What are Facebook Lead Form Ads?

What is a Facebook Lead Form Ad? This is a really common question that we get asked at My Marketing Consultant, especially when we are consulting with service based businesses who rely on lead generation as a primary source of customer acquisition.

Lead Forms are exactly as the name suggests, a way of capturing an potential leads details within Facebook,

Why is this important? Well, the main reason a lead form ad is important, and should be incorporated into your Facebook marketing plan, is that they keep the user onsite. Keeping users on Facebook is a big A+ in Facebooks eyes, they WANT users to remain on Facebook, not to leave in order to submit their data elsewhere on an existing landing page such as Click Funnels.

Does this mean that Facebook prioritises lead forms over other lead capture measures? Well, no. There isn’t any evidence that suggest that advertisers will be penalised for using a landing page over a lead form. However, lead forms do have some big advantages when compared to landing pages, such as.

• Easy Setup: Lead forms take under 2 minutes to setup, making them very easy to create when you need to capture a someones details. Landing pages on the other hand may take hours to setup, optimise and test.

• Simple To Change: If you have ever setup a landing page, you will know that they can take days to edit and optimise. Where as a lead form can take just a few moments. Say for example you decided that instead of a leads first name, you now want their last name, with a lead ad you can add this requirement into your form in under 30 seconds and be back up and running.

• Less Friction: When we say friction, it relates to the ease of signup that a lead must go through. With Facebook lead ads, the ease of signup is greatly increased compared to a landing page.

• Speed: Because the lead is kept on Facebook, more often than not their information is pre-filled into the lead form instantly, so all that is left to do is click the submit button!

Now I know what you’re thinking, ease of setup, reduced friction and speed? Are they really the only benefits of lead forms over other lead capture methods? And the answer is no, of course not. However these three aspects are huge determining factors when it comes to capturing a leads information.

Essentially it boils down to this, the less effort and time it takes a lead to submit a form, the more likely they are to actually submit the form.

But now that we know the benefits of Facebook Lead Forms, are there any disadvantages to them? The answer to this question is yes, lead forms 100% have disadvantages. And it will be up to you as a business owner to determine whether a lead form is the best choice for your business. Some of the main disadvantages are listed below:

• Strict Information Rules: Over the years Facebook has been tightening up on user privacy. And in years past, advertisers were able to ask leads just about any question they wanted such as finding out their income. However that is now a thing of the past, and generating sensitive information from leads is no longer allowed. What this means is, if for example you need sensitive information from your leads such as their personal income, then perhaps sending them to a landing page is a better option. This way you can ask any question you need without Facebook disapproving your ads.

• Low Quality: This one is certainly up for debate, but many advertisers believed that because Facebook Lead Ads are so easy to fill out, the actual lead has less intent and is therefor lower quality than a lead who fills out a form on a landing page.

• Connection Needed For CRM: A golden rule of lead generation is that the form needs to be attached to some form of CRM email sequence to welcome new leads. This is easily done when a lead fills out a form on your website, but Facebook Lead Ads are a different story. Facebook doesn’t automatically send you the leads information when they complete a form, instead you need to pay for an external connector such as Zapier to connect the lead form to your email CRM. This is very easy to do, but it does cost money to have a Zapier account which might be an issue for lower budget advertisers.

• Notifications: For me, this is probably the biggest issue for lead forms. They currently don’t have any form of notification system. What this means is you could set up a lead ad on Monday and let it run all week collecting leads, but you wouldn’t actually know that you had generated leads unless you went back into the Facebook Ads Manager to check. This can be a big issue, as it’s crucial to contact leads asap after they have submitted an enquiry.

As you can see, there are numerous pro’s and con’s to using Facebook Lead Forms. While they do present a quick and easy way to generate new leads, it is possible that the leads may have lesser intent to actually follow through on what it was you were advertising.

Our recommendation is to critically analyse both a) the information you need from a lead, and b) the information you need to provide to a lead to get them to convert. And use that to determine whether you choose to run lead ads, or send the leads off site.

For example, Jerry the Financial Advisor has a relatively high ticket service that he wants to promote. And for him to do his job properly, it’s important he has all of your information correct. This will likely include your income, partners income, loans owing, and general financial status. In addition to this, Jerry knows that with his services, he can help you earn more money through numerous investments, and that on average his clientele experience a growth of 8-10% P.A on their investments.

For Jerry, his lead requirements and claims are a red-flag for Facebook. And it’s likely that Jerry will want to provide as much information as possible to his leads before they sign up. For Jerry, we would recommend sending his traffic to a landing page where he can have full control over not only the questions he asks, but also the information he provides.

Another example is Karen, she wants to promote an offer to receive a half price massage at her massage parlour. Karen doesn’t need much information from her leads, only the name and phone number so she can give them a call to book in. For Karen, Lead Ads make a perfect choice as they are easy to setup and can provide her with a quick solution to acquiring her customers information.