Tag: lead generation

  • Facebook’s Leads Center Provides a Hub for Marketers to Manage Their Leads

    Key Insights

    • Facebook announced Leads Center, a new tool that provides a space for you to organize and maintain information from their prospects.
    • Your lead management process will become more efficient because you no longer have to go outside of Facebook or through a third party to manage or view your leads.
    • Leads Center is in the beta phase, so it is not available to all users.

    Backend screenshot of new Facebook Leads platform

    Soon, you won’t have to save the leads you got from Facebook’s Lead Generation Ads in a spreadsheet on your desktop. Facebook is releasing a new feature called Leads Center. While this new tool is not available to everyone yet, it will provide users with the ability to organize and maintain information from their prospects. This tool will include the ability to:

    • Manage leads by setting reminders to follow up, assigning owners to leads, and adding notes to their contact information
    • Filter leads
    • CreateCustom or Lookalike audiences
    • Email leads from the Leads Center

    Now you may be asking yourself, why does this matter and how does this benefit my business? Facebook’s Lead Generation Ads produce lead forms that fit a specific purpose and provide prospective clients with efficient user experiences. Instead of filling out long, time-consuming forms, the forms are prefilled with the customer’s information. This process makes for a stress-free experience for potential clients and provides businesses with quality leads. In turn, this results in a higher conversion rate.

    Before Leads Center, you had two ways you to access your leads. The first was downloading a spreadsheet from the backend of Facebook. The second was setting up a “zap” through Zapier to get the leads into your own CRM.

    In this post, we’ll take an in-depth look into how Leads Center can benefit your business, some of its key features, and its availability.

    Will Leads Center Be Helpful for Your Business?

    Now to get to the good part—how Leads Center helps your business and make your Facebook lead management more efficient. You will no longer have to go outside of Facebook or through a third party to view or manage your leads. Search Influence has used lead forms for many years now, and this new offering is an excellent way to help business owners to manage their leads.

    Below are examples of a Lead Generation Ad and the form:

    Tulane School of Professional Advancement lead gen facebook post example

    Tulane Facebook conversion form example screenshot

    The Key Features of Facebook’s New Leads Center

    Leads Center has various functions that will simplify managing your leads. Let’s take a look at some of the key features:

    • Custom labels: If the lead is interested in a specific product or service, you can create a label to describe or organize your information.
    • Assigning owners: You can assign owners to specific leads so the right individuals on your team manage them.
      Mark prospects according to their lead stage: You can organize leads by where they are in the funnel to easily manage and process them.
    • Lookalike audiences: You can create lookalike audiences based on the information from your leads to optimize your ads’ audiences and obtain more qualified leads, resulting in higher conversion rates!
    • Create reminders: You can set reminders for each lead to assure none of them slip through the cracks.

    A Closer Look at Lead stages

    Facebook uses four different stages to categorize leads and represent where they are in the funnel:

    • Raw: New leads
    • Interested: Leads that have qualified for the service or product.
    • Contacted: Leads that have been contacted.
    • Converted Leads: Leads that have been converted into customers.

    Organizing these leads by their stage will help you target them more effectively because you’ll know where they are in the sales funnel.

    Facebook Leads Center Availability

    Currently, Leads Center is in the beta phase, so it is not available to all users. Leads Center is open to businesses that have previously run ads with the Lead Generation objective. Leads that are generated in Messenger are not available yet.

    To view the Leads Center, go to your Facebook page. Then, look below “Inbox” in the left-hand tab to see if it is available to you!

    Leads Center link shown on Facebook profile page screenshot

    Facebook’s Lead Generation ads are just one of many ways to generate quality leads that result in a higher conversion rate. Through Facebook’s Leads Center, you can view leads, assign users to them, categorize them, create lookalike audiences, and so much more, all within Facebook.

    Search Influence is dedicated to helping businesses reach their goals. If you’re looking for a reliable way to generate leads and manage them efficiently, Facebook’s Leads Center will be a beneficial tool. Contact us today to see how we can help you!

