Attracting customers via social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can help overcome barriers to conversion and turn your prospects into revenue sooner and more cost effectively.
Many businesses attract leads through social media by linking to their own website, this can create a number of risks. Chief among these is that your website won’t perform the way you need it to, or the way your prospects expect it to. For example, if your site takes too long to load, isn’t optimised for mobile, or has a difficult-to-use contact form, users can be turned off. If the user experience is even slightly less intuitive and enjoyable than on the social media site, your brand will suffer. That means fewer conversions and a higher cost per acquisition.
You can overcome this challenge by bypassing your own website and letting your prospects contact you directly from LinkedIn or Facebook.
This is more streamlined for your customers, removing one step in the process for them.
The only downside is that you won’t gain an increase in traffic to your own website. But is that really important if your cost per acquisition goes down and your lead generation and conversion rates go up? If you’re measured on how many leads you can deliver, then traffic metrics may not be so important.
Four reasons to use Facebook or LinkedIn forms
- Integration with CRMsIf you use a CRM, thenyou can automate your leads to go wherever you want. If you don’t have a development team to configure this, there are service providers who act as the middle man between Facebook or LinkedIn and your CRM or marketing automation tool.
- It’s fast and easy to useSetup is similar to any other post with the difference being the creation of a form. From the user’s side, there is usually a call-to-action button. When they click the button, the form appears with additional information.
- They come pre-filledThis feature is a huge time-saver since the form fields that the platform knows about the user come filled in already.
- Lower CPAIn our experience, the cost per lead compared to other channels is lower by as much as 50 per cent. This makes for great use of advertising spend.
Six example ways to use Facebook or LinkedIn lead generation forms
- Newsletter or email sign-ups.
- Contests and giveaways.
- Scheduling appointments or webinars.
- Event registrations.
- Quote inquiries.
- Reward programs.
Case study: How Facebook lead capture forms can work better than other channels
One of our clients, in the construction industry, was running native ads on Google Display Network that drove traffic to its website with an optimised landing page and form. The client’s cost per acquisition (CPA) was around $80. When it engaged Outsource for an initial pilot using Facebook, its CPA using Facebook lead forms for nearly 12 months reduced to an average of $29.59.
If you are considering trying Facebook or LinkedIn forms and you’re not sure how to do it, our specialist digital team can work with you to set up and administer campaigns with full integration with most marketing automation tools.
