Complete Guide On How to Create a Lead Generation Form on Facebook

Facebook has always been a leading ad network for both B2B and B2C companies. With a large database of potential clients to target, this platform remains the top choice for many sales teams when it comes to online ads. 

But… 

Did you know that you can easily create lead generation forms with Facebook? 

Facebook offers a built-in feature to help you capture prospect information without the need for a landing page. You can harness the power of lead generation ads to create customized forms and then promote them to maximize business exposure.

And that’s exactly what we’re going to help you with today.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• How lead generation ads work on Facebook
• Advantages of using Facebook lead generation ads
• Four questions to help you decide if Facebook Ads are the right choice for your company
• How much does it cost to generate leads on Facebook
• A step-by-step guide to creating outstanding Facebook lead gen forms that get you results

Let’s jump right in!

How Do Facebook Lead Generation Ads Work?

Lead generation ads are one of the most popular types of ads on Facebook. They give advertisers the option to capture prospect information with a well-optimized form that works both on desktop and mobile devices.

The social media giant introduced this kind of ad to simplify the process of capturing high-quality leads. You’re now able to fuel your funnel with highly-targeted leads on Facebook within a few simple steps.

How Facebook lead generation ads work is simple:

Target customers will see your advertisement somewhere on the platform depending on your preferable ad placement. After they click on it, they need to fill out and submit a form that asks for some details including their contact information. Once they’re done submitting the form, Facebook will take them to another page that gives them a valuable freebie in return.

4 Advantages To Using Facebook Ads In Your Lead Generation Campaigns

There are a lot of marketing and sales strategies to choose from when you decide to expand your customer base. With social media alone, you can use many platforms to find new prospects and get them to pay attention to your brand.

So that might leave you wondering:

Why should I go with Facebook Ads to find new leads? And what is it that makes lead generation ads the most efficient option for capturing prospect information?

First things first…

Facebook Ads Manager is a beginner-friendly platform that anyone can use to create and manage new ads. Aside from the resources Meta provides on its website, there are unlimited guides, videos, and infographics about the topic to help you get started and get excellent results for your first campaign.

Here are five more reasons to use Facebook for finding and converting new leads for your business:

1. Reach Highly Targeted Prospects

Targeting the right prospects makes all the difference when it comes to online lead generation. Because any advertising platform that doesn’t provide you with targeted leads will be a huge waste of time and money. 

Facebook is the largest social platform with over 2.9 billion users, as of April 2022. 67% of them are active users who log in to the website every day.

Even if they don’t use it for business, most of your target customers are already on Facebook. So this allows you to stay on top of their mind and encourage them to interact with your business by filling out your form

Now, here’s the interesting part:

The targeting options on Facebook are endless — starting with basic demographics and interests all the way to Facebook pixel, which helps you learn more about potential clients and retarget them. All of this is important for you to guarantee that you’re reaching the right prospects with each lead generation ad you launch.

2. Get Higher Conversions

More accurate targeting means higher conversions. That explains why developing a strong ideal client profile (ICP) is one of the best ways to optimize sales campaigns and boost conversions.

Now:

Facebook lead generation ads are an excellent solution for reducing conversion friction. That’s because this type of ad fits pretty well with the user experience — especially for mobile users. Meta has always prioritized customer satisfaction by only serving non-disruptive ads through smarter ad placement.

Another remarkable thing about lead generation ads on Facebook is how simple and easy to fill out the forms are. You can collect any information you want about potential clients without even forcing them to leave the social platform.

To put all of this in simple terms:

By creating captivating offers and promoting them to a targeted audience at the right time, your conversion rates with Facebook lead generation ads will go through the roof.

3. Spend Less Money

Facebook has always been one of the cheapest advertising options online, which explains why it remains the first choice for many businesses. You can start playing around on the platform with a budget as low as 1-10$ per day.

What makes Facebook so budget-friendly are the low cost-per-result (CPR) and cost-per-click (CPC) advertisers have to pay. Unlike other ad networks, you don’t need to sacrifice quantity or quality to keep getting positive results with your lead generation ads.

What’s the secret?

For starters:

You can run tests for your new ads and make adjustments within days of launching each campaign. You don’t have to waste weeks or spend thousands of dollars before you can end a failing campaign.

Also:

With the right ad type, sales offer, scheduling, and audience targeting — you can run a complete lead generation campaign on Facebook and get outstanding results.

As the Meta algorithms begin to understand your target audience and campaign objectives, your ad results are going to improve significantly — which eventually drives down your costs.

4. Save Time While Improving Results

You won’t only be saving money but also time by choosing to generate leads using Facebook Ads.

Getting an ad reviewed and approved usually takes less than 24 hours, according to Facebook. After that, you can expect to reach hundreds of targeted leads within a few hours and attract them to your sales funnel.

