What the New WhatsApp Update Means for Marketing

Seems like my WhatsApp was updated today with a new feature for businesses.

Businesses can create channels, and communicate key messages to their followers.

What’s good about this:

👉 Notifications – unlike posting in your company feed on social or subscribing to an email newsletter, it’s super easy to miss or ignore those messages. When you have a notification on your phone from companies you actually care about, then you are more likely to reach your audience, especially in a timely manner. This may be more effective for time-sensitive news, promos, or updates.

👉 Exclusive content – perhaps companies can use these channels to deliver key messages (e.g. promos, limited time offers, etc.) that are only available through Whatsapp. This incentives users to be constantly monitoring the channel.

👉 One way dialogue – unlike a social feed, which may be cluttered up with random pictures, posts, replies… Here, in theory, you can a cleaner feed of pertinent info without all the noise.

What’s bad

👉 Noise – over time, these channels may end up being ignored, especially if you start following dozens of companies

👉 One-way dialogue – while a one-way feed could be good (as mentioned above), they could get stale. What makes social feeds like X good, is you can get in on the conversation, comment, complain, ask questions, repost…

👉 Marketers – marketers managing these feeds will mostly like look to optimize them as sales channels.

How do you feel about this? Could it replace social feeds and newsletters?