Facebook lead generation forms can help nurture high quality leads and make your ad campaigns more valuable.
Facebook is full of potential leads for your business, but figuring out how to create customers out of the platform’s massive audience is a common struggle for business owners. One solution is Facebook lead generation forms.
Many small businesses correctly guess that Facebook, with its 2.96 billion monthly active users, can help them bring in new customers. It is still an enormously popular channel for business advertising. Facebook’s ad revenues make up over 97 per cent of the company’s total revenue (which hit a staggering US$118 billion in 2021).
However, there are a lot of steps between being noticed on social media and converting someone into a customer. Let’s examine why lead generation can be powerful for your business and how Facebook can help you connect with potential leads.
Why is lead generation a powerful marketing step?
Leads are potential customers for your business. Typically, leads are generated by driving users to a landing page that contains a form they can fill out in exchange for a valuable piece of content or similar tempting offer.
Whatever you’re offering needs to be worth giving up personal information for, so most companies offer something exclusive, such as a helpful piece of content that can’t be found elsewhere online or an invitation to a special webinar or demo.
Users who provide their contact information move further along in the buyer’s journey and, hopefully, toward the decision stage. They are no longer anonymous visitors to your website or social media channel. They have become potential leads you can track and follow up with.
Why are Facebook lead generation forms effective?
Targeted marketing on Facebook can help you reach high quality leads, but getting users to move from the platform to your website to fill out a form can be clumsy.
The more steps you make a user take along the path to a purchase, the more chance they’ll get distracted, lose interest, experience a delay and not complete the form.
On the other hand, a seamless experience can easily move people from seeing an ad to filling out a form. The more hurdles you remove, the more likely they’ll keep moving along the buyer’s journey toward conversion.
How to create a lead generation form on Facebook
Now, let’s dig into how you can generate leads more effectively on Facebook by using lead ads.
1. Create your Facebook lead form
Facebook lead forms are created in your Business Manager using the Publishing Tools feature. You’ll be looking for the form library option. There you can create a new lead form or duplicate an existing form you created in the past.
2. Add design elements to help guide users
One of the more appealing aspects of Facebook marketing is the ability to refine your targeting. Taking time to choose suitable options will increase your chances of attracting high quality leads.
- Choose the correct form type
Look for targeting options that allow you to focus on high quality potential leads and design options that help users stay on track with what you want them to do. For example, adding a step where users can confirm their information before submitting the form can help ensure the leads you receive are high intent users.
- Use relevant images
Adding a background photo that matches your ad photo is a smart way to help reassure people they’ve navigated to the correct place and remind them what you want them to do.
- Add thoughtful text
You can add welcome text and questions to compel users to enter the information you want to collect, as well as a link to your privacy policy. You’ll need a call to action that encourages the lead to take the final step and complete the form. As a final touch, you’ll create a thank you screen respondents see after completing the form.
3. Review and publish your lead form
You have the option to review your form before you publish it. Review every part of the form carefully, including the text you’ve entered, the options you selected and each link you added. Typos and dead links could cost you valuable leads.
At this stage, you can also use the settings tab to change the language used on your form if you are targeting audiences who speak a language other than English. This is also the step where you’ll add tracking parameters to monitor your results. Finally, if you’re satisfied with your form, you can publish it so it will be accessible in your forms library and ready to use in your ads.
4. Launch an ad campaign using your form
It’s time to run an ad using your form. You’ll want to create a Facebook ad with the lead generation objective set. You’ll also take steps to choose targeting and placements and set your budget and bid strategy.
Important tip: You won’t be notified directly by Facebook when your lead form starts generating leads. The best strategy to stay on top of leads is to connect your customer relationship management system to Facebook in the leads setup section of your publishing tools.
5. Create a system to follow up on leads
Be proactive about following up on any leads that come to your business through Facebook lead ads. Each lead represents a potential customer for your business, so you’ll want to be prompt about responding to prospects. The more seamless your follow-up system, the more likely it is you’ll get value from lead campaigns.
Wasted leads mean wasted time and money spent on ads, so make sure whoever is tasked with these follow-ups knows what to do and can do it quickly. (Facebook will only store your leads for 90 days before they become expired leads, so be sure you’re following up and storing the data elsewhere.)
Ad campaigns with lead objectives
There are three choices when it comes to setting a leads objective for your forms. In the lead generation process outlined above, you want your leads to fill out a form with contact information, so you can follow up with them. Other choices include having them call your business directly (be sure to run these ads only when your business is open) or connect with you on Facebook Messenger via an automated chat response. Proceed carefully in making these choices as you craft campaigns to use your lead generation forms.
Quality leads can result in more sales for your business, so figuring out how to make the best use of Facebook lead generation forms can be an excellent way to tap into the platform’s audience. Not feeling confident you’re making the most of Facebook lead generation forms? Connect with a Postmedia expert for a free consultation.