  • Capture More Potential Applicants With Lead Generation Ads

    Students rely on search engines to research and evaluate the colleges they are interested in attending. As an institution of higher education, you should nurture them from the early stages of research to when they begin applications. The applicant cycle, according to PerfectSearch, can take up to two or more years and should consist of multiple tactics, including targeted emails, paid search, SEO, and social media.

    Lead generation ads are great for capturing potential applicants who are close to converting, as well as those who are earlier in the process. Because of this, they are a great way to capture people who want to move quickly through the application process.

    Lead generation ads can be utilized on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Since Facebook and Instagram are both under Facebook, if you set ads live on Facebook, they’ll also show on Instagram.

    Person setting up Facebook lead generation ads for their business

    What Are Lead Generation Ads?

    Lead generation ads are just that—ads that run on Facebook that are meant to generate leads. According to Facebook, lead generation ads let people show their interest in a product or service by filling out a form in the ad with their details and encouraging a business to follow up with them.

    Once a user clicks on the ad, a form will populate with the pre-filled information from the user’s profile. Meaning, they don’t have to type in their name, phone number, or email address. It’s a simple concept with a great return.

    Facebook’s lead ads can help you meet the following goals:

    • Finding new customers for your business
    • Finding out more about people’s interests
    • Getting people to sign up or register for your service
    • Getting people to enroll in your program
    • Getting people to download a brochure or manual

    Why Should You Use Lead Generation Forms?

    Depending on the type of form, filling in the information can be time-consuming and overwhelming. Collecting data and customer information is the key to success, so the more information you are able to collect, the better. According to data from Facebook, lead generation ads usually have high conversion rates because there are fewer steps in the conversion process. The mobile-friendly forms are created for easy converting.

    Leilani Bruce of Pacific54 states, “according to Adobe’s State of Digital Advertising 2018 report, 50% of Gen Z (18-19 year olds) and 42% of millennials (20-36 year olds) think social media is the most relevant channel for ads.” So the question should be WHY NOT use lead generation forms?

    You can customize the questions and information you collect. So, it would be a great idea to ask which programs or courses the potential applicant is interested in. From there, follow up with additional questions based on that user’s answers, but keep them simple and to the point.

    The forms run in more places than just Facebook’s newsfeed; they can also show up in Instagram feeds, stories, etc. Whether you’re using carousel ads, videos, or static ads, they all support lead generation ads. Using videos is recommended because users engage with videos more often than static ads.

    One great feature of Facebook is its self-learning and optimization, meaning that Facebook will automatically optimize your campaign to show your ads to people who are more likely to fill out the form. This leads to more conversions and highly qualified leads.

    As mentioned before, make sure to reach out to potential applicants in a timely manner, whether you follow up with more information or are just using remarketing to drive applications.

    Group of digital marketers working on Facebook lead generation ads

    Tips on Using Lead Generation Ads

    After capturing data from a pool of potential applicants, you can create a remarketing campaign to continue to target them. This allows you to remarket to someone who might have already interacted with one of your ads.

    Also, potential applicant information can be used to create a lookalike audience. According to Facebook, a lookalike audience is a custom audience that’s used to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your university because they are similar to your existing students. Make it easy for potential applicants to get in touch with you by utilizing a specific call to action (CTA) like click-to-call.

    Another thing Facebook is capable of is connecting with your university’s internal platforms. Facebook can easily integrate with MailChimp, Salesforce, Google Drive, or custom CRMs. Facebook recommends integrating CRM software since it allows you to see your leads in real time, letting you reach out to your leads more quickly. And the sooner you reach out to a potential applicant, the more likely they are to convert.

    If you’re looking for new techniques to drive more students to your university, the team at Search Influence has years of experience helping institutions of higher education increase the quality and size of their applicant pools. To learn more about our services, contact us online.

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