Facebook Lead Generation: Key Strategies With Steps 2023

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Facebook lead generation is the process of using free and/or paid Facebook inbound marketing strategies to source quality leads for your business. Free strategies involve creating a business page and posting relevant content, while paid strategies consist of running Facebook ad campaigns. It’s primarily for B2C brands, but B2B ones can use it as well. Regardless, there are software tools and marketing agencies that can help you do it correctly.

How Facebook Lead Generation Works

Marketers use Facebook as a lead generation tool by building their Facebook business page’s presence on the network and gaining followers, to whom they can offer a lead magnet in return for their contact information. Marketers may then add strategies like ads to grow their audience and reach more potential leads. Armed with the contact information of new leads, businesses can nurture these leads to a purchase.

Below is a process to follow sequentially to generate the most quality Facebook leads:

1. Create a Desirable Free Offer: Build a lead magnet (ebook, webinar, checklist, etc.) that your ideal leads would love to have in return for their contact information.
2. Build a Business Page and Grow Following for Free: Create a business page and attract leads to it with free strategies like status updates and branded content posting.
3. Deliver Your Free Offer to Your Audience: Distribute your lead magnet to your followers in a private group, or on your general news feed in 20% of your posts.
4. Turbocharge Your Efforts With Paid Strategies: Run paid ads or pay to boost posts to expand your audience and collect contact information from non-followers.

Even if you only choose a few of the strategies we share, still try to do them in order. And keep in mind that although Facebook lead generation is effective in its own right, it’s most powerful when used as a part of a larger lead generation plan. B2C businesses should consider using it alongside other online marketing methods, like SEO content marketing, and different social media lead generation methods, like attracting leads on Pinterest and other B2C-focused platforms.

It’s also important to know that Facebook operates from a branded Facebook business page, unlike LinkedIn, where sellers use a personal profile as their virtual headquarters. This makes Facebook lead generation more effective at making your followers feel connected to your company’s brand and more open to marketing on other social platforms or mediums.

Who Should Use Facebook Lead Generation

Facebook is a platform mostly used by marketers from both B2C and B2B brands looking to generate social media leads. Regardless of your industry, Facebook is an effective inbound lead generator. On the other hand, Facebook is not well-suited for salespeople looking to do direct outreach. You won’t have much success sending cold Facebook messages to prospects’ inboxes from your personal profile. People use the chat for leisure, not business. Specific Facebook use cases include:

Though mostly focused on entertainment and social connection, Facebook users are still well primed for indirect offerings that appear on their news feeds in the form of interesting articles, fun posts, and ads. This contrasts with users on platforms like LinkedIn, who want to make direct business connections and are primed for direct outreach.

If you’re a B2B company looking for outbound lead generation tactics on social media instead, check out our article on LinkedIn lead generation. Otherwise, keep reading for the best free and paid strategies for inbound lead generation on Facebook.

Best Free Facebook Lead Generation Strategies

Begin by enacting free Facebook strategies. First, create a lead magnet. Then start growing your brand’s following on Facebook by creating a Facebook business page, posting relevant content, and running a private group. Finally, make your offer to this following in return for their contact information, a transaction marking the follower to lead conversion. Below you’ll learn how to roll out these strategies step by step.

Create a Valuable Lead Magnet to Offer

Lead magnets are free valuable resources that people can receive in return for their contact information. Lead magnets include ebooks, free courses, free trials, consultations, newsletters, and anything else your target leads find valuable. You’ll offer this lead magnet to people in your general news feed posts, private group posts, and your Facebook ads. Once someone clicks on the magnet, they’ll see a form to submit info you’ve chosen to collect from them.

Here are the steps to creating a lead magnet that converts:

1. Pick the Lead Magnet Type: Ask yourself what content you already have, what your audience wants, what you can create, and what your competition is offering. Most importantly, make sure the content satisfies the needs of your target audience.
2. Design Your Lead Magnet: Use a pre-existing template or design software to create a resource with a great user experience. Canva is a good budget tool for creating visual content like graphics. VistaCreate is simple to use and great for videos and social media lead magnets.
3. Make It Easy to Download the Lead Magnet: Build a landing page that makes it simple for leads to fill out the form and get their lead magnet. Alternatively, Facebook lead ads enable you to offer the lead magnet and capture their information directly on Facebook.
4. Plan the Lead Magnet’s Delivery: Once the lead fills out the form, you have to send them the lead magnet. Usually, they’ll receive the PDF link or membership account link through an automated email response facilitated by a tool like Mailchimp.

