think what is the difference here? Actually, It’s just the same thing, you have the same chats, same status, same call option, same contacts up there. So there is not much different. But the only difference that you would see in the setting section is “Business setting”. Now, this is where you will probably see a lot of different features which will never saw in the normal WhatsApp. So let’s get into one of these features.
Business Setting
The business setting gives you six bottom things. It gives you Profile setting, Statistics, Short Link, Away message, Greeting message, and Quick reply. Now I’ll be putting across those important things which actually make sense for us. It is also the differentiating factor between WhatsApp for personal reasons and WhatsApp for Business.
Let’s get into the profile setting —
In profile setting you can add your business address, location, you can add your business description, email address and as well as your website URL. So this is how your profile will look (see below screenshot) after you fix things. You can even mark your location on the map which is the good part. I’m not too sure at this point of time how WhatsApp Business especially locations are going to be used, maybe with time Facebook is going to define this as well.
Now the second important thing: The “Away message” feature —
Away Message
We’ll first understand what does Away message? This particular feature is a message feature that you activate when you are not active on WhatsApp Business. For example, you are active on the internet and you don’t want to reply to messages because you are very busy. In this case, you can activate this feature and you can have a customized message there. So anybody who sends you a message gets an auto-reply message from you. Now the best part of this feature is it doesn’t work in WhatsApp group because groups have messages all the time so it’s not good to send the same replies to people again and again. So it doesn’t work in groups.
However, you can disable and enable this feature whenever you want. For example, you are entering into your office, you’re very busy, you can enable this and when you are leaving your office you can disable this. At the same point of time, you are entering a meeting, you can make use of this particular feature. It’s one of the fabulous features.
So the next important messaging tool is Greeting message —
Greeting message
Now this message feature allows you to send messages to those people who have sent you a message for the first time. For example, you have been putting a project number in the courses, putting your number all across on the internet and people are sending you WhatsApp messages to receive updates from you. Sometimes it is very fascinating, initially allowed people to send me WhatsApp messages but it becomes very monotonous for me to keep replying to them and it becomes very tiring, so you have to be on WhatsApp all the time and the questions keep coming from people.
It is most frequently asked questions so I completely remove my numbers across on the automation process. so that people can’t send me the message. But this feature is now allowing me to reactivate that entire process again, why? Because when people are going to send me the message on WhatsApp, I can now send them a greeting message. So you can see (in the below screenshot) the message which I’ve drafted, so that person sends me a message for the first time receiving a message from me. Because I’ve activated both the Away message and the Greeting message together. The person first receiving a Greeting message and also the Away message out there. And this is a great feature, why? because of sometimes you have something to say especially. When you did advertisements and you can always get this drafter, save it right there so anybody who is going to message you they see your both advertisement messages. So marketers don’t have to personally save their number, send them a message, and copy-paste all that info. That’s why that is the fabulous initiative that WhatsApp for business has brought. See below screenshot.
The next important thing is the Quick reply —
Quick Reply
Here you can answer some common questions such as services, locations, and some other info. So here you can define your answer and draft it for a quick reply. You can define a keyword such as Thanks and dropped a message, Service and drafted a message, Facebook and drafted a message. See the below screenshot.
Now when anybody who’s going to ask you about service, what you’ll need to do? Just type slash (/) icon in the message box and WhatsApp will give you options for the quick reply from your drafted keywords. Now tap on a keyword that you want to send as a quick reply. It’ll send reply messages whatever message you drafted. See the below screenshot.
WhatsApp for Business has also a statistics option —
Statistics
It is very simple, just show details about how many people you send messages and how many people have read them and how many people have replied to you back.
Benefits of WhatsApp Business
- People can use their number in newspaper Ads, Hoardings and have a Greeting message with all the details and sequence messages in the format of pre-defines replies.
- Chatbot Automation
- A direct message from Facebook Ads
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