Electronics
Fashion & Apparel
Furniture
Jewelry and Watches
Afterschool Activities
Sport & Fitness
Beauty Center
Dental Clinic
Medical Clinic
Home Cleaning & Maid Services
Photography & Videography
Car Dealership
Travel Agency & Tour Operator
TL;DR — Click to Message Ads
Click-to-message ads perform best when you optimize for qualified outcomes, not just message volume—because low-intent clicks waste budget and clog your inbox.
Target qualified leads by defining your ideal customer and setting Meta ads to Maximize conversions (not Maximize conversations) to improve lead quality.
Send conversion signals with Meta Conversion API (CAPI) so delivery shifts toward people who complete real actions like bookings or purchases.
Motivate messaging with a clear reason to chat (promo, plan/package help) and strong creatives.
Reply instantly with AI Agents to qualify leads and answer FAQs 24/7, while keeping every channel in an omnichannel inbox so no inquiries get missed—and keep refining based on conversion rates and channel results (e.g., WhatsApp outperforming in some regions).
Are your click to message ads getting the results you want? While they’re an effective way to capture leads, it’s essential to optimize them to bring in the most quality conversations and keep prospects engaged.
Accurately targeting and engaging your audience, discovering what resonates with them and having a plan to manage inquiries efficiently will help you reach your goals. Remember that your first attempt at click to message ads may not have the desired effects.
It’s a process of experimentation to understand which tactics work best for your business and implement best practices. We’ll share what we’ve learned from our customers and our own experience to take out some of the guesswork for you.
4 Proven Strategies for Optimizing Click to Message Ads
Optimizing your ads takes time so you can understand what works and what doesn’t. Every business’s needs and goals will be slightly different. Implementing these best practices helps.
1. Use Targeting to Maximize High-Quality Leads
Ensure your target audience matches the profile of the customers you aim to reach. It might seem obvious, but we’ve seen many cases where businesses lack clear objectives for their ads. Those with a large budget may target everyone and see what sticks, but it’s not efficient in the long run.
Targeting an audience that’s too broad results in low-quality leads and wasted ad spend. Determine your ideal target audience and direct your ads to the correct category. Campaign and creative-level goals in Meta also affect the types of leads you’ll get.
Growth Manager Loh Yi Xuan recommends setting your campaign on Meta to “maximize conversions” rather than “maximize conversations.”
With our own click to message ads, changing the setting to “maximize conversions” resulted in higher quality leads and more sales qualified leads.
Once you've been running ads, a further way to optimize your targeting is with Meta's Conversion API (CAPI). This allows you to send conversion events, e.g., lead makes a booking or purchase, to Meta. Then Meta will show ads to more of this type of person.
With respond.io, you can set CAPI up with a Workflow, so that conversion events are triggered in the conversation. They can be identified by human agents or by AI agents that can trigger the Workflow automatically. Another option on respond.io that works the same way as CAPI but for TikTok ads is TikTok Lower Funnel Events.
Turn customer conversations into business growth with respond.io. ✨
Manage calls, chats and emails in one place!
2. Give Prospects a Reason to Chat with You
To capture leads, it’s not enough to simply add a chat button to an ad for your product. The images, the copy and the CTA must drive prospects to start a conversation. For example, ask people to inquire about limited time promotions or choosing the right package or plan.
Lai Zong You, Growth Manager for respond.io, highlights the importance of keeping the AIDA model (attention, interest, desire and action) present when personalizing click to message ads. He also mentions how critical it is to catch the leads’ attention during the first three seconds of a video ad to drastically increase the chances of capturing them.
Intrigue viewers with an image or caption that gets to the heart of their problem or tugs at their emotions. Get leads into a chat through captivating, original campaigns inviting them to interact. Use a persona, leverage trends or even gamify your ads.
3. Reply Promptly from a Single Inbox
When prospects click into an ad to chat, they expect a prompt reply. If they don’t get it, they lose interest and the opportunity may pass.
Many businesses are running campaigns on several channels, so messages may be overlooked if agents need to check every channel manually. Using an omnichannel inbox with a conversation management platform like respond.io ensures your agents will never miss a message.
Automatically assign leads to available agents as soon as they come in, or even better, assign leads to AI Agents. Respond.io's AI Agents are trained on your business knowledge and answer leads at any time of day, even outside of working hours. Use them to qualify leads, answer common questions and, if necessary, manage expectations as to when an human agent will be in touch.
4. Adapt from Experience
We recommend an omnichannel approach, but you’ll likely find certain channels perform better than others. With Meta’s click to message ads, you can choose where to send audiences and determine which way prospects prefer to contact you.
Monitor the performance of your click to message ads regularly. Pay attention to the number of interactions, conversion rates, and customer feedback to continuously refine your approach. Meta Ads Reporting can help you with this.
For example, one of our customers in the healthcare industry runs click to message ad campaigns for WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. They’ve found that for their region, click to WhatsApp ads are the most effective in getting quality leads.
Their main goal is to get people to ask questions about their services and book an appointment. They’ve seen success with that through clear CTAs and adjusting their creatives to optimize for what resonates with their audience.
Create Click to Message Ads that Convert with Respond.io
With continuous optimization, you can consistently capture quality leads into conversations and set them on the path to conversion. A conversation management platform like respond.io enables you to automate click to message ads so you get leads into a single inbox and reply instantly.
And respond.io not only integrates with Facebook and Instagram click to message ads, but also with TikTok Messaging Ads. Take advantage of the opportunities every channel offers to capture high quality leads, measure where they’re engaging and convert them faster.
See what respond.io can do for your business today with a free trial or contact us for a customized demo.
Turn customer conversations into business growth with respond.io. ✨
Manage calls, chats and emails in one place!
Further Reading
Want to learn more about doing click to message ads? These articles will show you all you need to know to get started.