Even when your ads are running, it’s never too late to make adjustments or try new things. You can even launch multiple ad sets simultaneously and compare your results based on different variables.

This makes Facebook advertisements one of the quickest solutions for testing and evaluating new business offers. It allows you to validate your good ideas and get immediate feedback on what needs to improve.

Who Should Use Facebook Lead Ads?

Lead ads are an excellent way to capture prospects’ information for both B2C and B2B businesses. They work for companies of all sizes selling products or services in all industries. That’s due to the variety of potential customers that are actively using Facebook — which you can easily target if you choose the right audience.

Should your company use Facebook lead ads?

Here are some questions to help you decide whether lead ads are right for your business:

1) Have you identified your ideal customer profile (ICP)?

Choosing the right audience for your ads can make a huge difference. Even with the largest ad budget in the world, your next campaign is going to fail if you don’t know who you’re targeting. So before you jump you start thinking about lead ads, you need to determine who you’re targeting.

2) Are competitors in your industry also using this type of ads to generate leads?

Having competitors run ads on Facebook to generate leads is a positive sign. This means that you’re not going to be the first one to experiment with this type of ads. Therefore, you won’t have to risk dumping thousands of dollars on a failing sales strategy.  

3) Do you have a high-value lead magnet to promote on Facebook?

The right targeting and ad placement can only get you so far in your lead generation campaign. If you’re looking to get excellent results with your ads, you need a valuable, attention-grabbing offer to increase conversions. 

4) Have you invested big bucks into building a lead generation website?

What makes Facebook lead gen ads so effective is how the prospect isn’t forced to leave the platform. A captivating CTA is all you need to get target buyers to open a form hosted on Facebook and fill it in a few simple steps.  

Unfortunately, if you’ve already invested a lot to launch a lead generation website, you won’t be able to use it here. 

How Much Does a Facebook Lead Generation Campaign Cost?

Since the end goal of your campaign is to generate leads, Facebook is going to calculate your campaign costs in CPL (cost-per-lead). But you may also look at other metrics such as CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost-per-mile) to identify what needs to improve in your campaigns.

Here’s the thing:

The average CPL differs from one industry to another based on many factors. That includes your initial bid, ad placement, lead quality, as well as the cost of products sold within your industry. How effective your ads are may also drive your advertising costs up or down.

Creating a lead gen ad with an attractive offer can drive a lot of engagement and get you high conversion rates. Eventually, those positive results are going to minimize your advertising costs and keep you profitable.

It’s also vital to note that Facebook Ads is a bidding platform where the highest bidder gets the best lead quality. So paying more per lead in comparison to a competitor doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re beating you in the bidding war.

How to Create a Facebook Lead Generation Form In 6 Easy Steps

Lead generation forms have solved most of the challenges salespeople used to face when advertising on Facebook. Not only are these ads super efficient, but they’re also easy to build and publish compared to creating a lead generation website.

Now…

There are a lot of mistakes that you need to avoid when you decide to create Facebook lead gen ads. If this is your first time building lead forms, it’s necessary to have all the knowledge you need under your belt so you can get the results you desire.

In this part, you’ll learn six simple steps for creating the perfect lead gen form and promoting it on Facebook.

Step 1. Set Up an Ad Account

Meta Business Manager is where you get started with creating new promotional campaigns. But to gain access to this tool, you need to create a personal account on Facebook. Once your account is activated, you can use it to get on the Meta Business Suite where you’ll be able to manage future ad campaigns.

To begin with:

You’ll be asked to enter some details about your company, including the name of your business and email address. Be sure to use the correct name of your company here as that might appear in your ad once you roll it out later.

After that, you need to link a Facebook page to Business Manager — which can be your company’s main page on the platform. You may also add any other pages you own on Facebook to make the management process easier for you and your team.

Finally:

It’s time to add an existing ad account to Business Manager or create a new one if needed. In this step, you have to name your ad account and then choose a currency, a time zone, as well as a preferred payment method.

Pay attention to the details you provide here as those cannot be changed later on. What you can do instead is create another ad account from scratch and use it to manage your ads in the future.

Step 2. Create a New Ad Campaign

Facebook Ad Manager is a tool that allows you to create new advertising campaigns, manage how they’re running, and track their progress all in one place.

To get started:

You first have to create a new ad campaign from the “Campaigns” tab. Select “Lead Generation” as an objective, then name your next campaign using a memorable, unique title. For example, you can include the campaign objective, date range, and audience name so you can remember your campaigns and easily access them in the future.

Now:

It’s time to set an advertising budget for your campaign. You basically have two options for doing this — which is to either go with a daily budget or a lifetime budget.

A daily budget tells Facebook algorithms how much they should spend on average every day. This is a good option if you want to avoid unexpected costs and maintain consistent results for a long time.

