Facebook Lead Ads: 5 Actions for Success

At LeadsCon West in Las Vegas earlier this month, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel titled “From Likes to Leads: Leveraging Facebook Lead Ads for Customer Acquisition”. With me were with Sona Parikh, Product Growth Manager for Leads Ads of Facebook, and Sam Bhatt, Co-founder of WD Social, a social media lead generation agency.  Here, I’ll share the highlights of my portion of the presentation. I focused on 5 actions for success: 1) Capture leads in real-time, 2) Embrace short forms, 3) Stay Compliant, 4) Qualify Leads, and 5) Nurture leads.

Capture Leads in Real Time

By default, if you want to get your leads out of Facebook, you have to login and download a CSV. Not only does that solution not scale over time, it makes for an inconsistent user experience with your brand. I always recommend sending a real-time confirmation email for every valid lead you receive, in conjunction with the other follow-up methods you use. Our platform, LeadConduit, handles this integration between Facebook and your various systems.  Whether you use LeadConduit or another solution, I encourage you to capture all of your leads in real time and follow up immediately.

Embrace Short Forms

Most of our lead buyers pay their lead providers on a Cost Per Lead (CPL) basis. That is not the case with Facebook Lead Ads. You pay for the advertising and there are no guarantees on the number of leads you receive. One way to increase lead volume and lower your CPL is to increase form completion rates by minimizing the number of fields you collect on your form. Most users will submit this form on a mobile device, so make it as easy as possible for them. Just capture what you need – a name and email address and/or phone number.

Based on an email or a phone, you can append additional information about a consumer using various real-time data services. Appending additional  data allows you to continually optimize your campaigns. Sam Bhatt spoke at length about the importance of consistent testing and iteration, as he uncovers which ad types work best for industry-specific audiences. Capture as many leads as you can, and continually optimize to see what works for you.

Stay Compliant

TCPA was still a big topic at LeadsCon this year, and was covered in multiple sessions. All the same rules and regulations for contacting leads apply to leads from Facebook Lead Ads. If you are going to contact a consumer on their mobile phone with an auto-dialer or you are sending text messages, it’s important to have the proper legal disclosures on the form. Facebook conveniently allows you to add custom disclosure language on the form with a checkbox. The next step is documenting that proof of consent. Our TrustedForm product is used to verify and document proof of consent for your internet leads. We’ve been working with the team at Facebook to create a special TrustedForm for Facebook solution. The first version is scheduled for release next month!

Qualify Leads

In Sona’s presentation on Facebook Lead Ads, she recommended qualifying your leads at every stage of the process. A critical stage for lead qualification is after the consumer submits their information, but before it enters your CRM or follow-up process. So, how do you qualify a lead if all you have is an email address or a phone number?  You can actually do a lot thanks to the various real-time data services available.

For example, services like BriteVerify and Webbula tell you if the email you received is deliverable. Our SuppressionList product can identify if the lead is a duplicate from another source or an existing customer. TowerData can give you lots of demographic data based on an email address. Whitepages Pro Phone Intelligence can tell you a ton of information about a phone number- what type of phone, who its registered to, where they live, etc.  

There is a wealth of data that you can utilize to make a decision on what action to take with each lead.  Do you want to filter it out? Send it to different locations? Process it differently based on that data? Systems like LeadConduit allow you to append data from any third party data service and use that data to make a real-time decision on the lead.

Nurture Leads

Nurturing leads is about your follow up process or contact strategy after you get the lead in your system. Set expectations with the consumer in your ad and then do what you said you were going to do so that your follow up process is consistent with your offer.  For example, if your offer says you are going to email them a whitepaper, do that. Don’t immediately call them. That’s just annoying.

LeadsCon attendees are typically in industry verticals like insurance and mortgage, where shared leads are the norm. Lead buyers in these verticals have systems configured to call within seconds of the consumer submitting a lead. It’s a race. Facebook leads are exclusive to you.  While you still want to have prompt follow-up it’s not a race. Implement a consistent follow-up strategy based on the context of where these folks sign up. These are people reading their Facebook feed,they didn’t go out searching for your product or service, making them potentially  lower intent than other channels. However, they did express interest. So, while these leads are good quality, keep in mind the context. I think Facebook leads need to be treated more like marketing leads instead of sales leads.

Hopefully you find these tips helpful. Good luck with your Facebook Lead Ads campaign. Let us know if we can help.