Generate Leads on Facebook: The Ultimate Two-Step Strategy

• Last updated September 2, 2019
• lead generation

When looking to generate leads on Facebook through advertising, a lot of businesses take the wrong approach. They then complain about the expense and poor results they experienced.

The good news is that there’s a cheaper, far more effective way.

But first, what are businesses doing wrong?

In the main, they post content on Facebook that attempts to sell directly, before delivering any value or building any kind of relationship with the prospect. The result tends to be low response rates, and a poor return on their investment.

Of course, people are on Facebook to connect with others, to socialize, to be entertained, and to find content that might interest them. Businesses that try to generate leads on Facebook without giving users what they are looking for are unlikely to get very far.

So what’s the alternative?

This post gives you the ultimate two-step strategy to generate highly qualified leads on Facebook using a combination of specially optimized content and Facebook advertising.

The first step involves the regularly creating and publishing blog posts that are:

• Of value and interest to your marketplace.
• Fully optimized to convert visitors into leads.

Ideally, such content should be published at least once or twice a week.

In effect, these posts act as long-form landing pages through which you can generate leads.

Even better, they also deliver a multitude of other long-term benefits for additional lead generation. This includes:

• Increasing levels of organic traffic through search and social.
• Providing content that can be repurposed for other content platforms and distribution mechanisms—for example, webinars, YouTube videos, Medium articles, podcasts, guest posts, and so on.
• Growing your authority and reputation.

So how do you use this content to generate leads?

Each post needs to include a relevant bribe that encourages visitors to leave you their email, and possibly other details. In other words, each post needs a Lead Magnet.

For maximum lead generation, the more relevant the Lead Magnet is to the post, the better. One way to do this is to provide additional content or some other resource that’s directly relevant to the post.

This type of Lead Magnet is usually referred to as a content upgrade. The more relevant it is to the content on the page, the higher your conversions are likely to be.

It doesn’t need to be particularly difficult or time consuming to create. It can be as simple as offering a free PDF version of the post for people to download as a reference.

Other ideas for content upgrades include:

• A checklist or cheatsheet.
• A guide.
• A free video or video course.
• An email course.
• And many others.

It should only take a few extra minutes to create a content upgrade once the post is otherwise ready for publication.

As a result, you’ll be able to use the post to generate leads for weeks, months and potentially years to come, whether through Facebook or other channels.

In effect, it turns a simple blog post into a long-form landing page.

The key is to offer the content upgrade in a number of different ways to maximize the number of leads the page generates.

To do so, use a combination of the following.

Links

When the visitor clicks the link, a popup appears allowing the visitor to enter their email to opt in.

Rather than just a single link, provide links at different points within the post such as towards the top and bottom, and somewhere around the middle. This is particularly important for longer posts.

Each link can be presented as:

• A standalone link in the post as shown above; or
• An inline link, such as that as shown here:

Test different approaches to discover what visitors respond to best.

End of Post Sign Up Form

Display an inline signup form at the end of your post to allow visitors to opt in to get the resource.

In fact, this kind of inline form can be displayed anywhere within your post.

A Sticky Bar or ‘Smartbar’

This shows at the top or bottom of your browser window, remaining in view of the visitor as they scroll through the post. It provides a constantly visible way for the visitor to take advantage of the lead magnet on offer.

The one shown here is configured to display a popup when the button is clicked, in the same way as a link (above). You can also show the lead capture field(s) within the Smartbar itself.

A Popup

Have a popup that’s triggered to appear when someone for example:

• Has been on the page a certain length of time.
• Has scrolled down a specific percentage of the page.
• Is about to leave the page.

Ideally, this should be the same popup triggered to appear when someone clicks one of your lead capture links on the page (see above).

This means that if someone has already triggered the popup to show by clicking one or your links, or has otherwise already opted in, it won’t then show to the same visitor again.

(There's some free software you can use to do all the above—click here for more information.)

Rinse and repeat...

Keep creating new content, ensuring each new post is optimized for opt-ins in some of the ways described above.

This gives you a constant supply of fresh content you can then share on Facebook, using the second step in this strategy (below), to generate leads.

Plus, of course, you’ll be building organic traffic levels too for additional lead generation and other benefits.

Let’s move on to Step #2...

The second step in this strategy is of course to send traffic to this content—in effect, your long-form landing pages—using Facebook Ads to target your marketplace.

You can start sending traffic from Facebook Ads as soon as you publish so you start getting some results through.

As you do so and start attracting traffic to them, you’ll notice that some of your posts—usually around 20% of them—start to noticeably outperform others.

As well as generating more leads, you may also find they attract higher levels of other forms of engagement, such as:

• Comments
• Shares
• Time spent on the page.

Generally, you’ll find around 5% of them will far outperform the others. For these star performers, total engagement levels can often exceed that of the other 95% of content on your site combined.

AB Testing

It’s crucial to also split test—or AB test—your pages in order to maximize the leads they generate.

Your testing should involve the following:

• Testing different combinations of lead capture mechanisms on the post to discover what works best for your website. For example, placement of links, use (and timing) of popups, and so on.
• Split testing the copy and appearance of the lead capture mechanisms themselves. As with all AB testing, small changes can lead to dramatic increases in results.

The ultimate aim to achieve a sustainable and profitable cost per lead that allows you to scale your advertising over time.

Testing can easily double or more your opt in conversion rate. This halves your cost per lead, and the information you glean can be applied to new posts created in future.

Note that your Facebook advertising is unlikely to be profitable immediately. Instead, it requires an initial investment in traffic in order to optimize your pages (along with the ads themselves) so that your campaigns improve in profitability over time. Once you reach profitability, you can then recoup that initial investment.

Further Improving Profitability

Testing your lead capture campaigns isn’t the only way to increase profitability.

Another way is to increase the value each lead has for your business. This involves:

• Optimizing your sales process so that you convert a higher proportion of leads into customers.
• Selling additional products and services, including those at higher prices, to those leads over time.

In addition, you can encourage visitors who don’t convert into leads immediately to opt in at a later date.

For example, many visitors may have:

• Become distracted.
• Been unable to opt in at the time.
• Simply not noticed the offer.

Try to capture their information later by using ...

Facebook Retargeting Ads

The traffic you are receiving via Facebook Ads also means you can build up a retargeting audience. You can do this on Facebook as well as through other ad networks like Google.

You can then show them other ads to try to capture their details, such as those that offer them:

• The same content upgrade.
• A different resource, such as a different checklist, whitepaper or video series—or perhaps even a free webinar you’re running on a related topic.
• Another opt-in optimized post.
• A subscription to your blog so they’re regularly notified about new content.

To Conclude

This powerful two-step strategy to generate leads on Facebook involves:

• Creating valuable content in the form of blog posts that are then optimized to capture visitors’ details.
• Driving traffic to those pages through Facebook advertising.

This means you can capitalize on Facebook’s vast advertising reach by sharing content designed to engage their users, while converting those users into leads when they arrive on your website.

Of course, this strategy isn’t just restricted just to Facebook. Use the same approach for generating leads through Twitter advertising, Google Ads and other channels.

In addition, you get the added benefits of increasing amounts of content on your site that attract organic traffic through SEO and social, while building your authority and reputation in the marketplace.

steve shaw

Steve Shaw is the CEO of optinopoli™, next-generation lead capture and sales conversion technology—click here for more info.