On the flip side…

A lifetime budget keeps you focused on high-potential opportunities despite the fluctuation of your results. Facebook will spend more during the hours of the day, days of the week, or periods of the month when it sees that your target audience is more active on the platform.

As for bidding:

It’s hard to tell how much you should bid for each lead when you don’t have comparison data. So it’s better to go with automatic bidding until you have enough experience and reports to rely on.

Step 3. Choose Your Schedule

You’ll now set a duration for running your ad from start to finish. You can select a date for launching your new campaign and when it should end, which all depends on your target audience and their preferences.

Here’s the thing:

The default option is to start your ad immediately and stop it once your budget is spent. But it’s hard to decide on how many days your campaign should run for. If you chose to go with a daily budget, make sure to test your ad first with a small budget and keep it running for over three to five days.

For example, instead of spending 250$ on the first day, it’s better to limit your ad spend to 20$ a day for five days. This gives Meta algorithms enough time to understand who you’re targeting and show your ads to relevant audiences.

Step 4. Select Your Audience & Placements

Ad placement and target audience can make or break any lead generation campaign.

The reason they’re so fundamental for your success is the effect they have on who sees your ad and where. This is key to driving down your advertising costs and maximizing ad results throughout all campaigns.

Ad placement refers to the position in which your lead generation ad is going to appear. Meta offers dozens of advertisement spaces both on Facebook and Instagram — including news feed, stories, Facebook right column, Messenger inbox, etc.

There are two ways for placing your ads on Facebook — automatic placement and manual placement.

Although automatic placement might seem like a good option, it can quickly exhaust your budget on irrelevant ad spaces. So it’s always best to pick manual placement and go with “Facebook News Feed” as your first option.

Also:

Your audience targeting possibilities are endless with the wide variety of variables that Meta provides. You can nail down your ideal customers based on demographics, locations, interests, as well as their behavior on the platform.

Want to take Facebook targeting to another level?

Place the Meta pixel code on your website and give the algorithms some time to understand your visitor activity. This will allow Facebook to go beyond standard targeting and offer you lookalike audiences to help you generate better quality leads.

Step 5. Create Your Ad Copy and Lead Form

And now with the final step before launch, which is to set up your ad…

On the right column of the page, you can check out the preview of your offer to see how things change whenever you add a new element to your ad.

You’ve already chosen a Facebook page to use in your advertising campaign. So now you need to pick a format for your lead generation ad. That can either be a single image ad, a video, or a carousel.

You’ll set up your ad by creating all the elements that your target leads are going to see when browsing Facebook. You need to be creative when choosing the visuals, the ad copy, the headline, and the CTA of your ad.

Now look…

You want this campaign to promote an incentive for people to engage with and fill out your form. That can either be an educational piece that improves your potential clients’ lives or something that helps them overcome an important daily challenge.

Also:

Just because people are landing on your lead form, doesn’t mean that you can keep them on it for hours. So you want to make it short and easy to fill by only asking the right, important questions.

And now, it’s time to create your lead form:

Start by crafting a captivating intro and a headline for your form. Prospects engaging with your CTA are already interested in your offer, so you don’t need to write a lengthy paragraph to convince them here.

When it comes to the form questions, you should ask for the usual contact details such as name, email address, location, as well as other multiple choice questions related to your offers.

And you’re a few steps away from launching your ad! You just need to customize your thank you screen, add a direct link to your freebie, and you’re good to go.

Step 6. Publish or Save Your Ad

Congratulations! Your ad has now been published and is under review. It will take less than 24 hours to be approved by Facebook and start getting new leads for your business.

Please note that your Facebook lead generation ad cannot be edited once it’s published. What you can do instead is save new lead forms as a draft when you create them so that you’re able to edit them later. Or, you can create a copy of any live ad, make the changes you want, and launch it again as a new ad under a new name.

How do you access lead information on Facebook?

It’s pretty simple…

All you need to do is go to “Instant Forms” under “All Tools” from the Meta Business Suite. Here you can download all the lead lists you’ve generated in any format you want.

Bottom Line

Generating new leads on Facebook is a sure way to take your sales performance to the next level. Being the most popular social platform today, Facebook presents companies from all industries with the opportunity to find new clients by running highly-targeted ads at a low cost.

To decide whether you should use Facebook lead gen ads in your next campaign, you must consider all the benefits and then ask yourself the four questions shared above to evaluate your readiness. This will help ensure that you’re not wasting any time, money, and growth potential on an advertising strategy that doesn’t solve your needs.

Ready to launch your next ad campaign on Facebook?

You can follow the six steps in this guide to help you create an outstanding lead generation form. Pay close attention to audience selection and ad placement because that’s what usually affects your conversion rates the most.