How To Create Facebook Lead Ads That Convert

Larry mentioned them in his list of 10 CRO Truth Bombs. WordStream clients are using them to corral leads in droves. They're cheap. They're effective. The targeting options are so vast and precise that finding new customers is easier than bullseyeing womp rats in your T-16 back home.

I'm talking about Facebook lead ads.

 

If you're not familiar with them, lead ads are Facebook's answer to the jaw-dropping amount of time the average person spends on his or her mobile device. It's no secret that conversions from paid channels tend to take a hit on mobile, so the Zuck and crew decided to eliminate one of the most prohibitive steps for would-be converters: visiting your website.

Instead, with lead ads, you just choose from the Cheesecake Factory-esque menu of targeting options, create a lead form, and watch the (significantly cheaper) scorching hot leads roll in. They can be used to acquire all sorts of information, from potential consumers anywhere in the funnel.

 

And the best part? Contact info collected through lead ads can be used to create new audiences – both custom and lookalike – allowing you to adjust your paid efforts based on where a prospect falls in your funnel or find new, similar prospects.

Sold yet? Of course you are.

But before I delve into how you're going to make your Facebook lead ads irresistible, here are the six simple steps you'll need to take in order to create your first one (assuming you've already got a Facebook Business Manager account).

Facebook Lead Ads For Dummies

 

Once you've signed into your Business Manager account, navigate over to Power Editor.

 

Click the “+Campaign” button on the top left hand side of your screen to open a laundry-list of prospective campaign goals. While many will be familiar (and some more useful than others), the one you want is titled “Collect leads for your business.”

 

Now, let's get granular. Choose your desired audience, targeting parameters, placements, budget, and scheduling. Discussion of this warrants a post of its own, so I won't try to condense a thousand words into twenty. Suffice to say you know your business, your goals, and your target demo better than I do. Get everything calibrated and proceed.

The Power Editor UI will prompt you to create a new lead form or duplicate an existing form. Since we're operating under the assumption that you haven't done this before, you'll only be able to select the former. For future reference, though, be sure to recycle forms when appropriate, but don't use a single form across every lead campaign you run (especially when you're serving lead ads to those already in your funnel).

Next, add a context card. They're “optional,” but trust me: you want to make one. Essentially, a context card is the step between somebody seeing your lead ad and the formfill itself. Take your time crafting the copy that goes on your context card (or hire a professional). Make sure you distill your message down to the most concise version: explain what you're offering, who you are, and why whomever is seconds from giving you their precious contact information should do so. Nothing more.

Once you've finished the context card, it's time to put together your lead form itself. You'll be given more possible fields than you'll know what to do with…

… and that's okay. Because for your first lead ad, we're going to focus on just two of them: email address & full name. Why full instead of “first” and “last” as separate fields? The more boxes a prospect has to complete, the less likely they are to convert. You can use a little bit of Excel wizardry after you've got the data to parse names into separate columns.

Finally, complete the privacy policy and disclaimer and you're ready to rock.

Optimizing Your Facebook Lead Ads

The good news: you know how to make a Facebook lead ad!

The bad: your competition does, too.

Because your competitors are plastering your prospects' timelines with ads, it's important that yours stand out. Now that you know how to make a run-of-the-mill Facebook lead ad, it's time to learn how to make an incredible (read: high converting) one.

Optimizing Targeting for Facebook Lead Ads: Lookalike A Paying Customer

Create lookalike audiences using customers, not prospects.

If you make a lookalike audience of everyone who submits, your reach will be wider, sure, but it'll also be less qualified. By creating lookalikes of your converters instead of everyone who has submitted a lead, you're building a more accurate profile of the sort of person who makes a purchase or becomes a client.

This model is inherently more valuable to your business than a rough estimate of the type of person who might possibly could maybe one time almost sort of be interested in what you have to offer. Niche-ing down is a good thing. Remember that.

Facebook Has More Targeting Options Than Members…

Use them to your advantage!

Get as granular as possible with your campaigns and ad sets, and don't be afraid to experiment. Personally, I like to take any customer data I can get my hands on and look for patterns. From there, you can begin overlapping the traits you uncover using the virtually limitless targeting options available to you. Things to look for include:

• Job titles


• Education


• Relationships


• Age


• Hobbies


• Average income


• Language proficiencies


• Entertainment 

Through all of these and more, you can create highly targeted campaigns outfitted with lead ads that speak directly to the traits you've identified.

Are you a drivers' ed teacher looking for new students? Consider targeting parents in higher-income areas (driving lessons don't come cheap). Flower shop or purveyor of fine chocolates? Seek out people in new relationships, show them a lead ad, and get 'em on your email list.

Duplicate Audiences Are A Waste Of Money

Having a fat stack of ideas out the gate is great. Know what isn't? Trying to test them all on the same audience at once. Patience is key. 

