Click-to-WhatsApp Ads for Solar Installers: Setup and Follow-up

A Facebook ad has already cost you money by the time someone taps it. With a click-to-WhatsApp ad, that tap opens a chat on your business number, and from that second the clock is yours to win or lose. Picture a homeowner in Nashik who types "price?" at 8 pm and hears nothing until noon. By then she may well have messaged another installer.

This guide covers the whole route for an Indian solar installer. We start with the Ads Manager setup, then what Meta charges for the messages (including a mismatch between two of Meta's own pages that older guides still get wrong), and then the follow-up routine that decides whether a chat becomes a site visit. Every Meta fact below was read on Meta's own pages on 31 October 2026, and the sources are linked.

Key takeaway. A click-to-WhatsApp ad opens a chat with your WhatsApp number instead of a form. Set it up in Meta Ads Manager with the Leads objective and WhatsApp as the destination, send your first reply within 24 hours so Meta opens a free-message window, and log every chat in your CRM the same day with a source label. The ad starts the lead; the follow-up routine below keeps it.

What a click-to-WhatsApp ad is, and when it beats a lead form

A click-to-WhatsApp ad is a Facebook or Instagram ad whose button opens a chat with your business on WhatsApp. According to WhatsApp Business (Meta), these ads can run in News Feed, Stories and Marketplace on Facebook and Instagram, with the same location, age and audience targeting as other Meta ads.

The difference from an instant form is where the lead lives. A form hands you a name and a number to call. A chat hands you a person who has already started talking, but the record sits in a WhatsApp inbox, not in your CRM, until someone copies it across. That one gap is where chats tend to get lost.

For the wider Meta ads picture (audiences, budgets, creative), read our Facebook ads for solar in India guide. This post stays on the chat route.

What to have ready before you open Ads Manager

You need three things before Meta lets you pick WhatsApp as a destination. Meta's Business Help Center article on creating these ads says to create a business account with the WhatsApp Business app or the WhatsApp Business API, and to connect that WhatsApp number to your Facebook Page (you must be the Page admin) or to your business portfolio.

The practical checklist:

• A Facebook Page for your company, with you as admin.
• A WhatsApp number used only for the business, not a rep's personal number. If that rep leaves, the number and every chat leave with him.
• A decision on the Business app versus the API (next section).
• A person who owns the inbox from 9 am to 8 pm, with a named backup.

Business app or API: which one to start with

Meta allows both. The WhatsApp Business app is what most small installers already use. A WhatsApp Help Center page covers quick replies, the saved shortcuts for messages you send often (check in your app how many you can store). The WhatsApp Business API is a connected route through a provider, with templates, multiple agents and per-message charges.

Our guides on the Business app versus personal WhatsApp and setting up the API for a solar company go deeper on each route. Whichever you pick, the follow-up routine later in this post works the same.

Set up the ad in Ads Manager, step by step

Meta's menus change often, so treat these as the order of decisions, not a screenshot tour. The steps below follow the Leads objective path in Meta's current help article.

1. 1

   Create the campaign and pick Leads

   In Ads Manager, click Create and choose Leads as the objective. Traffic, Engagement and Sales also offer WhatsApp as a message destination, but Leads is the natural fit for a quote enquiry.

2. 2

   Choose WhatsApp as the conversion location

   Select WhatsApp, pick your Facebook Page, and Meta uses the WhatsApp number connected to that Page. If the WhatsApp option is greyed out, Meta says to click Connect account and enter the number with its country code.

3. 3

   Know what you are optimising for

   The performance goal defaults to Maximize number of conversations. Meta is counting chats, not roof owners. Your creative and your first message have to do the filtering.

4. 4

   Set audience, placements and budget

   Meta may show Advantage+ switched on for audience and placements. Whatever you choose, restrict the location to the towns you can actually survey. A chat from a city you do not serve is a wasted reply.

5. 5

   Write the message template at ad level

   At the ad level, Meta shows a Message template section where you create a new template or reuse one. This is the greeting and the tappable prompts your customer sees. The next section covers what to put there.

6. 6

   Publish, then wait for review

   Meta's developer documentation says a published ad shows as pending review until it is approved, then turns active. Do not announce a launch to your team until the status is active, and send yourself a test message from a personal phone first.

