As a business developer, salesperson, or company owner, you probably attend many networking events to generate leads in your city.
Unfortunately for most, not all networking events provide quality leads.
That two to three-hour trip from point A to point B can, therefore, be a huge waste of time.
In this article, we'll be sharing how to generate leads on Facebook with advertising, which can help you acquire the right leads with less effort.
Why Facebook lead ads?
Good question.
The answer: most of your potential clients have either a Facebook or Instagram profile.
This means that if you set up your targeting correctly (which we'll go over), you can reach them with advertising.
But before we go any further, I will point out that even though most of your clients may have a presence on one of Facebook's social platforms, that you may find LinkedIn to be your go-to tool. This is especially true if you're representing a company that is involved in business-to-business (B2B) sales.
That's not to say that you can't find B2B leads on Facebook. You can but it won't be as effective. Regardless, give Facebook a try for B2B.
If you're in business-to-consumer (B2C), this article is definitely for you.
Implementing a campaign to generate leads
We'll go over the following items to building a strong lead generation campaign on Facebook:
Choosing the right objective
Setting up the right targeting
Creating the right ad
1. Choosing the right objective
Since you need to generate lead information such as names, phone numbers, and email addresses, you want to use the lead generation objective on Facebook.
This objective allows you to create an advertisement that asks users to provide their contact information for additional details. Better yet, it auto-fills their profile information into your lead form so that it's as simple as one click to submit their information.
While using another objective such as the traffic objective can allow you to take users to a customized landing page, you should think twice. The reason is simple. You increase the likelihood of users abandoning the landing page if they have to wait for it to load. The lead generation objective, on the other hand, brings up the form directly in the Facebook or Instagram app quickly.
If you feel that you can put together a highly effective and efficient landing page then go for it. You can also check out our article "How To Improve a Landing Page for Lead Generation".
2. Setting up the right targeting
You can have the best graphics, videos, etc. but if you're not showing it to the right people, your ad is going to fail.
The best route to take when setting up the targeting is to use your existing customer lists to create a lookalike audience (as long as you have permission from your customers).
Essentially, you are able to upload a list of emails or phone numbers to Facebook. This list will be analyzed by Facebook in order to determine the characteristics that your customers mostly have in common. This lookalike audience will share the qualities that your customers have and therefore, are the candidates that are most likely to convert to leads.
If you do not have an email or phone number list of at least 500 customers, you can still set up targeting based on interests, age, etc. However, this targeting won't be as effective as a lookalike audience.
Example: we've worked with some clients that have tested interest-based targeting and lookalike targeting. We've seen lookalike targeting generate leads at a lower cost, up to 50% less. This can be a big deal.
If you have customers but haven't started an email list, use a tool such as MailChimp to start collecting them. Send an email to each of your clients with a link to the MailChimp subscribe form for them to opt-in.
If you don't have enough customers, consider adding leads you receive at say, a Miami networking event, to a mailing list using a tool such as MailChimp. It might be a good way to create a lookalike of people likely to be interested in what you're selling.
3. Creating the right ad
The next step is choosing the right creative assets to get your leads' attention.
You should experiment with images, videos, carousels, etc.
Best practices for media include:
Use minimal text that stands out (e.g. BIG SALE)
Show a human face
Provide an irresistible offer (e.g. 50% off)
Summary
We hope these tips have taught you something new.
With Facebook lead ads, you need to test all the time: objective, targeting, creative.
There are additional things to look at when you've got the whole campaign set in place. For example, you want to make sure that your sales team is ready to handle the leads, that any applicable email marketing campaign is connected to the customer relationship management (CRM) system you're using, and more.