5 Great Ways to Capture More Leads from Your Facebook Presence in 2021

As a marketer navigating today's digitally focused environment, there are few things more exciting than watching the leads pour into your sales funnel. And if you are, like most marketers, always on the hunt for new ways to maximize results while investing less time and money, you are likely running several experiments on Facebook for generating those leads.

With more than 2.7 billion active monthly users, it's no surprise that marketers from all sectors flock to Facebook to attract just a small percentage of this massive user base.

Unfortunately, not every marketer is reaping the benefits of Facebook's behemoth platform. But the truth is that most Facebook lead generation "hacks" and tactics are not all that fancy and secret. Growth marketers often do their best to make them sound ethereal and narrowly used, but any business owner can implement them. It just takes knowing which ones are right for your business and staying consistent with implementation and testing.

So if you could use some help maintaining a flow of Facebook prospects into your funnel, read on, and I’ll detail five tactics that are not hard to implement but will help you quickly generate a higher volume of more qualified leads.

1. Capture More Leads With a Strong CTA

To start off, I thought I’d call your attention to a simple, yet highly effective tactic that can increase leads pretty much instantaneously.

You may have noticed this prominent button at the top of your Facebook Page:

As a default, users can contact you via Messenger, which is a powerful lead capture entry point unto itself. But, Facebook allows you to change this message and add a custom call-to-action button so users can do everything from contact you to sign up for your upcoming webinar.

If you’re marketing a services company, you’d do well to add a “Book Now” button to your Facebook Page. If you are selling a physical product, add a “Shop Now” button that links to your website.

Here are the call-to-action button options Facebook offers for the in-header unit on company pages:

2. Grow Your Facebook Presence With Easy-to-Create Video Clips

So you’ve been around the social media water cooler for a while. In that case, you likely know that the Facebook algorithm favors video content, and posting a consistent flow of video clips is a fantastic way to maximize organic reach.

I can hear you saying, “I don’t have the budget or the skills to create that many videos.” We get it. The good news is that we aren’t talking about creating longer educational or lifestyle videos. Those are effective, but they are also harder and more time-consuming to develop. We are talking about fun clips, just a few seconds long, showcasing people using your product.

You don’t need technical skills or a high-powered camera to create these types of videos. All you need is your smartphone, the right lighting, and a model (ask a friend). Follow these tips to maximize results.

Shoot the product in several environments where it would live. For example, if you sell an insulated coffee cup, shoot images of a person on the go with the mug to show that the liquid stays hot for long periods. Shoot a person by the computer with the mug, a place where people typically drink hot beverages. Shoot a moving still of the mug in a kitchen set as the backdrop, and show off some differentiating product details.

Natural lighting. If possible, shoot the subject in natural light and avoid shooting in the light’s direct line to prevent shadows. Shoot off to the side of the direct line of light.

Don’t forget to add a call to action to your videos, ideally in the video and in the Facebook post’s content.

A great way to keep this strategy scalable is to use video creation software where you can upload images and video footage and create engaging videos in a few minutes. For example, with Lightricks’s Boosted app, you can create branded short videos for any industry, whether you’re B2B or B2C. These tools offer templates, so all you have to do is upload your images and logo and set them to fire.

3. Enjoy Higher Conversions With Facebook Video Retargeting

Whether you use a software tool like Boosted or you get into the flow of creating product videos in one take, now you can use them for several purposes to maximize your impact. Besides growing your Facebook presence to generate more leads, use videos for retargeting the people who viewed them.

When is this useful? Consider this scenario. You are developing a product that isn’t yet ready for launch. You create a product video for your pre-launch campaign and want to maximize its impact. Create a custom audience that captures people who watched through your video.

Retarget them with your ads once you launch. Your conversions will be much higher than if you advertised to cold leads.

But wait, there’s more… You can also use this video as promotional material in a contest to generate buzz for your upcoming product. Also, create lookalike audiences from your video views and experiment with advertising to them.

4. The Right Way to Run a Contest to Generate Leads

You know how you jump at the opportunity to snag that six-pack your neighbor is giving away because they bought the wrong brand? We love free stuff, and so do your customers.