Write the first message so the right people tap it

The first message is your qualification form. If you do not write your own, Meta's developer documentation gives the default message a customer sees as "Hello! Can I get more info on this?". That gives your rep nothing to work with. Meta's help article says the Start conversation template lets you set a greeting and suggest questions or messages people can tap.

Use the prompts to sort enquiries before a human types a word. Four prompts cover most solar demand:

Two more habits help. First, give each ad variant a slightly different greeting or prompt wording, because that is how you will later tell which ad a chat came from (more on that in the FAQ). Second, let the ad carry a qualifier, such as the towns you serve, so the wrong chats never start.

That caution is not just good manners. Meta's Advertising Standards prohibit ads promoting products, services, schemes or offers using deceptive or misleading practices, and a "free solar" headline invites exactly that kind of review problem. Our PM Surya Ghar subsidy slabs guide has the numbers to quote and the date to check them against, and the PIB release is the primary source.

What Meta charges for the chat in 2026

The ad budget is billed by Ads Manager as usual. This section covers only the WhatsApp message fees, and they are smaller than most installers fear.

According to Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform pricing page, Meta charges per message, and only for messages it delivers, since 1 July 2025. Older guides that quote per-conversation rates describe the model Meta replaced. Messages from the customer to you are not charged.

Here is what a click-to-WhatsApp ad changes. When a person messages you from the ad on the WhatsApp Android or iOS app, a 24-hour customer service window opens. If you answer inside that window with a marketing, utility, authentication or service message, that reply is not charged and opens a free entry point window. While it is open, Meta does not charge for those four message types. Meta Business Agent messages (Meta's AI agent) stay charged.

Two Meta pages, two numbers: plan on 72 hours

When we checked, Meta's developer documentation said the free window "may remain open for up to 7 days". Meta's marketing page for the platform, WhatsApp Business platform pricing, still said "the following 3 days (72 hours)". Many guides repeat only one of these.

Our advice is simple. Plan your follow-up for 72 hours, treat days four to seven as a bonus, and look at your own billing before you build a process around the longer figure. We could not find a dated Meta announcement explaining the difference, so we are not stating when it changed.

Three conditions matter for the free window:

• The chat must start from the ad on the customer's Android or iOS WhatsApp. Meta says desktop and web apps are not supported.
• You must answer inside the first 24 hours. Miss that and the free window never opens.
• The window is shared by everyone sending on that business number, so a second rep can reply for free too.

India rates after the window closes

Meta publishes an INR rate card, effective 1 October 2026. The India figures below are per delivered message on the WhatsApp Business Platform.

Source: Meta's rate cards, INR list rates, checked 31 October 2026. Rates change on Meta's published calendar, so open the card before you budget.

Meta's pricing page covers the Platform, which is the API route. We did not find a per-message rate card for the Business app on the pages we read, so if you use the app, check Meta's current terms before assuming either way. Our WhatsApp pricing guide covers provider fees and when to skip the API; check any message rate in it against Meta's card above.

The Three Clocks: a follow-up routine for every chat

Most guides stop at the ad. The money is in what happens after, so we use one routine, The Three Clocks. Each clock is a deadline, and each protects something different.

Clock 3 is the only one Meta does not control, and it is the one customers feel. We suggest starting with 15 minutes between 9 am and 8 pm. That is a team rule to test, not an industry benchmark, so pick a number your reps can keep and write it on the wall.

Run each new chat through this sequence:

1. 0 to 15 min

   First human reply

   Use the customer's name, answer their tapped prompt, and ask the first qualifying question. Use a quick reply for the opening line, then type the rest yourself.

2. Same day

   Log the lead in your CRM

   Name, number, source label, customer type and the next action with a date. The next two sections explain the hand-off card.

3. Day 1

   Book the survey or send the first number

   Offer two survey slots. If they will not commit, send a rough proposal while the window is open. Our guide to sending a proposal on WhatsApp shows the format.

4. Day 2 to 3

   One useful nudge

   Answer an objection or share a relevant installation, not "any update?". If the customer has been silent for 24 hours, this must be a message template on the API, which is free inside the window, so get two or three templates approved before you launch. Our follow-up cadence and WhatsApp templates posts have wording to adapt.

