orca.floClick-to-WhatsApp ads for UAE businesses: how to turn the chats into sales
Short answer
Click-to-WhatsApp ads open a WhatsApp chat with your business from Facebook or Instagram. If you reply within 24 hours, Meta opens a free entry point window of up to 7 days in which it doesn’t charge for your messages. The ad only pays off if someone answers fast, in Arabic or English, day and night.
Updated
In the UAE, a click-to-WhatsApp ad is often cheaper per lead than a form, because people would rather chat than fill fields. The catch: the lead goes cold if nobody answers for an hour. Here is how these ads work, what Meta charges, and how to answer every chat in seconds.
How a click-to-WhatsApp ad works
Someone taps your ad
On Facebook or Instagram, the ad’s button opens WhatsApp with a chat to your business number, often with a pre-filled first message.
They send the first message
The conversation starts in your WhatsApp. On the official API, Meta tags it as coming from your ad.
You reply within 24 hours
Then Meta opens a free entry point window of up to 7 days in which your messages are free, on the official API.
You turn the chat into a booking or a sale
Answer the question, share the price, book the slot or send a payment link, before they message a competitor.
What decides whether the ad makes money
Speed
People tap several ads in a row. The first business to answer usefully usually gets the booking.
Continuity with the ad
Someone who tapped a “20% off facials” ad should be greeted about that offer, not with a generic menu.
Arabic and English
Answer in the language the customer writes in, including Gulf dialect.
Knowing which ads sell
Cost per chat isn’t enough: track which ads led to bookings and payments, and cut the rest.
How OrcaFlo handles ad chats
OrcaFlo answers every chat from an ad within seconds, in Arabic or English, from your own prices and services, then books, sends a payment link or hands the lead to your team. With ad openers it greets people from each ad with a message made for that ad, and its reports show which ads brought chats, leads, bookings and sales. It can also send chat outcomes back to Meta as conversions, once your privacy notice says so.
No plan fee for 14 days and your first 500 messages free, then from $14.99 a month + 2¢ per message. No setup fee. On OrcaFlo’s QR link to the WhatsApp Business app none of Meta’s API rules or fees apply, but there’s no green tick and some ban risk, because it isn’t an official WhatsApp app.
Questions
On the official WhatsApp Business API, yes for a while: if you reply within 24 hours, Meta opens a free entry point window of up to 7 days in which it doesn’t charge for your messages. You still pay for the ad itself.
Yes. In OrcaFlo, ad openers send a first message made for each ad, or tell the assistant what to say about that ad. Everyone else gets the usual answer.
Yes. The ad opens a chat to your number whether it runs on the app or the API. The free entry point window and ad tagging are features of the official API.
Track each chat from the ad to the booking or payment. OrcaFlo’s reports show chats, leads, bookings and sales per ad, so you can move budget to the ads that sell.
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Read moreStop losing customers to slow replies.
No plan fee for 14 days and your first 500 messages free, then from $14.99 a month + 2¢ per message. No setup fee. Let OrcaFlo answer tomorrow’s messages.