What Are Lead Gen Ads on Facebook and How Can Advisors Use Them?

Facebook ads are becoming more and more user-friendly and universally adopted, and it’s easy to see why. Facebook allows advertisers to be very specific with their targeting.  Sure, they include the basics: But then they go seriously in-depth, with everything from shopping habits to income to relationship status and much, much more. With that kind of targeting, it’s no wonder that 68% of all money put toward social media ads is spent on Facebook (and that it’s one of our favorite platforms for advisors). One of our favorite kinds of ads (and one that is far under-utilized by advisors) is Lead Generation ads.  These ads don’t send people to a different landing page when clicked, they simply bring up a form to capture the person’s information. You can set which form fields you want to require and add any custom disclaimer information you need.  Why do we love these ads so much? They remove a pretty big barrier from the lead conversion process – getting users to leave Facebook and put their information in on your landing page. With lead ads, your prospects never have to leave Facebook at all. 

Wordstream did a great study where they found that Facebook lead ads have a conversion rate of 12.54%, as opposed to to the landing page conversion rate of 10.47%. As any advisor will tell you, a 2% difference can really add up.  But it’s not quite that simple. Yes, the conversion rate is higher, but the cost per action – how much it costs to get someone to fill out your form – is considerably higher, too.  Source

Why the cost is so much higher is anyone’s guess, but we believe the additional cost is generally worth the better conversion rate, especially considering the lifetime value if just one of your leads becomes a client. 

So How Can Advisors Use Lead Gen Ads on Facebook?

Lead gen ads can’t stand on their own – you have to connect them to your email marketing solution, CRM, Salesforce, etc. in order to make sure the information gets to where it should go. Zapier offers a lot of great options here if the software you use doesn’t integrate directly with Facebook (here’s a list of the current available integrations). You have to connect Facebook to different software depending on what you want to use it for, so let’s look at a few of your options.

Webinars

Say you’re running a tax efficiency webinar around tax season, you can take registrations directly through lead ads. A lot of webinar providers integrate directly with Facebook – GoToWebinar, Webinar Jam, Zoom – so it’s pretty easy to set them up.

Downloadable Guides

Pick your most popular downloadable guide or fact sheet and run some targeted ads. If you have one on Social Security, target people age 55 to 64 and write some awesome ad copy to peak their interest. Then in your form, get their name, email and any other info you want in exchange for your resource.

Pro tip: When deciding which form fields to include, it’s important to note that every field you require lowers your conversion rate a little more.

If you can get away with it, just ask for email. But this is a bit of a catch 22, because the fewer fields you ask for, the higher the likelihood you’ll end up with low-quality leads. Yes, more fields can hurt your conversion rate, but it can also help weed out the riff-raff.  You have two options to get these ads working: 

• Connect Facebook to your email software so it can send them a copy of the guide after they submit the form.
• Set the button on the thank you screen to take users directly to the guide. 

Calculators

People love calculators. Of course, you can’t put your calculator directly in Facebook, but you can set it up to send them to your calculator from the Thank You Screen, similar to the tactic listed above in the Downloadable Guides section.

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This is something you’ll only really want to use for retargeting or a situation where you know you already have a warm lead. It’s a big ask, so the conversion rate will likely be low and the cost per action will be pretty high. But, again, the lifetime value of a new client is very high for advisors, so I believe these are worth a shot if you’re targeting the right audience. Just go into it with the expectation that clickthrough rate will be lower and cost per action will probably be quite a bit higher than usual. 

Lead gen ads could be a valuable addition to your advertising toolbelt, so consider trying them today!