Facebook is an ever-changing platform with a vast number of potential customers using it 24 hours a day. This platform offers many ways for businesses to advertise to, and interact with, those potential customers. Facebook Lead Ads might be right for your business.

 

What are Facebook Lead Ads?

If you read blogs or news sites, you’ve probably seen a pop-up inviting you to opt-in to that site’s email newsletter. This is a common example of a lead capture form. Forms like this may invite you to a free course, or offer a special deal on a physical product.

Facebook takes that familiar lead capture process and moves it inside the Facebook platform. The resulting ads are highly targeted because people share so much of their lives on Facebook. You can design and write your ad copy for a very narrow audience. The money you spend can more efficiently ensure that you hit that precise demographic.

Then, when the prospect sees your ad in their newsfeed, Facebook makes it very convenient for them to opt-in. When a form is too long, or the questions look too difficult to fill out, many people will close it and leave the page. Facebook pre-populates the form with information that people have already provided, doing a lot of the work for them. This also avoids mistyped information, because the form data is automatically transferring the confirmed customer info directly from Facebook.

 

Finding Good Information

Where I mention above that Facebook is ever-changing, read it as a caution about which article or YouTube guide you follow. As of late 2017, Facebook Lead Ads have been out for about two years. The interface, options, and policies change all the time, even if the basics remain.

Start at the source. Here is the link to the official Facebook advertising page. It should direct you to the latest links and resources.

You can look to other expert users on the web for more tips and advice to get the best results. You are spending real dollars to use Facebook Lead Ads. A good offer with valuable and relevant content will work better in more ways than one. First, well written and designed marketing will naturally get better results. Have you ever seen an ad that assumes something incorrect about you, or puts you off with a view that you oppose? Those ads aren’t very effective at converting you into a customer.

Facebook watches how your ad performs. It optimizes and automatically gives an advantage to ads that appear to be doing well. On the other hand, if you don’t create an ad well, your ads cost more because you’ll have to pay more in bids to compete with well-crafted ads.

Lead Ads are mobile friendly. In fact, at first, Lead Ads were only available for mobile users. Reaching mobile users today, as you probably know, is essential.

 

How to Set Up a Lead Ad

There are many options and variations, but here are the basics. You will need to have a Facebook page and business account set up.

Once you are in the Business Manager section, navigate to the Power Editor. There is a hierarchy to an ad. If you imagine other campaigns you’ve seen, it makes sense. A brand of product you know well might have a memorable series of advertisements. The collection of these ads is the Campaign.

 

Create a Campaign

Within the campaign, you will have Ad Sets and the actual Ads. Select the type of ad buy, typically an auction where you bid to display against competing ads. (This is where having a quality ad gives you an advantage.) Then you set your Campaign Objective, which could be to sell actual products, to capture lead information or to just tell the world about your product or service. Then, the last steps before you get creative are to set your budget, schedule, and audience.

The Facebook Tracking Pixel is a powerful tool–beyond this the scope of this article–for selecting and managing your specific audiences. It can give a great deal of control over reaching the customers you want.

 

Setup the Creative

This is when you decide what the audience will see and what offer or links they will receive.

Set text for the ad, enter a headline, write a description and select an image. As you set these items, you will see a preview to the right. Make a clear offer as your Call to Action.

Next, you design the Lead Form. You can check boxes to pick the information you will collect. Remember, keep this as simple as possible. Email and First Name is usually good enough. Even with forms that Facebook Lead Ads automatically fills, you don’t want leads to back away because you ask too many questions.

There is a place where you can also add up to three questions. You can create your own poll or ask your audience very specific questions.

 

Learn By Doing

To try out these tools as a beginner, set the budget very low. It is a good idea to start on a small scale until you get the hang of things. When you start to see a good response with a small investment, you can scale it up and expand geographically and by frequency.

Remember, it is very easy to spend a lot of money very quickly. The time and energy it takes to try it out a few times is modest compared to the expense of running an ad that is a turnoff to your customer base. Use these powerful tools wisely!

 

IMAGE: Gerd Altmann / CC0 Public Domain