TAM 048: Wilco de Kreij – Facebook Lead Ads
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For episode 48, I chat with Wilco de Kreij of Connect Leads. Last year, Facebook launched their newest feature called Facebook Lead Ads. Facebook Lead Ads allow you to generate lead forms to gather user details like email address and contact information straight from Facebook, without the making the person type in their name and email address again.
Facebook lead ads helps make it easier for people to sign up and receive your offer without the struggle to sign up your forms manually on a small device like a phone.
This week, we discuss an overview of Facebook Leads Ads, the benefits and some tips to make your lead ads successful. Are you already familiar with Facebook Lead ads? Have you tried using it? Don’t forget to share your user experience in the comment section below!
We chat about:
- Why you need to use Facebook Lead Ads
- How to get leads using Facebook Lead Ads
- Step by step instruction how to launch your first Facebook Lead Ad
- How your ad will show up on mobile
- How do they differ from a simple Facebook ad?
- Follow up sequences after launching your ad
- Integrating marketing automation to your Facebook Lead Ad?
If you would like to have a chat about how you could be using marketing automation to grow your business join us in the Automation Nation private Facebook group
Links Mentioned In The Show
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Barry: Get the fact that you guys are smart enough that to add tags was really a great feature in my eyes. They're so ... for those listening-
Wilco: I've been following you for a long time, so what else can you expect, right?
Barry: Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm glad someone's listening.
Announcer: Welcome to The Active Marketer podcast, where we talk about how to design, automate, and scale your business to the next level using sales and marketing automation. You can find out all the tips, tactics, and techniques you need to get more customers and sell more stuff over at theactivemarketer.com. Now here's your host,
Barry Moore.
Barry: Welcome to the podcast. It's all about sales, funnels, and marketing automation. I am your host, Barry Moore, and this week more cool stuff for you. If you have been in the online marketing space at all in the last few years, or even if you're a more traditional business and you've been doing online advertising at all, you have probably heard about Facebook ads. You've probably seen them many, many times. As you're scrolling through your newsfeed, you'll see a Facebook ad of someone trying to drive you to content so that you can engage with their content, or drive you to their landing page so you can see their offer.
This week, we're not gonna talk about that exactly, but we're gonna talk about a much cleaner way that you can get traffic into your marketing automation straight from Facebook. So no driving them to a landing page and then having to get them to convert on your landing page. We want their name and address details to go straight from Facebook right into your marketing automation system or your email service provider. So this week, we're gonna be talking to Wilco from ConnectLeads. We're going to talk about Facebook lead ads, which are a very specific type of Facebook ad, and how you can use lead ads, and his piece of software called ConnectLeads, to create an advertisement on Facebook.
And when the person says, "Click yes. I want that." Or, "Click yes. I'm interested." Their name and email address goes straight into your auto responder. No middleman, no CSV files, no nothing. Straight into Active Campaign, and then you can follow up with any of your normal kind of sales follows or marketing automation you may have set up behind the scenes, to process that lead and try and turn them into a customer. So really interesting piece of software. Really cool. I've tried it. Took me just a few minutes to get set up, and had lead flowing straight into Active Campaign. It was pretty impressive.
And I also want you to stick around to the end of the episode. I've got a very special offer for you at the end of this episode, so don't bail early. Stay all the way to the end. I think you'll be interested in the special offer that we're gonna talk about at the end of the episode. But before we get into talking to Wilco, we're gonna do this Shameless Social Proof segment. We haven't done one of these in a while, so I wanna get back to it.
This one is coming from the UK iTunes store for a change. This one is from Marcello. He says, "The best podcast of the year. Five stars. One word, love the podcast. The information shared by Barry and the experts on the show is fantastic. If you really pay attention and apply the tips, strategies, and techniques, you can change your business. Another thing that differentiates this podcast is that Barry shares tips, strategies, and techniques about Active Campaign. If you are an Active Campaign user, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Brilliant work, Barry. I can't wait for the next interview. God bless you."
Well, thank you very much, Marcello. You couldn't ask for a better review than that. So happy you're enjoying the podcast. So happy that we can put out information that helps people grow their business. I really love it, and that's what we're here to do. If you would like to leave a review of the podcast, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher or SoundCloud, wherever you consume the podcast. Leave us a review, and I will read it out on a future episode. But now let's get into this week's main topic, which is Facebook lead ads with Wilco.
Well, I'd like to welcome to the show Wilco from Connectio and ConnectLeads. How are you, Wilco?
Wilco de Kreij: Hey, man. I'm doing good. How are you?
