Your goal for social media should be to attract people who are likely to convert to customers, which means focusing on campaigns that match your goals. If you’re looking to increase sales, for example, a lead campaign is the best tool.
Have you struggled to gain followers on your social media accounts? Do your competitors seem to get more “likes” on their posts? Numbers can be confusing in social media, but savvy marketers quickly learn social media audience sizes don’t always translate to sales. Sales keep your business profitable.
What is a lead campaign?
A lead campaign is an advertising campaign created with the overall goal of converting the people who see your ad into leads. What counts as a lead? A lead can be anyone who provides a name, email address or any other information that allows you to follow up with them later.
What platform is best for social media lead campaigns?
There’s a good reason to make social media a priority in your lead generation efforts. Ascend2 says 59 per cent of marketers worldwide credit social media marketing as one of the most effective tactics used for improving the quality of lead generation.
Facebook stands out from other platforms due to its popularity and an extensive list of features to help with your ad campaigns. Facebook attracts nearly 2.45 billion active users each month, making it the most used social media platform. If you can use its advertising features to learn who Facebook users are and what they’re interested in, you can begin to convert them into customers.
How to get the most benefit from your Facebook ads
It’s important to follow best practices to increase CTR (click-through-rate) when creating your Facebook ads. A bit of research can help make sure you choose the right images, create headlines that target your ideal customer and include relevant details. These steps will help people notice your ad and motivate them to click on it.
Once your ad is ready, consider what you want to happen when people click on your ad. If you’re going to target a particular customer, you should make sure the first page they land on after clicking is relevant to what they need. The best page for them to see first may not be your home page or a generic sales page on your website.
Instead, send traffic from your Facebook ads to a landing page you create to convert people into customers. Two of the most effective ways to do this are by offering contests on that landing page and email-gated content like an eBook. Either of these methods can provide potential customers with value once they arrive at your landing page.
Don’t worry if you don’t have an eBook ready to share with customers. You can create a new ebook with relevant information or compile it from existing content like blog posts, articles and case studies. This content can be a valuable marketing resource, and is worth the time and cost it takes to create.
How Facebook helps increase lead generation
Facebook offers a few features to help you expand your lead generation. There may be people who want to hear from your company but find it difficult to enter information on a mobile device. Facebook lead ads make this easier by offering instant forms that can pop up when someone taps your ad. A user’s Facebook contact information will be already filled out for them in this form to save them the time and effort of typing it in. They can submit the information as shown in the form or edit it first.
You can also add up to 15 custom questions to learn more about your lead. This feature can be set up in Ads Manager, where you’ll also have an opportunity to share your organization’s privacy policy to let people know how you will use and protect their information.
After people have submitted your form, you can download your leads data directly from Ads Manager or your Facebook Page, or connect them to a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Another helpful feature is the ability to use Engagement Custom Audiences to reach people who have shown an interest in your ads. As well, Facebook offers free measurement tools to help you see where your leads are signing up and allows you to create and export reports.
Lead ads:
- Make it easy for the customer.
- Allow you to learn more about your most engaged customers.
- Let you reach people who are likely to take action.
- Automate your advertising with dynamic ads based on people’s interests.
Messenger ads:
- Start an automated conversation with customers by connecting them to the built-in Facebook messaging platform when they click your ad.
- Engage customers interested in keeping in touch by targeting users likely to respond to messages.
- Give you the opportunity to continue conversations as needed to offer more information.
- Allow both you and the customer to get more information more quickly.
Audience targeting
Much of the power of a Facebook leads campaign comes from the ability to target your audiences carefully. Targeting ensures that people most likely to click on your ad are the ones who see it, allowing you to get the best possible return on your investment.
Facebook ad targeting strategies can be precise, so take the time to drill down and target your ideal customers. Facebook allows you to target lookalike audiences based on your CRM or customer list, or you can target audiences based on specific or broad category breakdowns.
Facebook Ads or boosted posts: what’s best?
Facebook offers a couple of ways to advertise on its platform, each with distinctive features. Once you learn the differences between Facebook Ads and boosted posts, the goals you’ve set for your campaign should help you select which path is best for you.
Boosted posts
Are you looking for audience engagement and brand awareness? Choose boosted posts. With these, the post is published to your timeline and appears in the regular newsfeed marked as an ad. You can either boost an existing post that has already been published on your feed or create a new post and boost it immediately.
You pay to boost an ad to audiences of your choosing. You can choose audiences, set a maximum budget for spending and choose how long your ad will run. You can optimize these ads for likes, comments, shares, website clicks, page engagement and local business promotions.
Boosted posts are the simplest way to advertise on Facebook, but your options are limited.
Facebook Ads
Are you looking to create more advanced ads and need the extra features offered by Facebook Ads? Use the Ads Manager. Facebook Ads allow advanced targeting for different campaign objectives. You can optimize your ads to get people to take a broader range of actions, including app installations, website conversions, video views and product catalogue sales.
You can place your ad in different locations, such as Facebook News Feed side ads, Messenger ads, Instagram Stories, instant articles and Audience Network. You can specify ad objectives and maintain more design and creative control.
For extra convenience, you can create and manage ads via the Ads Manager mobile app.
Likes and followers are great for brand awareness and engagement. If these are your goals, keep up with organic posts, especially on Instagram. Just be aware that they aren’t likely to convert your audience into customers. If you’re hoping to build sales through your social media activity, focus on building an engaged audience of people who are likely to purchase from you.
Lead campaigns are a way you can make sure your investment in social media is worthwhile and sustainable over the long term. Your business needs sales to grow, and social media advertising based on leads can help get you there.
