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March 21, 2017

How to Use Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook Lead Ads expand social media’s role in the sales funnel by providing another way for businesses to connect with customers who are about to make a purchase.

Most digital marketing focuses on the bottom of the sales funnel, or the final steps needed to get a conversion. These efforts aim to capture users who already expressed an intent to purchase.

In contrast, social media marketing historically focused on top-of-funnel awareness and post-sale customer retention. But today, social media plays a role in all parts of the sales funnel, from developing awareness, to educating customers who are considering a purchase, to driving transactions.

On Facebook in particular, advertisers can now accurately target past or prospective customers for reengagement using Facebook Lead Ads.

So, if you’ve ever said, “Social media is just silly cat memes,” or “Social media is a waste of time for my business,” think again.

Facebook Lead Ads give businesses a powerful tool to capture consumers near the point of sale. This article explains what Facebook Lead Ads are and how to use them for business.

How Facebook Lead Ads Work:

Facebook Lead Ads foster a connection between businesses and prospective customers by making it easy for interested parties to share information with a business over social media.

Facebook Lead Ads are similar to many other Facebook ad types. You have the freedom to create the copy, include custom images, and target a particular audience.

The Facebook Lead Ad carousel resembles other ad types on Facebook

The key difference is that when a Facebook user clicks on a Lead Ad, he is presented with a pop-up form that includes pre-populated contact information from Facebook, like his name and email address.

Facebook Lead Ads have pop-up forms with pre-populated personal information

This readily available contact information makes it easy for a prospective customer to signal his interest in a particular business or product with just two clicks: once on the ad and once to submit the form.

Why is this pre-populated personal information valuable for both a user and a business?

For users, the simple answer is that filling out forms can be a painful experience. Considering that nearly 60% of monthly active Facebook users only access Facebook on a mobile device(link is external), businesses need to make it easier for potential customers to share information.

For businesses, when users submit forms, they signal an intent to make a purchase. Then, the business can follow up quickly to help the user act on the intent. The business also can use the form to direct the user to its website, essentially setting up another touch point.

Facebook Lead Ads include a form that directs a user to the business' website

Once a user submits the form, it’s up to the business to contact the consumer and close the deal.

Facebook lead ads are most effective for businesses with high average transaction values and a guided sales process with multiple touch points between the business and the prospective customer. If you run an e-commerce business that sells high volumes of low-priced goods, Facebook lead ads may not be the best option for you.

Step-By-Step Guidance for Creating Facebook Lead Ads:

Creating a Facebook Lead Ad is a five-step process. Some steps require careful testing to determine what works best for your business.

1. Create New Ad Campaign to Collect Leads

When you create an ad campaign on Facebook, select “collect leads for you business” as the campaign objective.

select collect leads for your business as your Facebook ad objective

2. Define Target Audience

Facebook allows you to identify the characteristics that compose your ideal audience, including age, gender, language, location, interests, and behaviors.

Facebook ads have robust audience targeting features

You should experiment with different target audiences to determine which groups convert best for you.

Some common filters to consider include the following:

  • Geography – people within a certain amount of miles of your business
  • Retargeting ­– people who have visited your website
  • Custom Audiences – former customers
  • Behaviors – other brands or activities they like or other Facebook data

Also, make sure your audience is big enough. Otherwise, you risk showing the same ad to the same people multiple times.

3. Set Bid Criteria

For Lead Ads, we suggest selecting the manual option for the bid amount. Manual allows you to select a bid based on what the results are worth to you.

Facebook lets you choose between an automatic and manual bid options

The other bid option, automatic, lets Facebook set a bid that it thinks will get you the best results at the best price.

4. Build a Lead Form

The lead form is presented to Facebook users who click on your ad. It contains pre-populated information about the user.

Creating a Facebook Lead form

As you design the form and choose which details to request, remember that the more information you ask a consumer to provide, the less likely they are to submit the form.

A rule of thumb is to ask for basic information only, such as name and email address.

5. Qualify Leads Before Adding a Context Card

Facebook also gives you the option to add a context card, or a pop-up that appears alongside the lead form and tells consumers about your business.

context cards for Facebook Lead Ads give the target more information about your business

We suggest waiting to add a context card until after you get your first round of leads and assess their quality.

Context cards help qualify leads, but if you’re already getting high-quality leads through the ad and lead form, there’s no need to add another step to the process.

Optimizing Facebook Lead Ads: Targeting, CTAs, Testing:

As you create Facebook lead ads, consider three tips to optimize your efforts: use lookalike targeting, include call to action (CTA) buttons, and test ad copy and images.

1. Use Lookalike Audience Targeting

Deliberate, precise targeting is critical for creating successful Facebook lead ads.

As a leading social media marketing agency, Friendemic frequently experiments with targeting features. We find that lookalike audiences often drive the most conversions at the lowest cost.

Lookalike audiences allow Facebook’s algorithm to seek out users that have features that are similar to those of converted users. In other words, using the lookalike audience feature allows you to identify small but powerful audiences that are likely to convert.

For example, if you have an original audience composed of 100 loyal customers, lookalike audience targeting could attract 1 million or more similar people.

2. Add a Call To Action Button

All Facebook lead ads should include a CTA. In fact, the overall click through rate increases by 2.85x(link is external)when an ad includes a CTA button.

Because CTAs aren’t one-size-fits-all, it’s important to test different CTAs and compare the results to find what wording works best for your audience. The CTAs businesses use do not always correlate with performance.

Infographic of study that explored success of different CTA buttons used on Facebook

This infographic, which portrays the results of a study conducted by AdRoll, found that even though advertisers use the CTA button “shop now” the most, “learn more” has a better click through rate overall.

3. A/B Test Your Ad Copy & Image

Always A/B test your ad copy and image. We frequently see that even small changes in the copy or image yield dramatically different results in terms of cost per click and cost per lead. Consider the following two examples from a Honda regional marketing group.

A/B test your ad copy and image to learn what yields the best click through rate

Both examples above are Lead Ads from Honda. They show how altering the image can affect the overall click through rate.

Use Facebook Lead Ads to Increase Your Customer Base:

Social media is an important part of any marketing strategy. Using Facebook Lead Ads is one way to target prospective customers. We walk you through the five steps necessary to get started and offer three tips for approaching ad creation effectively. Our parting advice: don’t give up on Facebook Lead Ads after your first attempt. With diligent analysis and testing, you can improve your results over time.

Do you have additional Facebook Lead Ads tips + tricks? Share with us and comment below!

Tag(s): automotive , car sales

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