3 simple steps to generating leads with Facebook ads

There are really only a few principles to creating winning ads on Facebook that generate leads — including name, email and phone number — for under $10 a piece.

If you follow these principles, you should be able to start generating leads very quickly.

Do customer research

The only goal of a lead generation ad is to capture the customers’ attention, and offer the “bait.”

What is the bait?

The bait is something that you give for your customer in exchange for their information. The key here is it has to be perceived in your customers’ minds as valuable enough to surrender their contact information.

The only way your customers will take action is if you offer them something that they want enough to give you their information for it.

So that begs the question, what should I offer them? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out through our research.

First, you have to define your ideal customer. Who do you want to attract with your ad?

Once you know who you’re talking to, go out, and find 10-12 people in your target market and ask them one simple question: “What is your biggest problem when it comes to buying (or selling) a house?”

Look for patterns in the answers. You will notice common themes.

Now, take those answers, and use your expertise to create something for them that will solve their biggest problem.

Example: Here’s an ad we ran targeting first-time homebuyers. We did some research and found that a lot of millennials were hesitant to buy a house simply because they didn’t know how to get pre-approved.

Notice how we’re speaking directly to our audience and calling them out?

Also notice how what we’re giving them attracts the right type of person (someone who’s ready to get pre-approved) and helps them take the action we would already want them to take.

Example 2: In this case, homes between $300,000 and $450,000 were selling very fast in his area, and this real estate agent wanted to get in on a piece of the pie.

So the target was families shopping in the $300,000 – $450,000 range in his county who also want a home with a pool.

You can also do this as well for yourself. Find whatever is selling the fastest in your area or even whatever is running out, make a list, and promote your ad locally. This ad, tailored to what’s selling the fastest in your area, works almost every single time.

The goal here is to be extremely clear on the problem we’re solving and give leads something they can digest in under five minutes. It can be a short PDF, video, list of homes, etc.

Test

Now, it’d be awesome if you could go through step one, do the research, create your bait and make an ad that takes off right away, every time, generating hundreds of leads.

The fact is, no matter how good you are, first ad isn’t always going to work right away.

The key is to test, test, test.

We personally structure our campaigns generally running to four different audiences, with four different ads in each audience.

So to start out, we have 16 ads total, running to four different groups of people, and four ads in each group. That way, we have 16 chances to get it right, rather than one.

Some common things that I personally like to test is different ad images/videos, baits and ad text, or ways of positioning the bait and speaking to the audience.

Scale

The last principle is my personal favorite, scaling.

So once we launch the campaigns, let’s say we monitor over the course of three days and just one of the ads gets a couple leads.

The other 15 fail.

Believe it or not, and this point I would be perfectly happy.

The whole goal with Facebook ads is to run the right ad to the right audience who will take action and give you their info.

The most cost-efficient strategy is to test a lot of ads and audiences with very low budgets, find the winner quickly and scale.

Remember, it only takes one winning ad — and that ad is worth a lot of money.

Once you find that ad, you want to pour all your money into it and shut off all the others.

This is the beautiful thing about Facebook ads. Say this ad is getting leads for $5 each. Guess what? You can put in as much money as you want, to get as many leads as you want, and the cost per lead will stay pretty much the same.

So you want 100 leads this month? Great, put in $500 dollars.

In conclusion, Facebook advertising does work if you do.

The most important part of all of this is the customer research and finding the winning ad quickly. You have to know what your market responds to and how to speak to it effectively.

If you follow these three principles of research, testing and scaling supplemented with effective marketing techniques, you will win.

Remember, it only takes one ad.

Landon Bates is a lead gen specialist with Progress Marketing in Salt Lake City. Follow him on Facebook, or connect with him on LinkedIn.