Amid a myriad of data usage restrictions and targeting policies, Facebook still manages to drive cost efficient new customer leads for businesses, and here's how.
Facebook marketing has become uber-popular as more and more individual business owners learn how to create, launch and manage their advertising across Facebook and Instagram with the social giant's ad platform, Business Manager.
While the platform is self-serve, it doesn't always serve one's self. As Facebook continues to dodge media backlash for data breaches and political campaign tampering, they have been layering on new policies, procedures and requirements that are confusing advertisers and hampering campaign delivery, but digitalXmedia eXperts are here to help. Here are the basic steps you should take to implement a successful Lead Generation campaign:
First, let's clarify, we're not talking about Sponsored Posts (“boosted” Facebook posts are content that a company has paid to promote within the News Feed. These sponsored posts originally appear on the company’s Facebook timeline as organic content, but are able to get a boost in visibility, thanks to paid promotion).
We're talking about Facebook Ads (involving a full paid social marketing strategy, more sophisticated targeting capabilities, and in depth ad design, served across multiple placements on Facebook, Instagram and Facebook partner mobile apps and websites).
Second, there are 13 campaign objectives to choose from, segmented into three categories (Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion). The objective you choose is based on your business goal. Want more people to know your brand? Then you want to run Awareness objectives. Want to sell more products online? Then you want to run a Conversion objective campaign.
We're going to focus on getting more people to consider purchasing your goods and services, specifically, the Lead Generation objective.
Social media lead conversion rates are 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate. (Marketing Insider, 2019)
When you consider in 2010, Facebook announced 500 million users, and today, there are 2.32B users, and that mobile devices are estimated to drive 79% of total global internet usage (eMarketer, 2018), you have to admit that Facebook Ads is the place to be.
Lead Generation Ads
Facebook lead ads allow users to tap your ad and open a form within the platform, without navigating away from where they are currently engaged. The form is already pre-populated with their Facebook contact information, minimizing effort to complete and submit. With just a few taps, they can get the information they want, and you generate a qualified lead for your business. Leads are saved under your business page settings, or can be sent, real-time, to your email or CRM database.
Five Best Practices
Campaign budgets can be set with daily or lifetime amounts. Use lifetime. Why? Because you don't want to limit your reach (how many users see your ads) because of budget is restricted on a specific day. Set a lifetime budget for a campaign flight of two weeks to 30 days. As long as your using standard pacing, your budget will last the for the planner period of time, but the platform will be able to adjust daily spend based on user interaction with your ads.
Ad Sets are the section of your campaign where targeting is applied (location, interest, user data, age, and more). Quality leads come from defined audiences. The key is to narrow your audience by adding attributes that match their profile and define their behavior, but also to maintain a large enough pool of users, enabling the platform to learn and optimize using algorithms that will pin point your ideal customer. Separate user profiles into different ad sets, and limit yourself to 3-5 active ad sets per campaign. Each ad set will compete for budget, and the ad set that drives the most leads, will have the opportunity to spend more.
The right ad type is also an important choice. Since lead generation is a consideration tactic, choose ads types, imagery and content that are highly engaging (i.e. canvas ads, video ads). 70% of B2B marketers claim that videos are more effective than other content when it comes to converting users to qualified leads (Marketing Metrics, 2019). Remember, you want personal information from a user, so try to provide them with something valuable in return, like exclusive access, special discounts, or a deep dive into a topic of interest. The ad copy is your opportunity to make them an offer they can't refuse...to submit a form.
The lead form should be straight forward (name, email, phone), but should also incorporate branded content (image, video, ad copy) that reassures the user your business is legitimate and that they definitely want you to contact them. Forms with fewer fields have a higher completion rate, but forms with more specific fields tend to be better quality. Choose the length that is right for your business based on the after submission process. If you have a strong sales team that can vet all new leads quickly, then ask basic questions to get more leads.
A redirect is available on the thank you page after a form is submitted. Use it as an opportunity to engage the user further. Link them to your social page to follow or share your content, drive them to your website to learn more about your company. Whatever you do, just don't leave them hanging!
Executing a Facebook lead generation campaign is not difficult, but there are nuances to the platform. Follow our best practices and you will see success. Or, if you would rather an eXpert handle the heavy lifting, contact us.
- dXm -
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