Barry: I'm really doing well myself because I've been playing around with your tool all day the other day, just to see how it works. And I find it fascinating. So I wanted to get you on to talk about it a little bit. And for people who don't know, we'll get into what that tool is in a minute. But it's all kinda based around Facebook lead ads, which I've only ever kinda heard about. I haven't had a chance to play with them. So thought I'd get you on to talk about them a little bit more, because I think they're just a game-changer for getting new leads into your funnels, into your pipelines. So I guess the first question is, "Why use lead ads?"
Wilco: Basically, why Facebook introduced this feature, I think is really for the mobile audience. I mean, their mobile audience is growing, as I'm sure you know, right? There are, like, 655 million people who only use Facebook on their mobile, never on the desktop, which is insane. And as I'm sure you know as well, it's the best way, at least for me and for many businesses, to get people into your business is to funnel them into your business, right? So to collect their lead first and then build a relationship, etc, etc.
But the problem is, on a mobile device, people are doing stuff. They're on the road. They're checking their phone just real quick. And if they see something interesting, they click on it. And usually they're not that into typing out their whole name and typing out their whole email address, all on a tiny keyboard. And for Facebook, that's a problem. Because if an advertising can't make money from that mobile audience, they're not gonna spend money on it. And like I said, for Facebook that's a problem. That's why they released this feature, to make it easier for everyone, for all advertisers, to collect leads, to collect someone's email address, on a mobile device without them having to actually type in their email address.
So what this new lead ad feature does ... it's a new feature from Facebook Ads. Basically, if you click on it, instead of opening a website, it will automatically open up a pop-up. And they will have all the information already written out. So it will say the user's name. It will say the user's email address. And it can even include things like gender or occupation or things like that, and Facebook will automatically pre-fill that. And then the only thing they need to do is tap once more, and their email address is collected by Facebook.
And this really lowers the barrier of collecting a lead. Instead of having to type it all in, having to wait for a page first on a mobile connexion, and then having to type it all in, now they can just click on it. It will instantly open up inside the Facebook ad. And then they'll want that more, and their email address is collected without doing any kind of typing. And I think that's pretty much a summary of what a lead ad is, and also why Facebook also created it.
Barry: Yeah, I think ... I remember when Facebook first floated. And I listened to a couple podcasts about investing in share trading and the stock market, and they were battering Facebook when first went public about how they just weren't monetizing mobile. Like, all their ads [bend 00:06:38] and stuff was on desktop. They weren't monetizing mobile. So clearly, that's a big priority for them, and they certainly seemed to have cracked that game. And that sector of people on mobile devices is only gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. And there's so many different form factors now. You know, it's the iPads and tablets and small phones, big phones.
So I think it's super important that as part of your marketing mix, that you are paying attention to how your ads show up on mobile. So there's lots of talk and lots of chatter around creating a landing page and then getting people to opt in, and following up with an email sequence. And that's all great if they're on a desktop or maybe even on an iPad. But certainly if they're on the phone, you bring up a good point there that that form factor for entering your name and email address on a phone has a lot more friction to it. People are probably gonna go, 'Ah, I don't have to type my email address on this stupid tiny little keyboard."
So this is a way you can capture people without having them have to type in all that information, because it's already stored in Facebook. They just say, "Hey I want this," and they click on it. And Facebook pre-populates their name and their email address and, as you said, any number of other data points on them. And you can grab that without having to have them type it back in. I guess the other thing, too, is that's a much more useful email address, right? If it's the email address that they're logging into Facebook with, that's probably a much more valuable address than some fake one they might want to give you just to get your lead [back there 00:08:06].
Wilco: Exactly. Because Facebook already verified it when they signed up at Facebook first.
Barry: Yeah. So I guess, how do they differ from ... You know, everyone's seen the normal Facebook ads. So how do they differ from just a normal Facebook ad?
Wilco: Well, at first sight, from the audience perspective, they look similar. So they have that same kind of image, the same size of an image as well. They have the text above, and they have a title. So it all looks the exact same. And they have a little call-to-action button as well, which you can do in a normal ad as well, right? You can say something like "more information" if you were running any kind of Facebook ads. So on that sense, they look the exact same way.
The only difference is that with a normal ad, if you click on it, it will open up a link, right? It will go to your website, so it will take them outside of Facebook. And if they click on a lead ad, they won't go to your site. It will immediately, without loading, it will immediately open up that pop-up with all the information. And then after they actually click and subscribe, then after, they will see a button where they can click onto your website.
So basically the difference is, either they first go to your website, and then they may or may not enter their lead. And with this kind of ad, with the new lead ad, they will immediately see the form. They will opt in first, and then they can go to your website. I think that's the easiest explanation of how these two differ.
Barry: Yeah, I think that's the super important point. It's making that opt-in point, that moment of truth there where they're gonna give you their name and email, literally as frictionless as possible. They don't have to enter anything. They just click that call-to-action button on the lead ad. Their name and email address is already populated. All they have to do is go tap "yes," and bam, they've opted in. And then as you said, you can redirect them from there to a thank-you page, or maybe back to your Facebook page, or wherever it is you want to redirect them from there.
