Before we begin this is to let you know this is a workaround and not a full proof tracking solution.
Background
As we know WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging platforms. Built with end-to-end encryption and integrated into several platforms like Meta, Google (ad extensions) and other platforms.
A great way to engage with users, send protected communications and allow potential customers to get in touch. The encryption part makes it challenging to optimise in PPC.
While not full proof our solution allowed our client to get a click to conversion rate, ie people who clicked on a WhatsApp CTA to actually making a conversation go from 30% to 85%.
What you need
• Ideally a dedicated WhatsApp number for each campaign or PPC landing page you intend to use.
• A CRM or way of marking a date/time a WhatsApp conversion has been generated. This is so you can count daily how many (leads) you are getting from WhatsApp.
• Google Tag Manger (GTM) – to setup event tracking
• Google Ads tracking
• Google Analytics 4 setup
Initial Setup
Using GTM, create a click event for each time a user clicks on your WhatsApp CTA button or starts a chat (like join.chat).
This is so you can get initial data on clicks on WhatsApp that you can view in GA4.
By doing this you can now see when a user clicks on a button. Most PPC managers would then simply setup a conversion goal to optimise for users clicking on the button and stop there.
If you do this you can fall into a trap. Whereby you are simply teaching Google to get users to mash the button, as opposed to going after engaged users who would be more qualified.
If you go for just clicks on the CTA button, while it will look good in platform, the chances are you won’t see an uplift in leads via WhatsApp.
What we need to now, do is add a condition to qualify the user as well.
Qualifying Users
What worked for us was to set a couple of conditions to mark the user as qualified.
We first added event tracking on each PPC landing page to measure average time on page. From 10/20/30/40/50/60 secs. This way we could get an understanding of the average time on page for users.
Then using GA4 we could make an explore report to look at time on site + users who clicked on WhatsApp to drill down into the average length of time users would be on page before they clicked on the CTA. To find the sweet spot of engagement.
Then we implemented scroll tracking on PPC landing pages, again to look at the percentage of users who scrolled down the page and where did most click on a WhatsApp button.
Conversion solution
From our data we saw most users engaged between 20-30 seconds on the landing pages and scrolled to around 20-30% of the page before dropping off.
Time on page GTM setup
Scroll depth GTM setup
From this we setup in GTM a trigger group that would mark a conversion if the following conditions were applied.
• WhatsApp Button Click
• Users on page at least 20 secs
• User scrolled at least 20% of the page
If a PPC user did all of the three we would mark this as a conversion in Google Ads.
Within a week of implementing this technique we saw click to conversion rates from Google Ads go to around 80%+ and our average CPL drop by 70%.
We could then work the campaign to optimise for click tracking in a smarter way. For this client WhatsApp conversions made up 70% of their leads. Before it was a black box where we had little control over optimisations (aside from raw button clicks). Now we are getting a high level of engagement, accuracy and consistent leads. With this handy technique.
If you’d like to know more about effective conversion tracking or if you have a problem or project, we’d laugh to hear from you and see how we can help out.
