Facebook Lead Ads had been in private beta for a while and have now been officially launched. Some companies such as Land Rover who were part of the testing phase saw lead ads outperform their landing pages and even though leads needed to be downloaded manually prior to the official launch of lead ads, it was one of the most anticipated features.

Lead Ads allow businesses to provides forms so potential customers can sign up and receive information such as quotes, newsletters, and offers. Facebook also pointed out in their public announcement that it is a privacy-safe way for businesses to collect leads.

How Facebook Lead Ads Work

Lead Ads Preview

When clicking on the lead ad, a form opens. Fields are determined by the advertisers. Based on the information potential customers share with Facebook, fields like name and email address are automatically populated. Similar to Amazon’s 1-click checkout, Facebook has made lead ads a two tab system and dramatically reduced the sales funnel for businesses that want to generate leads. Lead ads have only two steps in their lead generation process, one to click on the ad and one to submit the automatically filled in information.

Advertisers can customize form fields and use contact fields, open-ended questions, and multiple choice questions. Companies with pre-approved legal language can include a customizable disclaimer.

Lead Ads currently integrate with six CRM solutions:

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

Facebook is planning to add more solutions in the upcoming months.

Alternatively, companies can integrate their CRM with the Facebook API or stick to manually downloading the leads into a CSV file which is what was available to selected advertisers during the private beta phase.

Lead Ads and Conversions

Advertisers can set lead ads to be shown to potential customers who are more likely to submit their information. Additionally, businesses can measure the cost-per-conversion of lead ads.

Note: If you are using the Power Editor to set up Lead Ads and do not see “Lead Ads” as an objective, you have to reset the Power Editor to make this feature available: On the top-right corner of the Power Editor, click the dropdown next to “Help” and select “Reset Power Editor.”

Lead Ads Reset Power Editor

How to Create a Lead Ads Campaign

Go to the Power Editor and add a new campaign:

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Select “Objectives”:

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Once you clicked on “Objectives”, click on “choose from” and select “Lead Generation”. As soon as this is selected, click on the “Add” button that appears:

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If you are familiar with the Power Editor, you can go ahead and scroll to the bottom of the article to see what else Facebook is launching to improve Lead Ads.

If you are not that familiar with the Power Editor or simply want to get a sneak peek of how to set up Lead Ads, here is a brief tutorial:

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Choose “Lead Generation” as objective:

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You will now see the following screen:

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You are currently on the ad level and in order to add a page, you have to switch to the ad set level. On the left of the screen you will see the account tree. Select the ad set level as shown on the screen shot below and then choose your page if you are managing several pages:

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Once you have chosen the page, agree to the terms & conditions pop-up. Scroll down to check the rest of the ad set settings and go back to the ad level. On the ad level, scroll down to set up the fields of the form:

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Facebook will ask you to name the form for future reference. Once that’s done, click on “more options” to see all available fields:
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Once you have selected all your fields, you will need to provide a link to your privacy policy:

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Click on Next and add the link of your thank you page:

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Here is a preview of what the template of the form looks like:

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Future Upgrades for Lead Ads

Lead Ads are currently only available for mobile devices but Facebook is working on making them available for desktop. Additionally, the social giant is planning to launch them in other formats including carousel and video ads