Wilco: Exact.
Barry: So what kind of things can you use ... Well, we've kinda covered the traditional kind of, "Hey, I wanna opt in for this free PDF ... PDF lead magnet." What other kind of things can you use lead ads for?
Wilco: So yeah, like you said, that's obviously the most common thing, right? So basically, if people ask me, I say, "Well, basically everything that you can get every- someone else to opt in for as well." So like I said, giving away an e-book or something like that. But you can also use it, for example, to let people sign up for a webinar. So you can run an ad and say, "Hey, you know, we have this workshop tonight at 8:00 P.M. or tomorrow at 8:00 P.M. Uh, click here to subscribe." And then if they click it, then instantly they'll get that opt-in form, and they will subscribe.
So yeah, the sort of short answer would be, "Everything that you would normally ... that you could use an opt-in page for as well, uh, as long as you give something of value." I think that's the most important part. You have to give them something of value, because people are still ... Even though it's real easy to submit, they still are submitting their email address, and they know it. So you still have to give them something of value in order to make sure they actually want to subscribe in that [scenario 00:10:54].
Barry: Yeah, sure. The point I was just trying to get across there is, it's not just one thing. It's not just, "Hey, download this PDF." You can use it for free video training. Use it, as you said, webinars. Lots of different scenarios where you can employ these lead ads, basically just to get people to sign up for something, whatever that something happens to be. I can't remember off the top of my head, but that call-to-action button. There's only a few different things that you can actually put there as a call to action. Is that right?
Wilco: Yep, there are ... from the top of my head, there are six, and actually change based on which language settings the user has. So that, like in English, there would be, "Apply now," "Download," "Get quote," "Learn more," "Sign up," or "Subscribe." So those are the six that will show up.
Barry: Very cool.
Wilco: Yep.
Barry: And then, so what happens to their information after they do that? So say I've seen your lead magnet. It's, you know, "Download this free guide to XYZ." I'm saying, "Yeah, I might want that." And I click on "Download." My name and email's pre-populated there, and then I click on "Okay" or "Next" or whatever the button says there. And then boom, I'm done. Where does that information go? As the marketer, how do I get my hands on that information?
Wilco: Yeah, well, basically Facebook asked ... when they released this feature, they made sure you can ... everyone can access the data. But your first question was, "What happens if you subscribe?" Well, the short answer is actually, "Nothing." And that might sound a bit weird. But the thing is, Facebook stores all that data, but they only way they get is to download a CSV file. So they'd have to go into your Facebook page, and then you can download a CSV file with all the leads that you've captured so far.
Now obviously, if you were gonna subscribe to an offer, you would wanna make sure that you get something right away. I mean, the first time I tested this out, I actually ... I just figured, "You know, I'll export that CSV file once a day and import it into my autoresponder." So when I did that, obviously I had people who signed up the day before, and then the day after, they got their welcome email where I promised something. And I got various emails, which was kind of surprised me actually, saying, like, "Hey, who are you? Like, I will ..." And so they didn't even remember that they subscribed the day before.
So that proves the point that you really have to make sure to basically deliver whatever you promised to them right away. Because an hour later, it's already less effective. So if you were just using Facebook, then you'll have download that CSV. You'll have to make sure that it's in the right format and upload it into your autoresponder. And you'll keep on doing that every singe, yeah, hour or day, whatever you prefer, but at least as fast as possible. And for every single lead form that you're running separately, it's all separate CSV files.
And I think that that's exactly where ConnectLeads comes in, which is we actually get instant notifications from Facebook that sends over real-time notifications whenever someone enters a lead form. And this way, we can make sure that the lead that comes in goes straight into your autoresponder right away. So that way, if you connected using ConnectLeads, when someone clicks on the lead ad, right away we'll send over the email to your autoresponder, whatever that system is, or to your, for example, a webinar platform. And right away, they'll get an email saying, "Hey, thanks. And here is your e-book." Or, "Here's your, uh, webinar invite." Or, "Here's your video that, uh, we promised you." Whatever you have promised them.
So those are basically the two options. Either a manual, export them manually and keep on doing that as often as you can think of. Which I would not recommend, but that's the standard option. And the other option is to connect using a tool like ConnectLeads and make sure that's all automated into your account, closing the gap between your Facebook lead ads and your autoresponder.
Barry: Yeah, that just sounded insane to me when I was playing around with these lead ads. I was like, "Okay, cool. Where's all this information going?" It's like, "Oh, no, you've gotta come in and get the CSV file." And I'm like, "What? That doesn't make ... that makes no sense whatsoever, like, from a marketing perspective." As you said, because people want that immediacy. They're like, "Oh yeah, I want this guide." And they're expecting it. They expected to get it a minute or two later.
