Facebook Lead Ads – Game Changer?
Facebook has just announced a new feature within their ad network that may just be a game changer for musicians like us. That is to say, musicians who understand that their success will directly correlate to the size of their mailing list.
The new feature allows advertisers (that’s you) to run ads with a “native lead capture flow” built into the ads themselves. There will be no need to click away to a third party site, or fill out any cumbersome forms (a real issue for mobile users). Just two clicks and you’ll have a new fan on your mailing list.
One can only imagine that this will also result in an increase in lead quality, as the email addresses passed on by Facebook will be the user’s Facebook address rather than some throwaway email address which many consumers dedicate to promotional content and newsletters.
Facebook’s ads will be able to auto-fill any of these pieces of information:
- Full Name
- Street Address
- Phone
- Zip
- City
- State
- Country
- Company Name
- Job Title
The feature has only been released to a small number of businesses while they go through a final round of beta testing. However development has been moving fast and it would seem likely that the feature will become more widely available soon. How soon is anyone’s guess.
A few legitimate points of concern…
1. Conversions Rates: Typically copy (the words you use on a landing page) is a major contributor to conversions. So with infinitely less digital real estate to work with, will a native lead capture form be as effective as taking people off site to your own landing page? It’s hard to say, and it’s something that will certainly require some testing. However, it’s hard to imagine that there won’t at least be some scenarios where the simpler process results in higher conversion rates, especially for more established acts who’s fan base will already be somewhat engaged.
2. Privacy: Certainly any feature that passes private information raises a number of privacy concerns. In an effort to protect users Facebook won’t just hand over the info the moment someone clicks on a subscribe button. Instead, users will have an opportunity to review the information that is being passed on and make edits before finalizing the submission. Additionally, users will see a privacy policy within the ad, and advertisers will be prohibited from selling the information to any third party.
3: Cost: If these ads do in fact lead to an increase in conversions they will be in high demand and it stands to reason that the price will go up. However if your conversion rate goes up your acquisition costs will go down. So presumably it will be a positive trade off that ultimately increases your bottom line. But only time will tell.
It’s too soon to say what impact this new feature will have on musicians. However with every new indie artist success story one thing becomes clear… the money is in the mailing list. So at the very least, this will be one more tool in your music marketing toolbox.
What do you think?
Is this a game changer for musicians, or will conversions suffer without the benefit of a more traditional squeeze page? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
Hey John,
I know I am late on the up take with the post but have a couple of questions:
– Have you used facebook lead pages yourself?
– if so what were your thoughts/results, did it gain you cost effective & valuable subs?
– There has long been talk about FB ads being cheaper when you keep what you are doing on Facebook its self, do you think this is correct and in effect when using Facebook lead pages compared to directing traffic from your ads off site?
-Which do you think gives the best results and is most cost effective, using lead pages or directing ads traffic off site to a stand alone squeeze page?
Thanks
Hey Jordan,
I haven’t really played with it yet. Last I looked you sneeded a Zapier account. Without one you would need to download leads to a spread sheet and upload them to your email management tool which is a pretty terrible user experience.
There have also been complaints about pour quality leads.
I was also disappointed by how little I could do with the actual lead ad. I think it may take a landing page, and all the potential media and copy that you can place there to convert cold traffic successfully. So for me, a squeeze page is still the way to go. That said, I am certain FB will improve the platform. I will definitely do some split testing at some point and share the results when I do.
Thanks John for the review about this amazing tool. Leads Ads more another app can do new subscribers into my autoresponder and funnel instantly, with no additional work needed. Now, it’s perfect. My cost per subscriber is near to 6 cents.
Hi Yoel,
Great! Happy to hear you’re digging the tool. That’s great that you’re getting such inexpensive subscribers. Well done!
Let me know if I can ever help with anything.
As a buyer of music and subscriber to musicians (rather than as a seller) I’m disturbed by the tendency of sites to want personal information. A musician can reasonably ask for an email address to send info to (as was the case with a link that led me to peruse this page). By choice it is not my primary personal email. If a link said that it needed my home address or phone number, then I’d steer well clear!
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your comment. I know what you mean. Generally speaking, the more info you ask for, the lower the conversions will be, meaning less people will take the desired action.
That said, in this instance, the sign up process is made easier with the pre-populated fields and should lead to a higher conversion rate, at least in many instances. But we’ll see what happens.
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks, John . Let’s see how this works .
im confused how does this help musician….didnt quit get it yet plz explain…plus is this suppose to generate income for an artist in one way or??!??
Thanks for the comment/question… Here at MMM we focus on a specific form of direct to fan marketing that involves driving traffic, building our mailing list, building a relationship with our subscribers, and then eventually asking for support in the form of buying our music, merch, tickets to shows, etc.
One way we drive traffic is with paid advertising, namely Facebook ads. This is a new feature that the ad platform is about to launch which may very much help that process. So for those who are engaged with Facebook advertising, this is big news.
But I do realize that many are still at the beginning of that learning curve. My best advice is to watch the free music marketing blueprint video that you can find in the side bar of this site, It gives you a much more detailed overview of the process.
All the best.
Can you let us know what this feature is live? Would be good to test it to see how it works in practice. Thanks! 🙂
Hey Markus, will do. I’ll be jumping on it as soon as it goes live to the public. Cheers.
I think it’s a game changer
Certainly could be Macboo. It will be interesting to see it unfold.
I believe we went through a similar thing with custom landing tabs, which were all the rage until people realised that Facebook wouldn’t allow you to actually run any ads to them. This more than negates the higher conversion rates promised.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one….
Could be. As a general rule, the less steps there are, the higher the conversion rate. But the biggest question (at least to me) is how important the copy, image, and branding on the squeeze page are as compared to the easier opt in process. I’m not 100% sure how this will weigh out, but I think it’s possible this could at least be a very powerful option for retargeting those people that make it to our squeeze pages but don’t initially sign up. Only time will tell, but thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one.
John,
Thanks for keeping us updated on all of this important info!
My pleasure Gary, thanks for checking out the post.
It could be a good thing, for sure, but what if you want to include a free download or some give away? Are they saying you wont be able to direct them to a landing page at all?
Hey John, thanks for stopping by.
The incentive wouldn’t change, nor would the post subscription experience. The ad would basically say something along the lines of “sign up for a free download” and the ad would integrate with your email management provider (or at least that is what is implied). So when someone signed up Aweber (or whatever service you use) would take over and deliver the free download, or whatever it is you promised. The only real change here is that there are less steps involved for the user. The biggest potential negative (as I see it) is that we don’t know if those steps are actually important. Meaning that we may find that music fans need to visit our landing pages, see our pictures, press quotes, and learn more about us before they feel compelled to subscribe. But we really don’t know until the feature is live and we can test it. My gut tells me the real value here will be for retargeting those that visited the squeeze page but haven’t yet signed up.