Click-to-WhatsApp ad analytics and click-to-chat: how does it work?

Marketers are investing more dollars in digital advertising, making social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram an important way to connect with customers.

At the same time customers expect personalized experiences, conversational experiences, and instant access to brands.

And to top it all, business leaders are looking for return on ad spend, demanding ROI benefits from campaigns and proposing budget cuts.

Keeping all the above in mind, marketers have a (not-so) secret arsenal in their campaign toolkit, which helps them leverage customer data, connect social media platforms to more cost-effective chat apps, and take the consumer from awareness to purchase in one journey.

What’s that you ask? That marketing arsenal is ads that click to WhatsApp aka click-to-chat WhatsApp ads.

Before we get into how click-to-WhatsApp ads work and the benefits, let’s cover the basics.

Ads that click to WhatsApp, in a nutshell, are promotions over Facebook and Instagram that direct customers to chat conversations over the messaging channel. They would appear on your audience’s newsfeed, stories, and Facebook Marketplace, with a call-to-action button that would prompt them to initiate a conversation with your brand’s official WhatsApp Business Account.

These ads are the same as the regular Facebook and Instagram ads but include a Send Message button that initiates a conversation.

For example: Imagine you’re running a coffee company, and you’re all set to unveil your exciting new range of dark roast coffee capsules. Your marketing team is gearing up to launch an Instagram campaign featuring vibrant carousel ads and stories. But you want to do more than just create awareness; you want your audience to engage, try out your products, and make a purchase.

That’s where click-to-WhatsApp ads come into play. With these ads, your marketing team can literally strike up conversations with your customers over a cup of coffee. Just add a caption encouraging your followers and potential customers to chat with your brand over WhatsApp and include a CTA button that opens the WhatsApp app directly on their phone or desktop.

Once the conversation is initiated, you have the perfect opportunity to inspire them with more information, showcase your entire product catalog, share video demos, and send personalized promotions. You can even guide them through the purchase process. What’s more, you can integrate them into your loyalty program and maintain ongoing communication through the chat app, all without the need to repeatedly target them with additional social media ads. It’s a win-win solution for deepening customer engagement and boosting sales.

The secret behind what makes click-to-WhatsApp ads a marketers most powerful arsenal is the very important d-word – Data.

What makes Facebook and Instagram popular amongst marketers in addition to the reach is the ability to target ads based on interests, age, gender, education, relationship status, and so much more. Going back to the coffee example: you can target your ad campaign on people interested in coffee, coffee shops and recipes.

And to add to it the reach:

Now, with the above you’ve been able to precisely target your audience with personalized ads, giving them the option to click-to-chat.

Once they’ve entered the WhatsApp chat, as a marketer, you’ve got yourself a goldmine of data to play with:

These are all very handy pieces of first-party data that can be used to create or added to an existing customer profile in your customer data platform.

And to top it all, your marketer now has a single view of that customer’s journey, allowing them to stop targeting that customer with the Facebook and Instagram ad and continue the conversation over WhatsApp – thereby, saving marketing monies.

But data is just the tip of the benefits for ads that click-to-WhatsApp.

According to Statista, the share of digital ad spending on mobile platforms is expected to reach 70% in 2026. This makes ads that click-to-WhatsApp an integral part of your conversational marketing journey. But it’s not devoid of benefits.

With click-to-WhatsApp ads your business benefits from:

With all these benefits, how do you measure the success of click-to-WhatsApp ads? Well, with click-to-WhatsApp ads analytics, you can.

When we invest in an ad campaign, we want to know how successful it is. Knowing this tells us our return on ad spend (ROAS). And now your marketing team can tell you this, and more.

Businesses can now view end-to-end customer journey data in ads that click-to-WhatsApp campaigns.

This provides marketers the insights they need to optimize their campaigns by showing figures such as:

To start creating ads that click-to-WhatsApp, you first need to connect your existing Facebook Business page with your WhatsApp Business account.

You should also consider integrating other entry points such as widgets on your website or through traditional offline media to increase your chances of customers reaching out to you on WhatsApp.

Creating a click to WhatsApp ad is simple if you follow these seven easy steps:

Creating a campaign is easy enough, but you will want to keep in mind the top use cases and best practices for maximum impact.