Best Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives for Lead Generation

When you use Facebook ads to generate leads, one of the first things that Facebook asks you is ‘What is your marketing objective?’

Most business owners choose either the “Traffic”, “Lead Generation” or “Conversion” objective.

But which one of these Facebook Ad marketing objectives is best if your goal is to:

• Generate the most Facebook leads
• Generate high quality Facebook leads
• Get leads that convert into appointments and clients

We’ve spent thousands of dollars testing these different marketing objectives and in this article, I’ll break down the key differences between the top 3 Facebook Ad lead generation objectives.

If it’s easier, you can watch the video version of this article here:

BUT WAIT! Before you start generating leads with Facebook ads you need the right STRATEGY.

And by ‘strategy’ I’m talking about a way where you can:

• Get leads chasing to work with you (rather than you chasing them)
• Get high quality leads with ANY marketing budget (big or small)
• Get predictable high quality appointments with your ideal clients each month
• Avoid 80% of the ‘busywork’ that gets very slow or zero results

All of this and more can only be done IF you have the right strategy.

What is the right Facebook ads strategy?

Before you start ANY lead generation or digital marketing, CLICK HERE to watch a video I’ve recorded that walks you through the BEST strategy to get predictable high quality leads & appointments each month on autopilot with FB ads, Google, YouTube and LinkedIn.

So, have you finished watching this video that goes through how the strategy works?

If so, GREAT!

Keep reading to learn what is the best Facebook ads objective to generate high quality leads each month.

What is the best Facebook Ads campaign objective?

The best Facebook ads campaign objective all depends on the goal of your Facebook ad campaign. If your goal is to get leads, appointments and clients with Facebook ads, then there are three main FB ad campaign objectives you want to pay attention to:

• Traffic FB ads objective
• Lead Generation FB ads objective
• Conversion FB ads objective

Let’s compare all three and see which is best for lead generation.

1. Traffic Facebook Ads Objective

What is the Traffic Facebook ads campaign objective?

The Traffic Facebook ads campaign objective will optimize your Facebook ad campaign to get the most amount of clicks and visitors to your landing page.

Can the Traffic Facebook ads campaign objective generate leads?

Although the Facebook ads traffic campaign objective can generate leads, it doesn’t give you the most amount of leads.

This is because the Facebook ads algorithm is not optimizing your ads to get the most amount of leads. If you use this objective, it will optimize your ads to get the most amount of traffic.

The reality is that not all traffic converts.

So if you use the Facebook ads traffic objective, you’re less likely to get the type of traffic (or Facebook users) that will convert into leads.

In other words, the traffic Facebook ads campaign is optimizing your ads for traffic, not leads.

When is it best to use the Facebook ads traffic campaign objective?

The Facebook ads Traffic objective can still be good when you’re trying to get data into your Facebook Pixel to see how people respond to your ad and landing page… But, I would still recommend skipping traffic (in most cases) and doing one of the other following objectives.

2. Lead Generation Objective (Facebook Lead Ads)

How does the Facebook lead generation objective generate leads?

The Facebook ads lead generation campaign objective will show users a pre-populated form on the Facebook platform whenever a Facebook or Instagram user clicks on your ad.

Is the Facebook lead generation objective the best way to generate leads?

If you’re looking to generate as many leads as possible, then the Facebook lead generation objective is the best way to do this.

Because the Facebook lead generation objective uses Facebook lead ads pre-filled forms to generate leads, it makes generating leads really quick and easy.

A Facebook user does not need to manually fill in the Facebook form with their name, email, phone or other contact info.

The Facebook form is pre-filled with their name, email, phone number, etc.

Are Facebook lead generation objective leads low quality?

Because it’s so easy for Facebook users to fill out a form with the Facebook lead generation objective, the quality of the leads can sometimes suffer.

Sometimes people fill in the form without realizing it (by accident) or other times people can even forget they filled out the lead generation form.

Can you get higher quality leads using Facebook lead generation objective?

If you’re tired of getting low quality leads using the Facebook lead generation objective, you need to add more friction and other trust building elements with your leads.

The following short video explains how you can do this:

When should you use the Facebook lead generation campaign objective?

If your goal is to get as many leads as possible and you’re not too bothered about the quality, then the Facebook lead generation objective is a great way to do this.

If you use the Facebook lead generation objective, you will most likely get a LOT of leads and the lead cost is usually a little lower than the other options.

