Generating leads for businesses is vital – how will you be able to share information with key customers if you don’t have leads? You can share information with prospecting audiences, but audiences with the highest conversion rate are your already engaged audiences. In order to re-engage those users, you need to capture their data.
Lead generation enables you to find users who express interest in your business, who you can later try to convert into a customer through other marketing efforts.
Facebook offers you an easy solution to generating leads via their lead generation format, which runs on both Facebook and Instagram.
Why should you use Facebook for lead generation?
Facebook has 2.32 billion users daily – so for almost any business, potential customers are present and using the platform regularly.
Also, Facebook makes it easy for advertisers to create leads and capture custom data that is important to your objective, as well as making a simple sign up process for users without leaving the platform. Facebook also auto-fills fields, eliminating any potential user frustration.
What are Facebook lead ads?
Traditionally, advertisers would send users to a landing page hosting a form whereby users can leave their data. This method works well for driving high-quality leads, as the user will need to have higher intent in order to go through the effort and process of navigating that journey and leaving their details. But Facebook lead generation ads make it easy to attract and capture the data of users with some interest, who may not have taken the time to follow the traditional journey as their intent is not as high. With some nurturing, that lead could turn into a potential customer.
So does Facebook drives a high quantity of leads but not a high quality?
Not quite.
The Facebook lead generation form is customisable for advertisers to capture key data, but also to find out exactly what the user is interested in to better segment their audiences and target them with customised follow-up messaging.
The lead forms are made up of 4 components:
- Introduction
- Questions
- Privacy Policy
- Completion
There are also two types of form:
- More Volume – the quickest, easiest form to fill in which results in a higher quantity of leads.
- Higher Intent – this adds a review step that prompts users to confirm their information by sliding to submit.
Your form introduction can either detail exactly what it is you are promoting, or you can have no introduction at all. Having no intro takes users directly to the questions to leave their data and, by removing this step, also gives the form a higher quantity focus.
Alternatively, adding a longer descriptive paragraph about the offer and your business gives the user a second chance to review exactly what they are getting by leaving their information. This helps to filter out the higher intent users from the low intent ones.
The next stage is questions, this is where you define your ‘prefill information’ e.g. email, full name, number, company name etc – if these details are stored in the user’s Facebook account, then Facebook will auto-populate these fields.
To add an extra layer of intent to really focus on those higher quality users, there are custom questions that can be asked:
Multiple choice
You enter your own question, and fill in possible responses for a user to choose from, e.g.
Have you shopped with us before?
- I have never heard of your company, and would like to know more
- I have heard of your company, but never purchased and would like to know more
Short answers
You enter your own question, and the user can respond with a short sentence that describes their answer to your question, e.g.
How can we help you today?
Conditional
This allows you to create a set of questions with conditional answers that change based on how someone answered a previous question.
Appointment requests
This lets people request a date and time to make an appointment with your business or schedule a visit etc.
Adding in any of these stages requires the user to take an action of some sort, it also offers more information to your business about your customers. By categorising your leads, you will be able to send custom follow-up messages based on where they are in their user journey.
Lastly, you enter your privacy info where a user can view what you will be doing with their information, and a completion message to say ‘thanks, we have received your information’ or ‘someone will be in touch.’
Utilizing these extra steps can be highly valuable to your business, not only for learning about your customers, but also by ensuring the leads you do generate are of a higher quality and include users who are more likely to convert.
To further optimise your lead generation strategy, we recommend taking the following actions:
Offer something for free
Users are naturally more inclined to give their data if they are receiving something for it in return. This could be a guide, a discount code, access to a webinar or even a voucher to bring into a physical store.
Automate your follow-up process
Using a CRM integration to automatically collect your leads from the platform and follow-up with a customised email ensures a smooth journey for the user. If your CRM is not compatible, you can download the leads from Facebook and upload manually, but be sure to have an email ready to send to these new leads in order to nurture them through the user journey.
Use your lead generation forms for more than one purpose
As noted earlier, not only are you able to collect data to push your business out to users who have shown interest, but you can use lead generation to learn more about your audiences. For example, you can use lead gen to generate emails for your email marketing list, but also use as an inquiry form by using the custom question fields discussed earlier to find out what that user liked about the ad or brand, and where they are in their consumer journey. For B2B, you can use this to find out what company the user works for.
For more specific information on improving your lead generation efforts, speak to one of our friendly team members today on 0845 450 2086 or check out our social media marketing services.