While one lead magnet should be enough to attract leads, it’s often smart to create more than one so you can satisfy more of the needs of your target audience. One person might love the free trial, while another would rather have a free course. This diversity of lead magnets is especially important if you have a private group where you want to offer different, more valuable lead magnets, like discounts, than you do in the general feed.

Optimize Your Facebook Business Page

The first step to building a Facebook presence is creating your business’s Facebook page and optimizing it with an on-brand cover and profile photo, a clear business description, a relevant vanity URL, and a call-to-action (CTA) button that offers your lead magnet. This page is an easy-to-maintain online presence for potential leads to discover and learn about your company. If they visit the page and vibe with it, they can follow it and start receiving your brand’s posts.

Below is an example of a business page that works well:

The example business page above has a description that speaks to the desires of its target audience, as well as contact information so followers can easily reach out for help. To create your own business page, head to Facebook’s business page setup wizard and follow the instructions. There, you can choose a page name, select your business’s category, and write a quick business description. It'll also prompt you to add profile and cover photos, all of which we detail below:

Profile & Cover Photos

Business Description

Vanity URL

Call-to-Action

Your page’s profile photo is displayed every time you comment on a post or publish to the news feed, meaning it’s the first thing people will notice. So, make it relevant. Most businesses use their company logo. As for the technical side, this Facebook article breaks down the best dimensions and practices to take into account when uploading your profile and cover photo.

Your cover photo, on the other hand, appears across the top of the business page — only page visitors see it. The cover photo gives you the opportunity to use a visual element to capture visitors’ attention or elicit a specific feeling (joy, excitement, comfort). Make it relevant to your brand, helping the visitor understand what your business does. You can also use the space to advertise something, like an upcoming brand event, as SalesLoft has done below:

Example Facebook profile & cover photos

The description will appear in the About section of your Facebook business page, which will likely be the first place your visitors check out. This makes it a great opportunity to convince them to follow your brand. Do this by making it speak to your target audience’s interests and needs. But you only have 255 characters to work with, so prioritize the key components.

Here are the components of an effective business description:

• What Your Business Does: Briefly explain your main product or service and how it helps your customers. This gives visitors context about your value.
• Who You Help: State exactly what type of people benefit from your product or service. Is it a certain type of company or job title? This helps visitors self-qualify.
• Benefits of Liking the Page: Give your visitors a reason to like your page by describing the type of content you share. It could be best practices for a specific industry, updates on industry trends, or something else your leads want to know.

If you do the above, your visitors will have enough information to make the decision about liking your page. Your ideal leads will also feel connected to your brand now that they understand you help people like them. Check out Salesforce’s example of a short and sweet About section:

Example Facebook business description

After creating your business page, it will receive a random, nonsensical URL. To make your page easier to find and share, create a vanity URL that follows this format: www.facebook.com/{Your Company Name}. To create your vanity URL, head to this step-by-step guide.

Example Facebook vanity url

Facebook allows you to add a simple CTA button at the top of your Facebook business page. This is a good chance to convert some page visitors into leads. Do this by making a CTA button that brings users to a web page where they fill out a form to get the offer. You’ll see the option to create the button on the top of your page written as “+ Add a button”:

Add CTA button option example

Once clicked, you’ll see that there are seven pre-made options to choose from: Sign Up, Contact Us, Shop Now, Book Now, Watch Video, Use App, and Play Game. Your optimal button verbiage depends on your leads and what action you want them to take. If, for example, your lead magnet is a newsletter subscription, you’d use the “sign up” CTA button. For more on Ad Manager CTA buttons, read Facebook’s article on what CTA buttons are available.

Zappos uses “Shop Now,” which brings you to their website’s home page:

Example Facebook call-to-action button

Post Relevant Articles & Status Updates

Now that you have a Facebook business page, start posting relevant articles from around the web and status updates to attract followers. If people like what you post, they can head to your Facebook page and click follow. From then on they’ll see your posts on their feed. Over time, they’ll begin to trust your brand and become more likely to accept any offers. Engaging content must relate to your leads’ interests and needs, or be entertaining in some way.