But if you want to get higher quality leads, then you might want to investigate the Facebook Conversions objective.

3. Facebook Ads Conversions Objective

If your goal is to get the highest quality leads possible, then the Facebook Conversions objective is the best way to do this.

How does the Facebook conversion campaign objective work?

With the Facebook ads conversion objective, you can tell Facebook what you consider a conversion (for example a lead, sales appointment or new client) and Facebook will optimize your campaign for that specific objective.

So if you’re running a lead generation campaign, you’re most likely going to be using the Facebook ads conversion objective for generating leads. Each time you generate a new lead, you’ll tell Facebook you got a new conversion.

You can do this by creating a Facebook ads “Custom Conversion” in your Facebook ads pixel manager.

I recommend creating at least two Facebook custom conversions.

One Facebook custom conversion for each time you get a new lead and another one for each time you get a new sales appointment. If clients pay online, you can also set up a custom conversion for each time you make a new sale and win a new client.

What Facebook conversion should you optimize your ads for?

When running ads using the Facebook ads conversion objective, you can choose which custom conversion you want to optimize your ads for.

However, for best results, you want to choose a custom conversion that you’ll be able to get a lot of data for.

So, if your Facebook ads budget is relatively small, it might be best (at least in the beginning) to optimize the FB ads for new leads, rather than sales appointments or clients (yet).

If your budget is relatively small, you might not be able to give Facebook enough data so the Facebook algorithm can optimize your ads for your chosen objective.

When is it best to use the Facebook ads conversion objective?

With the Facebook Ads Conversion objective, you’ll be sending your leads to an opt-in landing page in your appointment funnel.

Using a landing page creates more friction which means most likely get higher quality leads with prospects who are more serious in learning how you can help them.

So use the Facebook ads conversion objective if your goal is to get higher quality sales leads and appointments with Facebook ads (such as when targeting business owners).

See also: How to target business owners on Facebook Ads

Does the Facebook ads conversion objective still work well after Apple’s privacy updates?

Apple recently introduced some iOS Apple Privacy changes which affects the Facebook Ads conversion objective.

In other words, Apple blocks many tracking cookies from Facebook. This makes it harder for Facebook to track your conversions if you’re using the Facebook pixel on its own.

How can you fix this?

If you want to get more accurate conversions with the Facebook ads conversion objective, it’s recommended you track conversions using the Facebook API instead of the Facebook pixel on its own.

Here’s a tutorial video I recorded to show you how to do this:

Important: Choosing the right Facebook Ads Objective is only the beginning…

To learn how to set up the best funnel for generating leads, sales appointments and clients in a way that is predictable, profitable and automated using Facebook Ads, check out my free Masterclass training here.

Lead Generation vs Conversions Facebook Ads Campaign Objective

When it comes to choosing the best Facebook ads objective for leads, both the “Lead Generation” and the “Conversions” objectives can work well.

However, if your goal is to get higher quality leads, then the Facebook ads “Conversions” objective in most cases will be better.

Here’s why:

With Facebook ad lead forms (the “lead generation” objective), it’s VERY EASY for anyone to submit a form.

The Facebook Ad lead forms in many cases come pre-filled. So you might be thinking, “Isn’t that a GOOD thing?”

Well, it depends on YOUR objective.

If your goal is to generate a large QUANTITY of leads, then yes.

If your goal is to get high QUALITY leads, then no.

Here’s what most people don’t realize about the Facebook “Lead Generation” objective:

Because it’s very easy to generate leads and there’s very little friction, you can get leads with people who are not very interested in what you do.

Sometimes people can even forget that they filled out a form online, so when you later contact them they get annoyed!

How the Facebook Ads Algorithm Determines Lead Quality

Facebook’s algorithm is constantly looking at the people that fill out your Facebook Ads lead form or who converts through your conversion objective.

Facebook then optimizes your ads to show your ad to more people who are likely to fill out the form in the future.

But the problem is, if the form is so easy to fill out, not everyone who fills out the form will be a good lead.

So over time, Facebook will continue showing your ad to more people who are likely to fill out the form, even if these people are not good quality leads.

In other words, Facebook is optimizing your lead generation ads for quantity rather than quality.

How the Facebook Ads Conversion Objective is better (in some cases)

Because someone needs to go to a landing page and fill out a form with the Facebook Ads “Conversion” objective there is more friction before someone becomes a lead. Some might think this is a bad thing. But it depends.

