It’s hard to remember life without smartphones. Most of us use them for everything from keeping in touch with friends to sharing funny websites on our social media pages. But one thing has always been difficult to do with a smartphone – let a business know that you’re interested in knowing more about their products or services.
The reason? It’s significantly harder to fill in those business signup forms on a mobile phone. In fact, it’s estimated that filling out a form on a mobile phone takes an average of 38.4% longer than filling out that same form on a desktop computer. This increase in difficulty means that many potential customers simply give up on trying to fill in forms on their mobile phones… and if you’re in business, that means you’re losing valuable leads.
Now Facebook is attempting to solve this vexing problem with its latest feature, lead ads. When your business runs a lead ad, Facebook shows it to a targeted audience of people on their mobile phones who are most likely to be interested in your business. The idea is that interested potential customers will then be more likely to request price estimates, newsletters, product demos, test drives or special offers from your business… because Facebook has dramatically simplified the process of signing up for business information from a mobile phone.
How have they done this? Well, Facebook has developed a highly customizable lead ad form, so you can easily choose which information you most want to collect for your business. Then, when someone clicks on your lead ad, your form opens with the person’s contact information automatically populated, using the information they’ve already shared with Facebook. All it takes for customers to sign up for updates from your business is two clicks: one to open the ad, and another to submit the pre-filled form. (Of course, Facebook has made concessions for user privacy – potential customers have the option to edit or omit information before clicking ‘submit.’)
Facebook has already started to improve their lead ads – you can now add open-ended or multiple-choice questions to your signup forms, so your business can get the information that matters most to your marketing goals. The next step will be making lead ads available in more formats, including video and carousel, so businesses can collect leads from people on any device.
Lead ads could become a valuable part of your media buying plan – get in touch to see how it could benefit your social media marketing.
