Facebook Lead Generation – How to Generate More Leads and Sales Through Facebook
Whether or not you like Facebook, it’s still the number one social media site online. With over 2.6 billion active users1, no other platform comes close, and it’s a key business tool for companies of all sizes.
It’s great for brand recognition, connecting with customers on a personal level, and for promoting content and community events. But is Facebook a viable option for generating quality leads for your business?
Not only is Facebook a viable option for generating leads, it is one of the most underutilized platforms. Meaning, many businesses don’t use Facebook to generate leads at all, and the ones who do are underperforming because they don’t know how to do Facebook lead generation effectively.
Do you want to know how we can use Facebook’s hidden ad features to grow your business? Plan a FREE strategic session HERE!
Types of Facebook Leads
With Facebook, there are two types of leads you can generate:
- Direct Leads – Leads that either fill out a form within the platform via a Facebook lead generation campaign, or leads that connect directly to a form through a post for some type of offer—an ebook, discount, free tool, etc.
- Indirect Leads – Anything that adds an extra step to filling out a form creates an indirect lead. For example: if you post content on Facebook that includes a link to a new blog post, and then the potential lead then has to click somewhere else on the blog to fill out a form—that’s indirect.
Leading people to your forms indirectly is more nurturing and friendly. Plus, it can act as a filter for unqualified leads.
How to Generate Leads On Facebook
Regardless of whether you’re capturing direct or indirect leads, they’re leads! So let’s examine some Facebook lead generation tips so you can start converting.
1. Use popular blogs to leverage Facebook lead generation
Businesses who run solid growth marketing campaigns have an advantage over their competition. One of those advantages should include a high number of archived blogs. If any of those blogs were successful at generating leads, check to see if they’re an evergreen blog—a blog that is still relevant long after it was posted. Then create a solid Facebook post promoting that blog again.
With the post, include some intriguing copy and anchor your link within the first line. And if the blog doesn’t have a call-to-action (CTA) towards the top, be sure to add one. The idea is to get people to move on to filling out a form as soon as possible.
2. Generate leads with offers through video content
The Facebook algorithm loves video content. In fact, if viewers stay for more than a minute, it’s good, and if they stay for over 3 minutes, it’s great! With smartphones and tons of free and paid video editing software available, it’s easy to create content enticing to potential leads. Here are some solid video ideas:
- Customer testimonials
- How-to videos
- Tour the factory / Behind the scenes
- Unique product usage
- Promote an offer or event
- Offer a course
The creative possibilities for your business are endless, but the key is adding—along with the anchor text CTA—a CTA at the front and end of your video. It’s not enough just to put the link in the text. Be sure and ask potential leads to sign up, fill out the form, or click for the download.
Live Videos
If shooting and editing a video is too time consuming or your business doesn’t have the resources to do it with high-quality, then live video is another option you can use to generate leads. The possibilities are endless, and use the same verbal CTA cues as you would in recorded content.
Plus, with live video, people have the opportunity—and are more likely!—to comment while you’re live. It’s a way to interact with potential leads and drive them directly to your site in real time.
3. Facebook Lead Generation Ads
Facebook created lead ads in 2015. Basically, a lead generation ad is a lead capture form that’s promoted within Facebook. These ads incentivize filling out the form through offers like subscriptions, demonstration requests, discounts, ebooks, or other perks.
The ads are very intuitive and will populate a form with information from the user’s Facebook profile. Another advantage to lead ads is that Facebook created them to simplify mobile sign-ups, so the ads are optimized for mobile users. Most active Facebook users view the site on a smartphone, which makes it a huge plus.
The best facebook lead generation ads follow these guidelines:
- The ad makes a clear offer and incentive—don’t misdirect people.
- Create a solid ad that’s creative and includes excellent copy, high-quality images or video, and a CTA button.
- The form should be short and sweet. Facebook provides an option to ask questions but…
- If you’re going to ask questions, be sure they’re the right ones. People won’t finish the form if they get annoyed.
Targeting Audiences
Facebook ads generate leads, but only if you target the right audiences. Fortunately, the platform allows you to test and choose from different audience types. They offer three types:
- Lookalike
- People near you
- Custom audiences
Each style has its own advantages and disadvantages based on your business type and the type of Facebook lead generation campaign you want to run. Regardless, be ready to follow up on any of these leads via Facebook Messenger or another messaging application.
4. Facebook Ads Strategy
Facebook lead generation ads are great, but they’re not the only paid advertising option on the platform. A solid way of generating leads with facebook ads is to extend the reach of the content you’ve posted—like the evergreen blog posts or video content.
Extending your reach uses Facebook’s sophisticated audience targeting technology to pinpoint exactly who you want to see your ads. So it’s very important to understand the basic concepts of growth hacking.
To target the right audiences, you should have solid data to back up your profile. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting money.
Once you pinpoint your audience, you can choose from three options:
- Boosted Posts
- Column Ads
- Newsfeed Ads
Again, each style of ads has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it’s up to you to determine what’s best for your business and advertising campaign.
Conclusion
Knowing how to do lead generation in Facebook isn’t a skill you can learn overnight, but there are a lot of solid resources available. With our tips, you should be able to get started and test what works best for your business.
But if you’re looking to fast track the growth of your business, it may be time to work with a global business acceleration office like Upthrust.
We used Facebook’s hidden ad features to help Torfs get a few thousand extra monthly transactions, so working with social media platforms to generate leads and increasing sales is one of our specialties.
Do you want to know how we can use Facebook’s hidden ad features to grow your business? Plan a FREE strategic session HERE!
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