If someone still fills out a form despite the additional friction, it shows they are a lot more motivated to learn more about how you can help them. In other words, they are more likely to convert into a client and they are higher quality leads.

Facebook’s algorithm then looks at the people that convert with the Facebook ads Conversion objective and they show your ads to more people that are likely to convert. Facebook’s algorithm is now optimizing your lead gen ads for quality, rather than quantity.

Top Tip: Adding friction before someone becomes a lead is all about balance. The more friction you add, the better the quality the lead, but the fewer leads you will get. The less friction you add, the more leads you can get, but the lower the quality they will be. So, it’s good to strike a balance of having a little bit of friction (to increase lead quality) but not too much friction where you get very little leads. In most cases, you will need to test different options to see which works better for you and your business.

Other tips to generate higher quality leads with Facebook ads

There are other Facebook lead generation objectives that you could also experiment with to see if you can generate more and better quality warm leads with Facebook ads.

Here are a few tips to do that:

Tip 1: Retargeting video views to generate leads

A popular strategy on Facebook ads these days is to show people a video that explains how you can help them. You would advertise this video to people on Facebook using the “Video Views” objective.

The advantage to using the video views Facebook ads campaign objective is that you can get a lot of people seeing your video without needing to pay a lot of money.

Getting video views is often a lot cheaper than using the traffic, lead generation or conversion objective.

The idea is that you get a lot of views (very cheap) and then retarget people on Facebook ads who watched 50% or more of your video with your lead generation ads.

Does the video views retargeting strategy work?

Sometimes. This strategy was made popular by a few big brands who used this strategy and publicly published their results. However, many small businesses tested this strategy for themselves and couldn’t replicate the same results.

Some people say that it works better for big brands, rather than small businesses, because people are more likely to watch their video since they already recognize the brand.

I tested this strategy myself for Skyline Social and a few clients and didn’t see better results than using the “Lead Generation” or the “Conversions” objective directly. Like all things in marketing though, there are lots of variables and it might work for you (even if it didn’t work for me or others). The only way to know for sure is to test it and see what happens!

For our clients, we typically focus on either the lead generation or conversion objective.

Tip 2: Filter People Out in Your Ad Text

Another way to get higher quality leads with your Facebook Ads is to be VERY CLEAR who your ad is for in the ad itself.

For example, here’s a veterinary ad we run for one of an accounting firm lead generation Facebook ads campaign.

As you can see, we specifically called out the exact type of business the accounting firm was targeting.

Why is this important?

Facebook’s algorithm looks at who stops to read your ad and who clicks on it. Based on this data, it shows your ad to more people that follow the same behavior.

So your ad must get your potential clients to stop and click, rather than everyone else. You want everyone else who is NOT a potential client, to ignore your ad.

By doing this, Facebook will optimize your ads and show them to the right kind of people (your potential clients) which will increase your Facebook ads lead quality.

Tip 3: Build Trust First In Your Ads

A lot of business owners are using Facebook ads just to get someone to fill out a form and then they’re calling and emailing them constantly to try and speak to them.

However, this strategy is very difficult to do successfully.

By doing this you’ll most likely:

• Annoy leads by constantly following up with them
• Waste time chasing leads
• Think the lead quality is not very good when it might just be the strategy that isn’t very good

I recommend you provide value to leads first BEFORE trying to chase them to get an appointment.

So, instead of getting them to fill out a form to learn more about how you can help them, get them to fill out a form to watch a short video that explains how you solve a problem that they have FIRST. After they watch the video, then allow them to schedule a call with you if they want to learn more.

See also: How to create a Video Sales Letter (VSL)

By doing this, you’ll get leads chasing to work with YOU, rather than you chasing leads to work with them.

To see in more detail how this strategy works, watch this video.

Tip 4: Retarget website visitors

The easiest and most cost effective way to get high quality warm leads via Facebook ads is to retarget website visitors.

This is because people that visit your website are most likely already somewhat interested in what you do.

So if you show them a Facebook ad with a lead magnet, there’s a very good chance you’ll get these people to convert into leads.

Conclusion

The best Facebook ads objective for lead generation depends on your goal. If your goal is to get higher quality leads, use the Facebook ads “Conversion” objective. If your goal is to get the most amount of leads (quantity) then go with the Facebook ads “Lead Generation” objective using Facebook ad pre-filled forms.