Click-to-WhatsApp ads, and the queue they create

A click-to-WhatsApp ad turns ad spend into conversations. The ad is straightforward; what catches businesses out is that every click is a person expecting a reply, they arrive in bursts, and each one starts a 24 hour clock.

What arrives

Not leads in a spreadsheet. Live conversations from people who have seen one advert and know nothing else about you, at whatever hour the campaign is delivering. A campaign that performs well at 22:00 produces a queue at 22:00.

Before switching the ad on

1. Decide who answers, and when. If the answer is nobody after six, schedule the ad to match. Paying for clicks you cannot answer is paying to disappoint people.
2. Write the first reply. It should name the thing they clicked on. "You asked about the 20 litre paint - we have it in white and cream, 2,400 a tin."
3. Set an out-of-hours message that says when. The rules for those apply doubly here, because this person has no relationship with you to be patient with.
4. Know your capacity. Twenty conversations an hour is a person's full attention. Budget accordingly, and cap the campaign rather than the service.
5. Have somewhere to put them. A shared inbox that shows unanswered first, or the burst buries the conversations that arrived while you were replying.

Measuring it honestly

Cost per click is not the number. Cost per answered conversation is, and it is usually much higher, because some proportion of clicks arrive when nobody is there. Track first reply time on ad-originated conversations separately - it is where the money is actually being lost.