Facebook Lead Ads are an ad format for simplifying lead generation: when a user clicks or taps the ad,  they are shown a Lead Form right there on the Facebook/Instagram app, with some fields pre-filled using their Facebook user information. They don't have to leave the FB/IG app to fill in the form, which lowers friction and increases the number of leads.

You can recognize these native Lead Ads campaigns by the Facebook Objective Lead Generation. In Smartly.io, Facebook lead ads can be created in the following ad formats: Carousel Ads, Video Ads and Lead Ads.

ℹ️ Important: All advertisers must accept a new set of Facebook Terms of Service (TOS) to create new lead ads. If you have not yet accepted the new Terms of Service, you will get a pop-up which will ask you to accept the TOS to continue. You will need to accept the TOS once per Facebook page. To review and accept the new TOS, go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/leadgen/tos.

Lead form overview

Lead ad forms can include up to 18 preset fields. The data, if available, will be taken directly from the user's Facebook profile.

• Email
• Full name

Contact fields

• First Name
• Last Name
• Phone number
• Street address
• City
• State
• Province
• Country
• Postcode
• Zip code

Demographic questions

• Date of birth
• Gender
• Marital status
• Relationship status
• Company name
• Military status

Work information

• Job title
• Work phone number
• Work email

You can add up to 15 additional questions with customizable answers. These can be custom questions, but Facebook also offers a set of additional predefined questions. You can pre-fill the answers to these questions. Using an open text field for the answer is possible, but a list of options is recommended.

In the lead form, you can add custom disclaimers using the Optional disclaimer field. You should understand what, if any, disclaimers you need, and keep them as brief as possible. A user will have to scroll through the entire disclaimer and accept before they can submit the form.

ℹ️ Note: Facebook does not yet have the capability to edit lead forms.

Best practices for lead ads

Facebook lead ads are a great way for generating leads more easily. To get the most out of them, here are some best practices to follow:

• Use up to 3 custom questions to minimize drop-off and ensure efficient cost per lead. However, you can use more questions if
  • your business requires extensive prospect qualification for your high consideration products or services
  • you are comfortable with potentially higher Cost Per Lead to get the better lead quality with more questions
  • you currently use long lead forms on your landing pages and want to replicate this experience on Facebook
• Use the list of options instead of an open text field for answers.
• Make the disclaimer as short as possible.
  • There is no character limit on the disclaimer, but the user will have to scroll through the entire disclaimer and accept before they can submit leads. A long disclaimer might increase the drop-off rate.
• Make sure to react fast! A lead is warm only for some time. You need to put in place some mechanism to be able to download your list of prospects and act upon them as soon as possible. Some companies provide a list of hot leads to their call center, some other push the leads to an email drip campaign or an autoresponder, and so on. There are multiple options for this.
  • Facebook proposes an extensive list of integrations with CRMs and other databases. Full list here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/908902042493104 
  • You can setup your own automation using Facebook Marketing API
  • You can use tools like Zapier or IFTTT

Creating lead ads in Smartly.io

In Smartly.io, Facebook lead ads are available in regular campaigns and Automated Ads campaigns. In this article, we'll cover how to create lead ads in regular campaigns. For more information lead ads in Automated Ads campaigns, see Automated Lead Ads.

In a regular lead ads campaign, there are three different sections we'll be covering:

1. Configuring campaign details and audience targeting
2. Configuring the ad creative
3. Setting up the lead form

Campaign and audience details

To start creating a lead ads campaign:

1. In Campaigns, click Create > New campaign > Regular Campaign
2. In the Campaign section, select Lead generation as the Facebook Objective
   • You can select any Campaign Reporting Goal you like, but we recommend using Lead ads
3. Select a Facebook page
4. For Optimization Goal, you can select Lead Generation (to maximize the number of leads) or Conversion Lead (to further optimize for offsite conversions made by users who first filled in your Lead Form)
5. In the Audience section, select Mobile News Feed and/or Desktop News Feed as the ad set placement
6. Set the audience minimum age to 18

Ad creative

ℹ️ Note: The Facebook page for all creatives has to match the Facebook page selected on the Campaign level.

When you choose Lead generation as the campaign's Facebook objective, lead forms will be available in the Carousel, Video, and Lead ad ad formats.

To configure the ad creative for lead ads:

1. In the Ad Creative section, select the Carousel, Video, or Lead Ad ad format
2. Select an existing lead form, or click Create new Lead Ad form to create a new form
   • If you choose to create a new form, a pop-up window will open and take you to Facebook for the form creation. See Creating a new lead ad form below for more details.
3. Add a media
   • In the carousel ad format, the media can be an image, a static Image Template, or a video
   • In the video ad format, the media must be a video
   • In the lead ad format, the media can be an image or a static Image Template
4. Select a call-to-action
5. Configure any optional creative details

Note that only unpublished posts can be created when creating lead ads with any ad format.