And to have to go in and download CSV files ... And as you said, if you have a number of these lead forms running, just to click-test or whatever, you're gonna have dozens of different CSV- It's just ridiculous. It's ridic- Because I'm assuming that's why you created ConnectLeads in the first place.
Wilco: Exactly, yeah.
Barry: Yeah. So let's switch gears and talk about that a little bit, all right? So obviously this is a show about marketing automation, and we wanna get those leads into our autoresponder sequence or into our marketing automation platform so that we can follow up with those leads. So you were saying, with a tool like ConnectLeads, you're using the Facebook API. Is that correct? To just push these-
Wilco: Yes.
Barry: Push these-
Wilco: Facebook Ads API. They have two different APIs. One's their standard API, and this one is just for the advertise API, different kind of API.
Barry: Okay, cool. So you're just using that Facebook Ads API to get it to talk to, in my particular case, Active Campaign. But that could be any number of different autoresponders. So that Facebook's just ... Whenever someone signs up and say, "Yeah, I want your lead magnet," that just pushes across straight into your autoresponder of choice. Is that right?
Wilco: Yes, exactly. They will send over all the email addresses to our servers. And then we collect data, and then we send it over, enter into any of the autoresponders, yep.
Barry: And then I know this for a fact because I was playing with it just yesterday. But I think the great thing about it too, if you're using Active Campaign ... and I don't know what other systems you do this with. But you can also add a tag of your own as that information goes across. Is that right?
Wilco: Yep, that's correct. Every autoresponder that supports that, we added that in there. So you can easily ... For example, with Active Campaign, you can have multiple tags in case it's easier. And yeah, that's ... you sound correct.
Barry: Yeah, I love that ... It's the feature that everyone who doesn't ... like, there's tonnes of people who integrate with Active Campaign. But the ones who don't actually know how to use the tool properly, they just go, "Oh yeah, you can just add people to a list." And it's like, "Oh, yeah, but I don't wanna have a hundred lists. I just wanna have one."
Wilco: Segmented by tags, right? It's the whole purpose in the first place. Exact.
Barry: So the fact that you guys were smart enough to add tags was really a great feature in my eyes there. So for those listen-
Wilco: I've been following you for a long time. So what else can you expect, right?
Barry: Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm glad someone's listening. But yeah. So for those listeners out there who might not know what we're talking about, is you want to add someone to your list. So if someone's opted in for your lead magnet via one of these lead ads, obviously you wanna add them to a list. But you wanna follow them up with whatever the most appropriate automation, or whatever the most appropriate follow-up sequence is for that particular download.
So if you're running three different lead ads, lead ad A, lead ad B, lead C, there's gonna be different automations behind each one of those to deliver that information to the customer, to the lead. So you could say, "Right, when someone clicks on lead ad A, we're gonna tag them with, you know, lead magnet A." So that knows which automation to fire inside Active Campaign. So that automation would be fired based on the presence of that tag, which is nice. But everyone gets added to the same list, which is exactly how it needs to happen, which I think is super, super cool.
So tell us a little bit more about ConnectLeads. How did you decide that you were gonna go out and build this thing? I can understand-
Wilco: Well, actu-
Barry: The pain and why you wanted to do it, but did it then stem from-
Wilco: Yeah, yeah. Actually that's the exact same as you are. Like we said, just before in here, we talked about that we're sort of the same kind of people who like to test things out and see things, how it works, and see ... you know, just test things out. And the exact same thing happened to me when I saw the Facebook lead ads coming along. They were just being released. And I figured, "I'm gonna try that out." And I ran into the exact same problem as you did. So I was like, "This is- this insane."
And then ... because I've been creating Facebook products before, and I'm sort of familiar with their ads API ... with their API documentation. So I went and looked in and see. And then I noticed that they actually created a new section in their documentation, which actually explains how to set this up, how to do this in an automated way, if you have Facebook Ads the API extras, which is business were approved to just prior to that.
So then I started reading more, and I realised that they actually did it on purpose, that they only created the CSV export. Because they don't wanna pass over all your autoresponders' forms out here. I mean, you're advertising on Facebook. I'm sure you're familiar with the custom audiences, where people can just load a CSV file with [New Englanders 00:18:58], right? That's exactly the same thing. It's like, you have to do it all manually. Well, hopefully they could do it in an automated way, but they don't. They only allow [milch in 00:19:06], and that's the only thing that they did. And they've been doing that for years.
And the reason for that is because they allow their developers to create a third-party platform to do that for them. So instead of them having to worry about it, they'll just provide a ... they'll just make it happen, make it possible for third-party developers to create tools, so that tools like, for example, ConnectLeads can add it in. So when I started, I was like, "All right. This is something that I not only I need, but obviously the market needs as well." So that, yeah, I think that's enough of a reason for me to start working on it right away, basically.