According to Facebook, attempting to target the same audience with multiple lead ad campaigns can result in “under-delivery issues.”

If you're following the advice above (ratcheting down on those lookalike audiences) and leveraging the rest of Facebook's robust targeting options to your advantage, the initial reservoir of some-odd billion people with Facebook accounts has been dammed up and reduced to a faucet's trickle. Your ads are only serving to small, qualified audiences. Under-delivery isn't an option, folks!

 

Your Customers Sleep. Your Ads Should, Too

If you're selling a SaaS product to large businesses, I doubt your potential customers are up at three in the morning on a Tuesday. But things change if your offering is meant for the garage-based startup, or you've cornered the market on glowy, pulsing rave gloves.

Ad scheduling is a great way to avoid wasting time and money serving your finely-tuned lead ads to people catching Z's.

And once your campaigns are up and running, you can add more scheduling. If your data suggests that there are times at which prospects are highly motivated, increase bids (better yet, create a new campaign and find a way to make use of your insight in the ad copy). On the other side of that coin, if data suggests prospects simply aren't interested in forking over their information at dinner time or 51 minutes before their mid-morning snack, scale back.

Optimizing Creative for Facebook Lead Ads

Context Matters...

With lead ads you're asking people to take immediate action. Unlike more traditional ad types, there's nothing standing between the first click and the form fill (unless you count the context card, but that's more complementary than intermediary). As such, in addition to lookin' pretty your creative needs to do a lot of legwork.

 

Ensure that you pair your captivating image with clear copy. Take this Land Rover ad for example. It features concise but captivating language (the percussive consonance makes it clear this tagline wasn't conceived on the first try). The image is striking. And check out that button. It tells the prospect exactly what he or she stands to gain by clicking.

Coupons Rule Everything Around Me

           

Some people won't click on your ad no matter how well it reads or pretty it looks. When it comes to the folded armed curmudgeons in your vertical, incentivize the click.

Look at where in your sales funnel the audience you're targeting with your lead ad falls. If it's the very top or somewhere in the middle? Send free information or offer a subscription. Closer to the bottom? Create buy-in by offering a coupon, a free consultation, or quote.

Whatever your value proposition ends up being, if you want it to grab potential prospects, it must be clear. Emblazoned in neon. The completely irresistible version of the guy at a traffic light spinning a sign for $5 cheese pizzas.

The Context Card: Never Say No To Screen-Time

As I touched on above, the context card isn't optional. That “optional” is just a silly April Fool's joke Facebook forgot to remove from the Business Manager UI. In reality, context cards are necessary.

They allow you to share more information about your offering with a potential prospect in the seconds before he or she is presented with the opportunity to give you valuable information. Use the context card to:

• Highlight benefits your business provides


• Promote a special offer


• Create a double opt-in (qualify your prospects with another “are you sure” button)

Keep Prospects Informed

Let people know how and when you'll contact them. And be sure to follow up. This isn't really a big one if you're just asking for an email address to get someone into your automated funnel, but if you're advertising a free quote or audit, you must reach out. Failure to do so isn't just a waste of your money: it makes you look unprofessional.

Labor Over Your Copy

Don't just cut and paste the same copy every time you make a new lead campaign, and don't jack text from your landing page. The context card is its own, standalone piece of text with a distinct job.

Sure, you can draw inspiration from content you've got stashed away, but rehashing it completely is a bad idea. Consider the specific audience you're targeting with each lead ad. What information would they appreciate? Now, take that even further. What sort of language and tone would they find most appealing? Take a few stabs at writing something that will resonate and have somebody else look at it.

'Every Prospect Under The Sun Is Completing My Forms, But I Can't Find Their Information!' - Every Person to try Facebook Lead Ads

You've made irresistible ads. People are sending you contact info faster than even your autoresponder can respond. Just one question remains…

 

There are currently three ways to fetch lead information from Facebook:

1. Good 'ol CSV. It ain't pretty, but it works. Simply navigate to your Ad Set tab, find the “Results” column (illustrated below) and click the link that says “Leads(form).” You'll want to check this frequently, as there isn't currently any sort of notification system available to marketers.


2. If you use a CRM that syncs with Facebook (so far: Marketo, Salesforce, Driftrock, Oracle, Maropost, Sailthru), your leads will magically appear there!


3. The third option is above my pay grade, but it's possible to develop a custom connection between your back end and the Facebook API. Ask your developer to explain what that means.

Now you know how to make a Facebook Lead Ad. You know how to make it awesome. You know how to track down prospect info. If you've got questions please feel free to get at me on Twitter or share them in the comments below.

Now get out there and woo future customers already!

