How to launch a lead generation campaign with Facebook Lead Ads

Last Updated / Reviewed: Feb 1st, 2022

Execution Time: ~1-2h

Goal: To launch a Facebook Lead Ads campaign and integrate it with your email service provider (ESP).

Ideal Outcome: Your Facebook Lead Ads campaign is collecting leads for you on autopilot and those leads are being nurtured by your email marketing workflows.

Prerequisites or requirements:

• You need a Facebook Ads Account and a Business Page. If you don’t have one yet you can follow SOP010 - Create a Facebook Ads Account using Business Manager.
• This SOP covers a detailed process to integrate Facebook Lead Ads with MailChimp, this chapter of the SOP assumes you already have a MailChimp account. If you are using any other ESP that integrates with Zapier the process could vary slightly. You can find a list of tools that integrate with Zapier, here.

Why this is important: Having a scalable, easy to setup and maintain, lead generation campaign could make or break your business.

Where this is done: In Facebook Ads Manager, Business Manager, and your current ESP provider.

When this is done: Every time you want to launch a new Facebook Lead Ad campaign.

Who does this: The person responsible for Paid Advertising or Email Marketing.

Setting up your Campaign

1. Log into your Ads Manager guided creation panel here.
2. If you’re managing multiple Ad Accounts and Business Managers make sure you’ve selected the right ones on the top header.
3. Click the ‘+ Create’ button, under the ‘Campaigns’ tab:
4. Under ‘Choose a Campaign Objective’ → ‘Consideration’, select ‘Lead Generation’:
5. Scrolling down, you will need to rename your campaign according to your naming convention. In naming your ‘Ad Set,’ the recommended Facebook template is ‘Country – Age Group – Gender – Interest’.
6. After clicking ‘Continue,’ you will be redirected to your Facebook Ad Campaign dashboard. You will immediately see an error prompt ⚠️ in your ‘Ad Set’ dashboard. Select your ‘Ad Set’ page, select the correct Facebook page in the dropdown, and click on ‘View Terms’ to accept
7. Read the ‘Lead Ad Terms’ and click ‘I Agree to the Terms and Conditions’ if you have no objections.

Setting up your Ad Set

1. On the ‘Ad Set’ setup, scroll down to ‘Audience’:

Custom Audiences (optional): If you already have custom audiences created you can select them in the dropdown.

Locations: Select the location settings that you believe will match your target audience.

Age, Gender and Languages: Select the demographics that you believe will match your target audience.

Detailed Targeting: Select the Demographics/Interests/Behaviors that you believe will match your target audience. Click ‘Browse’ to start selecting:

Aim at being as specific as possible while not getting overly specific.

Exclude People: You can use exclusion groups if you don’t want to target specific groups.

Connections: You can use this feature to reach people that have a specific kind of connection with your Page, App or Event.

1. Look at the right sidebar and see the ‘Audience Definition',’ Reach,’ and ‘Estimated Daily Results’ if it looks good to you. If not, you can continue to adjust items in ‘Detailed Targeting.’
2. If you are satisfied, click ‘Save This Audience’:
3. You will get to see the summary of the first ‘Saved Audience’ of your Facebook page. Name it according to your naming convention:
4. Select “Automatic Placements”.
5. All changes made will be automatically saved in drafts, as indicated by the green check bottom left portion of your current dashboard.

Setting up your Budget, Schedule, Optimization & Delivery

1. To activate ‘Budget and Schedule’, you must turn ‘ON’ the ‘Campaign Budget Optimization.’ To do that, you need to switch to your ‘Campaigns’ dashboard, scroll way down and turn ON the switch under ‘Campaign Budget Optimization’ until it turns ‘blue’ (it is OFF by default).
2. Set up your Budget and Schedule:

• Budget:
• Select “Daily Budget” if you want to have an ongoing campaign.
• Select “Lifetime Budget” if you want to limit your campaign to a specific budget instead.
  1. Example: If you want to spend $20 per day on this Facebook Lead Ads campaign, you will have ‘Daily Budget: $20’.
• Bid Strategy:
• You can select ‘Lowest Cost’ when you want to maximize delivery and conversions from your budget. For this SOP, this is the best option because we want friend referrals in exchange for a $20 discount coupon before a purchasing of our retro console or game.
• ‘Highest Value’ when we want to focus on high value purchases. In this case, we can use this option when we want the sale of our retro consoles to be prioritized.
• ‘Bid Cap’ when you want to set the maximum bid across auctions, rather than allowing Facebook to bid automatically. Bid cap is meant for advertisers who have a strong understanding of predicted conversion rates and can calculate the right bid.
• Ad Scheduling:
• Put a ‘check’ on ‘Run ads on a schedule.’ Then, you need to switch to the ‘Ad Sets’ dashboard to set the time and day you want your ads to appear.
• In the ‘Ad Sets’ dashboard, scroll down to ‘Budget & Schedule.’ If you put a check mark on ‘Run ads on a schedule’ in the ‘Campaign’ dashboard, you will see an ‘End’ date. If you are on a Daily Budget campaign, you will just see a ‘Start Date.’
• Select your start and end date.
  • E.g.: You are collecting leads for an event that will happen in a few days and it doesn’t make sense to keep your campaign going after the end date.
• Take note of errors suggested by Facebook on the right sidebar. For example, if you want to extend your ad schedule to November 2021, you will need to increase your budget.
• Under ‘Show More Options’, you can:
  • Set Ad Spend Limits (optional)
  • Choose your Ad account time zone or the ad viewer time zone (E.g.: If you are setting ads for a New York audience, you might want to schedule based on their time zone).
• Optimization & Delivery:

This is found scrolling on the bottom part of the ‘Ad Set’ dashboard. Click the Leads dropdown and choose how you want to optimize the delivery of your ad.

• For the maximum number of leads, choose Leads.
• For the highest quality of leads, choose Conversion Leads.
  • You need to install a Facebook Pixel (SOP 005) and configure Facebook Conversion Events (SOP 098).
• You cannot edit ‘Cost Control’ if you chose the Lowest Cost Bid Strategy.

Make sure all the changes made are ‘Saved’ (automatically done by Facebook):

Setting up Ads

1. In the FB Manager Campaign main dashboard, you will see that the ‘Campaigns’ and ‘Ad Sets’ tab have already ‘1 Selected’ item in them. Now, we can create the actual ad that the targeted audience can see by clicking on the ‘Ad’ tab.
2. Click the ‘+ Create’ button, under the ‘Ads for 1 Ad Set’ tab:
3. Rename your Ad name according to your naming convention (E.g.: Retroaddicts-Lead Magnet-Friend Referral-Discount Coupon) and click ‘Continue’.
4. Although the setting for this SOP is the default ad format, you can scroll down to see that you can choose two formats: Single Image/Video & Carousel:
5. Also, you can set where you want your ads will appear in Facebook via Ad Creative:
   1. Feeds, In-Stream Videos (including Instagram)
   2. Stories and Reels (including Instagram)
   3. Search Results, Instant Articles
6. Notice the warning prompt ⚠️ to create a form, since we previously set our ‘Lead Ad Method’ (Step 4 in chapter “Setting up your Campaign“) to be ‘Instant Forms,’ which was the default setting. Scroll down to find the heading ‘Instant Form,’ then click ‘Create Form.’
7. You can now start designing your Lead Form. Start by naming your form according to your naming convention:
8. Click the ‘Settings’ tab → Make sure you choose the right language in the dropdown, same as the audience you are targeting → Switch from ‘Restricted’ to ‘Open’ (unless you only want to enable this form to users that have specifically been targeted by Facebook Ads.)
9. Go back to the ‘Content’ tab → Select your form type:
   • More volume - Select this option if your sales process does not involve a lot of time-investment with each lead. This will increase the number of leads that you get but you will also get lower quality leads.
   • Higher intent - Select this option if your sales process requires time-investment on your end (e.g.: your sales team will call each lead individually). This option adds an extra step for users to review their submission and confirm that they want to submit it.
10. After ‘Form Type’, you will now edit ‘Intro.’ The default ad format is ‘Single Image or Video’ which you can customize back in the Ads dashboard. So, if you want to have the Carousel format, you must set it back in the Ads dashboard.
11. Select the ‘Background Image’ that you would like to use for this Ad
12. Configure your Ad Copy text.
13. Still under ‘Intro’, the next item is ‘Greeting’, where you will edit your ‘Headline’ and ‘Description’ (optional but recommended)
14. After ‘Intro,’ the next dropdown is ‘Questions’ → Select the data that you would like your leads to share with you.
    You can always further segment your leads once you have their contact information, either by interacting personally or by creating automated workflows that will enrich the user profile by progressively asking for more information as users consume your offers and move down the funnel.
    When selecting fields and adding questions to your form ask yourself these questions:
    • Are we sure this data is going to be used in our sales process in the next 30 days?
      1. If you are not sure, do not request it. Chances are this data will never be used and you are just increasing your cost per lead by adding it.
    • Could we get this information further down the line in the sales process without impacting our sales results?
      1. If yes, do not request it at this moment.
    • Could this data violate any of the Facebook Advertising policies (check [_here](Introduction to the Advertising Standards | Transparency Center "‌")), or any data-processing legislation that I might be subject to (check your jurisdiction’s data-processing law)?
      1. If the answer is ‘yes’, or you are in doubt do not include that field.
         E.g.: If you are advertising a Golf course, you might feel tempted to ask users how many years they’ve been playing Golf for. That “might” be something that you “might” use in the future. But that is not something that you necessarily need to know the moment you are just getting to know your lead and that is something that you can ask your lead later either personally or through your marketing funnel.
         Custom Questions: In this section you can add any fields that are specific to your business or offer and are not on the ‘User information’ section.
         E.g.: If you are going to ask your user for how they would rank their Golf skills you might want to have a ‘Multiple Choice’ field with ‘Never tried it’, ‘Amateur’, ‘Hobbyist’, ‘Pro’, instead of having it as an open-field. This will not only make it easier for your leads to fill out the form, but it will also allow you to analyze your results and use them on your automation workflows more easily.
         Prefill Questions: This is where you configure user information.
         Description: You can explain why you want their contact information.
         User Information: Any field that you select in this section will be prefilled with the user’s personal profile data making it much more likely for them to submit your form since they don’t need to fill out those fields themselves.
15. Preview your Ad by using the sidebar on the right, and make sure everything looks OK:
16. If everything looks OK, click ‘Publish’ (under the Ad preview) to publish your form.

