3 Hot Tips on Using Facebook and Instagram Lead Ads to Grow Your Business

Want to know where all your potential customers are hiding? That’s easy. Look no further than Facebook and Instagram. Combined, they have billions of highly-engaged, active members. Enticing just one percent of those billions to be your clients or customers could transform your balance sheets from red to deepest black.

Now, the bad news. You aren’t alone. That message you work so hard to create competes for space with posts from big corporations and from businesses like yours. But Facebook and Instagram both want to make things as easy as possible for you. Why? Because if it works, you’ll keep paying for ad space.

One way Facebook assists businesses is “Lead Ads,” which let users click on an ad and sign up for an offer without leaving the social media site. Businesses use Lead Ads to collect contact information, which they can then use to generate a contact list for their email campaigns (even downloading it to such emailing tools as MailChimp and Salesforce). Many businesses use Lead Ads to gather prospects, enabling skilled sales professionals to follow up and close the deal.

If you’re going to use Lead Ads to reach Facebook or Instagram members, do it right.

1. Create an Offer

Not to put extra pressure on you, but if you want your ads to get clicks, they need to be good. Put yourself in potential customers’ shoes. What would make you click on an ad? Maybe it’s a special offer or timely information like how to manage stress during the holidays. Once you have that idea, add an an eye-catching image to attract more clicks.

2. Customize the Form

The best feature of Lead Ads is that it auto-populates the form with the information Facebook or Instagram has on the customer. This will include basic contact information, but you can also add basic questions for customers to answer. This helps you gather data on each customer’s interest level in your products or services. It also provides information that empowers your sales team to convert prospects into paying customers.

3. Follow-Up!

The form kicks off the real game. Knowledge is power only if you do something powerful with it. Your team needs to put its talents to use in following up on all the data you’re collecting. If you’re building an email subscription list using your form, create a killer newsletter jam-packed with useful information. If your sales team plans to work those leads (and they better!), they need to pick up the phone and start scheduling appointments.
Whatever route you decide, act quickly. Two-thirds of businesses fail to follow up on internet leads, which means that they miss out on great opportunities. Customers may see your ad once and express an interest, but the more exposure they have to your brand, the more likely they are to take action. Follow up on each new lead, and you increase the odds of interested customers buying from you.

Social media ads supercharge your marketing efforts, adding customers and multiplying earnings. But only if you have a plan in place beforehand. Facebook ads open doors. But they slam shut quickly. Be ready to march through them and close that sale.