How to use Meta’s Facebook & Instagram for lead generation

Do you want to generate leads as easily and quickly as possible? Then Facebook Lead Ads is a great place to start. In this article, I will walk you through how to create a Facebook Lead Generation advert that works on both Facebook & Instagram.

What are Facebook Lead Ads?

Facebook Lead Ads allows you to generate leads directly from your potential customers from directly within the Facebook and Instagram platform — without the need for a landing page.

Your potential customers click on a button, submit their details (e.g. name and email address), and that’s it! You’ve generated a new lead in a few seconds.

Why use Facebook Lead Ads?

There are lots of good reason to use a Facebook lead ad, including:

• It’s easy to use (see below to learn how)
• It’s easy to set up (you don’t need any fancy landing pages)
• It’s easy to test what lead gen offer works (and what doesn’t)

A Facebook Lead Ad can work on both Instagram and Facebook, but to create them, you will need to use the Facebook Advertising Platform since Facebook owns Instagram.

What is the best Facebook lead ads strategy?

The best way to use Facebook lead ads is to offer some kind of free educational content in return for someone’s contact information.

For best results, use free educational content that explains how you solve a big painful problem your clients have and create the content in a video format.

For more information on how to create this video and what to say to maximize your conversions, watch this video.

How to use Facebook Lead Ads

Now that you know what it is and why you should try it out, let me show you how to use it effectively in your business.

Before you start: Facebook requires you to have a “Privacy Policy” somewhere on your website. If you don’t have one, you can easily create one for free in under 10 minutes by using this website.

Step 1: Create an advert

In your Facebook Adverts Manager click on “Create Advert”

Step 2: Choose the right campaign goal

For your “marketing objective” choose “Lead Generation”, in the “Consideration” section, as seen in the screenshot below.

Step 3: Choose a Campaign Name

It doesn’t matter too much what name you use as long as it allows you to easily remember what the campaign is for.

For example, if I created a lead generation offer where I give away a free social media strategy guide, I would call it “Lead Gen — Social Media Strategy Guide” or something along those lines.

Step 4: Choose your Facebook Page

Select the Facebook page you want to run ads on (this will probably be your Facebook business page). If this is the first time using this type of Facebook objective, you will also need to accept Facebook’s terms and conditions.

Step 5: Choose the right audience

It’s very important you know your audience well. Who are your potential customers (their age, location, gender, etc) and more importantly, what are they interested in?

When choosing your target audience, it’s very important you fill out the “Detailed targeting” section. If you click on the browse button, you will get a list of categories for you to target people.

Or you can use the search box to type in something related to who you want to target.

For example, if you wanted to target business owners on Facebook ads, you could search for the job title “Managing director,” or I could search for “Small Business Owner”.

Facebook has a lot of data so be sure to play around with what kind of results you can get.

Step 6: Choose your placements

For lead generation campaigns, I normally select “Automatic placements”.

This means your lead generation advert will be visible everywhere (Facebook, Instagram, Facebook partners, etc).

Facebook’s algorithm is very smart and will automatically optimize your campaign to show your advert in the places it is more likely to generate more leads.

In our testing, we have found that we almost always get better results with “automatic placements”.

Like all things in marketing, it’s good to test it for yourself, but if you’re just starting out you can safely assume that “Automatic placements” will deliver results for you.

Step 7: Choose your budget

This is entirely up to you and you can spend as much or as little as you like. Obviously, the more you spend, the more people you can reach and the more leads you can generate.

My recommendation is, if you’re getting started, to begin with a smaller budget, such as £5 to £20 per day (or $5 to $20), and then scale up as and when you see results.

Remember: when you select a daily budget, you can turn it off at any time. For example, you could have a daily £20 budget running for one day, 3 days, 7 days or as long as you like.

Step 8: Let Facebook decide your “bid amount”

Facebook does a pretty good job of getting you the most leads for the best price. At this stage, I’d leave all the advance settings as they are. You can always change or do split tests in the future; but again, our testing has found it’s best to leave it as it is in most cases.

Click “Continue” to move on to the next step.

Step 9: Create an effective Facebook lead generation offer

I could easily write a book (and many others have) on creating an effective Facebook advert. So, for now, let’s keep things simple.

The main thing to keep in mind is: your offer needs to be relevant and highly valuable to your target audience.

If you’re targeting a cold audience (someone who has never heard about you before), then you will definitely need to offer something of immense value as part of a lead generation offer.

In our example, we will use a free “social media strategy guide” as an example.

It’s also a good idea to test a few different variables in your advert. Different text, different headings, etc.

You’d be surprised how one simple change in the text or the image can have a big impact on the amount of leads you generate.

In this example, by uploading 3 different images, I will test what one performs better.

It’s important when testing you only change one variable at a time.

Find the winner, then test the winning advert against another variable. Keep repeating until you get your cost per lead as low as possible.

What if you’re not sure what to offer?

This is the beauty of using this type of campaign on Facebook. If you don’t yet have a piece of content ready, you can change the wording in the advert to say:

“We are thinking of creating [name of your content idea]. If you’re interested in a free copy of the [article/video/guide/etc] click “sign up”.

Or

“We are currently working on [name of your content idea]. Get early access to this [article/video/guide/etc] by clicking on ‘Sign up’.”

Using this method you can test if an offer will generate leads or not before you even create the content.

Very cool!

Step 10: Finally you need to create your form

Now you need to create the form prospects will fill in to become a lead. To start, click on “New Form”.

You can have a welcome screen if you want, but I normally turn this off, to reduce the amount of steps necessary for someone to become a lead.

