How to Generate More Leads and More Calls using Facebook Ads

I still get a lot of business owners asking me if Facebook ads still work for local businesses.  The fact is, in many cases yes they do.  And in other cases there are better alternatives all depending on what product or service you are wanting to promote.

What types of businesses can really benefit from running Facebook Ads?

1. Most local businesses offering a product or service in their local area that appeals to the general public
   1. examples can be local plumbers, dentists, lawyers, restaurants, landscapers, gyms, accountants, repair shops, realtors, salons to name just a few.
2. Most businesses that offer a product or service that attract regional or national attention
   1. examples can be e-commerce stores, financial services, insurance companies, retail chains, and more.

You may say, “well that sounds pretty broad”, and you’d be right.  There are a wide range of businesses that are regularly placing ads on Facebook to generate both brand awareness and generate leads and appointments.

So what types of business don’t work so well on Facebook:

1. Casinos
2. Weight Loss
3. Tobacco & Marijuana
4. Beauty
5. Alcohol
6. Political

This list is just a few of the industries that Facebook often frowns upon when it comes to promoting their product or service on the platform.

But if you have a business that caters to the general public that does not fall into those categories then there is a good chance that Facebook ads can be an effective tool to generate more leads and sales for your business.

Here’s an example of an ad campaign we ran for a Asphalt & Concrete business that wanted to get more leads for both residential asphalt paving and sidewalk & driveway concrete jobs:

As you can see we generated 65 leads in the course of just 30 days resulting in tens of thousands in new revenue all from Facebook ads.

B2B vs. B2C Facebook Ads

While Facebook ads can really excel at generating leads for businesses that cater to consumers (B2C), it can also be quite effective for businesses that serve other businesses as well (B2B).  The key is to know how to target businesses within Facebook using proper ad strategies and techniques. It’s important to work on your messaging in both your ad creatives (images and videos) and your ad copy.  You can also experiment with interest targeting as well depending on the industry you want to attract to your ads.

What Type of Facebook Ads Work Best

There are quite a variety of different types of Facebook ads and it’s extremely important to know which one to choose depending on your ultimate goal. For many local and regional businesses that are looking to either generate new sales calls & leads, it’s usually best to run a leads campaign using Facebook forms.  This has become far more prevalent compared to running traffic to a website and trying to track visitors and conversions as Facebook prefer to keep people engaged on their platform.

Facebook Lead Filtering

This is one area that needs some real focus in order to get things right with your Facebooks ads.  The reality is that most people on Facebook are not actively looking for a product or service when they are scrolling on their feed. So leads generated by ads can often end up with a lot of tire kickers and become poor quality leads.  So filtering out your leads is a critical part of the overall success.  Fortunately, Facebook Ads Manager has methods that can be utilized to weed out the tire kickers and send you more leads from people who are more likely to convert into customers.

Even with that said there are a lot of variables to consider when placing ads including your ad images, videos, text, questionnaires, and targeting amongst others. If you’ve ran ads before or tried yourself only to see them fail this is not necessarily an indicator that ads won’t work for your business.

The reality is that there are a lot of Facebook ad ‘experts’ out there that simple don’t know how to effectively generate quality leads for businesses and often end up failing.  Generating high-converting and effective Facebook ad campaigns requires a lot of testing or simply a lot of experience of knowing what works and what doesn’t.

If you don’t know how to run ads or have never tried before.  I highly recommend hiring a specialist or Facebook ads agency that has proven results to show you that they have the experience and knowledge to make your campaigns soar and generate more leads, more calls, and more sales for your business.