By far one of the biggest challenges I hear about when working with clients is how to efficiently generate leads through Facebook marketing.They’ve heard how effective Facebook can be for building an email list so they figure all they have to do is spend some money on a few Facebook ads and their list will grow by leaps and bounds.
By the time their campaign is done, though, the only thing they have to show for their effort is a lighter bank account and one, maybe two new people added to their list.
Results like that aren’t going to make anyone happy.
So, they stop trying and dismiss Facebook as an ineffective, waste-of-money marketing tool.
Sound familiar?
I hope not, but if it does I’m hear to tell you that generating cost-efficient leads on Facebook works.
In this article, I’m going to share with you two proven strategies for generating leads on Facebook. I’ll also share a case study from one of my clients who saw amazing results from a strategy discussed here.
Strategy #1 Facebook Offers
You’ve probably seen Offers in your News Feed before but maybe didn’t know what they were.
Here’s an example of one:
They’re a great way for those of us with Internet businesses to promote products and services through targeted advertising on Facebook.
But you can also use them to give away free products that people get when they join your email list.
This is how you get leads by using Offers.
Simply promote your free ebook, consulting, webinar or whatever your opt-in giveaway is and drive people to a landing page where they have to enter their email address to get it.
In order to use Offers, your business’ Facebook page needs to have at least 100 fans. You have the option of choosing whether someone can redeem your offer online, in your store if you have a physical location, or both in-store & online.
One reason Offers work so well is because when someone claims your Offer, it shows up in their News Feed. Friends of that person can then see that their friend just claimed your Offer. This word-of-mouth promotion is one thing that sets Facebook apart from other marketing platforms and is one of their strengths.
As with other advertising on Facebook, Offers cost money to use. When you setup your Offer, though, you don’t have to use one of the pre-set budgets you’re presented with.
Of course, if you’re comfortable with the budget and reach options shown, great. Go for it.
But if you’d rather spend less than what Facebook is showing you, here’s a little ninja trick so you can set a budget that works for you:
When you’re finishing up creating your Offer and get to the above shown step, check the “Promote Later Using Another Facebook Ad Tool” box. This allows you to go into your Ads Creator, create an ad out of your Offer and bypass the pre-set budgets Facebook gave you.
You can then enter whatever budget you’re comfortable with.
As with any form of advertising, be sure and test different offers, images and copy until you find the combination that generates the most leads for you.
Offers aren’t the only form of Facebook advertising that works great for generating leads, though.
Page Post Ads are one of Facebook’s best performing ad units because they can show up in people’s mobile News Feed.
Strategy #2 Page Post Ads
A Page Post ad allows you to promote a status update that you’ve posted on your Facebook page as an ad, and target it to your ideal audience.
It can appear on the right side of people’s Facebook page (the “marketplace”) as well as in the News Feed.
There are a few reasons this ad is so effective:
- it is larger than any of the ads in the marketplace
- ads that appear in the News Feed perform much better than standard marketplace ads
- Page Post ads can also appear in the mobile News Feed (with 680 million people accessing Facebook from their mobile device, this is gold!)
Here’s how you use Page Post ads to generate leads:
- Create a status update on your Facebook page that includes a call-to-action about your free giveaway as well as the landing page URL.
- Put this call-to-action and URL at the beginning of your post. I like shortening the URL with Bitly.
- Include an eye-catching image or video with your post.
- After you post your update to your Timeline, go into your Ads Creator and create a new Page Post ad. Select the post you just created from the dropdown menu.
- Set your targeting, how long you want your ad to run, and budget.
For example, here’s a status update, and then a resulting Page Post Ad:
Resulting Page Post ad:
Do You Love Case Studies As Much As I Do?
Discussing how to do something is great, but seeing a real-world example is even better.
I recently worked with a client who wanted to drive traffic to his landing page where he was selling a $497 training product.
He wanted to generate leads, but he really wanted to test the direct sale (why not, right?).
So, I advised him to set up a two-strategy approach:
- Strategy #1: Lead generation — send people to a custom app on his Facebook page where they would opt-in for his free video training course.
- Strategy #2: Direct sale approach — test sending people to a sales landing page outside of Facebook to see if they’d buy his $497 training.
Budget: $1,000
He ran a combination of standard marketplace and a Page Post ads, targeting interests closely related to his niche.
The Page Post ads GREATLY outperformed the marketplace ads, 4.6% click-through rate (CTR) vs 0.05% (the standard CTR for Facebook ads is 0.04%).
I’ll take a 4.6% CTR any day, especially if it’s converting.
And convert this campaign did.
Here are the results:
- Lead generation: 511 emails
- Sales: three for a total of $1,491
Why did this campaign work so well? I attribute it to a few factors:
- Targeting: Have you heard of Citrix XenApp? I hadn’t either before starting to work with him. That’s my client’s niche and he’s an expert in it. It’s really a niche within a niche. Facebook advertising allows you to get extremely specific with your targeting which means you can put your ads in front of your exact target audience. He was able to laser-target his ads to people within his niche.
- Page Post Ads: For the most part, I’m advising most of my clients these days to use Page Post ads. As I mentioned above, they’re gold because they can show up in the desktop and mobile News Feeds. And, mobile’s where it’s at. It also doesn’t hurt they’re twice the size of normal marketplace ads (right side of your FB page).
- Landing Pages: The lead gen form was within a custom app on my client’s Facebook page. Using a custom app as your landing page tends to convert well because when people are on Facebook they prefer to be kept there, rather than being taken to an external landing page. Thus, it creates some trust with the person clicking.
The sales landing page, on the other hand, was a page on my client’s website. The reason it worked so well is because it was super relevant to the ads he ran. The copy was similar and spoke directly to his target audience.
Take Action and Test
Of course, none of these strategies work if you don’t take action and test them out for your own business.
The key word there is “test”.
The fun thing is, I’m only scratching the surface here of the many ways you can leverage Facebook marketing to generate leads and grow your business.
You have to test different strategies to see which ones work best and drop the ones that don’t yield results.
I’d love to hear from you, now. Have you tried generating leads with Facebook?
If you’re struggling to grow your email list and want to generate more leads, I’ve put together a free email series where I show you my system for generating massive leads on Facebook in the next 30 days. And, each of my seven strategies can be implemented in less than 20 minutes. For access to my free email series, click here.
About the Author
Rick Mulready is a Facebook marketing strategist, teaching small businesses and online entrepreneurs how to grow their business through lead generation, sales and getting more traffic with Facebook marketing. If you’re struggling to grow your email list and want to generate more leads within the next 30 days, grab his free email course at RickMulready.com.
How to Become a Lead Generation Machine Using Facebook Marketing is a post from: Internet Business Mastery: Business Development and Internet Marketing for the Web 2.0 Age
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