These days, the nature of social media demands that paid advertising makes up a key component of amplifying your brand stories and reaching new customers. And the big platforms are making it easier to capture consumer details. And yet, despite the existence of several different types of Facebook ad types, if you want to capture fan details, brands have  needed to either use an app or drive traffic back to a landing page or website. Until now.

Introducing facebook lead ads

Facebook has clearly recognised this lack of capability drives traffic away from its platform while also increasing load times, so it’s not surprising that it’s starting to roll out these new “Lead Ads” as a new form of paid advertising. If you’re using Power Editor to run your ads (and I highly recommend you do so if you’re not already) you can start to build these lead capture forms to secure consumer details.

Have a read of Jon Loomer’s article about how to set up these ads and the different options available. It provides a good user experience for consumers not having to take them away from facebook and pre-populates as much data as facebook know. There’s also the option to ask some questions of the customer throughout the process – a good opportunity to think about how you can personalise your initial communications to make sure it’s relevant. Note, if you’re considering these types of ads you will need to make sure your privacy policy is clearly published on your website as you must link to this before your form and ad is approved.

Not to be outdone, Google are also getting in on the mix and looking at ways to target customer data in a meaningful way. Google is about to unveil “Customer Match” ads to allow brands to target email addresses on their database, an initiative that facebook has been doing for a while with their customer audience segments.

Love to hear any stories or feedback if you’ve been using these ads – our initial trials have found very cost effective results.