Most marketers know by now that Facebook is a crucial business tool for companies of every size and industry. With a daily active user base of 1.13 billion (1.03 billion on mobile alone), you realize it can help you reach new audiences you may not have been able to reach otherwise. It can also allow you to be found more easily in search, create a community around your business, promote the content you create, and develop a strong brand identity. However what about using Facebook post ideas for lead generation? Attracting new leads using Facebook — leads that might eventually turn into paying customers — is one of the most intriguing reasons to use Facebook marketing.
And yet, we discover that only about half of marketers use Facebook to source leads. This needs to change. And even in case you are generating leads on Facebook. All of us could probably use a little boost in our lead generation efforts.
To ensure we’re all on the same page, let’s start with what a lead is (and isn’t). And then the two forms of leads you can generate on Facebook.
The 2 Forms of Leads You Can Capture on Facebook
A lead is a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service by providing you with their information in some way. People can show interest in a variety of ways: filling out a kind to obtain an e-book, requesting a demo, or finishing a web based survey.
Unfortunately, simply Liking a status update, photo, or video on your Page doesn’t make someone a lead. That kind of action doesn’t indicate interest in your company or product. It’s possible they just Liked your post because it had a cute pet in it, ya know?
On Facebook, there are two ways you can generate leads: direct leads and indirect leads.
Direct Leads
Direct leads are generated by sharing content that links directly back to a kind on your website. It’s where visitors can share information in exchange for an offer . Whether that be an ebook, coupon, infographic, or any other piece of content. This kind is housed on a landing page dedicated to that specific offer.
Indirect Leads
Indirect leads are generated by using Facebook on the path to conversion. For example, if you shared a blog post that had a call-to-action to a touchdown page at the bottom of the post. Your initial Facebook share is helping direct visitors to that touchdown page.
While directly promoting landing pages is an instant gratifier of leads generated, providing content without a form makes your Facebook presence a friendlier home for content that your fans will want to come back for again and again.
Now, let’s dive into 12 ways you may capture leads, whether they are direct or indirect.
12 Kinds of Facebook Posts to Help You Generate Leads From Your Business Page
1) Post landing pages for offers directly to Facebook.
One of the best ways to generate leads on Facebook is just to send people directly to landing pages for lead-generating offers.
Once you do this, ensure the offer has a compelling featured image that’s getting pulled into the Facebook post. To ensure Facebook pulls the right image from your blog post into your Facebook posts, you’ll need to first optimize the image size for Facebook. Then add the right open graph tags to your website.
You may also want to make sure it’s clear to the reader where you’re sending them. If they think they’re clicking into a blog post and find themselves needing to fill out a form, they could get confused or frustrated. Use verbal phrases like “Download your ebook” or “Get your cheat sheet” to indicate where you’re sending them.
Here is an example from IBM’s Facebook Page, which reads, “Explore our 2015 Corporate Responsibility Report”:
To use clear language, you may need to nix the stock photo from that image in favor of your own, custom image. Even the least design-savvy of marketers can easily create a custom image in PowerPoint that includes the name of the offer. It’s just like we did in the example below.
2) Post the blog posts that generate the most leads.
Another way of generating leads from the content your team is producing is to simply pick the blog posts that generate the most leads. And post those ones to Facebook. (Learn how to do a blog lead generation analysis here.) The topic and title of the blog post will intrigue your audience to click and read. And then they’ll find a CTA within that post — preferably high up, near the intro — to either a solution to a problem they’re having or to something they need to learn more about.
Pro Tip: Our social media managers have found they’re able to generate more leads from Facebook by posting blog posts containing anchor text CTAs in the introduction. In each single post we tracked for that examine. The anchor text CTA was responsible for between 47% and 93% of a post’s leads.
This is an example of a Facebook post linking to a blog post that includes an anchor text CTA in the introduction:
And here’s that anchor text CTA, indicated by the red arrow:
