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Great news! Lead Ads, which were first introduced in June 2015, and are now available to all advertisers globally on the Facebook Power Editor tool.

Although they can only be ran on mobile devices at the moment, Facebook also mentioned that they will be coming to desktop and even video ads too.

In this article I’ll show you what lead ads are and how you can create your first lead ads campaign.

What are Facebook Lead Ads?

Lead ads is an attempt to make lead collection easier, especially on mobile devices. Generally, the cost to reach and engage people tends to be cheaper on mobile than on desktop, but the conversions are usually more expensive.

That’s mostly because the majority of websites don’t provide a good user experience: pages take a long time to load and the process of filling in a form is relatively more difficult on a phone than on a computer.

And those are exactly the problems that lead ads will be solving – the form will load almost instantly after someone clicks on it, and the requested information will be automatically pre-filled by Facebook.

So while the ad looks like any other link, including the post text, headline, link description, image and call-to-action, it will open a form directly within Facebook, allowing for people to sign up with just two clicks.

Because it will be faster and more efficient, it’s expected to lead to higher conversion rates and lower costs per conversion – which are great news for advertisers!

How to Create Facebook Lead Ads

You will need to use the Power Editor tool on Facebook to create your campaign.

After you download to Power Editor, click to create a new campaign and select the new “Lead Generation” objective.

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Next, create a new ad set and choose the general settings: budget (daily or lifetime), schedule, audience, placement, optimization and pricing, and advanced delivery.

You will see that the only placement available is Mobile News Feed, although Facebook is promising to add lead ads to desktop too.

The campaign will be set to optimize for Leads automatically – Facebook will try to get you as many leads as possible by showing them to more relevant people.

Otherwise, you can also choose to optimize for clicks (CPC), which will try to get as many clicks on your ad. Those clicks include likes, shares, comments and other clicks, so it’s best to go with the recommended option.

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After you’re happy with the campaign settings, navigate to the ads level and create a new ad.

The ad creation process is very similar to the typical link ads. You will need to provide:

  • Text (goes above the image),
  • Headline,
  • News Feed Link Description (goes below the image)
  • Image (1200×628 pixels)

Remember, that all images must comply with the 20% text rule – you can’t have more than 20% of the image occupied with text.

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You’ll also need to choose a call to action button:

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These are the call to action (CTA) buttons you can choose:

  • Apply Now
  • Download
  • Get Quote
  • Learn More
  • Sign Up
  • Subscribe

How to Create a Facebook Lead Form:

The biggest difference from link ads, is that you’ll need to use a lead generation form. You will need to create a new one or choose a form you’ve already created.

To create a new form, click “Create New Form”

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In the new window that opens, you will be asked to name your form and choose the language:

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After you click next, Facebook will ask you to select the information that you need from people that sign up:

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Email and Full Name will be set by default by Facebook, but you have plenty of other options if you click on “Show more options”

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As you can see, you there are plenty contact fields, demographic questions and even work information.

You can also add a custom question by clicking “Add a question”:

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You can choose from the pre-made questions in Automative, Education, Ecommerce, B2B, Professional Services, Health Insurance, Need Help and Purchase Intent areas. These are all of the questions:

Automotive:

  • Car make
  • Car model
  • Trim
  • Year of make
  • Car dealership

Education:

  • Interested field of study
  • Current field of study
  • Highest level of education
  • When do you plan to enroll?
  • Course of interest
  • Campus location
  • What degree are you interested in

Ecommerce:

  • How often do you want to hear from us
  • Select a category

B2B:

  • Size of company
  • Size of sales team
  • Primary trade

Professional Services:

  • Type of legal service

Health Insurance:

  • Health insurance coverage status

Auto Insurance:

  • Annual mileage

Need Help:

  • Need help
  • What are you looking for
  • What is the problem
  • Select services

Purchase Intent:

  • Time to purchase
  • Time to join
  • Size of budget
  • Waitlist

Otherwise, you can click on “Add Custom Question” in the top right to create up to three brand new questions.

When you’re happy with the questions and contact details you request, click next. In the new window enter a link to your privacy policies as well as any optional disclaimers:

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Click next and add a link to your website – it will appear as a call to action after someone completes the sign up:

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After adding the link, you’ll see a preview of the form:

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Click “Create Form” if you’re happy with what you see and you’re done!

How to Access Leads from Facebook Lead Ads

To access any leads your ad generated, go to your Facebook page, click on “Publishing Tools” at the top of the page and then “Lead Ads Forms” in the sidebar:

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Click the “Download” link next to your form to export your contacts as a .csv file.

You might need to do that daily, in order to send them a lead-magnet you promised.

Our First Lead Ads Campaign Test:

We created a campaign for our Freedom Client Funnel e-book, targeting people in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. We set up a test for different interests immediately, as we knew each of them will have a different cost per lead. That allows us to test out each interest with a small daily budget, keep them running for a few days, and then pause the most expensive audiences.

This is how our lead ad looked like:

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And here are the results:

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As you can see, in one week we generated 70 leads at $4.35 per lead, with the best interest getting new leads at $3.06/lead.

About The Author: Bret Gregory

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