Here are some tips for creating that engaging Facebook content:

• Run a Comment-Driven Giveaway: Tell people that if they comment on the post, they’ll have a chance to win an item you’re giving away, or a special discount.
• Ask for Feedback: Request your audience to give feedback in the comments section after you’ve held a webinar or released a new product or service.
• Use Open-Ended Questions: Initiate conversations, especially if the question you ask is slightly contentious and summons strong emotional responses.
• Write Fun Posts: Tell a story, a joke, or a conversation starter to come across as fun and personable. Perhaps give a peek into the inner workings of your business to build trust.
• Share Other Brands' Articles: Find articles in your niche that your audience would enjoy and share them with introductions stating your key takeaways.

Keep in mind that non-followers will also see your posts. That’s how you win more followers, who you can later convert into leads. The best way to make sure your content reaches as far as possible is, according to Facebook, to create “posts that inspire the most back-and-forth conversation in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.”

Share Off-Platform Content Your Brand Has Published

Next, start increasing your level of credibility with your followers by sharing content your brand has published on your website, or, in other cases, another publication like Medium. These can be articles and videos that educate people on how to solve a problem, entertain them with insights and news analysis, or introduce them to a product or feature.

Here are some best practices for posting content you’ve published:

• Share Content That Solves Your Audience's Problems: Share information that will help your target audience solve a specific problem. It could be a video on how to unclog a drain, or an article on how to create websites.
• Participate in What’s Trending: Align some of your content with news or stories that your audience is following closely. This will help you enter their world, and they’ll begin to see your brand as more of a friend than a sales organization.
• Show Off New Features or Products: Share articles, videos, or reviews that showcase your newest product or service to get your audience excited about what you sell and to consider a purchase for themselves.

When leads click on the article they’ll be swept off to your website, where they can peruse at their leisure and become more familiar with your brand. Also, if you’ve hosted lead magnets across your website, your leads might come across them in any given article and download it. Hence, you’ve secured a lead indirectly. Now that you’ve created a large following, it’s time to turn the most promising of them into dedicated fans.

Start a Private Facebook Group

Page followers are one thing, but loyal fans are another. Start that fanbase by creating and managing a private Facebook group into which you post more premium content and offers, such as discounts. This provides a space for your members to get to know your brand and each other. As their loyalty grows, so will your chances of converting them into leads. They’ll be more likely to download your lead magnet than more generic followers.

Here’s how to create and manage a private Facebook group for lead generation:

1. Create the Group: Take just a few minutes to create a new private Facebook group. Follow Facebook’s instructions to learn how. You’ll write the group name, select the privacy option, upload a cover photo, and add a description of the group’s purpose and value.
2. Invite Ideal Customers Into It: Invite Facebook page followers that match your ideal customer profile to join the group, especially those interacting a lot with your content. Also, invite people following your brand on other social networks.
3. Attract Ideal Customers to Join: Promote the private Facebook group in the content you post in the general news feed. Interested people can request to join and the group administrator can grant them access.
4. Post Premium Content: Give these group members something more special than your regular followers. This could be live videos like Q&A sessions or product tutorials, or just more in-depth and helpful resources.
5. Convert Members Into Leads With Special Offers: Offer discounts and other deals that your members want. These offers will drive them to your website or get them to take direct action on Facebook, where they’ll submit their contact info for the offer.

Once people join the group, members will also be able to form relationships and have conversations with others in the group. This is powerful, as it creates a familial feeling around your brand. There are other ways to make your private group extremely valuable to its members, including some best practices for posting and managing the group.

Best Practices for Posting in a Private Facebook Group

Aside from posting regularly (a few times a week), there are some other best practices you can follow to ensure your members are happy with your content. This includes welcoming new members, posting at ideal times, posting unique content, and inspiring chitchat.

Here are the best practices for posting in a private Facebook group:

• Post Welcome Messages Often: To ensure newcomers have all of the key information, from helpful resources to group guidelines, post welcome messages frequently. This will also remind the other members that you are actively engaged.
• Post at Peak Times: Your Facebook page and group insights can inform you of the peak times for posting your content. This way, the chances of engagement from your audience are higher.
• Keep the Private Group Content Unique: Avoid recycling content that you have already posted in the general news feed. This will give people a reason to stay in touch with both your business page and your private group.
• Spark Conversation Between Members: Ask open-ended questions that get your members talking and sharing their opinions. It helps to mention current events that your members might be following closely.

When your members feel nourished by your brand’s content, they'll start to experience feelings of connection to your business. This increases the odds that they’ll respond well to your offers, whether it's in this group or the general news feed. Hence, you’ll be able to generate more leads.

