Top 14 Benefits Of WhatsApp Business Account

With deeper penetration of digital technologies, a number of messaging apps and platforms have evolved. WhatsApp is leading the global messaging space with 2 billion monthly active users. Contrasting this information with the fact that the world has 8 billion people implies that one in four people uses WhatsApp today. So, WhatsApp has outsmarted other personal messaging tools to become one of the most impactful platforms for businesses to reach customers.

The best thing about using WhatsApp Business Account is you can integrate this with the CRM solutions to optimize your marketing and customer service efforts. In this blog, we have captured the WhatsApp Business Account benefits in detail. We have also presented some tips to help you leverage the fullest potential of the WhatsApp Business Account features and functionalities.

What is WhatsApp Business Account?

Akin to having a WhatsApp account to forge personal conversations with your friends and family, a WhatsApp Business Account helps businesses build seamless interactions with their customers. The WhatsApp Business Account features and functionalities help initiate, build, and manage customer conversations.

 

WhatsApp Business application is available on Android and iOS platforms and is free to download. While WhatsApp Business is appropriate for startups and small businesses, WhatsApp launched the WhatsApp Business API to support large businesses and enterprises that deal with a significantly large customer base and multiple users at once. 

The features of WhatsApp Business Account are similar to a regular WhatsApp account, like messaging, sharing photos, etc. The business account extends these functionalities to cover broadcast messages, auto-replies, transactional messages, multiple-user access, and so on. 

Using WhatsApp Business API, businesses can schedule campaigns and track the effectiveness of their performance. They can leverage the platform to send updates, provide information, resolve customer queries, and so it turns out to be an effective customer support tool. 

From marketing messages and promotional content to transactional messages and customer support, a WhatsApp Business Account has the power to streamline customer interaction and promote sales. 

Why Do You Need A WhatsApp Business Account?

As explained in the previous section, you can choose one of the following WhatsApp Business Accounts.

• WhatsApp Business App if you are a startup or small business,
• WhatsApp Business API if you are running a medium-scale or a large business and have multiple users.

Following are some reasons you should sign up for a WhatsApp Business Account. 

1. Business Profile Creation

A regular personal WhatsApp account displays basic information like name, profile picture, and description. On the other hand, with a business profile, you can set the following. 

• Working hours, 
• Contact information,
• Website details, 
• Address of the physical location,
• Email Address,
• Social media links,
• Business type.

Beyond conveying basic information about your business, these WhatsApp Business Account features add credibility to your products and services.

2. Categorize Customer Chats

WhatsApp Business Account helps categorize customer chats and add labels. You can add labels like leads, new customers, new orders, payment pending, paid, order delivered, order completed, etc. 

By doing so, you can keep your inbox organized. You can search through the labels to figure out the status of a customer order.  You can add colors to the labels for easy identification and tracking. 

3. Set up a Greeting Message

Using a WhatsApp Business Account, you can set up a greeting message to welcome a user when he/she initiates a dialog. Also, when a customer sends a message after 14 days of no activity or zero interaction, they will receive the greeting.

4. Set up Auto-replies 

When you own a business, you may get frequent inquiries about the features of your products and services. Your new customers may ask questions that you have answered multiple times before. 

You can identify popular questions and set auto replies to frequently asked questions so you don’t have to repeat answers to questions you already answered. 

5. Create Catalogs

Businesses can use catalogs can showcase their products and services to customers. They can access the price, product code, and description of every item in the catalog. This means that you don’t have to redirect your customers to your website or send them the details every time. 

Using the Collections feature, businesses can also group items into categories, which means customers can figure out the features of a product or service they are looking for without going through the entire product list. 

6. Set up Out-of-office Messages

You can inform your customers about your unavailability using the Away message option on the WhatsApp Business Account, whether you are sick or leaving on vacation. The best thing about this feature is that you can customize the message content.

So, using WhatsApp Business Account helps you build credibility and trust among the users and customers of your business. Given the competitiveness of today’s marketplaces, putting the WhatsApp Business Account features and functionalities to the best use will help you stand ahead of your competitors. 

In the following section, we dive deeper into the WhatsApp Business Account benefits and share tips on how you can leverage them to unleash your business potential. 

WhatsApp Business Account Benefits

Using WhatsApp Business Account to reach your customers adds a personal touch to your customer interactions and helps forge deeper when compared to other channels.

Following are some important WhatsApp Business Account benefits you must know as a business owner. 

