What are Facebook Lead Ads?
Facebook Leads Ads allow you to capture potential customers’ data (name, email address, phone number, etc) directly within an advertisement on Facebook.
Your ideal customer is on Facebook >> They see your ad >> They click on your ad >>A pre-populated form pops up >> They click ‘submit’>> Your ideal customer’s contact details are sent to you.
And *Bingo* – You have a Sales Lead!
The end user doesn’t have to leave Facebook to give you their details – they can go back to watching cats that are scared of cucumbers. It’s painless, quick and easy!
The Pros…
• Don’t have to leave the comfort of Facebook: Potential customers don’t need to leave Facebook to contact you (it’s convenient and they’re on a platform they know & trust).
• Form filled out for you: Facebook populates many of the form’s fields using the info it already has about that person. When the person opens the lead form it will already be completed with their name and email address. You can add Custom Fields (e.g. Your Wedding Date, Your Shoe Size, Your Star Sign – whatever’s appropriate for your offer. The more Custom Fields you add, though, the more you’re asking customers to jump through hoops. Make them work too hard and they won’t send you their details).
• Easy to use: They are simple to set up (see below)
• Inexpensive: Put the right offer in front of the right person, and you can generate some very cost-effective leads. For example, I ran a Lead Ad campaign for a Groomswear Company (selling and hiring formal suits for weddings). For every £1 they spent on Facebook Advertising generated £11.25 in revenue.
• Retargeting: You can retarget people who opened your Lead Ad Form, but didn’t send you their details. Jon Loomer has written a great article on retargeting these people in his article “Create Facebook Custom Audiences for Lead Ad Form Engagement”.
The Cons….
• Quality of Leads?: Leads are only valuable when they’re good leads which will result in sales and a return on your investment. Are you getting good quality leads?
• The speed of Follow-Up: Whilst you can access leads via the Facebook Ad Platform, it’s a manual task which takes time. According to InsideSales.com, if you follow up with web leads within 5 minutes, you’re 9 times more likely to convert them… are you in a position to sit on Facebook all day waiting for the leads to come in? And therefore…
• You need a CRM System: A better solution would be to integrate Facebook Lead Ads with your CRM System (CRM=Customer Relationship Management) such as Salesforce, InfusionSoft, or I use Pipedrive.
The great news is that many CRM Providers have free trials, and some have a free plan for small businesses, so you can try before you buy.
Check out using Zapier to ‘Zap’ your Leads straight into your CRM System (Zapier helps integration between apps without any need for coding – which is an absolute blessing for many of us!). Prices start at less than £20 a month and it’s money well spent!
• Facebook lead Ads sure are ugly!: You’re very limited on how your Lead Form will look. And I’ll be honest, it’s pretty darned ugly! If you have experience in building landing pages using Leadpages, ClickFunnels, or the like, then you might prefer to drive traffic there. Bear in mind though, Facebook wants you to stay on Facebook and you’re likely to pay more to drive people to your external landing page.
But, as I always say, test both and see which gives you the best results.
Who will they work for?
Likely to be most effective when placed in front of your Cool Audience (with a compelling offer – move them from consideration to a low-risk purchase or free trial) and to a Warm Audience (upselling to higher priced products or services).
Ask yourself – would I give my contact details to someone I don’t know? There would have to pretty a very compelling offer!
You might be better off running Awareness Campaigns first (raise awareness, lead with value, share great content, get on their radar) and then retarget them with a great offer via Lead Ads.
Yes, the Groomswear Company I mentioned above (£11.25 return on investment for every £1 spent) was targeting a cold audience, so it can work. In this case, though, we targeted people with a very real need (they are getting married and need something to wear) with a compelling offer (25% off hire fee) with an element of scarcity (if you reserve your suits by the end of month).
How do I create a Facebook Lead Ads
Facebook has a set of comprehensive instructions for creating Facebook Lead Ads.
You’ll need to ensure you have a Privacy Policy on your website – Facebook will ask for the URL so that they can link to it. Without this, you will not be able to run your advertisement.
If you don’t have a Privacy Policy, you can buy one for less than £10 from Clickdocs.co.uk.
Further Reading
• Hubspot’s 107 mind-blowing sales statistics that will help you sell smarter
• Social Media Examiner’s How to Use Facebook Lead Ads
• Digital Marketer’s What you need to know about Facebook Lead Ads
• Ad Espresso’s How to create Facebook Lead Ads and sync them with your CRM
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