How To Use Facebook Advertising To Generate Awesome Leads

Facebook is the largest social network in the world.

In Q4 of 2020, it had around 2.8 billion monthly active users, which is more than 35% of the Earth’s global population of around 7.8 billion people.

But Facebook isn’t just a social media website, it’s also an incredibly powerful advertising platform.

Want to know how to use Facebook advertising to generate awesome leads?

Continue reading…

Facebook Lead Generation Techniques

Okay, so when it comes to lead generation on Facebook, there are three main methods:

• Running lead ads.
• Running regular ads, driving that traffic to a landing page.
• Creating a Facebook group and promoting your business there.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these lead generation techniques…

What Are Lead Ads?

You already know that you can run paid ads on Facebook to promote your products and services.

But did you know that there’s a particular type of ad that was specifically designed for lead generation?

These are called lead ads. They are opt-in forms that the customer can fill out with just a few taps on their phone screen. No typing on a smartphone required.

What Are the Benefits of Lead Ads?

Here are the three key benefits of lead ads:

• They are mobile-friendly. Have you ever tried filling out a form on your mobile phone? It’s so tedious that you are immediately tempted to abandon that form and never look back. In fact, according to Facebook, it takes almost 40% longer to manually complete a form on mobile vs. desktop, which results in user drop-off and wasted marketing budget. Lead ads solve this problem by allowing the user to fill out the form with their Facebook information without having to type it all out.
• They are highly targeted. Facebook’s advertising functionality is second to none, which means that you can show your lead ads to the exact target audience that you are going after.
• They integrate with CRMs. Lead ads can be linked to your customer relationship management (CRM) software. This allows you to stay organized, follow up with the leads immediately, and continuously nurture them.

How To Create Facebook Lead Ads

Want to create Facebook lead ads?

Here’s Facebook’s step-by-step tutorial on how to do that:

1. Go to your Facebook Page and click Publishing Tools.
2. Click Forms Library in the left menu.
3. To create a new form, click + Create. To use a form you’ve already created, skip to Step 13.
4. Choose New Form or Duplicate an Existing Form and click Next.
5. In the Create Form window, name your form in the Form Name field.
6. In the Form Type field, choose which type of Instant Form you wish to use.
   • Choosing More Volume will allow you to create a form that is quick to complete and submit on a mobile device.
   • Choosing Higher Intent will add a review step that gives people a chance to confirm their information before submission.
7. In the Intro section, add an introduction screen to your Instant Form. You can use this introduction section to include an image, headline and description that explains more about your product or service.
8. In the Questions section, click + Add Question to add up to 15 questions. Custom questions allow you to get answers to the questions that are most important to your business or organization. You can also include prefill questions to ask for user information.
   • In the Description field of the Prefill Questions section, inform people how their information will be used or shared. You may only use the information collected in your lead ad for the purposes stated in this notice.
   • Choose which information you’d like to have prefilled in your form. You can add categories using the + Add Category button.
9. In the Privacy section, add link text and a URL in the Privacy Policy field. You can also click + Add Custom Disclaimer if you want to add additional disclaimers to your Instant Form. Custom disclaimers have no character limit.
10. In the Completion section, add a headline, description, call-to-action button and link to help keep your leads engaged after they submit the form. The Headline and Call-To-Action Text fields can include up to 60 characters.
11. Click the arrows at the top of your Form Preview to make sure your completed form looks the way you want it.
12. Click Publish to complete your form. Click Save Draft if you think you’ll want to make changes later. Once an Instant Form has been published, you cannot edit it.
13. Now that you have completed your Instant Form, click Boost to use it in an ad. From here, you’ll choose the image or video that will appear on your ad and select your text, audience, duration and budget. When you’re done, click Promote to run your ad.

You can then download your lead data from Facebook or connect the lead ads to your CRM.

3 Facebook Lead Ads Tips

How can you increase the conversion rate of your Facebook lead ads?