Facebook rolls out code to nullify Adblock Plus' workaround

 Adblock Plus launched a workaround to Facebook's ad block bypass today that ham-handedly removes posts from friends and Pages, not just ads, according to a statement provided by Facebook to TechCrunch. “We're disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don't just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages.… Read More

Here's How to Transform Frontline Staff from Conversion Killers to Valuable Assets

Posted by BeTopLocal

Here's a scenario that may be all-too-familiar:

You've worked with your client to improve their SEO and optimize their pages for conversion. You've set up tracking software and done a great job of delivering qualified leads.

Then your client complains they still aren't closing more deals.

What gives?

What if it's not the tech part of the funnel letting you down? What if your problem is of the human variety?

“Hold up!” you're thinking. “Not my problem!”

Digital agencies often don't think of "interfering" with in-house operations (or don't feel empowered to), and it's easy to wipe your hands of the issue once your ad campaigns are in full swing.

But when you've spent thousands of dollars making the phone ring, you can't sit by idly and allow your client to lose customers to busy phone lines or poor onboarding. If you do, you risk losing the client.

Online marketing doesn't end with the "submit" button or a phone call. Frontline staff are CRITICAL to both your ad campaigns and your client's success.

In this post, I'll share the process we followed to make frontline staff an extension of our digital efforts and grow our client's new patient booking rate to 61%.

Step 1: Earn staff buy-in by solving their problems

Buy-in is tricky. You're an outsider trying to introduce change into a company that's been doing things "their way" for years.

You need to overcome this fear and get staff to buy into your new goals and marketing plans. Once they do, they'll be an unstoppable part of your onboarding process.

But how?

First, interview frontline staff, and make it about helping them vs. instructing them.

Advice from an outsider is seldom welcome, so it's your job to get to know the staff by asking them three simple questions:

• What is the most frustrating thing that happens on a call?


• What do you wish people calling in already knew?


• How could we make your life easier?

By showing staff you want to make their lives simpler and asking them for input, you build credibility and rapport with them while making them feel like you're on their team. What's more, you learn about the information customers currently lack when they call in, which is information you can give them on the landing page ahead of time.

Remember, receptionists are the first point of contact that a customer has with many businesses. They're extremely important for shaping how new prospects view the entire company.

Second, consider offering an incentive for staff to close deals more quickly.

This is a tricky one, as booking clients is, technically, the job of frontline staff; but if there's a way to recognize top performers, monetarily or otherwise, this can become another powerful way to get staff in on the deal.

An incentive could be anything from an office lunch on Friday if more than X number of appointments are successfully scheduled in a week or a gift card if scheduling rates increase by a certain percentage to vacations, TVs, etc. for top performers.

A quick example

One of our clients, a small, local clinic in Utah, was enjoying an influx of quality leads after we launched our Facebook, AdWords, and Pandora ad campaigns. However, long wait times resulted in lost prospects.

To remedy this, we sat down with the staff to learn about their pain points and showed them the ads we were running, then asked them what was missing. We wanted them to have a voice in the changes being made and to know how valuable they were in the onboarding process.

Their feedback was surprising.

Our client was also able to offer a $5-10 incentive for every appointment booked. This incentive motivated receptionists to answer calls and emails as soon as they came in, even on weekends, and reduce calls placed on hold or sent to voicemail.

Once you remove all barriers to staff buy-in, your marketing campaign can really take off. In this case, our client was able to book 203 new leads per month on the strength of staff enthusiasm.

Step 2: Use analytics to diagnose weak points in the funnel

Once the staff is onboard, it's time to dig up some granular results that will help them refine their processes and eliminate the obstacles in the way.

That means tracking and recording calls so that you can provide hard-hitting feedback for your client. The key here is to record calls and take the right lessons away from what you learn.

Get a tool to record phone calls

There are dozens of different platforms for call tracking out there, and most are quite affordable (usually $3-5 per line per month plus a small fee per minute). We wound up choosing CallTrackingMetrics to record calls for its affordability and reliability.

Make sure the staff knows they are being recorded, and that you'll use the information learned from the calls to make their lives easier.

Including a standard "this call may be recorded for quality control" message on calls is also good practice so that you don't violate callers' privacy. (This is not necessary in every state; you can see a list of the applicable rules here.)

Get a tool to trace calls back to digital sources

After evaluating several tools, none did what we needed, so we designed a custom WordPress tracking plugin solution (which you can download for free) to help us attribute converting calls to channels.

This also enables you to see with clarity where poor leads are coming from so you can either improve your landing pages and conversion funnel or keep those leads from coming in at all.

These tools gave us the means to analyze the clinic's onboarding techniques and calculate the cost per lead (CPL) and ROI of our advertising channels.