Next, enter what questions you want the prospect to answer on the lead form, to become a lead.

Here’s an example of our lead form:

Remember, you can have more than two lead form fields (name and email) but the more fields you have, the harder it will be to generate leads.

On the other hand, creating more lead forms fields could also be a good way to pre-qualify your potential customers. Even though you might generate fewer leads, the quality of the leads could be higher. Again, it’s best to test this to see what kind of results you get for your business.

Top tip: if you are going to ask your potential customers to fill in more fields then don’t just add extra fields for the sake of it. It’s important to only get them to fill in any additional info, if it’s absolutely necessary.

For example, one of the questions I could add to pre-qualify our potential customers, is “How do you plan to use social media in your business?”

Anyone that selects the outsourcing options, I know will most likely be a hot lead, since that’s exactly what we do with our done-for-you marketing).

Top tip: before you save your lead form, don’t forget to edit the name of your form, by clicking the pencil icon at the top of the form page.

Finally, click on “Place Order” and you’re done!

Tracking your Facebook leads

To download your leads, you can do so manually or integrate Facebook Lead Ads it into your CRM/Email database software (you will need to pay about $20/month for Zapier to do this).

If you’re just starting out and you simply want to test and see if your offer works, you can download the leads manually. But at some point in the near future, we strongly recommend you automate the process by integrating it with your CRM to save you time and nurture your leads more quickly.

f you don’t have a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for your business yet, then you need to get one. A CRM is effectively a database of your leads and clients that can help you to track interactions and monitor relationships.

Facebook Lead Ads Integrations

By connecting the two, it allows the contact information inputted by the customer to be immediately added to your CRM for incredible efficiency. Although not all tools are currently included, Facebook does offer a list of current integrations.

So, hopefully, this post has given you a good idea of exactly how Facebook can help you to generate leads.

Used in the right way, with tools such as Facebook Lead Ads, it can be an incredible tool for your business.

Is Facebook Lead Ads the best Facebook Objective?

Facebook introduced business owners to Facebook Lead Adverts or Facebook Lead Ads.

Facebook Lead ad campaigns have become more powerful than ever. FB lead ads has now become the most popular lead generation Facebook objective if your goal is to generate as many leads as possible using Facebook or Instagram ads.

Is it the best Facebook objective though? If your goal is to get as many leads as possible (high quantity of leads) then yes!

How Facebook Lead Ads Work

How do Facebook lead ads work? Facebook Leads ads are easy to understand.

A Facebook or Instagram user is browsing their news feed.

They see your ad.

Your ad promises to solve a big painful problem they have.

All they need to do is enter their name & email to watch a short video presentation or some other kind of lead magnet that explains how it works.

They click on the ad.

And here’s how Facebook lead ads works best.

Instead of sending someone to a landing opt-in page, Facebook will display a form which is pre-filled with their information (such as name, email and phone number).

See also: Is it best to ask for a phone number on opt-in forms?

Facebook makes the process a simple one by filling the form in on behalf of the user with the information they have already given. This means less typing for the customer and more incentive to fill in the form.

You’ve now generated a new lead using Facebook lead ads!

Facebook Lead Ads Targeting

There is a common myth surrounding Facebook that if you are a Business to Business (B2B) supplier, then you will not find your target audience on Facebook. With the changes and additions that Facebook has made, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are over a billion people across the globe who have a Facebook account, Instagram account or both (more than any other social media network). Regardless of whether you are a B2B business or B2C, it is likely that your audience will be on Facebook or Instagram.

Therefore Facebook Lead Ads can work for both B2B and B2C Facebook audiences.

See also: How to target business owners on Facebook ads

How much do Facebook Lead Ads Cost?

After spending $1,000 to $2,000 with Facebook ads, Facebook will tell you your cost per lead with Facebook lead ads. Your Facebook lead ads cost can range anywhere from $5 per lead to $20 per lead. Sometimes it can be less or sometimes it can be more.

The price of Facebook lead ads depend on your target audience, competition and how well your message resonates with the people you’re targeting with Facebook lead ads.

See also: How much do Facebook ads cost?

When should you use Facebook Lead Ads?

So, now that you know what Facebook Lead Ads are, when can you use them for your business?

Here are my recommendations:

• When you want to generate leads to pass to your sales team
• To get more people to sign up to your lead magnet
• To get more people to attend a real-life seminar, event or webinar
• If you’re a local business with a special offer
• When you want to get the most amount of leads possible for the lowest cost

Keep in mind that Lead Ads are more expensive than paying for traditional “Facebook Clicks”. But Facebook Lead Ads are typically cheaper than using the Facebook Conversion objective.

However, oftentimes the Facebook Conversion objective is more likely to get you warmer qualified leads.

Are Facebook Lead Ads effective?

Yes, Facebook lead ads are effective at generating leads. At the end of the day, each of Facebook’s objectives (traffic, lead generation, awareness, conversions, etc) are all focused on one specific goal.

So if your goal is to generate leads, then Facebook’s lead ads objective is one of the best ways you can do that.

Does Facebook Lead Ads a Pay Per Lead Model?

Technically speaking, when running Facebook ads you’re paying for impressions (how many times your ads are shown).

However, you can still use this to calculate your Facebook cost per lead.

After running ads for over a week, Facebook will tell you your average cost per lead. So this allows you to pay for as many Facebook lead as you like and get leads on demand.

For example, if your average cost per lead is $10 and you want to get 100 leads, you can pay Facebook $1,000 (100 leads x $10 per lead = $1,000).

To learn how this works in more detail, see Step 4 of this video.