5. After the window

   Switch to calls and approved templates

   When the free window has closed, templates are charged (₹0.8631 marketing, ₹0.115 utility). Call first and keep a template as the fallback.

Our WhatsApp lead conversion post goes deeper on the conversation itself. The Three Clocks only make sure the conversation happens.

Qualify inside the chat in ten minutes

A chat is cheaper to qualify than a call because the customer can answer while doing something else. Ask in this order and stop when you have enough to book a survey:

1. What is your approximate monthly electricity bill? (Ask for last month's bill photo only if they offer.)
2. Do you own the house or shop, and is there open terrace or roof space?
3. Which town and PIN code is the property in?
4. Is it a home, a shop, a factory or a housing society?
5. When are you hoping to install, and are you planning to pay in full or use a loan?

Those five answers tell you the likely size, whether the subsidy applies, which rep goes, and whether the deal is worth a survey this week. Our guide to qualifying solar leads explains how to score the answers, and the site survey checklist covers what happens next.

Treat a bare "Price?" as a starting point, not a lead. Answer with a range question, such as "For a 3 kW home system I need your monthly bill to give a real number, what was last month's?", and see who replies.

Do not ask for Aadhaar numbers or full document photos in the first chat. Collect those at the survey or application stage, and read our note on WhatsApp spam rules for solar businesses before you build any broadcast list. The same Meta policy says you may not share one customer's chat details with another customer, so keep screenshots of bills out of group forwards.

Hand each chat into your CRM the same day

This is where click-to-WhatsApp usually breaks. The chat is in WhatsApp, the pipeline is somewhere else, and nobody updates both. Meta's Conversions API for Business Messaging documentation describes a way to send results back to Meta, but it is a developer-level setup that uses a click ID, a developer app and advanced access to specific WhatsApp permissions. That is not a switch in Ads Manager, so most installers will rely on a simpler habit.

Whatever CRM you use, the rep fills a five-field hand-off card within the same working day:

• Who: name and mobile number, spelled as the customer gave them.
• Source: a fixed label such as "CTWA Oct homes" or the ad variant, so you can count later.
• Type and size: home, shop, factory or society, plus a rough kW from the bill.
• What they said: one line, such as "worried about roof leakage, wants quote before Diwali".
• Next action: the action, the owner and the date.

Before you trust a CRM with this, ask the vendor plain questions: does it capture the chat or the ad automatically, or does a person add the lead? Can you bulk import a day's chats from a spreadsheet? Can you filter and report by source label? Can more than one rep log an activity on several leads at once? If a vendor says "automatic" for Meta chats, ask to see it with your own number.

Our posts on lead source attribution and lead routing rules show how to assign chats and read the results by source.

A worked example: where a ₹30,000 month leaks

Take an illustrative installer in a Tier 2 city. These numbers are assumptions for the arithmetic, not benchmarks. Meta does not publish what a solar chat costs, so replace every figure with your own.

Same ad, same spend. Twelve more site visits came from changing one thing, how quickly people were answered. The ad did not get better. The routine did.

The exercise to run: fill this table with last month's real numbers from your Ads Manager and your CRM. If you cannot fill the third row because chats were never logged, you have found your first problem.

Where this ad type goes wrong, and when to skip it

Click-to-WhatsApp is not the right ad for every installer. It rewards teams that reply fast and punishes teams that do not. A form ad can wait until the evening call. A chat cannot.

Four mistakes to avoid:

• A personal number as the ad destination. The customer history leaves with the rep.
• No source label. At month end you cannot tell which ad paid.
• Proposals sent blind. A PDF with no qualifying chat first gets a thumbs-up and silence.
• Free-text nudges after a day of silence. On the API, Meta then allows only message templates. Inside the free window they cost nothing, after it they are charged. Call instead.

The exception to "reply fast" is a late-night chat. If a person messages at 1 am, an acknowledgment at 9 am the same morning still beats most competitors, and it falls well inside the 24-hour window.

