How to create Facebook Lead Generation Ads that work

Most marketers find their lead generation efforts slightly effective. This is because most of their strategies involve collecting information through form submissions. The marketer advertises an offer and requires interested buyers to fill out a form to purchase the product or claim the offer.

Sadly, the method only increases the site’s visibility. It does not always generate leads because users are required to leave the site where the offer has been promoted to follow a conversion path leading to a high bounce rate.

Facebook lead generation ads allow potential clients to access offers without leaving your website. Marketers can collect as much lead information from the Facebook platform and shorten the long click-through path users need to follow

Facebook lead generation ads help solve this problem by allowing potential clients to access offers without leaving the website. As such, marketers can collect as much lead information from the Facebook platform and shorten the long click-through path users need to follow. The text explains how marketers can leverage this tool and how they can create effective lead generation ads:

What Facebook Lead Generation Entails

Lead generation is a marketing process that involves capturing a buyer’s interest in a product or service. The primary purpose of generating leads is to develop a sales pipeline; interested buyers can follow when purchasing the product.

A lead is a user who has already expressed interest in your product or service, so the marketer doesn’t need to make cold calls. As such, the initial step to generating a lead is to attract the customer, say through a social media profile. With an audience that’s ever surrounded by information, marketers need to create solid lead generation strategies that capture a buyer’s interest before they can contact your sales team.

Why Use Facebook to Generate Leads?

With the numerous ways of creating lead generations, Facebook has proved the most effective channel. First, it has a considerable number of monthly active users (1.7 billion), providing a large user base for any business to reach its target audience.

Then, there’s the fact that Facebook makes lead generation easy for the user and the business. This is because it provides an advertising dashboard with plenty of resources you can use to generate and collect leads. What’s more, the user doesn’t need to leave Facebook to fill the form, enhancing the likelihood of making conversions.

The form allows the marketer to collect as much information about the customer through their profile. The user can then edit the pre-filled information if necessary. Other benefits of using Facebook for lead generation are:

• Saves time: Facebook’s mobile-friendly advertising format enables users to submit information using their mobile devices. They only need to fill form appearing on the screen and submit
• Increases conversion: Facebook’s ad formats increase the likelihood of conversion as the customer does not need to leave the website to purchase the product
• Access to different lead generation campaign formats: Marketers have access to different campaign formats e.g., webinar signups, content downloads to create lead ads
• Ability to customize questions: Marketers can customize the questions in the lead ad forms to collect as much information about their target audience

How to Create Facebook Lead Generation Ads

There are two ways of creating the ads:

Using the Business Page

• Visit the Facebook Business Page and select the Publishing tools icon
• Click on the ‘Forms Library’ on the drop-down menu
• Click on Create form and click next
• Name the form using the ‘Create Form heading
• Visit the form’s configuration settings to choose the language the audience will see when viewing the form
• If you don’t use Facebook’s API you can skip the ID and tracking parameters
• Then choose the type of form you want to use
• Click on the Introduction section and fill in all required information
• Next choose the questions you want to ask users
• Link the URL to your site’s privacy policy
• Add a custom screen to keep users engaged after submitting the form
• Click on Finish to complete creating the form

Using the Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook’s Ads Manager categorizes campaigns in three levels. At the highest level, choose the campaign category, then select an objective (generate leads), and set up the ad. Here are steps to guide you:

• Log in to the website and click on the Facebook Ads Manager icon
• Click on the Campaigns tab and click Create
• Select the method of creating the ad (quick or guided)
• Select your marketing objective (lead generation)
• Name the campaign and click on ‘Set up the Ad’
• Type in your account’s information and proceed
• Choose the Business page. If it’s the first lead ads campaign, accept the terms and conditions
• Configure all the necessary setting and continue
• Create a new ad or choose a form to create the ad

Note, you need to create a separate Facebook Fan Page to create lead generation ads. The page in different from one’s profile as it represents the company and provides resources for managing and monitoring engagement. For your ad to be effective, ensure it meets the following criteria:

• An engaging and suitable image (should have 1200 x 628 pixels)
• Have a catchy deadline
• Text explaining the offer should have 90 characters
• Include a description for the news feed in 30 characters
• Have a clear call to action

How to Make the Ads Successful

After setting the ad and publishing it there are a few more things marketers can do to ensure their ads achieve the intended objectives:

1.    Offer Incentives

Your target audience is more willing to share information if you offer something in return. A free download, a promo code, pre-order products, product samples make great incentives as they show customers you value their information.

Be sure to clarify your intentions from the onset, so customers understand what they are signing up for. In fact, you can include that at the beginning of the form and in the promotional copy. Marketers should also include branding throughout the ad to eliminate any uncertainty that comes with sharing personal information.