1. Increase your Reach

WhatsApp has over 2 billion users, and there can’t be a better channel to reach your prospects and customers. It is a popular messaging app in 188 countries. The easiest way to broaden the reach of your products and services is to leverage the WhatsApp channel. The large audience base is a promising reason to set up a WhatsApp Business Account. 

The WhatsApp Business features and benefits help widen the reach of your offerings among your existing customers and target new customers.

2. Boost your Marketing Efforts

WhatsApp messages have a whopping 98% open rate. It means that out of 100 messages you send through WhatsApp, 98 messages are opened and read. When you compare this against Emails and SMS channels, which have an open rate of just 21.33%, the significance and advantages of WhatsApp in promoting business conversations stand explicit.

Using broadcasting features, you can reach multiple customers at once. The catalog feature helps you set up an online marketplace to display your product and service offerings grouped by category.

Customers can make their purchases through the WhatsApp application, and you don’t have to redirect them to a website or other channels and miss them on the go. As you can market as well as your products and services through the WhatsApp Business Account, it offers a seamless customer experience.

3. Private and Personalized Conversations

WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, so it is a great channel to share credentials, one-time passwords, order details, payment details, tracking details, and other private information. It is also the most appropriate platform for one-on-one business conversations.

As you can reach individual customers, the WhatsApp platform offers a greater space for customization and personalization. If you own a large enterprise, you can link the WhatsApp Business API with the CRM software solutions in the market and discover customer insights. Based on the insights from the data, you can customize your marketing campaigns and communication.

4. Secure and Trustworthy Patform

All WhatsApp Business Accounts undergo rigorous verification and authentication on WhatsApp Business Manager or Facebook Business Manager. They are required to submit some business documents for verification to get a green tick. All these instill a sense of trust and credibility in customers’ minds when they interact with you through the WhatsApp Business Account.

The customers feel secure and comfortable about engaging with the business through the platform. 

5. GRPR-Compliant

An important advantage of WhatsApp is that it complies with GDPR and invests enormous efforts to ensure that its practices comply with the region’s data laws and privacy norms. It allows businesses using WhatsApp Business API to engage and share messages only with customers who have opted to receive them.

It determines the quality score based on customer interactions. If a customer reports or blocks you, it impacts your quality score. This covers both the advantages and disadvantages of WhatsApp Business Accounts. Though quality scores and other checks limit the abilities of businesses, the podium is free of spammers, which in turn enhances the trustability of your business.

So, interacting with your customers through a WhatsApp Business Account makes them feel legitimate. This helps market your business and reach more customers effectively.

Also read: Top 20 WhatsApp Marketing Tools for Bulk WhatsApp

6. Diverse and Interactive Content Formats

A notable advantage of using the WhatsApp Business Platform to push customer communication is that you can tailor your message in different formats, including text, audio, video, attachments, images, CTAs, links, etc. 

You can also add interact buttons so recipients can send their responses after reading the message. When it comes to text, SMS restricts the message length to 1000 characters. But WhatsApp has no such restrictions, and you can cook up long customer messages based on the audience persona.

7. Supports Two-way Communication

With WhatsApp, you can engage with customers and receive their messages and replies. This is unlike the typical no-reply text messages and emails that only promote one-way communication. As WhatsApp supports two-way communication, customers can seek support and assistance without making a call or going to a website. As per a Salesforce study, 80% of customers value agree that experience and engagement are as important as shopping for a product or availing of a service. Using WhatsApp Business Platform promotes two-way interaction and helps enhance the customer experience.

8. Facilitates Multichannel Strategy

Failing to provide multichannel service leads to losses that amount to 10% of the company’s revenue. Using WhatsApp Business API helps strengthen your omnichannel strategy and reach customers in new, untapped markets.

An advantage of WhatsApp Business Account is that you can integrate the API with marketing, sales, payment, and customer support. This means you can send marketing messages, scout for leads, take orders, seek payments, and handle customer inquiries through the same platform.

A notable feature of WhatsApp Business Account is that it allows multiple users to access a single account. You can build a reliable customer support solution with reliable WhatsApp marketing software. You can also integrate with other channels and build a solid omnichannel strategy to reach out to your customers and resolve their queries. 

9. Automate Responses to Customer Queries

WhatsApp offers templatized responses to frequently asked customer questions. You can set custom greetings and Away messages to interact with your customers even when you are not online. You can also set up an onboarding message flow that automatically navigates them based on their replies. 

Several WhatsApp marketing software solutions help build your own chatbots and automate live chat. You can automate first-hand responses using the Chatbot. Studies show that 67% of people depend on Chatbot support while using WhatsApp. A Juniper Research study shows that Chatbots have helped businesses save $11 billion in automation. 

