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As a Digital Marketing Executive, that has seen almost every type of digital and social media ad possible, I have to say that I am super excited about the new Facebook Lead Ads. The usability and usage of these ads for both nonprofits and consumer related organizations is endless. The Facebook Lead Ad may even rival Dynamic Ads when it comes to collecting data points from people that care about your organization or cause.

So, what can Facebook Lead Ads do for your business or nonprofit organization?

Let’s start with the basics. 

What are Facebook Lead Ads

Lead Ads gives people a quick and privacy-safe way to sign up to receive information from businesses, like newsletters, quotes, petitions, offers and donations. Facebook is making it easier for businesses and nonprofits to gather pertinent information about someone that is interested in what they have to say.

A lead ad looks like any other link ad with a CTA button on the surface. But when you click the link or CTA button (“Apply Now,” “Get Quote,” “Download,” “Learn More,” “Sign Up” or “Subscribe”), the user is immediately shown a form within Facebook.

How do Facebook Lead Ads Work?

When someone clicks on your lead ad, a form opens with the person’s contact information automatically populated, based on the information they share with Facebook, like their name and email address. Automatically populating the contact information that people share with Facebook makes filling in the form as fast as two taps: one click on the ad to open the form and another to submit the autofilled form. Like all of Facebook’s ad types, lead ads were built with privacy in mind. People can edit their contact information before submitting the form, and this information isn’t sent to the business or organization until a person clicks “submit.”

Facebook has been tweaking the user experience of setting up the lead ads by allowing businesses or nonprofit organizations to customize lead ad forms with open-ended questions or multiple choice questions, so they receive the information that matters most to their cause. Each lead ad form offers both standardized and customizable fields. Advertisers can also include a customizable disclaimer, so companies with pre-approved legal language can easily add their approved disclaimer to lead ads. This makes marketing your nonprofit that much easier.

Why Should You Use Facebook Lead Ads?

Lead ads pull from data that Facebook has already collected. As a marketer, I’m sure you’ve had the issue of gathering ENOUGH information. Instead of serving an individual with a long form that needs to be filled out, Facebook fills out the boxes for them -- because they’ve already given that information to them on their profile.

Lead ads help you capture leads without needing to build landing pages or forms. It can be expensive and time consuming process. Traditionally, the steps to make landing pages are long and tedious. You’d have to:

• Create the “want”. Whether it is a whitepaper, petition, donation appeal, newsletter offer to “trade” people for their email. Most of the time a simple email address just doesn’t cut it.
• Create the form to capture the lead. This could be done by code, or via embedding from your CRM or email system.
• Create a landing page for the form to live on.
• Create and dispense ads by sending your targeted audience to your landing page and crossing your fingers that everything is lined up, making sure you are using landing page and form best practices and have created a user experience that is easy and acquires the most information possible, depending on your end goal.

Facebook lead ads gives your audience one less step to go through. Here’s the truth and we’ve all seen it, time and time again. Buyers tend to be impatient and distrustful. They’re difficult to convince that the offer or information you want to gather is something that they want to give up. If they have to think too much about giving the information the likelihood that you will receive everything that is required diminishes greatly. Giving your audience the path of least resistance is your best bet and Facebook has created a frictionless environment to maximize conversions.

Facebook lead ads don’t take people away from Facebook. This allows them to continue their Facebook experience uninterrupted. There are 1.15 billion mobile daily active users (Mobile DAU) for December 2016, an increase of 23% year-over-year.  (Source: Facebook as of 2/01/17)  This is hugely significant and shows the dramatic growth of mobile traffic on Facebook. Those users account for 90% of people that are on Facebook.

It’s undeniable that if your website is not mobile-optimized, you’re not providing an optimal user experience for a large portion of your visitors.  You’re missing out on sales and conversions.

Just having your site fit nicely on a mobile device is not enough. If you simply squeeze the desktop experience onto the small screen, you’re not optimizing the user experience and missing out on conversions. Facebook Lead Ads eliminates the need for this.

How Can Facebook Lead Ads work for my organization or business?

Of course, there are other ways to gather leads through Facebook and Online Display Advertising, but there are none quite as simple as a Lead Ad. Stick to best practices, always A/B test your ads, and you’ll be on your way to a robust subscriber list, or you can let RMI Direct Marketing create these ads for you and your organization.

Contact Jennifer Tomascak, Digital Marketing Executive and in-house Facebook Ad expert, jtomascak@rmidirect.com to set up a 10 minute conversation about your goals.

GET MORE OUT OF YOUR LEADS TODAY!