2.    Use Compelling Ad Formats

Just like other ads, it is imperative to use the right ad format. If advertising several products, for example, a carousel format is an excellent choice. Be creative and include high-quality videos, images, and CTAs for the best results.

3. Integrate a Customer Relationship Management System

The primary objective of capturing leads is to sell more products and grow a business. However, you need to plan how to achieve these objectives after capturing the leads. A CRM system helps you nurture and follow-up the leads.

4.    Use Inbound Marketing Too

The most effective marketing strategies use a combination of tactics. As such, Facebook lead generation should only be one aspect of the overall marketing strategy. It should be combined with inbound marketing strategies like content marketing and posting consistently on social media channels.

5.    Target the Right Audience

• Align your lead ad’s objectives to the target audience. There are three types of audience to choose:
• Custom audiences: They include people in your CRM system, app visitors or those who have subscribed to your newsletter
• Lookalike audiences: If your objective is to expand the customer base, then your ads should target lookalike audiences. Marketers can identify such an audience by studying the most valuable customers to find similar users
• People near the company: If the business has more than one location, the marketer can use a business locator feature to target people within the range of your stores. Such an audience is ideal if you want to encourage customers to visit your store or schedule appointments

6.    Incorporate Video Formats

Videos have become an essential part of building brands. As such, creating Facebook lead generation ads in the form of videos goes a long way in attracting your target audience. The video should build up anticipation from the onset as many users don’t watch videos to the end. Here are useful tips:

• Add a CTA to the videos: It comes in handy if you are creating educational videos and want to attract many leads. Such videos reach a wider audience and are easier for new people to digest
• Include the CTA at the end: Your CTA should come at the end of the video. However, CTAs included in the middle of the video have shown to attract a higher conversion. If using the approach pique interest in the product, service or brand before the CTA
• Add the CTA to targeted videos: This approach is effective when you focus on the quality of the leads. 

7.    Ask Qualifying Questions

Follow up on the most qualified leads because they are more likely to buy your product or service. The best way to do this is to ask qualifying questions. Then you can separate the leads based on customer responses and concentrate on nurturing qualified leads.

The best way to connect with such leads is to ask users to fill out a survey along with a contact information form. Some methods of getting the most out of such surveys include:

• Ask if the Lead Gets Value from Your Products: Such a question helps the marketer identify which of their needs can be met. In turn, the marketer is more prepared to discuss how to meet those needs
• Place the Survey Strategically: If the survey is on the product page, you could ask leads to highlight the most important features they want in a specific product. This kind of data helps nurture leads. Note, surveys demonstrate the value you place on customer feedback and help you cater to the users’ needs. Additionally, surveys can be customized to align them with the current lead generation strategy.
• Send the Survey at the Right Time: In case you sent free trials of your product, your survey should collect information about the users’ experience. This should help you direct leads to the product's helpful features as they transition to the full version of that product.

Why Facebooks Ads Fail

Clearly creating and setting up ads on Facebook is pretty straightforward. However, even with a catchy ad title, the ads may fail to generate as many leads due to the following reasons:

1.    Failure to Identify Your Target Audience

Identify your target audience before even creating the ads. If the visuals in the ad appeal to males in their 30s but your products are designed for a younger generation, the ad might not be effective.

2.    Failure to Budget

Facebook advertising is pretty expensive hence the need to plan how much you want to spend from the onset. Also, project the return on investment while making a provision for factors such as your audience, duration of the campaign, type of product and more.

3.    Failure to Automate the Follow-up Process

Marketers often fail to plan how to manage the data collected. Thus, they end up downloading the data collected and then uploading it to the CRM system. Such activities only take up valuable time the marketer would spend on other pressing matters. Marketers must invest in automation tools that update any new information received.

4.    Failure to Use the Right Instant Form Fields

Publishing the lead generation ad is only the first step; marketers need to devise ways to nurture the leads using the data received. This means they need to customize the ads to collect as much useful information as possible.

You don’t want to publish an ad that only collects the customer’s name and email address; it should provide an idea of how close the customer is to buying the product. For example, if the lead ad is for consultation services, it would help if you asked the customer’s availability.

5.    Not Customizing the Ads for Use on Multiple Devices

While most of the features on instant forms help uniquely connect with your leads, some of them are not optimized to appear on multiple devices. Failure for marketers to consider audiences using mobile devices, for example, reduces the effectiveness of the lead ads.

6.    Using Instant Forms to Execute Only One Purpose

Apart from collecting basic customer information, Facebook lead generations ads can be used to:

• Encourage email signup to grow your email list
• Create inquiry forms that can be used to learn more about the audience
• Provide special offers and promotions to get more people interested in the brand 

The primary objective of creating Facebook Lead Generation Ads is to reach new audiences. However, since you are also collecting information, avoid asking too many questions too soon. Identifying your target audience, creating the ads correctly, offering incentives, and surveys go a long way in making lead generation ads effective.