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WhatsApp since its launch in November 2009 has proactively empowered instant text messaging for its users. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp is constantly witnessing a higher growth rate ever since.

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With such a large audience on a single platform, have you ever thought of using WhatsApp as a medium to sell your business products? Or ever come across something like: How to Optimise Your WhatsApp Business Profile?

If not, let us convince you with some numbers:

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1. Around 220.5 million WhatsApp Business downloads were made by businesses worldwide in 2021.
2. Around 175 million people send messages to WhatsApp business accounts daily. This shows how people are already responding positively to this new initiative.

And most importantly…

These WhatsApp Business accounts can help in solving user queries or even let them browse through products and services offered. Such details are showcased on a WhatsApp Business Catalogue. It enabled businesses to reach where their customers are. 

Various businesses have also started Live Chat support services that help in enhancing customer experience.

As a brand in the D2C industry, choosing not to be present on a platform where the majority of your customers are already present can result in lower visibility and less brand awareness. Hence, to survive in this competitive industry, you need to stay connected with audiences.

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Let’s understand this channel in detail to help your brand reach potential audiences while nurturing relationships with existing ones, and promoting their brand like never before.

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Let us get started!

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What is a WhatsApp Business profile?‍

A WhatsApp Business profile enables a business to establish a formal brand presence on WhatsApp. With billions of users already present on WhatsApp, it becomes one of the crucial ways to attract potential customers from this community and showcase your services or product. 

‍This profile can be filled up with details such as business name, product description, contact information, and others. We shall learn about all these details in the next section, but for now, this information allows businesses to efficiently communicate their product USP to their customers.

‍What is a WhatsApp Business Account?

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A WhatsApp Business Account is a landmark initiative by WhatsApp Inc. launched in January 2018 that is designed for brands to sell their services on the world’s most penetrated platform - WhatsApp.

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As a personalised communication tool, Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands find this most useful as it helps them to engage with customers more effectively through various offerings:

1. Automated messages 
2. Quick responses
3. Catalogue showcasing

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The best part, D2C brands can establish credibility with their users through a verified profile that helps them share product information while providing seamless customer support. A WhatsApp Business account facilitates real-time interactions between user and brand and enables personalised recommendations along with order or refund updates. 

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It's a powerful avenue for D2C brands to build trust, strengthen customer relationships, and drive sales through efficient, user-friendly communication, enhancing the overall brand experience on the popular messaging platform.

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In a crux, the most important underlying principle of this initiative is to help businesses, generally D2C brands, to stay connected with their audience and market on a platform where they are actually present - convenience over anything!

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Let’s also understand what are the main areas where a D2C brand can use WhatsApp for business.

1. Building Customer Support:

To avoid long delays, a platform that can solve customer queries within minutes is what any customer support team wishes for. This is where the WhatsApp Business account comes in - helping the team resolve queries by providing a great customer experience.

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If we look at this from a customer point of view, they prefer chatting on WhatsApp instead of calls or emails. This is even simplified with an Omnichannel CRM like Pragma comes into play that automates these general queries or FAQs and reduces response time to 1-2 seconds.

2. WhatsApp For Customer Communication

Send all the updates like product details, order status, refund status and more to communicate seamlessly. These messages usually see a 99% open rate and a better CTR. This pushes the user to interact more frequently with your team on the WhatsApp channel only.

3. WhatsApp For Marketing & Promotion 

The best part about WhatsApp Business accounts is that brands can send promotional messages to users in a personalised form.

A Cherry on top - You can add interactive media elements like images, video or gifs to strengthen your product positioning.

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With a platform like Pragma, tailored notifications, and nudging consumers to complete their orders; businesses can increase conversions by 15%.

With these being the basics, let’s move to how to create whatsapp business profile in detail.

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How to set up a WhatsApp Business profile with examples and tips?

Let us ask you this - Why in the first place do brands want to build a WhatsApp profile?

‍Or let us ask you, why do WhatsApp marketing blogs say “add WhatsApp business to your profile”?

Is it because everyone else is doing it?

Or maybe because it's a marketing platform with the highest ROAS?

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We believe it’s more than these!

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It's the ease of buying, aka the purchase experience

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WhatsApp Catalog (to surf products) → AI enabled WhatsApp Chatbots (for 24/7 customer support) → WhatsApp Pay (to make a purchase/payment) 

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WhatsApp is one of the best ways to simplify the purchasing process - right from product selection via catalogue to paying on the go.

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Keeping the above ‘Why’ in mind, setting up a business profile will be a lot easier for you now. Let’s build it!

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A business profile makes it extremely easy for customers to search for your product offerings, hence easing the buying process. On  your WhatsApp business profile, users can see your:

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1. Business name
2. Business description
3. Address
4. Working hours and days
5. The industry/category your product lies in
6. Business email
7. Website
8. Facebook/Instagram business profile

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This overall helps the user establish trust in your brand.

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Let’s now understand how to build a WhatsApp business profile:

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Once you get access to WhatsApp Business app on your device, you first need to create an account. With a formal brand presence on a messaging platform, this profile should include crucial information about your brand.

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Below is the step-by-step breakdown of what the procedure looks like while setting up a WhatsApp Business profile:

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1. Start setting up your profile with your Business name

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2. Add a WhatsApp business profile description of your brand - this can include what your brand does and what service/products you provide. This is also followed by adding a WhatsApp business profile picture.

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3. If you work in the QSR industry and sell products like cakes, freshly cooked food, etc, it becomes important for you to mention your Hours of Operation so that orders are placed between your operational hours. This will look like this:
   
   

Business Hours

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4. Do you serve around the globe or a country? Or maybe in a small region? 