Best Practices for Managing a Private Facebook Group

Running a private Facebook group is more than just posting awesome content. You also have to manage it correctly. There are some rules to follow to ensure your group grows consistently without ever losing its personable charm.

Here are some tips for managing your private Facebook group:

• Invite People From Other Networks: Invite fans from other social media islands, such as Twitter or Instagram, to your private Facebook group by sending them the link.
• Engage Consistently, but Don’t Overdo It: Create a space where your fans can engage in conversation and form relationships with each other as much as hearing from you.
• Give Them Gifts: Make them feel special with an offer or a giveaway that only they receive. This could be a pair of branded socks or a 20% discount on a purchase.
• Go Live: Go live and share educational content with your members. This will make them feel more connected to you and your brand.

At this point, you have your lead magnet, a large following, and a strong fanbase for your brand. It’s now time to start offering this lead magnet to these ideal leads through two main free methods. Read on to learn how.

Offer Your Lead Magnet for Free

You can offer lead magnets for free via two methods: posting it in your private Facebook group, and posting it to the news feed. We recommend doing both. Ideally, follow the 20:80 rule, which states that 20% of your posts should offer a lead magnet, while the remaining 80% should provide valuable content that asks nothing of your audience, aside from maybe leaving a comment. This way, your audience thinks of you primarily as a generous provider of value with no strings attached.

Here are some best practices for offering the lead magnet in a Facebook post:

• Write a Description of the Lead Magnet: Use the description section to write 1-2 sentences describing your lead magnet and a few ways it will benefit the lead. Speak to the pain points, needs, and desires of your target audience.
• Create Urgency: Remind leads that the offer will expire on a certain date and time. This can increase the likelihood they accept the offer now.
• Use a Visual: Include a picture, video, or graphic of the lead magnet so that the soon-to-be lead can see what they’re getting. If it’s a free trial, it could be a picture of the product. If it’s a checklist, you could give a sneak peek of part of it.

Keep in mind that you can also offer your lead magnets indirectly, via a recommendation to check out a blog post that offers the lead magnet in the copy. This is one reason why combining content marketing with Facebook lead generation is so powerful. If you feel you’ve been posting too many offers on Facebook, you can get leads to your blog and let the articles nurture them further, and pitch the lead magnet. For now, see this lead magnet Facebook post by HubSpot:

Once you’ve gotten the hang of the free strategies, created a sizable following, and started to generate some leads, you can look to paid methods for speeding up the process. If that sounds like too much, you can hire a Facebook ad agency to do these paid strategies for you, as well as some of the free ones that might be too time-consuming. If that sounds like your ideal situation, skip ahead to our section on the best agencies. Otherwise, read on for paid methods.

Best Paid Facebook Lead Generation Strategies

Paid Facebook lead generation strategies boil down to three different types of Facebook ads: boosted posts, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and Messenger ads. These paid strategies are most effective when incorporated after enacting the free strategies discussed above. They can help you expand your audience and increase the number of leads generated by both boosting your posts and advertising your lead magnet to non-followers who fit your ideal customer profile.

As for how they work, paid ads are targeted to users based on their location, demographics, and profile information, and they appear on your audience’s news feed or in their Messenger app. Users who click the ad go to a landing page or, with lead ads, enter information directly on Facebook. The steps for creating any Facebook ad are outlined in this Facebook guide. Besides boosted posts, you can create and manage all these ads in your Facebook Ads Manager.

For the best results, we recommend using a combination of these paid methods, since it will diversify your reach and give you more data about your customers’ behavior, which you can use to instruct your future campaigns. As for optimal order, start with boosting some of your best posts, then start paying to run PPC ads, and finally layer on Messenger ads. Now, let’s go over the three types of ads you can add to your Facebook lead generation strategy.

Boost Your Organic Posts

A boosted post is a post on your page’s timeline that you can make visible to an audience of your choosing — one that fits specific demographics. Their specialty is maximizing the reach of your best posts, thereby growing your audience and increasing lead generation opportunities.

To boost a post, follow these steps:

1. Go to Your Facebook Business Page: This is where you’ll find the post or posts you want to boost to generate more leads.
2. Pick Which Post to Boost: It’s often best to invest in boosting high-performing posts that people will love or ones with lead magnets.
3. Select “Boost Post”: This option is located at the bottom-right corner of the post. Some posts may be incapable of receiving a boost.
4. Fill in Your Ad Details: Facebook will ask you to define your target audience, pick your maximum budget, and choose the duration for running the ad.
5. Boost the Post: Now you wait for new followers and leads to come across your posts and prepare to roll out more related content to keep them engaged.