Here are three tips that will help you do that…

#1 Use Animation or Video in the Creative

Your first task with a lead ad is to grab the potential customer’s attention. They are scrolling through their newsfeed. How can you make them stop and take a closer look at your ad? One way to do that is to use animation or video in the ad creative.

“I can tell you firsthand that every time our in-house acquisition team meets with the people at Facebook this is the number one tip they give us. We have implemented animated creative over the past six months and seen improvements across the board—so much so that we rarely opt for static creative now when we’re creating new Facebook ads,” shares Gordon Donnelly, Senior SEO specialist at WordStream.

Here’s an example of an animated creative that they have used in lead ads:

Why do animated and video creatives work so well?

“What you’re basically doing is giving your ads that thumb-stopping power everyone loves to talk about. You’re differentiating yourself from the rest of the static elements in your prospect’s News Feed,” explains Gordon.

And sure, it takes way more effort to produce an animated or a video creative, but it’s worth the investment.

#2 Only Ask 1-3 Questions. Never More Than 5!

AdEspresso did a study where they analyzed 30,000 Facebook campaigns to see the impact the number of questions on a lead ad had on the cost per lead (CPL).

Here’s what they found:

• The more questions you have in your lead ad, the higher your cost per lead will be.
• When you remove too many barriers between the user and conversion it puts you at risk of attracting more low-quality leads.

Take a look at the data:

They started by asking one question, which resulted in a CPL of $0.91 and a conversion rate of 43.58%.

With each additional question, the CPL increased more or less linearly, until they got to the point where they asked five questions. After that the CPL more than doubled from $2.52 to $6.74.

Here’s the conclusion the AdEspresso team drew from this study:

“Based on the audience you’re targeting and the needs of your campaign, you should try to never ask more than 5 questions.

It’d be even better if you asked no more than 3, as 1 – 3 question lead ad forms have the highest conversion rates by far.”

So make sure that you only ask questions that are absolutely necessary. What information do you need to get the potential customer to take the next step in your sales funnel?

#3 Offer a Lead Magnet

It goes without saying that you shouldn’t expect people to share their contact details with you just because. You need to give them an incentive to do so.

A lead magnet is a something that you give away for free in exchange for a potential customer’s contact information.

It can be:

• A free ebook.
• A free video.
• An email course.
• A video course.
• An app.

…anything, really.

What matters is that it provides value to your potential customers.

Just keep in mind that people use your lead magnet to judge your products and services.

Impress them and they will be interested in exploring your premium offers. Disappoint them and you won’t get a second chance.

That’s why it’s so important to go the extra mile to create an effective lead magnet. 

Facebook Lead Ads Case Study: Brown Chevrolet Buick GMC

Brown Chevrolet Buick GMC is an automotive dealership with several locations in Texas.

They wanted to:

• Increase website traffic.
• Generate better leads.

…without increasing their marketing budget.

So they turned to Facebook with the hope of reaching people that they might not reach via traditional media.

Brown Chevrolet Buick GMC worked together with their social media and reputation management partner, Digital Air Strike, to create a Facebook advertising campaign.

They ended up running lead ads targeting people aged 18-65+ who were interested in owning cars and pickup trucks that GMC was selling.

They also used location targeting to reach potential customers that lived near the dealership locations.

Over just 2 days, the campaign resulted in:

• 43% increase in website visits.
• 63% increase in collected email leads.
• 63% brand new customers made a visit to a dealership.
• 12.5X return on ad spend.
• 8 vehicles sold.

Facebook Lead Generation Ad Examples: Sleeknote

Sleeknote is a company that sells marketing software.

They use lead ads to generate leads on Facebook.

Here’s one that promotes a content upgrade (a lead magnet that is relevant to a particular piece of content):

They also use lead ads to promote their webinars.

“One thing we learned from co-hosting 21 webinars is that promoting your webinars with paid advertising is the key to driving high-quality, targeted event signups,” shares Seray Keskin, content marketer at Sleeknote.

“But to drive more signups, we had to remove the obstacles for our prospects. Meaning, we started using Facebook lead ads to reduce the number of steps users have to take to register for our webinars.