How QuickEstimate fits

Quickest Solar CRM sits after the chat. It does not pull chats or ad data out of Meta for you. We do not claim any automatic link between Meta ads and the app, so the hand-off card above is a habit your rep follows. What the app gives that habit a home:

• WhatsApp follow-up: add the lead, set your own stages and a source label, set a follow-up reminder so the day-two nudge is not left to memory, keep saved message templates for your greeting and survey slots, and share the proposal PDF on WhatsApp from the app.
• Pricing: the Free plan is one user and 10 proposals a month with no card. Pro is ₹6,999 per user per year with a three-user minimum (₹20,997 for three users), billed yearly with a GST invoice.

Teams can log what was said on a lead, or on several leads at once after a busy day, and the dashboard and team report show the owner who is working the chats. Team members get permissions, so the owner decides who can do what.

A day of chats can also be brought in together: Quickest Solar CRM supports bulk import from Excel, which suits a team that logs the day's chats in a sheet at 7 pm. The proposal itself is the subject of our proposal on WhatsApp guide.

What to do this week

1. Pick the WhatsApp number that will receive ad chats. Make it a business number, name the person who owns the inbox, and name a backup.
2. In Ads Manager, build one Leads campaign with WhatsApp as the destination. Write four tappable prompts from the table above and set the location to towns you can survey.
3. Write your Clock 3 rule (for example, 15 minutes in working hours) and print it. Put the five qualifying questions in your quick replies or saved templates.
4. Fix the five-field hand-off card and a source label. Check at 7 pm daily that every chat from that day is logged.
5. After seven days, fill in the worked-example table with your own numbers and decide whether to scale, change the creative or fix the reply time.

When you want the follow-up to live in one place, see how the WhatsApp follow-up works and start on the Free plan.

Frequently asked questions

Are click-to-WhatsApp ads free?

No. You pay for the ad through Ads Manager as with any Meta ad. What can be free is the WhatsApp messaging. If a person messages you from the ad on an Android or iOS WhatsApp and you reply within 24 hours, Meta opens a free entry point window in which marketing, utility, authentication and service messages are not charged. Meta Business Agent messages remain charged.

How long does the free window last, 72 hours or 7 days?

Meta's two pages differ. Its developer documentation says the window may remain open for up to 7 days, while its WhatsApp Business platform pricing page still says 72 hours. We checked both on 31 October 2026. Plan your follow-up for 72 hours and treat the extra days as a bonus until your own billing confirms them.

Do I need the WhatsApp Business API to run these ads?

No. Meta's help article says you can create a business account with the WhatsApp Business app or integrate with the WhatsApp Business API, then connect the number to your Facebook Page or business portfolio. The API route adds provider fees and per-message charges, so many small installers begin with the app and move up when several reps need to share one number.

How much does a WhatsApp message cost in India now?

From 1 October 2026, Meta's INR rate card lists India at ₹0.8631 per marketing message and ₹0.115 per utility message, and ₹0.115 per service message after the first 1,000 free service messages each month per business number. These apply to the WhatsApp Business Platform. Rates can change, so check Meta's current card before budgeting.

Which Ads Manager objective should a solar installer choose?

Start with Leads. Meta's help article shows Leads with WhatsApp as the conversion location, and the performance goal defaults to maximising conversations. Engagement, Traffic and Sales can also send people to WhatsApp. Whichever you choose, Meta counts chats, so your creative and prompts need to filter for owners in towns you serve.

Can I send a proposal PDF inside the chat?

Yes, while the 24-hour customer service window is open. On the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta allows non-template messages only while that window is open, and each new message from the customer resets it to 24 hours. Outside the window you can send only approved templates. So send the proposal while the customer is still talking to you, not three days later.

How do I know which ad a chat came from?

Ads Manager reports chats started per campaign and ad. To match an individual chat to an ad, give each ad a different greeting or prompt wording and have your rep note it in the source label. A developer-level route exists, the Conversions API for Business Messaging with a click ID, but it needs a developer app and special permissions.

Can I add people who chatted with me to a broadcast list?

Only with permission. WhatsApp's Business Messaging Policy says you may contact people only after you have opt-in permission from the recipient, and you are responsible for how you collect it. Someone who messaged you from an ad has asked you to answer them. Ask clearly before you send promotions, and honour a stop request at once.