At this point, configure any other campaign settings. To create the lead ads campaign, click Create Campaign. 🚀

Creating a new lead ad form

ℹ️ Note: You will need to accept the Facebook lead ads Terms of Service in order to create lead forms.

Clicking Create new Lead Ad form in the ad creative setup will open a pop-up window for the Facebook Lead Ads Form Builder. In the builder, you can select to create a new form from scratch, or to duplicate and edit an existing form.

To create a new lead form in Facebook Lead Ads Form Builder:

1. Enter a name for the form
2. In the Settings tab under Form Configuration, select a language locale for the form
   • The default language is English (US).
3. Go to the Content tab
4. Under Form Type, select More Volume or Higher Intent depending on your goals
   • The selected option may affect the volume of submissions and cost per lead.
5. Optional: under Intro, add an introduction to the form
6. Under Questions > Prefill Information, select up to 15 questions
   • To see all available options, open the + Add Category dropdown menu.
   • The answers for the questions will be pre-filled from the user's Facebook profile whenever possible.
7. Under Questions > Custom Questions, add up to 3 additional questions
   
   • To add a custom question, open the + Add Question dropdown menu and select an answer format
8. Under Privacy Policy, enter a link to your company's privacy policy
   • You can also add custom disclaimers.
9. Under Completion, enter a link to your website and any other information you wish to display to people who have completed the form
10. Click Finish to save the form and exit the Form Builder

ℹ️ Note: You cannot edit an existing lead ad form. However, you can edit the ad itself and add a new lead ad form with the desired changes. The old lead ad form and its accumulated leads will remain available.

Reporting on Lead Ads

To see how many times the Lead Ad Form was completed, use the reporting column Leads (Lead Ads on the old campaign views). Not to be confused with the columns Leads (Web/App) (or Pixel/App event: Leads in the old campaign views) – these columns refer to the pixel/app event that your website/app can send if you collect leads on your own website.

Engagement audience for Lead Ads

With Lead Ad Engagement Audience, you can create an audience of people who have interacted with your lead ad. Lead Ad Engagement audiences are lead form specific. You can use engagement audience to include or exclude people who have interacted with the lead ad form. To create a lead ad audience go to Library tab and select Add new Lead Ad Engagement Audience under Create custom audience button as shown below:

Previewing Lead Ads

Once you created your Lead Ad, you can check how it looks on your mobile phone.

ℹ️ Note: The mobile preview works with the native Facebook app only (tested on Android and iOS). The mobile preview is not working when you open the preview in a mobile browser (tested on Safari).

To preview a lead ad on your mobile phone:

1. Click on a lead ad creative to expand it
2. Click View ad in Ads Manager
3. Click the eye icon to preview the ad
4. Click View on mobile
5. Open the Facebook app on your phone
   • Make sure that you're logged into the app on the same Facebook user account as you're using in Smartly.io.

This is how it looks on mobile.

First, the user will be prompted with the Additional Questions (optional, up to 3)

Emails, Name, Phone Number...all the data is taken automatically from the user's Facebook profile.

You can now download the lead (see next section of this article) The use can also click on the link below to be redirected to a specific url. That url will also have the url tags you have defined in the "Tracking" section of campaign creation.

Downloading leads

You can download leads via Ads Manager or via Zapier.

Please see the Facebook Advertiser Help Center article How do I download the leads from my lead ad?

Zapier is a third-party tool for automating certain business tasks. Facebook supports integrating lead ads with Zapier to make it easier to download and manage your leads. Learn more at https://zapier.com/help/doc/how-to-get-started-with-facebook-lead-ads-on-zapier

Lead Ads on Instagram

You can run lead ads on Instagram normally with the same creative and lead form that you use on Facebook as long as your creative conforms to Instagram's creative requirements. However, there are a couple of functionality differences on Instagram:

• Not all of the pre-filled fields for leads ads are supported on Instagram. Instagram will support the following fields: Email, Full name, Phone number and Gender. If you include additional fields (ex, city or street address) in your lead ad, people will need to fill-in the questions themselves when they open your ad on Instagram. Lead ads with field 'Date of Birth' will not run on Instagram.
• Your lead ad will look somewhat different on Instagram than on Facebook. On Facebook, to complete the form on your lead ad, people will be able to open your ad and scroll down it to fill out all of the sections. On Instagram, to complete the form, people will need to open your ad and click through a series of pages to complete it.
• Lead ads are only available on the Instagram app. Your lead ads won't appear on Instagram's desktop site.

Note for German companies

When your company is based in Germany and you're targeting users in Germany, you should consider using a double opt-in procedure for generating leads. Please consult your legal department or CRM expert about this.

You might also find these articles helpful:

• Wikipedia - Opt-in
• Was ist Opt-In: Das Zustimmungsverfahren

To send the double opt-in mail directly after you've received the lead, please consult the documentation below to fetch the leads in real-time through an API.