Barry: Yeah, very cool. I guess you must have had a software development background before that, yeah?
Wilco: Well, actually, I have a team of developers. So I wouldn't be able to pull it off myself, just being me. So we have a team of ... Because we are into software, we focused on just a few products. And it's all software, and that's all we do. So all we lead, this is sort of our thing, if you call it like that. Yeah.
Barry: Yeah, I guess it's pretty smart on Facebook's part, as you said. There's hundreds of different systems they have to interface with, so they just get guys like you to do the heavy lifting for them. And then they say, "Right, well, the API. You guys go make the products. Off you go." And then they don't half to hassle with creating a hundred different connexions to a hundred different systems.
Wilco: Exactly, with changing APIs and all of that.
Barry: Yeah, very cool. And the other tool in your toolkit there, along with ConnectLeads, is something called ConnectAudience. I haven't had to play with that yet. Can you tell me what that does?
Wilco: Sure. In a way, it's actually the exact opposite. It doesn't have anything to do with your Facebook lead ads, but it has to do with the custom audiences. So if you're advertising on Facebook, you can target your audience, right? You can say, "Oh, everyone who is living in New York and who is a fan of Coca-Cola," for example. But they also allow you to create a custom audience, which means that you can upload a CSV file with, for example, all your customers, right?
So can just upload it, and then Facebook will start recognising all these email addresses and see if they can match it to a Facebook profile. So from that point on, you can actually show advertisements to that custom audience, which are your customers, right? Or for example, everyone who subscribed to your email list. But just like with lead ads, that's only [magnels 00:21:12], so you'll have to download all these CSV from your autoresponder and then upload it into Facebook as a custom audience.
And that's actually what ConnectAudience is. It synchronises your autoresponder, for example, Active Campaign, and just sends it over as a custom audience to your Facebook Ads account. So you can then start advertising to, for example, who subscribed on your list. Or for example, everyone who has opened a certain email from you recently.
Barry: Very cool. So it's pushing all the emails that are inside Active Campaign. It's pushing those up into Facebook to create a custom audience based on those.
Wilco: Exactly, exactly. And you can go as little as you want. You can say, "Well, everyone ... I sent out an email. Everyone who has opened this email, but who did not click on the link," for example. Or maybe, "Those who did receive it, but who did not open the fragment." So you can just segment out which part of your ... anybody you wanna use as a custom audience, and you can just push that into Facebook Ads as a custom audience.
Barry: That's brilliant. So you could ... You know, the typical scenario is you run a webinar, for example. And you're gonna have kinda three segments of the audience that you wanna re-target after the webinar. So hopefully at the end of the webinar, there's four different segments of customers. There are the people who attended the webinar and bought your product at the end, which is good. We don't have to worry about chasing them up again. But then you're gonna have those people who signed up, but didn't attend. You're gonna have those people that signed up and left halfway through. And then you're gonna have those people that signed up, stayed the whole time, but didn't buy.
So you say you could, as long as those people are tagged inside your system, like Active Campaign. If they're tagged inside Active Campaign, you could push those three segments up as three different custom audiences, and you could run ads to those three different custom audiences differently. Yeah?
Wilco: Exactly.
Barry: Oh, good.
Wilco: But there's just one "but." Because Active Campaign is actually the only one that ... for example, with Infusionsoft, that's exactly right. With Active Campaign, you can segment on a lot of things, except for tags. Right now from ... yeah, and we're depending on the Active Campaign API, and they said they were working on it. So it should be coming. But right now, we cannot re-use again who has a certain ... basically, we cannot get a list of all the people who has a certain tag or something like that.
So that's currently, for Active Campaign, it's the exception where you cannot use tags. You can use a lot of other things, but not tags. For all the other systems, you can. They allow tags that ... you can use tags. But for Active Campaign, it's basically, "Have they received the email? Have they opened the certain email? Have they clicked on the link? Have they ... Are they in a certain automation?" You can say that. So but tags is not yet supported by Active Campaign.
Barry: Well, they-
Wilco: They said they'll be there.
Barry: Okay. Well, you could still get around that. You could have them all in a certain automation. Can you do list segments, or no?
Wilco: No.
Barry: No, okay.
Wilco: Subscribed to a list, but not a segment right now.
Barry: So you could break those people up into three different lists then, and then do it that way, for example.
Wilco: Yep. And well, I guess I did this for Active Campaign. For example, if you're using Infusionsoft, you can just use tags and anything you want.
