Your ideal book audience is out there.

But building a productive, mutually beneficial relationship with them takes trust. And nothing says I trust you more than when they freely offer-up their contact information on a lead-generating form.

Advertising on Facebook is a simple way to capture more leads and open a pathway to building that coveted consumer trust.

Why Capture Leads

While Facebook is a great platform for connecting with your audience, don’t confuse gaining a following with capturing leads. Just because I like you doesn’t mean I trust you. It may sound harsh, but it’s a reality of marketing on every social media platform.

Successful marketing on social media—on all channels—is about relationships. Customers have more choices, and therefore, more control than ever before. If you want to get traction from your lead generation ads, they need to establish value and credibility. Once you do this, you gain their trust, which is what moves the relationship forward.

Facebook’s robust advertising capabilities provide a simple avenue to establishing that trust, making it a necessary part of your overall marketing campaign.

Why Facebook Ads

Facebook was one of the first social media platforms to offer advertising and boasts a rate of 4 billion monthly visits, making it easily one of the best social media advertising options. Plus, it offers extended functions that makes the whole process more efficient, like:

• Audience targeting – Tons of demographics and other factors are at your disposal like: locations, interests, connections, and more. Facebook lead generation ads are precise, only seen by those who will find the message relevant and useful.

• Customization – When setting up an ad on Facebook, you can create custom lead generation forms that autofill a customer’s information, simplifying the sign up process. You can also make sure you ask the right questions with custom fields.

• Integrations – Once you capture a lead with a highly-targeted Facebook ad, you can use one of Facebook’s integration options to sort those leads in your email marketing platform, CRM, or other customer systems.

How to Create a Facebook Lead Ad

You can find a ton of resources on Facebook, and elsewhere, that cover best practices for creating Facebook lead generation ads. That in itself can be an entire article, so here is a high-level overview:

Getting Started

First you will want to gather your ad materials. Facebook lead gen ads have three key elements:

• Images and text – We are visual creatures. Images grab our attention far more effectively than words so make sure you have an image that resonates, as well as text that clearly states the value/benefit they’ll receive by engaging.

• Links – Where does your ad take the customer? This should be a customized form, which we will cover in the next section.

• Privacy Policy – This is a requirement for advertising on Facebook, so make sure you have one on your website, ecommerce store, or blog.

Facebook Ad Execution

Once you have your materials in place, it’s time to create your ad with the following steps:

1. Determine your audience – Create segments based on demographics, interests, and consumer behavior. Facebook can integrate with your current customer management systems to create a variety of custom audience types.

2. Customize your lead form – As mentioned earlier, you can use Facebook to create pre-filled fields that make filling out forms easy. You can also add custom questions to hone in on prospects’ needs and include pre-made call-to-action buttons that make ad objectives clear.

3. Pick a freebie/giveaway/carrot (free ebook or free ebook supplement, perhaps?) – Often customers want to know what is in it for them. Show them by giving away something they will find valuable. Make filling out your form and clicking submit worth their while.

4. Write your ad copy – Facebook ads have strict rules when it comes to on-image copy so you need to be direct and powerful there. Keep your audience in mind and state the benefit upfront. Consider making the call-to-action part of your image copy.

Once you’ve captured your leads, move them into your email marketing platform and you can start planning that perfect email campaign to nurture that relationship.

Turn Leads Into Sales

Facebook is great for building brand recognition and breaking the ice with your book audience, but social media alone is not going to get the conversions you need to maximize online sales. According to an article from McKinsey & Company, email is 40 times more successful in generating conversions than social media.

Make sure you are utilizing the right tools for the right purpose. Use Facebook to kick-off the conversation and collect leads. Then use those leads for email marketing and move them forward in their journey towards a purchase. For email marketing tips to get started, click here.