TL;DR
✅ WhatsApp is popular in countries such as India and Brazil
✅ It was not the case in its home country all these years
✅ With some efforts on Meta's part, the messaging app is now creating waves in the US
✅ What was earlier an app for texting and calling family and friends is evolving into a channel for businesses to connect with their users
✅ WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API are two amazing ways (the latter is especially powerful) in which companies can reach out to their users/potential customers, share updates/offers/additional information, resolve complaints, answer queries and use the channel to do marketing, sales and customer support/service.
✅ New paradigms of user-business relationships are being formed (You may not want to miss the bus!)
✅ Imagine the potential of businesses reaching users in other countries through the messaging app and winning deals....
On July 25, 2024, Meta's Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent an ecstatic text to his 16.7 million followers on his WhatsApp channel.
This was immediately followed by a dancing gif, aptly captioned as “Mood.”
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This is a huge milestone for Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, in the US. Recently, the tech giant launched some interesting campaigns to promote the messaging app in the country, which largely uses Apple's iMessage and traditional texting. One of them was a television commercial they ran with the cast of ABC's popular web series Modern Family.
WhatsApp's growing popularity
From a little over 100 million in 2012, WhatsApp now boasts of nearly 2.5 billion active users in 2023. Some estimates suggest this will touch 3 billion by the end of 2024.
Data source: Business of Apps
According to data gathered by World Population Review, an independent not-for-profit organization that collates global population data and demographics, India, Brazil, the US and Indonesia are some of its biggest markets in terms of the number of users.
Data source: World Population Review
In India, approximately, one out of every three people use WhatsApp. Nearly two-third of Brazilians are on WhatsApp. And in the US, around 30% of the population hang out on WhatsApp.
The US milestone has made Zuckerberg particularly ecstatic. WhatsApp rose to the top to emerge as the most preferred messaging app in a lot of countries but not in Meta's home country—until now. The tides seem to be shifting.
"So the WhatsApp stat, I think, is really important as a business trend just
because the United States punches above its weight in terms of, it's such a
large percent of our revenue," he said in the second quarter earnings call of 2024.
🎙️
"And I think now that we're starting to make inroads into leading in the U.S. as more and more people use the product and realize that, hey, this is a really good experience, it’s the best experience for cross-platform communication and groups and on all these different things, I think that that's going to just mean that all of the work that we're doing to grow the business opportunity there over time is just going to have a big tailwind if the U.S. ends up being a big market. So I think that that's one reason why it's really relevant." - Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Meta.
WhatsApp's revenue potential for Meta
All this is reflecting in Meta’s accounting books. In February 2023, Zuckerberg mentioned in the company’s first quarter 2023 earnings call that Meta’s click-to-message ads had hit the $10-billion revenue run rate (on an annualized basis).
Meta earned $389 million in 'other revenue' from its 'family of apps' (Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp) in the second quarter of 2024, as per its latest earnings' call. This was an increase of 73% from the same period a year ago, "driven primarily by business messaging revenue growth from our WhatsApp Business Platform".
Estimates suggest that around 50 million businesses use WhatsApp as a business tool to reach out to their customers/prospects, keep them engaged and build their brands. Meta offers two such options for companies—WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API.
While the former is free and offers limited capabilities to send messages to users and automate, the latter unlocks multiple use cases to attract, nurture and convert leads to deals—with the help of WhatsApp marketing software such as Gallabox.
Clearly, the tech major and businesses all around the world have hit upon something valuable—the ability to successfully reach out to millions with optimal efforts and yet personalize their messaging based on varied personas—in a world where getting users’ attention is becoming increasingly difficult.
Businesses, especially in countries such as India and Brazil, are beginning to maximize the use of the messaging app to connect with users and with the 100-million-user-milestone in its home country, the potential of using WhatsApp Business/WhatsApp Business API in the US is increasing.
WhatsApp's evolving capabilities
The app, which started off as a free messaging and calling app to help be in touch with family and friends, is slowly but steadily evolving into a platform for businesses to connect with their users. In January 2018, Meta launched the WhatsApp Business app and a few months later, the WhatsApp Business API solution, which allows businesses with complex needs to deploy some advanced features for marketing, customer support and sales on the platform.
This includes interesting features such as:
➤ Click-to-WhatsApp-ads, which allow businesses to post ads on Meta’s social media channels (Facebook and Instagram) and bring interested customers to chat with them on WhatsApp
➤ Broadcasting where brands can announce any exciting updates, offers or promotions to a large number of users at one go
➤WhatsApp Flows to collect data from (potential) customers in a structured manner to streamline communication and also improve engagement rates
➤WhatsApp Chatbots, which help businesses automate and customize customer interactions
➤Drip marketing that enables companies to schedule a series of predetermined messages and send them to the customers/users at pertinent intervals.
Meta is excited about tapping into the potential of WhatsApp’s growing popularity and the success of businesses in connecting with a wide set of users without being too intrusive. Steadily but surely, WhatsApp marketing is becoming a buzzword among growing businesses and their marketing/sales teams. And, the tech giant is continuously working on making WhatsApp Business platform's capabilities better for brands to grow their businesses while also ensuring user privacy and security.
Why your business should be on WhatsApp
With an increasing user base on the chat messaging app, which now offers powerful use cases to engage customers and build strong marketing and sales channels, it’s no wonder that businesses are making a beeline for the WhatsApp Business API connection.
Users are not just using the platform for forwards, GIFs, keeping in touch with their loved ones and ghosting some—but are also increasingly open to communicating with businesses and fulfilling their shopping needs.
If you are wondering what the deal is all about, check out our 7-day free trial. We are sure you will be hooked–once you realize the return on investment (RoI) it brings for your business.