Barry: Cool. Very cool. All right, so let's say somebody wants to get started with lead ads tomorrow. Like, someone's going, "Hey, this lead ads stuff sound pretty cool." How do you get started? What's the first-
Wilco: Yeah, well every Facebook advertiser has access to it right now. So if you are a Facebook advertiser, you'll have to go into the power editor. So this means you'll have to use Google Chrome and then go to facebook.com/ads/manage/power editor, or just go into your normal editor and then click on "power editor." Because this feature's only available in the power editor. You'll have to create a new campaign. And then where you select the objective, you'll have to select "all lead generation."
And once you select that, you can create a campaign and go into your ad set. And from there you select your Facebook page where you wanna run it on. And this is all this exact same as any other ad. And then if you actually start editing the ad, then you'll see that you can create a lead for it. It'll show up with a red line around it because you'll actually have to create it. Just click that, and just follow the steps.
It'll ask you, "What data do you wanna ... uh, do you wanna get?" For example, the name and email address. You will have to enter in a privacy policy or your ... it's always in your own website. And you will enter in the link where you want people to be able to click after they signed up. So that could be your thank-you pitch, for example, right, or an extra offer. Something like that.
So yeah, all you need to do is go to the power editor, create a new campaign, select new campaign objective, "all lead generation," and from there it's all ... yeah, you're good to go. You can create your lead ad and upload it to Facebook. And it's working.
Barry: Yeah, I'm no Facebook Ads expert myself, but getting in there, following the instructions you guys had on your website, and just getting in there and doing it was a piece of cake. I had an add up and running, connected to my autoresponder, with the correct emails going out, in, like, half an hour. It was all done and dusted. And started running ads, and I think someone signed up in, like, the first 15 or 20 minutes. So it works pretty good. I was pretty impressed. There's obviously gotta be some pitfalls in there, some common mistakes that people make along the way. What have you seen there?
Wilco: Yeah, I think the most common mistake I've seen people make is they sorta treat these kind of ads the same as they did for any other ad. But the problem is that, well, normally if you would have an opt-in page, right, the only goal your ad has, basically, is to get people to click on it. Because you will convince them to sign up on your opt-in page. That's where you'll have extra benefits, or you'll make it clear what they will get exactly. So on the ads you can just tease them a bit and make sure they wanna click on it. Make sure they wanna click on it, but that's pretty much it.
However, if you're doing the exact same thing for a lead ad, it's not gonna work as well. Because in a lead ad you'll have to be more descriptive. And what I mean with that is that you'll have to be ... basically, it has to be clear what they will be getting from it. You don't just want them to click on it, because they will still need to submit their email address, right? So you wanna make sure they actually want to do that. So normally you can just be teasing a bit and get them to click, and now you'll have make sure that you wanna make clear what they will get once they subscribe. So they already ... you have to all be convinced in the actual ad, for example.
And one way I see people do that is if you start advertising, you can ... obviously, you will have your ad text and your image, just like any other ad. But what many people done now is that you can create a lot of text in your ad. However, people won't always see it. Like, it will create this "View more" link, right? On Facebook, it will say, "View more." But what I've seen people do is they just have their ad like they normally have. And then they just keep on typing, and they'll say something like, "Hey, you know, if you click 'Subscribe,' then here's what you get exactly." Then they'll list all the benefits of what someone would get.
Because some people might not be convinced right away from the ad, but they will still click on the "View more" text, and then they will ... you'll see more room of convincing. And what sort of goes hand in hand with that is what I see people do. And this is more in general, for every ad actually, but also for lead ads, is they sort of try to speak in technical things or in features. But obviously, you wanna talk in the end benefit, right? You wanna talk about what the end benefit is of what you're giving away.
You don't wanna say, "Hey, uh, you, do you wanna join this cool webinar?" You wanna say, "Hey, we're going to teach you X, Y, and Z. We're gonna make sure that you'll double your sales while spending less time or effort." You wanna remove a problem. You wanna really focus on the end benefit, and don't speak in technical benefits. I think that goes for every ad or for every marketing mail that you're putting out. But I think that's something I've seen quite a few people do wrong as well, I'd say, when I was going to somewhere for customers' ads.
Barry: Yeah, you've got much less real estate to convince someone, I guess, than you would on the traditional landing page, for sure.
Wilco: Exactly.
Barry: And then we might close out on this, actually. Because I was telling a lot of people about this, because I think it's pretty cool, which is obviously why I wanna get you on here. I think it's a great way to get leads into your business. But a lot of people I talked to were like, "Aw, this has gotta be some sort of Facebook hack. And Facebook's gonna find out about it and shut it all down tomorrow." So maybe you can speak to Facebook's involvement in this and how well they're embracing vendors like yourself who are coming up with these solution.
Wilco: Yeah, sure, no problem. So first of all, the Facebook lead ads. It's obviously just a feature. It's actually created by Facebook. So the lead ads themself is obviously ... that goes outside of what we're doing, and that's an official feature. You'll see it on the Facebook blog. You'll see it ... you know, they'll have it mentioned and featured anywhere else.
