Ultimate Guide on Creating Facebook Lead Ads: How to Get More Leads from Facebook

Ultimate Guide How to get more leads from FB SG

Facebook Lead Generation Ads Campaign

Lead generation is the lifeblood of any successful business.

It’s not a business if people aren’t coming to your store to purchase your products or services.

It’s not a business if people aren’t genuinely interested in your information. It’s still not business if your email list isn’t growing.

Quite simply, it’s not business if your marketing strategy isn’t generating any serious leads.

So, how do you go about the business of generating leads?

There are so many ways to generate leads online – opt-in forms, email campaigns, live events, etc. But today, in this article, we’d like to focus on the largest lead generation social platform, Facebook.

Some Fun Fact About Lead Generation on Facebook

Facebook is ranked first as the leading lead generation platform (82%). It’s followed by LinkedIn (48%), with Instagram coming in third (43%).

Only 4% of marketers use Snapchat to generate leads.

Social Media Platform

Number of Marketers Using it to Generate Leads

Facebook

82%

LinkedIn

48%

Instagram

43%

Twitter

15%

Pinterest

9%

Snapchat

4%

Other

5%

Marketers also agree that images (41%) are the best lead generation posts for social media. They’re closely followed by videos (40%) with stories coming in third (11%), and text coming in fourth (4%).

Social Media Posts

Lead Generation Effectiveness

Images

41%

Video

40%

Stories

11%

Text

4%

Other

3%

The same study also goes on to confirm that social media is key to driving leads (53%). It’s followed by direct messages (19%), with emails coming in third (17%).

Facebook Lead Generation

Facebook Lead Ads is a paid ad platform that allows you to target a specific audience to generate leads, particularly on Facebook and Instagram.

Why Target Leads on Facebook

Ultimate Guide on Creating Facebook Lead Ads: How to Get More Leads from Facebook 1

As a marketer, it’s your job to figure out where your prospects spend much of their time online – and meet them there, instead of waiting for them to come to you.

More than 2.32 billion people use Facebook daily. That means many of the customers you’re targeting can be found on this platform.

On average, users spend 1 hour per day browsing through Facebook, and spend just as much time browsing through Instagram.

Taking into account the number of people using social media platforms, it’s safe to say Facebook is the most ideal place to market your business.

The native lead form is another reason Facebook is so effective at generating leads.

What are Facebook Lead Generation Ads?

Ultimate Guide on Creating Facebook Lead Ads: How to Get More Leads from Facebook 2

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In a regular lead generation setting, you’re to drive users to a landing page you created, where they’re to fill out a lead conversion form. They might have come across this information on a Facebook post or ad – and in order to fill out this information, they’ll be directed to a landing page outside Facebook to input their contact details.

This is one of the most effective ways to find high-quality leads. First the people you attract have to abandon what they’re doing to go to your landing page and fill out your form to access your offer. This strategy can only work if the prospect is highly interested in your offer.

But what if the person is only mildly interested? What are the chances they’ll still find it worthwhile to leave Facebook and fill out your form?

Enters Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook leads ads were specifically created for this.

Users don’t have to leave Facebook to fill out your lead forms. Instead of sending your users to your landing page, you can create the forms directly on your Facebook page and even let them access your offers without directing them elsewhere,

The whole point is to make the conversion process hassle-free and convenient for all.

That means, you can capture all the lead information you need directly on Facebook without necessarily dragging your users to an external landing page to complete the conversion process.

How Does Facebook Lead Ads Work?

Facebook Lead Ads are no different from any other form of paid ads. First, you have to set up your ad account through Facebook Ad Manager. You’re even allowed to customise your creative assets, target features, and budget to reach the right audience.

The information you provide is meant to help Facebook help you display your ads to the right group of prospects.

The ad is then displayed in the user’s news feed – this ad looks very similar to any organic Facebook posts, save for the “sponsored post” designation.

The lead ad is for promoting your lead generation offer.

Example of a Facebook Lead Ad

You can use Facebook lead ad to increase the number of people signing up to your business or product, with a coupon code as your offer.

To access this offer, the user will be required to submit their contact information by filling up a lead form. However, with Facebook Lead ads, this form can be filled directly on the Facebook app instead of an external landing page.

