How to Set Up a Facebook Lead Ads Campaign

For any business, lead generation is a key component of success. By attracting potential customers to hand over their personal details, you can build up a list of high-quality leads that are ready to be converted into customers.

Sadly, attempting to generate a lead is far from easy. Consider this scenario. A person is browsing their Facebook feed, and they come across your advertisement offering 20% off all products. They’re interested in both the offer and items for sale, so they click on the ad and are transported to your landing page. The person is then asked to provide some necessary information – such as their full name and email address – before being supplied with that 20% off deal.

Simple enough, right?

While it is from a business viewpoint, you have to step in the shoes of a user and see the situation from their perspective. Firstly, they have to completely abandon their Facebook usage to visit the landing page. Then they have to wait for the page to loan. Then they have to fill in their details. These might only add up to be a minor inconvenience overall, but it’s a big enough one for a user to change their mind and opt against submitting their information.

Now imagine if that inconvenience is eradicated, where a user can remain on Facebook while inputting their data. Well, there’s no need to imagine – it’s very much a reality thanks to Facebook lead ads.

Before running in and starting your lead ads campaign, it’s essential to take a step back to assess the situation. Most importantly, you need to review the questions you plan to include in your form.

Based on the Lead Ads Policies, you cannot create questions that request details on:

• Account numbers (cable account numbers, loyalty card numbers, frequent flyer miles, etc.)
• Criminal history
• Financial information (everything from credit card numbers to yearly income figures)
• Government-issued identifiers (driving license, passport, etc.)
• Health information (information on mental health, physical health, medical treatments, etc.)
• Insurance information
• Political affiliation
• Race or ethnicity
• Religion
• Sexual orientation
• Template questions (avoid creating new questions that are the same/similar to template questions that already exist)
• Trade union membership
• Usernames or passwords

With that said, most of these topics are not outright excluded. You can contact Facebook to request approval to incorporate questions relating to these types of information. If you are authorized to do so, Facebook will provide you with written permission.

To begin with, creating the lead ad, you first need to login to Facebook’s Ad Manager. Once there, click on the “+ Create” button towards the top left of the page.

Note: On the next page, you can press the “Switch to Quick Creation” button. However, this option is only advised for an advertiser who is well-versed in how the ad creation process works on Facebook.

In the “What’s your marketing objective?” section, go to the “Consideration” column. Now select “Lead Generation” as your objective.

In the next section, you are asked to select a Facebook Page to promote with your ad. If you don’t currently have a Page ready, you can click the “Create new Facebook Page” button and go through the steps to make one.

Once you have chosen the right Page, you will be asked to “View Terms”. If you’re happy with everything, click the “I Agree to the Terms and Conditions” button.

To ensure your ad has maximum impact, you can define your audience and focus on a particular market. If you already have a suitable Custom Audience created, simply search for it in the “Custom Audiences” section and select the right one. Otherwise, you can edit the predefined options – locations, age, gender, detailed targeting – to target a specific audience.

Note: unlike other ad campaign types provided by Facebook, you cannot send your lead ads to users who are under the age of 18.

The next step is to set the placements where your lead ads will appear. Facebook recommends sticking with “Automatic placements”, but you can opt-out of specific placements by going the manual route. This is a suitable option if you feel there are any placements which won’t deliver the results you expect.

Decide on a budget and schedule for your lead ad, and then click on the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

On the next page, you can begin to visualize your lead ad by incorporating the media and text you desire. Before that, however, you need to decide how your business will be represented by the ad.

This is done by going to the “Identify” section. Simply select the Facebook Page you chose in the previous step. You also have the option of linking up your Instagram account, a choice which is recommended by Facebook.

Under the “Format” section, select how you want to structure your ad. As this is a Lead Generation ad, you are presented with two options: “Carousel” and “Single image or video.”

Upload your chosen images and/or videos to the “Media” section. Note: you can incorporate different media for each placement. For instance, an image can have the right dimensions for a Facebook Stories placement but be entirely off for the Facebook News Feed.

This is where the “Edit placement” option comes in handy. It allows you to preview how your media will look for each chosen placement. If something’s not quite right, you can crop or change the media.

For the text portion of the ad, fill in the “Primary text” and “Headline” sections. You also need to select the most appropriate call-to-action for your ad. The options for this are:

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

Now it’s time to put together the questions you want to feature on your form. Firstly, go to the “Instant Form” section and select “+ New Form”.

You will be asked to pick your “Form type”. There are two choices available: “More volume” and “Higher intent”.

• More volume is the choice for those who are seeking to create a form which is quick to complete, gaining more leads as a result.
• Higher intent incorporates a review screen, which displays all of the information a user has inputted. The user needs to confirm the information is correct before submission. While this step will naturally result in fewer leads overall, the aim is to secure potential customers who have a strong intent to use your business – hence the name.

You have the option of using an introduction page for your Instant Form. For this, you require:

• A headline
• A suitable image
• Additional text that details your products/services. This is presented either as a paragraph or in a bullet point list.

Now it’s time to flesh out the form with questions. This can be done with either “Custom questions”, “Prefill information”, or a combination of both.

Custom questions will be broken down in more detail in the next step, so now’s the time to focus on Prefill information. These are essentially the questions you can ask that are automatically filled in – assuming a user has included the info on their Facebook profile of course.

There are various different Prefill choices available, and these can be found by clicking on the “Add Category” button. These include:

• Email
• Phone number
• Street address, City, State, Province, Country, Postcode, and Zip code
• First name, Last name, or Full name
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Marital status
• Relationship status
• Military status
• Job title
• Work phone number
• Work email
• Company name
• National ID number (Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador only)

Above the requested information options, you will see an “Enter a message” field. This is so you can let users know how their data is going to be processed. For example, this could be a message like ‘Your information will allow us to send you exclusive discounts and information about our latest products’. For further inspiration, Facebook has provided several examples to follow.

To begin, simply go to the “Custom Questions” section and click “+ Add Custom Question”.

As seen in the image above, you are presented with several options from the drop-down menu. These are:

• Short answer: As the name implies, this is designed for asking a question that requires a simple, one-line answer.
• Multiple Choice: Again, an obvious one based on the name. You can present multiple possible answers to your question, and the user then has to pick one of the given answers.
• Conditional: This option provides multiple conditional answers across a set of questions. These conditional answers change based on the response to a prior question.
• Store Locator: This allows a customer to search for your nearest store. The Facebook locator utilizes the information provided via your Page or business.
• Appointment Scheduling: A customer can request a time and date for an appointment.

Once you have added a custom question, you are free to do so again. Simply press the “+ Add Custom Question” button again and go through the same process as before. Note: a maximum of 15 custom questions is allowed.