Incentives can come in the form of free goods, discounts, or anything your audience will value enough to return the favor and opt in as a lead. Contests are a great way to offer something for free in exchange for acquiring leads.

Besides generating leads, the other nice thing about contests is they can help you:

• Build your audience
• Increase brand awareness
• Build up anticipation for product launches
• Drive traffic to your website
• Learn more about your audience

So running contests is nothing new, and we aren’t introducing some super secret hack here. But, what you may not know is that simply giving away a random prize sets you up for failure.

Before you launch, make sure you follow these guidelines:

The incentive - Most brands give away free products/services or something related to their brand, which is a good idea because it will likely draw future customers. If you give away something random like a free Hawaii vacation, you will generate many leads, but they won’t convert for you in the future – unless you’re a travel agent.

The prize - Think about your best sellers. Then, choose the product with the most visual potential, one you can make videos about, which will be aesthetically pleasing and grab attention. This will boost shares.

Use the contest to get more information - Ask people to either create an account on your website or fill out a form where you ask them for some information that helps you get to know your audience better (see next section for how to further engage leads who fill out your form).

The ecommerce shoe brand Freebird ran a contest giving away free boots to entrants who like them on Facebook, follow them on Instagram and Twitter, and create a free account on their website. This gets people to the website (which is ideal for capturing their behavior via the Facebook pixel) and captures their email addresses.

Lastly, don’t target everyone with your contest. Target only the consumer segment who would be interested in purchasing your prize. Otherwise, you will waste money advertising to people who may enter your contest but never become customers.

Pro tip: Segment your contest leads, so they are separate from your other leads. The reason is that some people will just join contests to get the prize and may not be interested in your brand, no matter how precisely you target them. Keeping these leads separate will help you stay organized as you follow up with email campaigns.

5. Simple Tweaks to Supercharge Your Facebook Lead Ads

In the previous section of this article, I briefly discussed using forms as contest entries to generate leads. Another tactic to consider, whether you’re running a contest or using any other lead magnet, is Facebook Lead ads with Instant Forms to capture these leads within Facebook. With these ads, people can fill out a form directly on Facebook, without the extra friction involved with prompting them to leave the platform. It’s less interruptive for the audience, and you don’t have to create or optimize any landing pages.

Here are some offers to use Facebook lead ads to capture names and email addresses:

• Newsletter signups
• Contest entries
• Discount codes
• Digital download freebies
• Previews for new product launches
• Pre-sales for high-ticket items

But, what if you could further engage with leads who fill out your Instant Form instead of them immediately scrolling away to the next item in their feed?

With Facebook’s Completion feature, you can engage with leads on the Thank You panel after filling out your form. Don’t overlook this option. Add a call to action to visit your website, download a coupon, or urge leads to contact you.

Another way to supercharge your Lead Ads is to leverage lookalike audiences. I’m not referring to targeting lookalikes of your leads, signups, or people who visited a specific page on your website, mind you. Although these audience types can be effective, the issue with this strategy is that since the leads haven’t converted as customers yet, you have no reason to assume that their lookalikes will buy what you are selling.

A better tactic is to create a seed audience of your past customers who had especially high order sizes or lifetime value. Then, build a lookalike audience based on these existing customers and target them with your Lead Ads. These people are more likely to opt in as leads and ultimately buy, because they more closely resemble your high-value consumers’ psychographics.

Generate More Leads From Facebook

Let’s briefly recap what we discussed in this article. Here are five ways to get more leads from Facebook:

1. Customize the call-to-action button on your Facebook Page.
2. Create short video clips to get more exposure
3. Retarget the people who view your Facebook videos
4. Run contests the right way by being strategic about the prize and targeting the right audience.
5. Leverage the Completion feature for your Lead Ads and test using customer lookalike audiences.

Some of these tactics take longer than others to implement, but sometimes it’s the small changes that get the biggest results. Regardless, it still takes consistency to make them successful. Try these tips, test, rinse, repeat, and watch the leads come flying in.