When your users come across your ad and click on the CTA, Facebook will respond by producing the form. This form will be auto-filled with some of the information, thus reducing the number of form fields that the user has to fill.  

Once the user fills this form and submits it, Facebook will proceed to deliver the coupon code in-app either via a Thank-You note or via the user’s email, depending on the designated lead flow.

The user gets the discount code, while you get a new contact to add to your email list for follow-ups, nurturing, and qualifying.

Facebook Lead Form

A lead form collects your leads’ contacts in exchange for your offer. The lead information you collect might include your leads’ names, email address, phone number, or any other personal information.

Your visitors will gladly fill out the form if you’re offering them something of great value.

Even with this, the process of getting your online visitors to fill out your form and claim your offer isn’t an easy one. With everything that’s happening in the social spaces, it’s easy for your visitors to get distracted or lose interest along the way.

You want to act quick, when they’re warmed up enough for action.

With Facebook Lead Ads, you don’t have to drag your users outside Facebook to collect their contact details. Instead, everything happens in-app, thus increasing the possibility of a conversion.

Those interested in your business can connect with you by providing their contact details.

While prospects don’t have to leave the Facebook app, the information they provide can be seamlessly moved to the database of any CRM program through an integration.

What are the Benefits of Facebook Lead Ads?

Facebook Lead Ads have a few benefits that apply to both you (the advertiser) and the prospects you’re targeting.

The point is to clear many of the barriers that a prospect goes through while filling out your lead form. Facebook Lead Ads try to eliminate these barriers by first helping you meet your prospects right where they are, on the Facebook app.

Here are few of the benefits of Facebook Lead Ads:

How it Benefits Your Prospects

Native Functionality

With Lead Ads, users are presented with an auto-filled form with only a few fields to fill. Plus, they don’t necessarily have to leave the platform.

They don’t disrupt your users by moving them from Facebook to your website or landing page and back again. 

Mobile Responsiveness

Facebook Lead Ads work even better on mobile. Since the app is already built for mobile, you can bet your ads will too. That means, no matter what devices your users are viewing your ads, they should be able to do so without experiencing any issue.

How It Benefits Advertisers

Visitors don’t have leave the  Facebook Ad

Leads ads benefit advertisers because they capture their visitors’ information without necessarily dragging them out of Facebook. It also saves them the trouble of creating a new conversion path or landing page.

Everything you need to set up a fully functional conversion path is readily available on the platform. Plus, the collected data can be easily integrated with your CRM.

Highly Targeted Segments

Facebook lead ads are even better because they allow for highly targeted user segmentation, like demographics and interests. Because of this, their leads tend to be highly qualified and are more likely to take action compared to those captured in a traditional way.

How to Set up Your First Facebook Lead Ad in 15 Easy Steps

Let’s get more practical.

You already know what Facebook Lead ads are, and why they’re so important to your business success.

So how about we show you how to set up your first lead ad.

You might want to start by reading Facebook’s policies for Lead ads, and make sure your form fields are in line with everything they have mentioned.

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With that squared, we can now proceed with the rest of the steps.

But first, check to make sure you have the following list of things in order:

  • You own the Facebook page, and have an admin access to it (not an editor or any other role, but the page’s admin).
  • Make sure you have connected your Instagram account to the page.
  • Make sure your website has a private policy page.
  • Make sure you have a nicely designed image or a creative asset that will draw attention to your ad. You want your ad to stand out right?

After you’ve confirmed all the above, you can now proceed to the first step of setting up your Facebook Lead Ad.

Step 1: Open Facebook’s Ad Manager

We’ll start with the simplest of the steps. Just follow the link provided to open Facebook Ad Manager.

Alternatively, you can log in to your Facebook account and navigate to Ads Manager.

Click on Create to proceed.

Step 2: Select Your Ad Campaign Objective

The next screen that pops up will be asking you to select your campaign objective. In this case, you want to select “Lead Generation.”

Everything is self-explanatory from there. But you want to tread through the next steps more carefully to avoid making some common mistakes people make all the time.