Listen to incoming calls to identify common causes of drop-offs

Listen for…

• Questions you can proactively answer


• Questions staff try to answer, but shouldn't


• Difficult prospects, and what made them difficult

Track these carefully, then take them back to frontline staff to get their insights and opinions. This is not a time to be accusatory, but to talk through ways to combat common problems.

When you have a clear picture of what your reception staff deal with, you can collaborate with them to turn their weaknesses into strengths, whether on your end in content, or on their end in the way they answer or divert client questions (which we'll cover in the next step).

Step 3: Improve your 'time-to-value' ratio

The main goal of your reception staff should be to get customers off the phone and into the office (or to the next step of the funnel).

You can support this goal by using your landing pages to prevent bottlenecks, as well as having strategies in place that help staff book appointments and navigate difficult situations.

A quick example

One of our clients had a problem that's common to most businesses: Patients wanted all of their questions answered over the phone by front-end staff who weren't qualified or equipped to answer them.

That meant more time on-call. More calls on hold. And more potential patients hanging up, tired of waiting.

We addressed this issue by first solving whatever bottlenecks we could with landing page content:

• We made sure our landing pages answered any FAQs we might have missed so that the receptionists wouldn't be answering them so often


• Second, we worked with the front staff to come up with a very specific strategy and goal for each call, and we provided examples that they could draw from. (Note: This was not a script. It's far more important that your staff understand your "closing strategy." In our case, this was walking reception staff through best-practices that would get new patients to make an appointment.)

To tackle this in a practical way, we worked with frontline staff to help them generate a list of guidelines that not only worked but that they believed in.

We guided the process but gave them ownership over the guidelines.

Here's what we included in our strategy:

Empathy: Make a connection with your caller

It takes less than three seconds to make a good impression, but only one bad experience to drive a new caller away. Knowing this, we drew on best-practice advice for business telephone etiquette and collaborated with staff to come up with our main objectives:

• Answer calls promptly and professionally


• Make a good first impression


• Show you care


• Build confidence


• Be courteous and helpful, even when redirecting calls

To do this, we listened to successful calls and noted what made the best frontline staff successful. How did they answer questions? What were their greetings?

You can do the same, then use this information to draft basic scripts for greetings, redirects, and answering common questions.

Authority: Have clear priorities and achievable goals

Medical clinics have a lot in common with other B2C businesses in that most questions can't be answered over the phone. Receptionists often aren't qualified to speak on behalf of the staff members who are experienced in solving the particular problems that callers have.

The best response to most customer questions is, "That's a great question for_________. Let's get an appointment/consultation scheduled so s/he can answer it."

To set up our goals, we took cues from resources like these Receptionist KPIs and combined them with the personal experiences our client brought to the table.

Our reception staff goals were:

• Ask questions and track responses


• Make onboarding painless


• Show empathy and compassion


• Give hope to callers


• Offer accurate information


• Don't answer questions you're not qualified to answer


• Schedule an appointment

Response: Have a strategy for dealing with difficult callers

You lose most of your callers during high stress periods, especially if it makes new callers wait for long periods of time.

When difficult callers tie up your phone lines or you experience an influx of new callers and you have to manage multiple lines, you risk losing new callers that grow frustrated with waiting.

Our strategies for dealing with difficult callers:

• Stay polite and courteous. Say your greeting, offer your name and ask for the caller's name.


• Avoid saying anything that might upset the caller. Offer them reassurances instead.


• Tell the caller that you understand their frustration and want to help them.


• Stay calm. Remaining calm will calm the caller down too.


• Keep your conversation positive and diplomatic


• Show that you're willing to help them resolve the conflict they're experiencing


• Be empathetic. Think like the caller and understand that their problem is important.

Our strategies for managing multiple lines:

• Prioritize calls in the order they come in


• If a second call comes in and you need to put a caller on hold, get permission to do so


• Solve simple problems for the new caller if possible (e.g., a transfer request) to free up the line


• If the second caller also needs your help, ask them to hold while you finish with the first caller


• Don't make callers on hold feel neglected. Check in with them periodically if your first call takes a long time to resolve.


• If possible, have a system in place so that you don't have to place callers on hold at all (e.g., transfer the call to another staff member or an automated attendant)


• Keep a pen and paper handy. Take notes whenever necessary.

Frontline staff are a critical part of the funnel. With the right approach, their work can be optimized.

You might not think it's your prerogative as an agency to train reception staff, but this is an opportunity to bring the principles of online conversions to the offline staff and unify the client's entire team to get better results for everyone.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Facebook is testing video ads during Live broadcasts

 If you watch a lot of Facebook Live broadcasts, get ready to see some ads. The company is now testing short video ads that will play during breaks in Facebook Live broadcasts, they confirmed to Adage. The move shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who follows Facebook and their various video products. Video ads are lucrative for Facebook and a Live product devoid of ads would cause… Read More