Have you ever used Facebook lead ads and ended up making calls to a group of very confused people?

I’m sure you’ve have had some cracker responses when following up leads.

In the past we’ve had some real head scratchers, including the ever popular:
“How did you get my number?!”
Funnily enough “….uh, you gave it to us” never goes down well as the response.

Whilst you wont always be able to guarantee 100% qualified leads, there are some tactics you can use to help improve your lead quality and get better bang for your buck from Facebook lead ads.

1. Get your audience right

It’s important that your lead ads are targeting people at the bottom end of your funnel. Ideally you want to reach people between the consideration and the purchase stage, people who already know about you and are looking to take the next step.

The last thing you want is to send out a lead ad to people still in the awareness stage. If you’re targeting new people, the ones who fill out the form are likely to have never heard of you before, not be in the market for your product or service and/or are submitting by accident - hence the “how did you get my number” calls. Most of these people will only be time wasters.

2. Don’t go too hard too fast

If it’s your first contact with someone, you don’t want to be asking for their name, number and to set up a date straight away. If you’re going to be asking for those intimate details about someone, ensure they’ve visited key pages and taken assertive actions on your website to show you they’re interested (read the room!). We often send our lead ads out to people who have downloaded a brochure on our client’s site as we know they’re actively investigating the product/offering.

Other ways to validate your audience include retargeting people who have visited 3+ pages of your site or watched a certain video.

3. Leave the user in control

It’s important that the user is in control of the information they give you at each step of the way. Facebook prefill the form to save time, but the user can alter the information before submitting at any point.

You can give the user more control by allowing them to nominate a day/time/contact method that suits them for a follow up. This can also help with reducing the number of people who you’re unable to contact, because they’re expecting your call or email.

4. Follow up straight away

The sooner you follow up the more likely you are to get a positive response from the lead. Instant follow up is ideal but we know you may not be sitting at your desk with your phone in hand just waiting for leads to come through (or maybe you are! Good for you!).

This is where we suggest using automation tools such as Zapier to fire off an email as soon as your lead submits their form. It’s also an opportunity for you to ask further questions about what they’re interested in or ask them to nominate a time they’d like to be contacted if you didn’t do that in your lead form.

5. Make sure they know what to expect (lead form set up).

For full details you can check out our step by step guide to setting up a Facebook lead form. But in short, you want to take every opportunity you can in the ad copy, description, lead form context card and on the thank you page to let the user know how you will be following up, if that’s a phone call make sure to explicitly say “Someone from our team will call you” or if it’s an email “we will email you straight away, please check your junk/spam folder”. Even with the warnings you will still catch the odd person who’s clicked through without reading, but the number of surprised leads should decrease with the more information you give them on what will happen next.

In summary:

1. Target an engaged audience.

2. Don’t ask for too much too soon. If you haven’t interacted before maybe ask them to request a brochure rather than book an interview.

3. Let the user stay in control. Ask them how and when they’d like to be contacted.

4. Send a follow up email using an automation tool as soon as the lead is submitted.

5. Warn them what to expect at every step along the way (i.e that you’re going to call, email or text them. Let them know how you plan to follow up).

If you’d like help generating leads for your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.