Facebook offers you a chance to skip the unnecessary hoops and get straight the creation part. Just click on the “Switch to Quick Creation” at the top-right corner. Remember, this is an option for advanced Facebook advertisers that do not want to be guided every step of the way.

If you’ve never set up a Facebook Lead Ad before, then it would probably be wise to just go with “Guided Creation.”

Step 3: Choose a Name for Your Ad Campaign

Be as detailed as you possibly can. The name you choose must mention your ad objective for comparison reasons.

For instance, you could name your campaign as “Lead Generation.” That’s your key objective, doubling as a descriptive title for the campaign.

The next step is where you specify your ad set. This is where you add specific details about the type of audience that you’re targeting. You’ll be required to specify your demographic details, and check the options that best corresponds to your audience persona.

Step 4: Create Your Ad Set

The best way to visualise your ad set is to think of it as a tray or basket that carries all the ads that target a particular persona.

The Ad set you choose should clearly reflect that.

Annie Miller – 25 – College Graduate.

You want to add more descriptors to this ad set.

A better approach would be to create a persona worksheet. Give the ad set a name and reference the worksheet should there arise a need for it.

Step 5: If You Have Several Facebook Business Page, Choose Which One to Use

Facebook allows you to create as many business pages as you wish. After you create an ad set, you’ll be required to choose which one among them to use for that particular Ad set.

If you only have a single page, then Facebook will automatically select the page for you.

Step 6: Leverage Facebook’s Dynamic Creative Features

With this option, you can upload your creative assets separately, which Facebook will use to automatically generate the right combination of headlines, CTA, images, and other components that you can use to subsegment your target audience.

This is an option you’d want to consider if you’re not planning to create a complete ad image from scratch and split test it yourself.

Step 7: Filter Your Audience

This is where you specify the characteristic traits of the audience you’re targeting, from interest to age.

That’s also what makes Facebook a powerful ad platform – they have one of the most advanced segmentation features.

You can trim down your audience based on their behaviour, interest, and demographic information. You can even exclude a certain group of people to avoid wasting your ad spend. For instance, if your product is only meant for young people, then you can exclude anyone that’s not within your specified age bracket.

You can even select your audience based on your past interactions.

With every targeting feature you specify, Facebook’s “Audience Size” ticker will be indicating the audience size you can reach.

Facebook has all this target features to help you make the most of your ad budget.

Step 8: Choose Where Your Ad Will be Placed (Ad Placement)

Where do you wish to see your ad?

You have to specify on whether you want your ads to appear on mobile, desktop, Instagram of Facebook – or if you want them to appear in the newsfeed or the side column.

Another option would be to choose “automatic ad placement,” where Facebook automatically determines where to place your ads, based on their performance.

Your goal should be to figure out where your ads perform best, and consistently place them there.

There are two ways to achieve this.

This first one is by placing your ads on automatic placement for a specified period of time as you analyse the results.

The second one is by choosing an ad placement that best matches the audience you’re targeting. For example, if your target audience mainly consists of young adults, then you might want to consider placing your ads on mobile, and vice versa.

Either way, you have to understand your target audience to the bone. Find out about their interest or where they spend the bulk of their time. You’ll be making a lot of wild guesses at first, but with time, you’ll begin to understand them better and make necessary adjustments.

Step 9. Set Your Budget

This is where you do some maths to find out how much you’re willing to spend on your ads per day and how long you want to run your ads.

Remember Facebook ads can cost you as low as $1 per day with no maximum amount.

And since the Facebook Ad system works on Auction, you want to make sure you’re working with a reasonable budget based on your prior research.

Some campaign objectives will let you choose on whether you’d like to bid for CPM (Cost Per Impression) or CPC (Cost Per Click).

With lead generation, you’ll be bidding for CPM (not CPC).

Step 10: Name Your Ad

This is your ad name. Remember that you’re allowed to run several ads under a single campaign.

This an internal name for an ad that you’re planning to run. It’s to help you keep track of this particular ad.

We suggest you use a hierarchical naming system, where you name the ads based on the type of campaign, audience, or an add descriptor.

Example, “Lead Generation – Annie Lennie – Yellow Background.” 

Step 11: Determine Which Social Account to Place the Ad

Facebook will pre-select this based on the information you provided in your ad set. But if you’re planning to advertise on Instagram, then you’ll be prompted to choose an account on which to place the advert.  

