Perhaps there’s no better platform available today that has the potential to generate more leads for your ecommerce site better than Facebook. It’s accessible, it offers a massive amount of consumer data, and through the years, it’s been making it easier for marketers a to seamlessly combine brand visibility through Facebook ads and opportunities for relationship building through their pages, among consumers.

Of course, there’s also the part where using Facebook for generating leads, given its size and scale, means having to sift through a lot of clutter and noise. But when used right…

1. Facebook can help you reach your target audience easier

Facebook consumer data is divided into very specific demographics and categories. These are very specific details about audiences that were once only available to blue chip companies with the matching budget to access such information.

Search for your niche on Facebook and click on pages or groups to find similar groups.

Facebook however, groups these users under very niche categories that allow you to recognize potential prospects easily, given that you’ve identified your target audience.

Try—

• Reaching out to your own Facebook fans or followers. Work on the premise that your followers will not be able to see your latest post. Instead, to turn them into leads, try gathering their data and reaching out to them outside of Facebook as well.
• Find similar groups and pages with audiences that likely share the same interest. This is a great way to find new people who most likely to turn into leads because they share similar attributes to your target customers.
• Seek out Facebook users based on your identified demographics and behaviors. This is why it’s so important that you identify your intended audience down to specifics.

2. Facebook gives you access to Audience and Page Insights

Facebook readily offers great tools that can help marketers get to know and understand customer behaviour and demographics.

Marketers can gather up-to-date and relevant data from Facebook insights.

Through audience and page insights, information such as geography, demographics, purchasing behaviour and other relevant data can easily be accessed.

It can—

• Offer data about purchasing trends or user insight regarding your target customer base.
• Provide specific data about online purchasing behaviour from audiences within a specific area.
• Gives you insight into how people interact with your pages through statistics based on page likes, comments and shares.

The more insight you have into these things, the better you can create relevant and engaging that help you draw them to your brand as potential leads.

3. Facebook lets you A/B test across a relevant audience to ensure best results

As much as you’d like to think that you already have the formula for the perfect ad or post down pat, the reality is, there is no scientific formula that lets you produce a single ad that will work for the variety of audiences that will see it.

The truth is, the secret to effective ads is in testing what works and what doesn’t—better if you can conduct the test across a group of people who could be potential leads so that you maximize the effort and gather essential data about your target audience, which you can find among your Facebook followers.

Simply input the relevant data you need to test specific sample groups.

Here are a few tips—

• Facebook offers the option to “split audiences” so that you can determine which demographic find your ad most appealing.
• Remember that Facebook’s options for ads and testing is scalable. You can spend as little as $5 a day to $100 if budget permits.
• Be sure to adjust your ads accordingly based on insights delivered to generate more leads.

One last thing…

Facebook may be great for generating leads, as you can see from the points discussed above, but there are a few things that you should also keep in mind before you start—

• Make sure that your profile is well written and accurate. There are cases that instead of clicking on a Facebook ad, a user will first click on your business’ Facebook profile. Ensure that your details are accurate (such as website and email addresses, phone numbers, etc.) with descriptions that are concise and typo-free to leave a good impression.
• Be realistic about your expectations. Sure Facebook has 1.65 billion (and growing) users, so it’s certainly a treasure trove of potential leads, but like any successful marketing initiative, it will take more than a catchy ad to get those leads and convert them. Make sure you provide a good offer, exude credibility and back up your claims.

And finally…

• Do not simply bank on the leads that Facebook can draw for you. Sure, you may have gotten a lot of attention from Facebook led initiatives, but unless you have a process that can take them easily through the rest of your sales or conversion funnel, you’ll lose them. Make sure that you have all the systems in place to engage with your leads—a great landing page, a well-designed site, a seamless purchasing process etc, possibly an email-follow-up sequence for those who aren’t ready to commit to the purchase.

There you have it. If you don’t already have Facebook as a part of your marketing mix, this is as good a time as any to start.

Try out these tips and let us know what you think by leaving us a note in the comment section below.