In terms of innovation and facilities offered to marketers, Facebook™ is definitely the number one social media network. We have discussed many of the advertising and promoted content features you can use and have showed you insider tips and tricks to get the most out of your Facebook™ ads budget. Today we will talk about one of the unique features which you will find in no other social media platform except for Facebook™: lead ads.
What Are Facebook™ Lead Ads?
Lead ads are the simplest form of promoting sales through Facebook™. They were created around the principle that the less steps a person must go through to take advantage of an offer, the more likely they are to complete the purchase. Therefore, lead ads work as follows:
- A user sees an ad promoting a product they want at a great price;
- Once they click on the ad, they are shown a pre-filled form, containing all the information they shared with Facebook™;
- The user is free to edit the information they want to share;
- With the next click they are taken directly to the seller’s website to the checkout form.
In this way, by simplifying the shopping experience for your Facebook™ followers, you increase your chances at building a profitable sales funnel. However, every good thing works properly when it is used adequately and effectively. If you want to get the most benefits out of Facebook™ lead ads, you need to learn a few best practice rules.
These are:
1. Be Careful about Creating the Form
As we stated, the lead ads have the specific feature of offering the user a pre-filled form. The fields in this form are the one specified by the author of the ad. If the user feels that you are asking for too much personal data in the mandatory fields of your form, they will not continue with the purchase. They will not even land on your website.
The secret formula for initial opt-in forms is to ask just enough information to include the person in your database for newsletter and behaviour tracking on your website, but not too much. For example, if you sell digital products (the customer gets a download link at the end of the purchase) it is absolutely unnecessary to ask for their phone number and home address in the form.
2. Integrate Your CRM
Not all Facebook™ lead ads promote sales – in fact, as their name states, their number one purpose is to create a database of qualified leads. As you certainly know, the value of a customer database is incalculable, so you must not lose even one contact detail. In order to ensure a safe and efficient transfer of the leads into your general database system, you have to connect your CRM with Facebook™. Right now, you can integrate CRM systems like Salesforce, Marketo, Oracle, Marketing Cloud, Driftrock, Sailthru and Maropost into the Facebook™ Power Editor.
3. Create and Set-Up Auto-Responder Messages
Every new lead needs to receive a welcome or thank you message, as appropriate. This is the basic rule of online marketing etiquette. Once you have finished creating your lead ad, before you launch it, create and implement an appropriate auto-responder message for every captured new lead.
4. Two Golden Words: A/B Testing
We have not been so adamant in our last articles about the importance of A/B testing because, frankly, we consider it to be second nature for marketers. However, we also have young marketers and business owners among our readers, so we take the opportunity to reinforce the importance of testing any kind of ad on similar audience groups, until you find the formula that brings the highest ROI. This is also true for lead ads: test various types of images, copy, calls to action and forms until you find the combination with the highest level of response.
5. Take Advantage of the Optional Question
With lead ads, you can opt to include a question at the end of the pre-filled form. This question could be anything from asking the user if they are a new or a returning customer, or if they are likely to recommend your business or products to a friend. The question is entirely related to your ultimate purpose: whether you want to filter new from existing prospects, or expand your reach to other audiences, etc.