Lead Ads are a specific format available on Facebook, which is focused on generating leads for your business. While looking similar to a traditional click to website ad, the real difference appears when the user clicks on the “Sign up” button. Instead of redirecting to a website, an app or a Facebook Page, a lead form is opened, directly within the Facebook interface.
This form contains various fields of your choice ; from default fields (location, name, e-mail address, …) that are automatically pre-populated with the user’s information, to custom fields that you can create. Each information you need can be gathered through the form.
Once the user is done filling it, all he has to do is press the “submit” button, and it’s done : the lead is generated. Pretty simple, right ?
Why using Facebook Lead ads ?
You might wonder why using these kind of ads instead of sending the user directly to your ( (mobile-optimised) website where he will also be able to sign up. The answer can be summed-up with one single word : simplicity.
Indeed, with lead ads, Facebook has made the process of lead generation on the platform much easier. As you may know, more and more online traffic is coming from mobile devices (latest trends for Belgium can be found here) - with more than 50% of people using Facebook exclusively on Mobile. Therefore, offering mobile users a smooth and easy way of reaching your business is key. That’s exactly what Facebook Lead Ads are made for: with its mobile-friendly form, designed for the least typing possible thanks to automatically filled information, the users can easily reach you and give you valuable information so that you can contact them. Remember : the less people have to do, the higher the probability they’ll convert.
For the tests we’ve made, Facebook lead ads showed quite promising results with an increased volume of leads generated, at lower cost per lead. So if leads are a key part of your business, you should definitely give it a try !
How to get started ?
Creating a Lead Ad is quite simple. The first step is to create a new campaign, and select “Lead Generation” as your marketing Objective :
Afterwards, you’ll access to the usual interface of Ad Set creation (where you choose budgets, scheduling, targeting, placements, …). Note that you will have to accept Facebook Lead Advert’s Terms to be able to continue.
Next step is to create the Advert itself. Once again, the process is the same as for a traditional Facebook ads - you can choose to create a image ad, a carousel, a video, a slideshow, whatever. It’s from this point that the setup differs from the usual one. At the bottom of the window, you will observe an extra part asking you to chose the form you want to use for this ad :
The Final step consists of adding a link to your Privacy Policy (if you don’t have any, you can find more info here), and finally the landing page on which you want to send users that might want extra information once they completed your form.
That’s all, you’ve just created your first Facebook Lead Ad !
How to retrieve leads generated through lead ads ?
Generating leads through Facebook is great - but it would be useless if you were unable to retrieve them to be able to benefit from those. Fortunately, Facebook offers many way to do so :
- Download it as a CSV file from your Facebook page (Publishing Tools > Lead Ads Forms > Download).
- Download it as a CSV file from your Advert Manager (Download button in the “Results” column).
- Download it as a CSV file from Power Editor (Download button in the “Results” column).
Note that it’s also possible to set up your lead to be automatically updated into your CRM system, but we won’t enter the detail here. This could be the topic of a future publication, so stay tuned !
Go even further with lead ads: Remarketing options
After you collected valuable leads for your business, Facebook recently made it possible to retarget users who interacted with your lead ad. By making a custom audience based on these leads, you can show them a further promotion, or offers relevant to your leads.
To do so, all you have to do is create the Audience within your Ads Manager, in the audience Tab. There, create a new Custom Audience and Select ‘Engagement on Facebook’, then ‘Lead Ad’. This will open the following window :
There you can choose from which form users you want to create an audience, the type of interaction they had with the form, and de membership duration. Three types of interactions are available, among which you can choose based on the usage you plan for this audience :
- All people who opened the form > could be used for basic remarketing
- People who opened the form but didn’t submit > could be use to re-engage people (// abandoned shopping cart)
- People who opened the form and did submit > could be used for upsell + exclude from running campaigns
And that’s it, you know everything you need to create audiences from your Leads Ads that you can now use for your remarketing strategy.
