Meta has already signalled its intentions to take full advantage of the economic potential in messaging, including Click-to-Message ads and other direct connection options, as social network interaction progressively turns to messages.
That effort will include WhatsApp as well, enabling more businesses on the most widely used messaging platform in the world. On that note, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, made an announcement at the first-ever WhatsApp Business Summit in Brazil about a new update that would let WhatsApp users directly search for businesses in the WhatsApp UI by name or category.
That might provide businesses wishing to utilise WhatsApp as a communication tool a major boost, and with WhatsApp usage growing, especially in the US, that may now be a much more crucial factor to take into account.
Because, as already mentioned, people are posting more updates to private DM groups and less to their social feeds. Indeed, Zuckerberg claims that social feeds are evolving into discovery platforms, and given this, it’s possible that consumers are becoming more receptive to DM interactions from marketers.
India has swiftly emerged as a crucial market for Meta, with the growing nation already having more Facebook users than the US and more than 550 million Indian customers using WhatsApp, much of it for business.
The goal of Meta is to transform WhatsApp into an Indian version of WeChat, which is used for almost everything in China, including communications, commerce, and bill payment. More business discovery and payment capabilities will hasten WhatsApp’s progress along this route, which will also open up new prospects in other regions. WhatsApp is currently on this path.
Also noteworthy is the fact that, with almost 150 million users, Brazil is WhatsApp’s largest user market outside of Asia.
However, while WhatsApp is used more frequently in other regions, it has also grown in importance in the US and Europe due to the global expansion of messaging. In other words, as Meta continues to develop its WhatsApp Business features, the WhatsApp possibility is expanding and it’s important to think about how it can fit into your brand strategy.