And it worked as we expected,”

Here’s an example:

“The ad starts by asking a question that targets our prospects’ pain points and continues with a clear description of the event. The goal is to make sure that users know what they’re signing up for, and the video helps users with that, as well,” explains Seray.

Here’s the video:

“By using only three input fields in the contact form, we made it easy for users to submit their email addresses with a few clicks. Plus, we added an incentive for the first 200 signups to drive more registrations.”

Sleeknote then targeted lookalike audience of their existing subscribers that had a high lead score.

“If you want to follow a similar path in your lead ads, make sure to give a detailed description of your event and schedule your ads in advance,” advises Seray.

Using Facebook Ads to Drive Traffic to a Landing Page

There’s also the approach of running regular ads, then sending people who click on them to a landing page that “sells” the lead magnet.

That’s how people did things before Facebook rolled out lead ads and it’s what many marketers still prefer today. Why?

Because while lead ads make it easier for the potential customer to give you their contact details, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they generate the same quality of leads as landing pages. 

The whole “lead ads vs. landing pages” debate was quite heated when lead ads came out.

Fortunately, now we have data on this.

Lead Ads vs. Landing Pages

WordStream did a study on the lead ads vs. landing pages issue.

Here’s how Gordon Donnelly explains it:

“We wanted to test this proposition that generally speaking, lead ads convert to leads at a higher clip than landing pages. We also wanted to look at the relative cost of acquiring a lead in each campaign type.

So we set out to measure the conversion rate and the cost per action for both lead generation and conversion campaigns, and we did so by pulling the data of all WordStream clients that were using those campaign types in the past 60 days.

Our data set spanned over 3,000 campaigns and about $9.5 million in spend.”

Take a look at the data on conversion rate and cost-per-action:

“So while cost per action was higher, the takeaway here is that lead generation campaigns convert to leads (from clicks) at a 2.07% higher rate than conversion campaigns. Which, due to the more streamlined user flow, is something we expected!” says Gordon.

But does that mean that lead ads are better than landing pages? Not so fast…

WordStream also decided to look into the quality of leads generated with these Facebook lead generation methods.

They looked at their own account throughout the same time period (60 days). 

Here are the results:

Here’s how Gordon summarizes their findings:

“The takeaway? Lead generation campaigns seem to be more effective across the board at converting clicks to leads. But conversion campaigns seem to take the cake when it comes to generating quality leads at a lower cost.”

How To Get Leads From Facebook Groups

You can also generate leads through Facebook Groups.

Ben Heath, a Facebook Ads expert who runs his own Facebook advertising agency, has had great success with this lead generation method.

In his video “How I Generate Leads From Facebook Groups Every Day”, he shares what worked for him and how you can do the same:

1. Don’t spam random Facebook groups!
2. Create your own Facebook group.
3. Set the group up in a way that generates engagement (e.g. a mastermind group).
4. When new people join the group, post a welcome message where you explain the rules and encourage them to participate. Make sure to tag the new members.
5. Be responsive. When people ask questions, help them out. When people leave comments, respond to those comments.
6. Regularly post relevant content. Make sure that the content includes a call to action (say, to download a lead magnet). Do this once a week.
7. Stay patient. It will take a while to see the results.

You can watch Ben’s video here:

At the time of making the video, Ben’s group had 1600+ members. It was generating leads every single day.

Also, if you don’t know how to grow a Facebook group, Ben made another great video called “How to Grow a Facebook Group Fast!”.

Here’s a quick summary:

• Connect your Facebook group to your Facebook business page.
• Run a Facebook Ads campaign to get page likes.
• Invite the people who liked your page to your group.

You can watch Ben’s video here:

Conclusion

It’s probably safe to say that whoever your customers are, you can probably find them on Facebook. 2.8 billion monthly active users is a lot of people.

But there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to lead generation. Every business is unique. That’s why you need to find out what works for your company.

And the only way to do that is to experiment. 

Run regular ads. Run lead ads. Create a Facebook Group. 

See which lead generation method produces the best results.

Then double down on it.