Step 12: Select Your Ad Format

There are two options here: single image and carousel.

A single image is as exactly as it sounds. You post your ad as a single image. You can post your product image or a poster you designed. Alternatively, you can display the image in a slideshow, but within a single frame.

A carousel allows you to display more than one scrollable image, with varying headlines if you wish. If you have multiple product offerings and are planning to display them all, then this might be the option for you.

The carousel option is also great when you want to pique your prospects’ interest.

Step 13: Upload Your Media

This is where you upload your creative assets. You have an option of either uploading an image or video.

Facebook allows you to upload up to six different versions of the same ad. This is actually recommended because it allows you to analyse the different ads and choose which one among them converts best.

You, however, have to make notable changes to each variation to split test them.

Step 14. Add Copy

Enter all the requested ad text. You’ll be asked to enter the headline, description, link, and any relevant URL.

While at it, a small preview of the ad will be generated in real-time at the right-hand side column.

Step 15: Select the Form Fields to Use

This is where you choose the form fields to use.

With Facebook Lead Ads, you do not have to create a separate landing page for that, as it allows your users to convert in-app.

You also get to choose which format, style, and copy of form to use.

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Facebook has a lot of customisation options for these forms. Whichever design you have in mind, you can easily pull it off using Facebook lead ads.

Remember we mentioned a privacy policy page as one of the must-haves in this guide. Now this is where you link the page with your form.

Facebook also allows you to customise your “Thank You” page. You can even screen and link your website just in case any of the leads would want to visit it after converting.

You can now review everything before submitting your ad for review. It should only take a few minutes for your ad to be reviewed. Once approved, the ad will automatically start running.

10 Key Lead Generation Tips for Facebook

Take Advantage of Facebook Audience Insights

Facebook is an advanced data collection tool. The platform collects lots of data on its users both in-app and through third party tools.

More interestingly, Facebook allows you to take advantage of this data through Facebook Audience Insights. Their goal is to help you set up highly targeted ads.

They have granular criteria for filtering your audience and targeting the right group of prospects, not just everyone.

Create an Ad Set for Each Group of Audience

Your Facebook Ads Campaign should have several Ad Sets, with each targeting a specific group or audience. Each set should be accompanied with multiple ads, created specifically for its target audience.

You’re to create multiple ads, targeting multiple pain points, with each ad conveying a single message.

It’s simple: the more targeted your message is, the more likely it will appeal to your target audience.

Use High-quality Imagery. Make Sure it Blends into the News Feed

Use high-quality images or videos and make sure they blend perfectly into the feed. Try to avoid using any foreign imagery. You don’t want an ad that’s too shouting or can be easily identified as an ad.

Keep in mind that you’ll be targeting users on Facebook, so you want to make sure your ad blends perfectly into their feed.

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You also want to make sure your ads stay within the suggested ad specs for the ad to look more natural and fit into the designated ad space.

Experiment with Videos

With Facebook Ads, you have the option of either using an image or video in your ad. While images are great for capturing your audience’s attention, videos help you tell a captivating story.

Videos are also preferred by users – with stats showing 64% of the users you attract will most likely watch your videos on Facebook.

Facebook users also tend to give undivided attention to videos. With these stats, it’s safe to say videos have potentially high ROI.

 Spy on Your Competitors

Don’t just run your ads blindly. Be sure to also check on your competition to find out what they’re doing on their end.

What creative ways are they using to reach their target audience?

If you notice them running carousel ads, then that’s something you’d also want to consider doing for your ads.

You’re not trying to imitate them, but trying to learn from them and experiment with some of the things they’re doing before charting your own ad strategy.

Review Your Analytics

Don’t just run your ads and forget about it. Your job does end with you setting up the ads.

You can maximise your ad spend by monitoring Facebook analytics regularly. Find out how the ads are performing. How is your audience responding to them?

Use the results you get to adjust your campaign and reduce wastage. You have even more reasons to do this if your budget is small.

Retarget Your Audience

Your prospects will come across your ad. But don’t expect them to make a decision in an instant, unless it’s something they were already deliberating on.

