It’s been a big quarter for new releases in Facebook Ads. First, the platform opened up Instagram as a new advertising placement. Now, they just announced that their highly anticipated Lead Ads are available for all advertisers.

Below, I’ll explain why this exciting new release could have a big impact on your advertising strategy.

What Are Lead Ads?

Lead Ads are a new type of ad unit displayed on mobile devices only within the News Feed. Facebook users can enter in voluntary
information right within the ad unit, opposed to clicking through to a web page to take an action.

For users, it provides an easy way to opt-in to take advantage of an offering. Facebook will auto-fill many of relevant fields using elements from your profile.

Why Are They Important?

Advertisers who have utilized Twitter Ads Lead Gen Cards understand the impact capturing leads right within an ad unit can have on campaign performance. Directing mobile users to a landing page, outside of the website or app they were visiting, can lead to high bounce rates. Allowing users to take advantage of an offering, while staying within their stream provides for a much more fluid experience – leading to increased conversion rates.

With Twitter Lead Gen Cards, internal tests generated leads at costs as low as ⅓ of website conversion objective campaigns. Initial tests on Facebook have shown similar promising results of lower cost per lead than a website conversion campaign.

Creating a Lead Generation Campaign

Today, Lead Generation objective campaigns can only be created in Power Editor or through an API partner. Let’s explore creation in Power Editor.

First, log into Business Manager, select your ad account, and launch Power Editor.

Next, create a new campaign. Pull down the objective tab to reveal Lead Generation.

Note: If Power Editor doesn’t reveal Lead Generation as a possible objective type, you likely will need to simply refresh the page.

Once selected, start creating a new ad set: associating a page, setting a budget, and refining your audience targeting.

Pro-tip: Create a custom audience by uploading a list of current leads and customers from your database who have already signed up for your offer. Exclude this custom audience from seeing your Lead Ad.

As mentioned earlier, Lead Ads are only eligible for mobile News Feed placements.

Scroll down to the Optimization and Pricing section, and select your ideal criteria.

Likely, "optimize for leads" is your best choice to align with your objectives of generating leads cost efficiently. As for pricing, I typically like Facebook to initially set my bids, and I’ll manually scale up or down based on CTR.

Finally, set your delivery. Standard delivery allows for smooth pacing and the best distribution across the entire day. Accelerated is ideal for short duration campaigns, such as a flash or labor day sale.

Lead Ad Creative

Elements:

• Text (Body)
• Image
  • 1200 x 628 pixels
• Headline
• News Feed link description
  • Caution: Unlike typical News Feed creation, Power Editor will not reveal a caution message should your link text be possibly truncated due to length. Be sure to check the ad preview section to ensure the description length fits.

• Call-to-action button
  • Apply Now
  • Download
  • Get Quote
  • Learn More
  • Sign Up
  • Subscribe

Creating Your Lead Form

While the creative format is very similar to a typical mobile News Feed ad, there is one strong area of differentiation - the form capture experience.

Facebook provides an incredible amount of customization when creating your form.

Within the Lead Form section, click on the “Create New Form” button to get started.

Step #1: Name your form

It’s likely you may test many different forms for different initiatives or to tweak the form field length. Adopt a form name nomenclature that will help you easily parse through different forms in the future.

Step 2: Select your lead form fields

Optional: Add up to 3 custom or existing preset questions.

For custom questions, you have the option to have the user pick from a list of possible answers or have the field completely open.

Things to note: Remember that you are advertising to user on mobile. As more fields are added, your conversion rates will likely dip. Facebook breaks questions into sets of two, called Sequences . Add any ‘must have’ fields to qualify the lead, while leaving out ‘nice to have’ fields.

Once your fields and possible questions are selected, click the next button, and add a link to your privacy policy.

Then, add a tracking destination URL link.

Finally, preview the form experience in the preview section before saving.

The very last step of ad creation is to assign an associated conversion code to track click through performance after a form is filled out.

Collecting the Leads

Once your campaign is live, and form fills start to trickle in, you’ll want to pull your list of leads to add them to your CRM, Email, or Marketing Automation system.

Note: You need admin access to the associated company page to download the leads.

Steps:

Log into Business Manager and find your associated Facebook page. Click on the “Use Page” button.

Once logged into the Business Page, click on the “Publishing Tools” button on the top header tab.

Then, navigate to Forms Library, find your list and download the .csv of your leads.

Integrations

Opposed to manually batching your leads, Facebook provides direct integration with Leads Ads with select partner tools:

• Driftrock
• Marketo
• Maropost
• Oracle Marketing Cloud
• Sailthru
• Salesforce

Since these integrations are relatively new, documentation is sparse. Reach out to your associated sales rep or account manager for more information.

Wrap Up

Lead Ads offer a streamlined way to capture leads on mobile devices. It’s a win-win situation: the user receives a better experience without having to leave the Facebook app while you receive higher conversion rates with automatically populated fields. Have you tested the new ad unit? We’d love to hear about your findings in the comments!