Agency insights
Thoughts and lessons on client selection, burnout, pricing, and modernising legacy accounts, from someone who's run a Google Ads for years.
Google Ads conversion tracking for WhatsApp bookings
Published October 2025. Last updated July 2026.
A client offers services like airport transfers, safaris and other experiences to tourists. Since everyone in his market uses WhatsApp, his website has a WhatsApp button for bookings.
But he had two main problems:
- He didn’t know where bookings came from. Were they from Google Ads, SEO, Meta, or TikTok?
- He couldn’t track WhatsApp bookings as Google Ads conversions. The best he could do was track clicks and hope they matched actual bookings.
When you know where every booking comes from, you can invest more in what works. And when you track bookings as conversions, Google’s bidding algorithm learns to show your ads to people more likely to book.
We solved this with Convertista. It captures the source of each booking. Here’s an example of the kind of data it collects (demo data shown for privacy):
Once a booking is confirmed, his team adds the order value in Convertista. It’s then uploaded automatically to Google Ads as a conversion.
He started entering order values manually, then connected his booking system to the Convertista API.
If you take bookings through WhatsApp, this could work for you too. Setup usually takes about 15 minutes. After that, you’ll know exactly what drives your bookings, and you'll be able to optimise your Google Ads to get more of them.
Most Google Ads Problems Aren't Google Ads Problems
If my writing resonates with you, I'd like to give you a copy of my book, Profitable Google Ads. The book was written for business owners, but many PPC professionals have found it valuable too.
Before you download it, what describes you best?
Related articles
Why I'm rethinking how I audit Google Ads accounts
What is Google actually learning from?
Offline conversion tracking with Contact Form 7
The Google Ads WhatsApp conversion tracking guide
Offline Conversion Tracking with Fluent Forms
The problem with call duration conversions
Topics you'll find on this site
Conversion tracking
Understand what happens after someone clicks your advert. Subjects include offline conversions, CRM integration, attribution, auditability and marketing instrumentation.
Essays and thinking
Articles about marketing, engineering, AI and problem solving that don't fit neatly into the other topics. These are some of the ideas and experiences that have shaped how I think.
Google Ads for lead generation
Learn how to use Google Ads to generate profitable leads. Subjects include campaign strategy, bidding, targeting, optimisation and the challenges of running lead generation campaigns.
Landing pages
Things I've learned about high-converting landing pages. Subjects include copywriting, page structure, forms, trust, conversion rate optimisation and user experience.
Lead quality
Understand why some leads become customers while others don't. Subjects include diagnosing poor leads, qualification, filtering junk leads and improving the feedback you send to Google Ads.
Sales Process
What happens after a lead has been generated determines if Google Ads is profitable. Subjects include first contact, follow-up, quoting, lead nurturing and turning more enquiries into customers.