Using Chatbots or automated messages on the WhatsApp Business Account helps businesses offload their administrative tasks and invest their time into performing other crucial business operations. 

10. Opportunity to Showcase your Brand

Today’s marketplaces are extremely competitive, and businesses are working out innovative strategies to garner the attention of their customers and draw more eyeballs toward their offerings.  

Using a WhatsApp Business Account, businesses can add all the details about the business profile, including logo, website, social media links, description, etc. You can also use a catalog and categorize the products so customers can scroll through and explore a category they want. 

Doing so helps improve your business’s visibility and strengthen your brand’s image. Using WhatsApp, in addition to other channels, provides an extra podium to showcase the value offerings of your business. 

11. Improve Marketing Campaigns

Using a WhatsApp Business Account, you can build innovative marketing campaigns. You can group customers and add labels, so identifying them becomes easy and effortless. You can also create broadcast lists, subscriber lists, etc., and customize your messages accordingly. 

Using the metrics like open rate, click-through rate, etc., generated from marketing campaigns, you can improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. 

12. Collect Subscribers Using QR Codes

With WhatsApp, you can collect subscribers and opt-ins using WhatsApp links and WhatsApp QR codes. When you place them effectively in your online and offline marketing messages, you can allow customers to interact with you directly through the channel. They can check your WhatsApp business profile and catalog and decide if they would want to engage with your business. 

This helps improve the accessibility for customers as they can reach you with just a click, unlike the regular WhatsApp account, where they have to add your number to the contact list to be able to message you. 

You can add the WhatsApp QR code to your messages and motivate them to sign up for your business offerings in just a click. This way, you can add customers without worrying about compliance norms and GDPR. You can also add QR codes to the shipment so customers can reach you easily if they require support or further information about your offering. 

13. Fair Pricing Models

WhatsApp Business API is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels for businesses of all scales and sizes. It is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model, and you only pay for the messages you send. 

So, even if you are a small business owner, using WhatsApp Business Account is an effective way to garner more customers without burning your pockets. When you send quality messages, your sending quota gets a boost, and this can offer more promising opportunities to reach your customers. 

When compared to other marketing channels, the RoI of the WhatsApp Business Account is extremely high. This means the benefits of WhatsApp Business Accounts far outweigh their costs. 

14. Send More Relevant Marketing Messages

Using WhatsApp offers more room to tune your messages and customize marketing campaigns. You can drive reminders, alerts, status updates, and push notifications. This could be an alternative to emails where instead of swamping their email inbox with promotional messages, you can just update your business status or send an alert about your new products and services.

Also read: Promotional WhatsApp Messages – A Complete Guide [With Templates]

How to Get Started with the WhatsApp Business API?

Kick-starting your WhatsApp marketing journey is very simple. It starts with identifying the right WhatsApp Business Account for your business. There are two types of WhatsApp Business Accounts:

1. WhatsApp Business App

If you own a small business or a sole proprietorship company, using the WhatsApp Business App is the most appropriate and affordable option. You can link 5 users to a single account, which goes up to 10 if you sign up for WhatsApp Business Premium. 

2. WhatsApp Business API

WhatsApp Business API works best if you own a medium or large-scale enterprise with a large customer base and you would want to integrate the platform with other CRM and marketing software. 

You should first receive the WhatsApp Business API from a reliable business or WhatsApp solutions provider. Using an API also helps automate responses, send messages in bulk, and generate insightful reports and analytics. 

Though different business solutions providers use different steps, most of them follow the following steps to create an account with WhatsApp Business API. 

Step 1: Choose a business solutions provider. 

Step 2: Create your WhatsApp Business Account. If you have a Facebook account, you can link both. 

Step 3:  Add details to your WhatsApp business profile and register the legal business name, phone number, website, and email address. 

Step 4: Verify the business phone number you would want to use to execute your business campaigns.

Conclusion

Enhanced reach, increased credibility, interactive content, personalization, etc., are some of the key WhatsApp Business Account benefits. 

Beyond that, firms gain access to important WhatsApp business features like an automated response, away messages, catalog, green tick verification, bulk message sender, templates for campaigns, etc. Identifying a reliable WhatsApp marketing software provider could be your appropriate starting point for setting up WhatsApp Business Account.

Frequently Asked Questions

Supriya is a highly skilled content writer with over 8 years of experience in the SaaS domain. She believes in curating engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly content to simplify highly technical concepts. With an expansive portfolio of long-format blogs, newsletters, whitepapers, and case studies, Supriya is dedicated to staying in touch with emerging SaaS trends to produce relevant and reliable content.