And in terms of developers like myself, I can sorta give you an idea of how that actually works. Because the truth is, I've been ... as a business, we create products. And over the last couple years, we've been trying a couple times to get the Facebook Ads API access, right? Because it's really hard to get. And earlier on, the only way you would be able to get it, if you would serve some really big enterprise customers. And I'm not talking about spending about 100 K a year. I'm spending about way bigger, way bigger ad expense in order to be even considered for that.
Now earlier this year, earlier 2015, they changed their guidelines for that. And they said, "All right, we- we start- we start allowing other ad developers. But, uh, basically we're not gonna make it easy for them, but it is possible." So basically they created a three-part process. And first of all, we'll have to build out a full product which uses the Facebook Ads API platform. You have to do that without without knowing whether they're gonna approve you, but you'll have to build it in full.
And then after you're done, you can contact them, and they will test it out. They will see if it all works and if it's all good. And then it's all right, and you will get approval number one. I'll just keep it short. Approval number one. And then they say, "Now you can use up to 25 customers," right? Then you can start using it, and they'll keep track of how many people and how they use it, and how much ad spend they use and whatever it's gonna improve, and things like that.
Then after a while, you reach the status number two. And that's when they say, "All right, now we're gonna really dig in." And that's when they're gonna ... you know, they wanna know everything about your business. Who's working there? They wanna know your numbers. They wanna know everything they could possibly ask you, basically. And then after ... that's when they make a decision whether the tool and whether your business is approved to user inside the ad platform.
And we're in constant contact about things. Also if someone, for example, breaks the rules, breaks the Facebook terms of service, we also remove them from our platform. So for example, one thing that's not allowed Facebook lead ads is that you're reselling your data, right? You cannot just [encamp 00:31:28] those lead ads and just resell all those leads to third parties. That's not allowed. And if people do that, obviously Facebook bans them, but we remove them out even from our system as well. So there's all kinds of rules that we have to commit to in order to make this work, which we obviously have all the intention of doing because that's the only way to work to get around this long-term.
So I think that's sort of a long answer to a short question. But I just wanted to give an idea of how the whole process works and that it's all, yeah, approved by Facebook themselves.
Barry: Yeah, and that ad API's not something somebody can just get access to if they're ... It's gotta be approved and watched over by Facebook. Yep.
Wilco: Exactly, yeah.
Barry: Yeah, for sure. Wilco, I really appreciate you coming on and explaining that to us. And I think anybody who runs Facebook ads, this is really kind of a game changer to get them straight into your autoresponder, straight from Facebook on a mobile device. And fantastic, because that mobile segment's only gonna keep growing as time goes by. So where can people find out more about ConnectLeads and get in touch with you?
Wilco: Connectleads.io. That's the easiest way. Get in touch with me. I don't ... a lot of people ask me, "What's your personal website?" And I just haven't ... I've never really gotten around to ... I have a blog, which I used to blog at years ago, but not really active, which is emarket.net. But it's not really ... I think the last postings are a couple years back, maybe. I'm not sure. So I don't really have a personal site.
But if you look me up, you Google me, Wilco, you'll find my Facebook link and Twitter, etc, etc. But yeah. ConnectLeads, you'll get that at connectleads.io.
Barry: All right. Thank you very much for coming on, and I would urge everybody to check it out. It's pretty cool. All right, thanks, Wilco.
Wilco: Thanks for having me, Barry. Thank you.
Barry: Yeah.
I'd like to thank Wilco for coming on The Active Marketer podcast and sharing with us how Facebook lead ads work, and how you can use ConnectLeads to get those leads put straight from Facebook right into your Active Campaign account, or pretty much any other autoresponder marketing automation software you might have. ConnectLeads can integrate with just about everything.
And another good thing about ConnectLeads ... This is not a pitch. I'm not an affiliate. I get no money for this. I just thought it was a great tool. But another great thing that Wilco does is inside his area, once you've signed up and paid for ConnectLeads, is a lot of training videos that show you exactly how to get started with Facebook lead ads and ConnectLeads in particular.
So wanna thank him for coming on and sharing all that great information. It's really is a great way to get leads into your business. And I wanna thank you, the listener, for coming on and spending your time with The Active Marketer podcast and all our fantastic guests. I would love it if you could head over to iTunes or Stitcher and leave us a review. And just like the beginning of this show, I'll read it out on a future episode. Those reviews in iTunes help our rankings and help get the podcast more visible to more people, so more people can use marketing automation just like you're putting it to work in your business. So I would really appreciate it if you wanna head over there and leave us a review.