Getting them to take action is a gradual process. You have to reel them in slowly until they make up their mind and decide to go through with an action.

If anything, studies show that an average person has to view an ad at least seven times before they make up their mind and take action.

Through pixel, Facebook can track your prospects all over the web, serving them your ads in the sites they visit and increasing your exposure in the process. The more these users view your ads, the more they’re likely to make up their mind and go through with an action.

Optimise Your Ads

You’re not done here. But only beginning.

With time, you’ll develop a better understanding of how your ads work.

That means you’ll be doing a lot of testing, optimising, and analysing of your ads to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Figure out what metrics to track. These are the metrics that hinge you closer to your goals. They’re to help you work on your ad strategy and draw you even closer to achieving your goals.

Keep Your Lead Form Simple

This one is pretty simple and straightforward.

Don’t overpopulate your forms with so many unnecessary fields.

At the end, you want to make your forms easy to fill out. The easier it is for users to fill out these forms, the easier it will be for them to complete them.

It’s simple: with every new field you add, the more you’ll be increasing the chances of someone abandoning the form.

The point is to stick with what’s relevant and useful to your goals and ignore the rest.

Target the Right Audience

The target your target must be in line with your business objectives. You have three types of audience to choose from:

Lookalike Audience: If you already have a customer base, you can use Facebook Lookalike audience to expand it. With this tool, you can remodel your customer list based on the customers that you already have. To find out more about Facebook lookalikes, follow this link.

The People Near You: Facebook also allows you to target customers based in their location. The easiest approach would be to target people near you. However, if your customers are distributed in different locations, then you might want to use their business locator feature to target them based on where they are.

Custom Audiences: Custom audiences include the people who recently visited your site, those who have already subscribed to your newsletter, or the people who downloaded your app.

3 Successful Examples of Facebook Lead Ads

We’ve identified three successful Facebook Lead Ads examples to inspire you in your next ad campaign.

Facebook Lead Ad Example 1: LA Auto Show

This Ad campaign is well documented here.

Not long ago, LA Auto show created multiple ad campaigns on Facebook. Their goal was to promoted their Marquee event.

They needed leads to rev up interests. These ads were to help them find auto enthusiasts, and see if they could get them to buy tickets. So, they decided to remodel their ad campaign based on the customers that had already purchased their tickets, thanks to Facebook Lookalikes.

These leads ad would offer ticket discounts to those who complete their forms. Their auto representatives would them follow them up to complete the ticket sales, and in the end managed to increase their online ticket sales by 37%.

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Facebook Lead Ad Example 2: Generali Thailand

Generali Thailand used Facebook Lead Ad to improve their Facebook response rate to new customer queries.

As a general insurance company, Generali Thailand would go on to integrate leads with their CRM.

The automated collection of their customers’ information would take the burden off their sales team agents, thus helping them respond their queries faster. They were able to act on all the leads they generated through Facebook, and in the end managed to register 2.5 times increase in sales.

Facebook Lead Ad Example 3: Real Madrid

We all know Real Madrid as one of the leading Champions League Soccer team. The team is supported by millions of fans from different parts of the world.

Plus, they have one of the most loyal groups of supporters both offline and online.

To bridge this gap and grow their support base in regions with low engagement, the club decided to run a series of Facebook Lead Ads.

By A/B testing their ads and optimising them every step of the way, the company was able to generated over 2.4 million leads, and even managed to reduce their cost per lead by 70%.

The Final Word

There goes your complete guide to running an effective Facebook Lead Ads campaign. Keep in mind that just running the campaign isn’t enough. You have to track your results and keep on improving them where necessary.

 

 

About the Author

tom koh seo expert singapore

Tom Koh

Tom is the CEO and Principal Consultant of MediaOne, a leading digital marketing agency. He has consulted for MNCs like Canon, Maybank, Capitaland, SingTel, ST Engineering, WWF, Cambridge University, as well as Government organisations like Enterprise Singapore, Ministry of Law, National Galleries, NTUC, e2i, SingHealth. His articles are published and referenced in CNA, Straits Times, MoneyFM, Financial Times, Yahoo! Finance, Hubspot, Zendesk, CIO Advisor.

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