Don't Call It a Comeback: Facebook's New Lead Generation Upgrade
You can now reuse your lead generation forms in an Instant Experience. WHAT!?!?!
In the last 3 years that the Lead Generation Objective has been available, savvy Facebook Ad users have flocked to it, generating bonafide leads. How? Because instead of the old-school online marketing method of sending people to a landing page (forcing them to leave the site they wanted to be on, which no one really wants to do) where prospects could type bogus details like, Mickey Mouse at 123-555-5555 (aka nothing), the Lead Generation Facebook Ad objective would instantly auto-populate actual contact information, based on what was already verified in Facebook. This was a God-send for marketers (and as we have seen in the news, criminals too) and less obtrusive for potential clients (no one wants to annoy a prospect in the first second -- yikes!).
Yet, during these last 3 years, whenever I teach a CE class for different associations and realty firms highlighting the Lead Generation Objective, most of the attendees had no clue about this objective still and the few that did had problems locating it (since it was a buried feature in the sight of novice and casual Facebook Ad users). Instead, Facebook promoted, "Boost a Post", which did not directly give us contact information. It is no secret that what most of us in real estate want are phone numbers, email addresses, somethin' other than just contact-less data of who was reached. Boosting a post, left many, especially those without robust landing pages, demotivated to pay Facebook squat, regardless of the success stories.
A new day has dawned.
This month, Facebook has finally made this feature of having a lead capture form that automatically pulls contact data directly from Facebook more prominent as an optional Instant Experience. This means your vital lead form is now available in other ad objectives (like this screenshot of the Traffic objective), that will help everyday Facebook users new to running ads not waste so much money on the wrong type of campaigns.
For example, let's say you have a new listing. You want to drive traffic to that listing's webpage so you go to the Facebook Ads Manager and intuitively choose the "Traffic" objective because it's well... in the name. You would complete everything as normal but now you can select the Instant Experience to reuse your existing Facebook lead capture form to save time. Why? Because again, maybe the people doing the clicking around your ad do not really feel like leaving the Facebook experience -- this way they won't but you still can get their contact details. Score! How often do you see that people have responded to your ads but you never get their real contact information from your actual landing page? It is usually more than we want, that's for sure.
This month, Facebook has finally made this feature of having a lead capture form that automatically pulls contact data directly from Facebook more prominent as an optional Instant Experience. This means your vital lead form is now available in other ad objectives (like this screenshot of the Traffic objective), that will help everyday Facebook users new to running ads not waste so much money on the wrong type of campaigns.
For example, let's say you have a new listing. You want to drive traffic to that listing's webpage so you go to the Facebook Ads Manager and intuitively choose the "Traffic" objective because it's well... in the name. You would complete everything as normal but now you can select the Instant Experience to reuse your existing Facebook lead capture form to save time. Why? Because again, maybe the people doing the clicking around your ad do not really feel like leaving the Facebook experience -- this way they won't but you still can get their contact details. Score! How often do you see that people have responded to your ads but you never get their real contact information from your actual landing page? It is usually more than we want, that's for sure.
Am I saying that every would-be Facebook marketer can now make $5 Million in sales volume overnight simply because the Instant Experience got an upgrade this month? Of course not. I still encourage newbies to Facebook Ads to take classes, watch explainer videos, and even outsource to pros like Grant Wise. But this is a step in the right direction for Facebook and business marketing. Let's see what other advances Facebook makes in the coming months to keep both us and our prospects on its platform.
We have got our eye on you, Facebook!
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