At the beginning of the show, I mentioned a special offer, and here it is. I have been talking to a lot of you through email, through Skype calls, and in our Automation Nation private Facebook group. And if you're not in there, head over to Facebook right now. Type in, "Automation Nation." Click "Join." Tell us you heard about it on the podcast, and you're in. We talk about all things marketing automation. Sales funnels, tips, tactics, techniques. We solve problems. People share their experience. It's really an exciting community. There are lots and lots of smart people in there.
When I started The Active Marketer, I really started it with kinda one key focus in mind. And that was to get marketing automation in the hands of every business owner who wanted to know how to do it. When I started this journey, my own journey, a couple years back, there was zero information. It was really mysterious. It was all back-end stuff that only the big guys did, and I learned through tonnes of trial and error and playing around and, "No, this doesn't work." There was really just nowhere to go for me to learn.
And I think a lot of you are having that same experience now. Even with The Active Marketer and our private Facebook group and the podcast, a lot of you are still running into snags. A lot of you still haven't had the light come on yet, and you want a little bit more education, a little bit more coaching, and a little bit more guidance. So I think I really need to step up my game in my crusade to get sales and marketing automation into the hands of everyone, to make it approachable to every business owner.
So I've got something really exciting planned for the new year, and that is a private coaching community. It's gonna be the community ... I'm really excited about this. It's gonna be the community I always wished was around when I started. I don't want you to have to go through all the trials and errors and the mistakes that I went through. And I'm sure a lot of you are experiencing this right now, and a lot of you even asked for this inside Automation Nation.
So what this is gonna be, is it's gonna be a private coaching community where we can talk to each other, where you can get direct access to me. We'll have shared automations in there that you can download, put straight into your business in a matter of minutes. We're gonna have swipe files that you can put to use inside your business. We're gonna have funnel blueprints, easily implementable action plans so that you know exactly the steps you need to take to make this all happen.
We're gonna have regular coaching calls, because I think that's really the secret sauce. It's great for me to provide you all these training videos and PDFs and stuff, but I think sometimes you just really need someone to explain it to you. And that's why I started this whole thing in the first place. So I'm really gonna pick up my game. We're gonna have regular coaching calls where we talk about specific tactics, specific techniques, how you put this to use. You'll have the opportunity to ask me questions.
And we're gonna do something really exciting, which is we're gonna have member hot seats, right? So this is a really great way to learn. If you ... brave enough to put your hand up, we're gonna put you in the hot seat. And myself and fellow member are going to grill you on what your tactics are to get you really super tight in what your message is, what your product is, what your funnel is. And I think it will be a great learning experience for everybody involved.
And we'll also gonna talk about, how do you automate the back end of your business processes as well? It's great that you get everybody funnelling in and buying stuff, but then how do you deliver that? How do you automate the back end of your business, so it's efficient as possible and you can deliver as many customers as you can? And how do you scale that up, and how do you scale out your team?
So we're not only gonna be talking about the front end sales and marketing stuff, and what you do with people once they're opted in or what they've bought, but how you can actually scale your business, right? How you can automate all the processes in your business so that you can put on other team members and maybe spend less time doing the drudgery, and more time doing the things you love within your business.
So I'm really excited about this, and I hope you'll join me on this journey. So here's the special offer. If you head over to the URL I'm gonna mention in a minute, you can sign up for early access. It's not gonna cost you anything. I'm just gathering a tribe of people who are super interested in this. So head over to the page. Put in your name and your details. And when the community's ready, hopefully by kind of the end of January. When this community is ready, because you guys are putting your hand up early, you'll have early access to special founder rates.
So if you put your hand up and say you want into this community, you're gonna get locked in at a special founders' rate for taking a chance with me. And I'm gonna reward you with that. The price of this community's gonna go up over time, and it's gonna go up pretty quickly as we jam more and more resources into this community and we get a lot of more momentum going. But you'll be locked in at the special founders' rate forever. So if you join us as one of our founding members, that's the rate you're gonna pay for the rest of your life. As long as you stay in that community, the cost to you is never gonna go up. New members are certainly gonna pay more, but you founding members who are taking action are gonna be locked in at that special price.
So there'll be more information on the community coming soon. But in the meantime, if you wanna head over to theactivemarketer.com/specialoffer, put your details in there. And when the community's ready, we get a little bit closer, I'll let you know what that special founders' price is gonna be. And I'll let you in at a special sneak peek to the community. And also you founders get to drive the direction of the community. So you get to tell me what you want me to build into that community, and we'll go out and do it for you.
So I'm really, really, super excited about this, and I hope you are as well. So head over to theactivemarketer.com/specialoffer and put your hand up. Until next week, I want you to get out there and design, automate, and scale your business to the next level using sales and marketing automation. See you next time, everybody.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to The Active Marketer podcast. You can find the show notes and all the latest marketing automation news over at theactivemarketer.com.
