One of the most essential things for businesses small and large, across all industries, is the need to collect leads. Facebook Lead Ads is a tool that allows your business to collect these leads quickly and simply.
Whether you need customers’ emails to publicize a sale in your retail store or you’re a lawyer looking to book consults with potential clients, getting information about your audience is the first step to converting them to positive revenue for your business.
From the number of lead generation marketing techniques and tools on the market, Facebook Lead Ads are one of the simplest and most effective, particularly for small businesses.
What are Facebook Lead Ads?
Facebook Lead Ads are a category of templates built-in to Facebook’s advertising system. Utilizing Facebook’s 2.41 billion monthly active users, your lead-generating ad can be spread to a wide audience of potential customers with relatively little active involvement from you.
At every step in the sales funnel you should be attempting to collect leads, but the brilliance to Facebook Lead Ads is that the user is never taken off of the social media platform to enter their information. By removing the element of a possibly untrustworthy external environment, users will be more willing to share their information, which increases the likelihood of a successful conversion. Furthermore, Facebook pre-fills user data for a number of fields like name, email, phone number, and location, reducing the work users have to do to submit to your form.
How Effective are Facebook Lead Ads in 2020?
When you consider the prospect of a lead generation campaign in comparison to a conversion campaign, you will likely encounter the difficulty of balancing between quantity and quality. Where Facebook Lead Ads are adept at capturing leads, that simplicity may indicate less engagement with your brand and a decreased likelihood of converting the lead to a sale.
However, this is where Facebook’s extensive range of targeting tools come in. Just because capturing information is simple through Facebook Lead Ads doesn’t mean you should forgo best advertising principles. The success of your Facebook Lead Ad campaign will depend on the accuracy of your target audience and the appeal of the offer.
Use Advertising Best Principles
Start by looking at your most popular content or particularly successful campaigns your business has run in the past. Use that information to develop attractive and compelling images and copy to use in your Facebook Lead Ad. It’s especially important to focus on the call to action of the ad, whether that’s subscribing to a newsletter to receive a discount, requesting a quote, or downloading a resource in exchange for providing an email address.
Tailor Your Target Audience
Just like with Facebook’s other ad types, you have the option of selecting the audience to which your ad will be shown. You should have an idea of the type of people who make up your consumer base, but you should be careful that the audience you’re targeting isn’t in fact different from your actual consumers. With that in mind, you can select a few demographic characteristics that Facebook will use to select the audience for your Facebook Lead Ad.
Follow Through Captured Leads
In addition to ensuring your ad reaches the best audience to generate more leads, the effectiveness of your Facebook Lead Ad will depend on your follow up. Facebook stores all data gathered through the lead ads, which you can then download in a CSV format. Unless you opt to use a leads integration and consumer resource management software, you will have to manually stay on top of these incoming leads to make sure no one falls through the cracks. This is especially important for lead ads whose call to action leads users to expect a response, such as getting a quote or scheduling an appointment. Rapid and attentive responses to incoming leads will help increase the likelihood of sales conversions.
What Can You Do with Facebook Lead Ads?
Beyond the basic function of a Facebook Lead Ad, there are several customization options when creating your ad:
Split testing – You can upload two separate ads for the same campaign so you can A/B test different visuals or copy to see which is more effective
Define your target audience
Custom budget – Set either a daily or overall campaign budget and Facebook will estimate the weekly spend so you can instantly see how much you’ll be spending. You can change this at any time.
Mobile optimization – 95% of Facebook users access the social media platform from a mobile device. Facebook Lead Ads already optimize the ad format for a mobile browser, so you don’t have to worry about that when you develop your ad.
Form type – Choose between more volume or higher intent for your Facebook Lead Ad. Higher intent adds a review step to allow users to confirm their information.
Introduction and Thank You – These custom form fields can and should be taken advantage of to give your leads more information about what they will receive from the offer and to thank them for participating, subscribing, etc.
Custom questions – While some Facebook Lead Ads may suffice with the collection of auto-generated user data, you may have a campaign that requires more detailed or specific answers. You can add up to 15 additional questions to your Facebook Lead Ad, but the fewer questions you have, the greater the chance of the user filling out the data and submitting the form.
Reasons You Need Facebook Lead Ads for Your Campaign
Facebook’s integrated advertising is extraordinarily sophisticated, especially when it comes to Facebook Lead Ads. The number one reason to use Facebook Lead Ads in your marketing campaign is the sheer simplicity of generating leads through the ad.
Pre-populated user data makes it even easier for users to share their information on-the-go, and your business will benefit from the trust many people already have in Facebook, instead of relying on an independent landing page to gain that information.
Facebook’s audience targeting and mobile optimization capabilities remove the complexity of designing ads, lead generation opportunities and media buys by ensuring your ad functions well and reaches the people it should.
For small businesses, the customization and sophistication of Facebook Lead Ads can be a simple, cost-effective way to generate more leads, which can lead to more customers, increased traffic, and a larger audience from which to grow your business. You have incredible control over the process with minimal hands-on upkeep of the campaign; a powerful combination for any hustling entrepreneur.