Well, do mention the Location you cater to on your profile as this tends to avoid orders out of your serving area.

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5. Post this, you can mention the Contact details of your business that can include a phone number, website, email address, etc. Do remember the website and email address require users to redirect to another platform which might not be a favourable experience, so it’s better you include all information on your WhatsApp business profile. 

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While for email resolution, try to build an automated system that can serve user queries - like a Pragma Chatbot (this has to be hyperlinked to the live version of - https://www.bepragma.ai/blogs/WhatsApp-marketing-software) that can be used by the user to track orders, refunds, browse catalogues, etc.

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6. What industry do you operate in? Basically, the Business Category is something you can mention like Apparel and Clothing, Shopping and Retail, Food and Grocery, and Others.

Business Categories

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7. It’s time that you put your product offerings as the final steps on the Product catalogue. This is the place from where the user can browse through your various products, be it clothes, food, cosmetic products, travel packages, etc. 

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What are the top WhatsApp Business profile examples?

With the above information to set up your Business profile, it’s time that we help you with some WhatsApp business profile description example in the industry that act as benchmark profiles for you to take inspiration from. We have

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1. JioMart Shop
2. AJIO
3. Spinny

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Importance of WhatsApp Business profile description

You’re all set to start selling via WhatsApp Business account. But before you actually take orders, we have some of the important features that we have collated just for you - Use them to make your WhatsApp Business profile stand out from the competitors.

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Let’s understand those:

Helps craft an outstanding profile

Once a customer views your profile, your profile should lure him/her to the services you provide instantly. Or let’s just say; ‘The first impression is the last impression.’ 

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The simplest way to enhance your profile is to add basic details like:

1. Brand name
2. Contact number
3. Business description
4. Operating hours, and more. 

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Since you have full control of the profile customisation, it’s advisable to create a profile that's both friendly and professional, helping target to the majority of the audience.

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Craft an Outstanding Profile

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Let you provide a digital and comprehensive product catalogue

For D2C brands, showcasing their product offerings is extremely necessary. These catalogues simplify the user experience of exploring the product range, discovering the latest offers, and accessing information whenever they desire.

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Within the WhatsApp Business account, you can put up all your offerings and even categorise them for easy navigation for the user. This is complemented by the addition of detailed descriptions for each item. Here's how your customers will view your catalogue:

Construct a Comprehensive Product Catalogue

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Helps you welcome every customer

Initiating a welcome or greeting message to your user every time they initiate a new conversation signifies your readiness to listen and assist them. It’s a gracious approach to making customers feel valued and unique.

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Here are some personalised welcome message examples:

• Hi there, thanks for reaching out! 🙋‍♂️
• Hi! My name is [employee name]. I will be happy to assist you.
• Hi, [customer name]. Thanks for reaching out to [organisation]. How may I assist you today?
• Thank you for your message, [customer name]. We’re currently away as our operating hours are from [business hours]. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
• Hey! It's wonderful to have you here at [organisation]. How can we help you today?

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Implement Automated Messaging and Auto-Replies

When businesses fail to address customer queries, their interest tends to wane. Just like setting up welcome messages ensures that they feel valued, auto-replies during your absence can help answer some of the most basic, and FAQs, hence informing clients about your availability rather than leaving them frustrated.

Customers get access to giveaways and freebies

Who doesn’t like freebies? 

Giveaways, and offers to attract more users and personalisation of these help in building brand loyalty. From running contests within the app to festive sales, user participation in such offers tends to increase, helping you build a better sales funnel.

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Provide Giveaways and Freebies

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Can be enabled simply by a WhatsApp CRM integration

WhatsApp CRM refers to the seamless integration of a WhatsApp account with your existing CRM system that allows you to leverage the widespread coverage of WhatsApp’s features combined with features like:

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1. ‍Efficient communication
2. Personalised interactions, and 
3. Streamlined data management through a CRM software 

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In short, this integration will empower businesses to engage with customers better, track conversations, and provide improved customer support - all within a centralised CRM platform.

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Final Thoughts

With User Experience at the core of everything your business does, it’s equally important to understand what channels your target audience is present on, hence, helping you build a sales funnel.

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From building a conversational platform to selling products, it’s time that you take your business online and start leveraging your WhatsApp Business account.

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How about we help you from Setting up your WhatsApp Business profile to even automating it fully, and building data-backed strategies for your business?

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Sounds interesting? 

Hop on to the link below and let Pragma do the heavy lifting for your business.

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FAQs

1. How does having a WhatsApp Business Account benefit my D2C brand?

WhatsApp Business Account lets your brand engage with customers more effectively, offering automated messages, quick responses, and a catalogue showcase. It enhances customer support, establishes credibility through verified profiles, and fosters real-time interactions for personalised recommendations and order updates. 

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2. How can a WhatsApp Business profile improve customer relationships?

By crafting a well-structured profile, you can provide crucial information like business name, description, contact details, and operational hours. This creates trust and simplifies the buying process for customers, enabling them to explore your offerings easily and interact more frequently on the platform.

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3. Can WhatsApp be used for marketing and promotions?

Absolutely! With WhatsApp Business accounts, you can send personalised promotional messages, incorporating interactive media elements like images and videos. These messages enjoy high open rates and click-through rates, fostering user engagement and potentially boosting conversions for D2C brands.

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4. How can WhatsApp CRM integration benefit my D2C brand?

Integrating WhatsApp with your existing CRM system offers efficient communication, personalised interactions, and streamlined data management. This integration empowers businesses to engage better with customers, track conversations, and enhance customer support, all within a centralised CRM platform.