Looking to boost your WhatsApp marketing game? In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll show you how to create powerful Click to WhatsApp Ads on Facebook and fully automate the replies Inside the WhatsApp Chat. From setting up the ad campaign and configuring ice breaker questions to building instant bot replies — we cover everything you need to turn clicks into conversations!

Open up your BotCommerce dashboard. From the left-hand menu, scroll down until you see the WhatsApp section and click on Click Ads.

Once you’re here, click on the Create button to start a new ad campaign.

This is where you enter your campaign details. Start by giving your campaign a name. I’ll call this one 50% Off Promo. Next, choose your campaign objective. You can pick Outcome Engagement, Sales, or Traffic. For this demo, I’ll stick with Outcome Engagement. Leave the Special Ad category as None, unless your ad is about sensitive topics like politics or credit. Finally, make sure your campaign status is set to Active and click Next.

Now let’s move on to the ad set. Here, set your bid amount. I’m going with 1. Then select your budget type, either Daily or Lifetime. For this one, I’m choosing Daily Budget.

Next, choose your optimization goal. I’m setting it to Impressions, which helps drive more chats.

Now select your Facebook page. Just make sure the page is already connected to your WhatsApp Cloud API number, or else the ad won’t link properly to WhatsApp.

Lastly, set the start and end time for your campaign. Confirm that the status is Active.

Now it’s time to choose who sees your ad. You can select Countries or Group of Countries. Here, I selected Countries and added Bangladesh, United States, and Canada as my target locations. You’ll also see options for Tags and Custom Audience. These are optional. Click Next to continue.

This is the fun part, designing your ad. Enter your ad header, your main text, and the description.

Next, upload your ad image. Make sure it’s visually engaging and relevant to your offer.

Now let’s take a closer look at the WhatsApp Greeting Message setup. Here, you’ll notice two options, Greeting with an Autofill Message and Greeting with Icebreakers.

If you select Greeting Message, you can type a simple greeting message that will automatically appear when a user clicks on your ad.

Icebreakers, on the other hand, are customizable, tappable text prompts that appear at the beginning of a chat, making it easy for users to start a conversation with predefined options. For this tutorial, we will go with those.

Fill in the greeting text, aligning it with the theme of the icebreaker questions. Once you’ve added all the icebreaker questions, click Next.

Before proceeding with the final steps, you need to activate the icebreaker automation on your Meta Business Manager. Open a new tab and go to your Dashboard. In the WhatsApp section, click Connect Account. From there, click Manage.

Scroll down to Phone Numbers. On the Phone Numbers page, go to the top right corner and click the Settings icon.

Now click on Automation. You’ll now see the options for icebreakers and commands.

Click Edit on the right-hand side. Here, add the same icebreaker questions that you used in the ad campaign. After entering all, you’ll see a mobile preview showing exactly how it will appear to users. Now click Save.

Now, you need to create a bot for each icebreaker question. Go back to your BotCommerce dashboard. Click on Bot Manager, and create a bot.

It’s important to ensure that each bot’s keyword is identical to the corresponding icebreaker question. This way, when a bot is asked a question, the bot flow will be instantly triggered, sending them the appropriate predefined response.  In the Start Bot flow, simply double-click the element, enter the first icebreaker question as the keyword, and assign a title for your flow.

Then, add the elements for your flow. For this demonstration, I’m going with a simple text response for the first answer. But in your case, feel free to design the bot flow as needed, whether it’s text, media, or quick replies.

Continue adding the rest of the questions in the same way.

Since our icebreaker feature is enabled and the bot flows are now active, we’re ready to wrap up the ad campaign setup. Let’s jump back to where we left off. Change the ad status to Active, click Next, and then click Finish.

Your ad is now scheduled to go live at the predefined date and time. You’ll see the ad status marked as Published, which confirms everything is properly set.

Now, let’s explore the ad campaign section a bit further. From here, you can monitor key ad metrics like impressions, clicks, spend, reach, CTR, and more. You can also make edits to your campaign by clicking on the corresponding icon.

Click on the eye icon on the same section to preview how the ad will look for your audience. You can preview it for mobile feed, desktop feed and Instagram.

Finally, test the icebreakers to ensure everything is working smoothly. Open a new WhatsApp chat from WhatsApp web. The icebreaker questions will automatically appear.

Now, every time someone clicks on your ad, not only will they land in your WhatsApp inbox, they’ll also be greeted with automated icebreaker prompts, creating a seamless and engaging customer experience from the very first click.