Unlike the other ad types, you do not create boosted posts in Ads Manager. These ads also have fewer customization features than the others. They’re mainly for getting your brand in front of new potential leads in the hopes that they’ll like what they see and follow your page. You can also boost posts that offer your lead magnets, thereby directly catching more leads.

Run Facebook PPC Ads

Facebook PPC ads are the basic display ads that show up on your audience's news feed and that drive traffic directly to your website or a dedicated landing page. They come in 10 different formats, including videos, carousels, and images. The copy and multimedia in these ads are meant to spark interest in your ideal customers, who will then click on the ad and enter into your lead generation funnel. Below is an example of one of these ads:

Also, consider using Facebook lead ads — PPC ads that contain an embedded form that captures a lead’s information, such as name and email address, directly on the platform. When people tap the ad, the form pops up preloaded with their Facebook contact information, unless it’s a custom field. The lift for the lead is therefore light; through just a few clicks, they get what they want, and you generate a new lead.

Leverage Facebook Messenger Ads

Having collected data from your PPC ads, you can gain an even better understanding of your target audience. It’s a good time to start sending targeted, automated direct messages using Facebook Messenger ads, an advertising option that’s meant to begin conversations with individuals in the Messenger app, thereby making the advertising feel more personal. The generated message could ask the recipient to download or sign up for a lead magnet.

Facebook Messenger ads fall into the following three main categories:

• Ads That Open to Messenger: These ads appear in the news feed and contain a call-to-action button that opens into the Messenger app.
• Sponsored Messages: These ads are highly targeted and sent directly to the inbox of people you’ve previously messaged.
• Messenger Story Ads: These are full-screen videos that appear within a user’s Messenger app. These ads can only be purchased alongside Instagram Stories ads or as an addition to a current ad campaign you’re running on Facebook’s main news feed.

Incorporating these ads into your Facebook lead generation plan is a great way to expand your brand’s audience, offer your lead magnet, and generate more leads for your business. To illustrate, here’s an example of what it looks like to receive a sponsored message ad:

Top 3 Software for Facebook Lead Generation

There are plenty of tools out there that can assist you in your efforts to generate leads on Facebook. Three of the best are Facebook Ads Manager, AdEspresso, and AdRoll. The first is a Facebook tool that enables you to create and manage ad campaigns. The other two are software tools that help you enhance, track, and automate parts of your ad campaigns.

These software options range in price and ultimately help with the management of your own original ads and campaigns. Next, we’ll list some of the top Facebook lead generation companies that assist in the content and campaign creation.

3 Best Facebook Lead Generation Companies

Facebook lead generation ad agencies will help you create and enact the Facebook marketing strategies we’ve discussed above, whether that's via creating and posting content or building, running, and monitoring paid advertising campaigns. They usually offer custom packages to help you achieve your goals. Three of the best agencies are Hibu, Marketing360, and Voy Media.

When interacting with these agencies, you can expect the following process: First, you’ll have an introductory meeting, during which a representative will ask you about your objectives, business, and audience to determine whether it’s a good fit. Next, they’ll do research and create a plan tailored to your needs. If you like the plan and decide to work with them, the agency will introduce you to your account manager, ask for access to your website and Facebook page, and then get to work.

Benefits of Facebook Lead Generation

There are currently 1.6 billion people connected to a small business on Facebook. It’s a great place to build a brand, spread that brand’s reach, and turn users and followers into leads for your products and services. Here are some other reasons why Facebook should have a place in your lead gen plan:

Keep in mind that the benefits amplify when you’re using it alongside other lead generation strategies. Building presences on other social platforms enables you to cast a wider net while also interacting with your Facebook followers on their other favorite social networks.

Bottom Line: Facebook Lead Generation

Generating Facebook leads can be done by using both free and paid strategies that help build interest around your brand, collect contact information with lead magnets, and expand your offer’s reach. You can choose what free or paid methods work and resonate best with your Facebook audience by testing them individually. Now that you have an idea of what Facebook lead generation entails, check out our article for a step-by-step guide on creating Facebook lead ads.

This article was written by Sam Rinko and updated by Allyssa Haygood-Taylor.