What are Facebook Lead Gen Ads?
Lead generation ads are a Facebook ad format that allows you to collect valuable information from potential customers.
You may want to choose what kind of information to collect according to your business’ needs. For example, if you run or work for a call-centre based business, you may be looking to collect phone numbers. Or if you work for a digital magazine and looking to grow your email list, your goal would likely be to collect as many email addresses as possible.
Why should you start using Facebook lead gen ads?
Facebook lead gen ads are an incredibly powerful tool to quickly generate qualified leads at a decent cost.
Two main factors make lead gen ads so extremely effective: Facebook’s targeting and the built-in “Instant Forms”. You can use interest, behaviour, demographic targeting or also create custom audiences to retarget website visitors, newsletter subscribers, users who previously engaged with your brand and much more.
The second factor that makes lead gen ads so efficient is the built-in contact form, or Instant Form, that auto-populate with the user’s information once he or she has clicked to the call-to-action button. This information is taken directly from the user’s profile, so he doesn’t have to manually enter it, making the process incredibly smooth.
Also, lead gen ads do not redirect to your website so you don’t have to worry about page loading speed and landing page optimisation.
How to make the most of Facebook Lead Gen Ads?
Facebook Lead Gen Ads can be an incredibly powerful tool to capture important data about your potential customers. But not all social media users are willing to give up their personal information without getting anything in return.
So how to make these ads as efficient as possible and make the most of your advertising budget?
There is no secret formula to create the perfect lead generation ad, however, you will definitely improve your campaigns’ performance by simply following a few best practices.
Know your audience
This is probably the most important of all. It’s easy to scale your campaigns on Facebook and Instagram and reach a huge amount of users. But are you reaching the right audience?
If you are advertising on social media you will likely own a website too. So log into Google Analytics and pull out as much information as possible about your existing customers. This will allow you to reduce the size of your target audience and make your campaigns more profitable.
Give something away
So you are now reaching the right users, but will that be enough for them to hand out their personal information? Try to include offers and promotions in your ad creative to persuade them and make the most of each ad impression.
Provide context
If you own or work for an emerging brand, some people may be reluctant to share their personal data with you. It takes time to build trust but by adding a bit of extra context in your adverts you can make it clearer for your potential customers what they are signing up for.
Or if you have a few pounds to spare, consider running brand awareness campaigns before hitting your audience with a lead generation ad.
Conclusion
Now that you know the basics of Facebook lead gen ads you should be ready to start using them to convert social media users into leads and, potentially, new customers.
With over 2.3 billion monthly active users, advertising on Facebook is no longer an option, but a must. No matter what business you are in, it is very likely that your audience is actively using the network.
So embrace this opportunity and start making the most of your advertising budget!
Like it or not, Facebook really does know a lot about its users, and this definitely makes our lives easier when it’s time to target our desired audience.
