Guide to lead generation on social.

Get the most out of your targeting efforts.

Lead generation, when done properly, is an effective way to generate potential customers that will likely convert into sales. But what exactly is it? Simply put, it’s the process of building interest in a business’s products or services. Leads can be collected through various mediums, including digitally via social media platforms — namely, Facebook.

Through Facebook advertising, you can create campaigns that allow users to fill out a form with their contact information. These forms also let you include custom questions to help you understand potential customers and reach business goals.

Unlock retargeting’s benefits

When our team was tasked with generating qualified leads to supply our client’s sales team, we knew a tiered approach was needed to filter out those less likely to convert. In building out our strategy, we leaned on learnings from previous campaigns, which demonstrated success through retargeting efforts or serving ads to those who had previously engaged with content. Retargeting lets us focus our efforts on audiences who already know us and are more likely to convert.

This strategy was built out in two phases: awareness and consideration. The purpose of the awareness phase was to build a pool of engaged users through educational product ads. For example, those who engaged with the ads were eligible for the consideration phase. In this second phase, targeting was refined to include engagers only. That is, the lead generation forms were only served to those who already saw and engaged with the educational product ads. This enabled us to filter out low-intent customers to build a list of qualified leads.

Build connections with leads

Through this campaign, we generated 38 leads that were supplied to the sales team. The list was actionable, as the sales team was able to directly reach out and build a relationship with those who submitted a form.

Lead generation on Facebook can be successful with a retargeting approach that works in phases to generate potential customers who are likely to convert.

Tip 1: Use video creative for your first phase. Facebook can build audience lists based on users who watched a percentage of your video, offering an easy, automated way to retarget potentially interested users.

Tip 2: Create look-alikes of the video retargeting lists to expand your consideration audience. Look-alike audiences are a Facebook segmentation tool that finds users whose demographics and interests are similar to a selected audience. These are easy to create and implement, making them an extremely powerful tool for finding high-converting users.