2 quick tips for getting new leads from Facebook

Have you been trying Facebook Ads with mixed results?

We’re fans of using Facebook ads to acquire qualified new leads. Especially if you have a limited ad budget.

But how?

We’re developing a coaching course on building a systematic lead funnel, until it’s available, I wanted to share a few tips that might improve your campaign right away.

How big of an audience should I target?

Facebook ads are powerful because of the targeting options it gives to marketers. I always get asked if size matters and it does… for Facebook ads anyway.

Every campaign is different, but we generally recommend that you use your targeting tool, either Facebook Ad Manager, or Power Editor, to narrow your target audience to no more than 250,000 – 500,000 for a national campaign. If you’re a geographically local or regional nonprofit, that number is going to be much smaller. If you’re targeting a highly select group, say dentists, or architects, or your website visitors using the Website Custom Audience feature, the number will be smaller still, yet very powerful, if you have the right messaging to your target audience.

We also find that targeting based on interests, including similar page likes, versus basic demographics drive higher quality leads.

Capturing the email address

If you really want to grow your email list using Facebook, we coach you to avoid measuring a campaigns success by likes or fan growth. The real metric that matters is how many of your FB ad clicks are turning into donors, and how fast is it taking?

The single best way to focus on “monetizing” your ad traffic, is to figure out which webpage is your best conversion page. Which page on your website generates the most email captures or donations for you? Is it a petition, a blog post, a “how to” guide download, etc? Figure this out, customize that page for your ad traffic, and send your advertising traffic there first. We often find that an embedded email capture right in a Facebook application performs the best. People new to your organization are more likely to share an email address inside of Facebook rather than jumping outside of Facebook. There are a ton of easy to install tools to help you configure an email capture application.

If you don’t have a really compelling landing page or high performing Facebook application page, then stop everything to create one for your lead funnel first. Otherwise, you’re just wasting ad money by tracking click-throughs (CTR). Offer your “lead” something of value for sharing their email address with you.