Activate your FB lead generation campaign

1. Back in the FB Manager Campaign main dashboard, you will see that ALL the ‘Campaigns’, ‘Ad Sets’ and ‘Ads’ tabs have already ‘1 Selected’ items in them. Click the ‘Review & Publish’ button.
2. You will be able to review ALL the changes you’ve made (Draft items). If everything looks good, finally click ‘Publish’.
3. That’s it! Your campaign is now being reviewed.

Exporting your leads from Facebook Lead Ads

1. On Facebook, open your Facebook Page.
   E.g.:https://www.facebook.com/ your_facebook_page/
2. Click ‘Publishing Tools’ found on the sidebar.
3. Click ‘Forms Library’ under ‘Lead Ad Forms’ on the sidebar.
4. Locate your form and click “Download”.
5. Click ‘Download New Leads’ to download a list of your new leads or select ‘Download by Date Range’ if you want to download all leads that occurred on a given period.
6. Select which format you prefer:
7. That’s it, you’ve successfully downloaded your leads. If you use an email marketing tool you can now import those leads to your list and use them in your email marketing workflows. If you are using MailChimp, or if your tool integrates with Zapier, you can also follow the next chapter of this SOP below.

Using Zapier to send your leads to Mailchimp

1. Log into your Zapier account here.
2. Click “Make a Zap” on the top left sidebar:
3. Rename your Zap according to your naming convention.
4. Search for “Facebook Lead Ads” (you should see a “Premium” tag on it) and click on that result.
5. Select “New Lead” as the trigger, and click ‘Save + Continue’
6. Click ‘Sign in to Facebook Lead Ads’
7. Click ‘Continue as (...)’
8. Click ‘OK’
9. Click ‘Continue’:
10. Under ‘Set up Trigger,’ Select the Facebook Page where your Form belongs to → Select your form from the dropdown → Click ‘Continue’.
11. Click ‘Test Trigger’ and Zapier will test your Facebook lead ad form if it works.
12. If you can’t see any test data, you might need to generate it via Facebook. On a new tab, go to ‘Facebook Lead Ads Testing’ tool by clicking here.
13. Go back to Zapier and click “Load in Samples”:
14. You should be able to see a Lead appear in the next screen. Click ‘Continue’
15. Add an ‘Action’ to your Zap, search for ‘Mailchimp.’
16. Select ‘Add/Update Subscriber’ then ‘Continue.’
17. Connect your MailChimp Account by clicking ‘Sign in to Mailchimp’ and then log in with your Mailchimp credentials:
18. You will see a list of properties that are available on the MailChimp list you’ve selected, map each of the properties to your FB Lead Ads property.
    1. E.g: “Subscriber Email” → “Email”
19. Once you’ve mapped all the fields, click ‘Click ‘Test & Continue.’
20. You will see a ‘Test was successful’ message. Then click on ’Turn on Zap.’
21. On a new tab, open your MailChimp list (you can find your lists by clicking here), you should be able to see a new lead in there with the data you’ve just configured in Zapier:Go back to your Zapier tab again, if everything looks good, click ‘Turn on Zap.’
22. That’s it! You’ve successfully integrated FB Lead Ads with MailChimp. Whenever a new lead submits your Lead Ads form, that lead will be sent to your MailChimp list.