Would you like to make it easier for your target market to connect with your offer on Facebook?  Want to reduce your cost per optin?  Facebook’s new Lead Generation ads can help!

In this blog post you’ll find out what you need to know about the new Lead Generation Ads, how to get started, and how to access your leads.  Plus I’ll show you some of my preliminary results from my tests.

What you need to know about Lead Generation Ads

Here’s the goods:

1. Currently you can only access Lead Generation Ads through the Power Editor.
2. Lead Generation Ads only appear on mobile devices.
3. People can sign up for your offer with 2 taps and never leave the Facebook News Feed (easy peasy!)
4. The information you receive from the lead is taken directly from the person’s Facebook profile (name, e-mail, etc.) so you know you have a good e-mail address.
5. You can request additional information from the user (they have to approve the information) such as age, mailing address, marital status, education, and even custom questions.  But as with any form that requests too much information, you may get less optins if you are delving too deep into their privacy.
6. You get a .csv file of the Leads in the Facebook Page that you used in the Ads (see below for how you retrieve that information).
7. As of this writing there is no easy way to automatically add any lead that comes in through Facebook into your e-mail system.  It’s more of a manual process by downloading the .csv file and entering the information into your e-mail system.  Less work for them to optin but more work for you.
8. You must have a website address where you can direct people to your Terms of Service for what they are opting into (a good idea for anyone doing online marketing).  Facebook requires you to add that link before you can create your ad.

How to Create a Facebook Lead Generation Ad – Step-by-Step

First you will need to use the Facebook Power Editor to create the ad.  Download your Ads information into the Power Editor and then follow these steps:

1. 1. Click Create Ad in the upper left corner of the screen (you may have to use the down arrow to access the Create Ad button)
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1. 1. Name your Campaign and select Lead Generation as the Objective.  Also name your Ad Set and Ad in the pop-up box and click Create.
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1. 1. You will be taken to the screen where you can edit the Ad Set for this ad which involves setting the Budget, the Schedule the ad will run, and the target audience.  Also connect your Facebook Page to the ad at this point

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      Notice if you scroll down in the Ad Set area, the placement shows that the ad only runs in the Mobile News Feed.

      

 

1. 1. Now customize the Ad by navigating to the Ads Level of the Power Editor.  You will add the same information as a traditional ad:  Headline, Text, News Feed Link Description, and Call to Action Button as well as the image (still 1200 x 628 pixels with 20% max text).

      
      

 

1. 1. Create your Lead Form.  Once you build one Lead Form, you can use it in multiple ads.  But when you are first starting out, you create it from scratch.  Click the Create New Form in the Lead form area and a popup box appears.

      
      

 

1. 1. Name your form and click Next.  A popup box appears that has you select which information you would like to ask for as well as the ability to select custom questions.

      

 

1. 1. Select the information you would like to request and select Next.  The popup box now requests the privacy policy (not optional) and legal disclaimer (optional but good for contests) links.

      
      

 

1. 1. Add your privacy policy link and click next.  The form allows you to give people the option to visit your website.  The website link is not optional but the person does not have to go to your website afterwards if they don’t want to.

 

1. Enter the website address you want them to go to and select done.

Your Lead form is now created and you can use it again in the future.  At this point your Lead Generation Ad is essentially done.  You can add conversion tracking to this ad but if they are already opting in to the Lead Generation ad, you may not get any addition optins for the people that visit your site but you can always track it.

Facebook will naturally track the Leads you get from this ad so additional conversion tracking is unnecessary.

Your last step of the Power Editor is to click the green Upload Changes button at the top of the Page.  That will get your ad into the review process and your ad will start running as soon as it’s reviewed.

Accessing Your Leads

The Facebook Ads report will show you how many people are opting in to your Lead Generation ad.

But you have to then go to your Facebook Page (that was a part of the Ad) and download your results.  After you have created a Lead Form ad, a new option will appear in your Publishing Tools Area called Forms Library.

Click the Forms Library and then you can download the Leads file.

Once you download the leads, the .csv file gives you the data you requested.

The biggest issue I didn’t like was the manual aspect of this method.  I wanted people to have access to the freebie right away so that meant monitoring this area daily and manually importing the leads.

The other issue with this method is you have to keep track of which contacts you have already imported.  Not ideal.

But the benefit is that the process is easier for the person who is opting in and this can result in less expensive leads.  Plus you get the correct e-mail because they are using it to log in to Facebook.

My initial testing showed that the cost per lead was a little higher than some of the other types of ads I run but definitely lower than other types.  So I’m pleased with the results and will continue to do some testing and optimizing!