Five Reasons Why Your Lead Gen Ads Aren’t Converting

Improving your Lead Gen ads on Facebook

1. YourLead Gen ads are targeting a cold audience 

For people to give you their contact details, they need to know who you are and what your brand is about. If you jump straight to the conversion stage, your prospects are much less likely to engage with your ads if you are immediately pushing a sales message on them. 

Instead, try running some awareness ads first, then a lead gen campaign to a retargeting audience based on people who have engaged with your awareness ads or visited your website.  

2. You’re not giving your Facebook audience anything valuable  

Audiences can be rightly protective of their personal data, so you need to give them a reason to hand over their email address or contact number. 

Offering gated content in exchange for an email address works well to persuade potential leads to hand over their data. 

This could be an offer or a link to some free marketing resources you’ve created.   

3. You’re not making it clear what happens next  

If users give you their data, what are they signing up for?  

You need to make it clear when people can expect to hear from you next and what you will send them – for example, a monthly newsletter or an invite for a 30-minute call. 

You also need to ensure your teams are joined up on this activity, and ideally that it’s linked to your CRM – there’s no point generating quality leads if your customer service teams aren’t briefed on what to do with the data you’ve captured.  

4. You’re not testing multiple ad creatives  

The more variation you can give platforms, the better. Using more ad creatives reduces the chance of your audience seeing the same ad repeatedly and gives you another variable to consider when you’re analysing how well your content is performing.  

It’s much more effective to test a variety of ads to see which ones work best, rather than using one and hoping it works.  

We would recommend a minimum of five ads per campaign. 

5. Your Facebook Lead Gen form is too long or complicated  

Think about your own user behaviour when you’re filling out forms online. Are you more or less likely to complete a form if it’s long, unwieldly and asks for too much detail? 

Make it easy for people to give you their information with as few clicks as possible. Capture the basic information from the form and flesh out your communications with your prospective customer at the next touch point.  

How do I become a thought leader?

To answer the question of how to become a thought leader, you should start by considering what you want to get out of it, both for the individual and the business as a whole.

Improving your Lead Gen ads on LinkedIn

1. Poor audience targeting 

LinkedIn is a hugely powerful platform for audience targeting, allowing you to effectively reach people at all levels of seniority within a business. You can also target broad audiences by sector.  

With such a wealth of targeting data available, a poorly-performing ad can often come down to the audience not being refined. A test and learn approach and regularly reviewing ad performance on LinkedIn can help improve this.  

2. You’re not nurturing your LinkedIn leads properly 

As with Meta ads, you need to ensure your audience is engaged with your brand before you compel them to convert. Although the platforms are different, the principles are the same – you are better off spending your budget targeting lead gen content to prospects who have engaged with your top of funnel ads or have already visited your website.  

If your prospects have no idea who you are when they see your sales ad, they are extremely unlikely to convert. 

3. Your offer is low value and doesn’t compel users to engage 

Again, mirroring Meta, the audience needs to be truly compelled to give you their personal data. A low-value or unclear offer is unlikely to lead to someone handing over their email address or phone number. 

For users of a B2B platform like LinkedIn, a unique asset – such as a report or whitepaper you’ve commissioned – can be an effective tool. A professional audience is more resistant to being sold to than a consumer one, so anything you offer them needs to add value to them or their work.  

Business often moves slowly, so impulsive conversions are much less likely to happen on LinkedIn.  

4. Your ad creative is missing the mark 

LinkedIn thrives on connections between real people and content from individuals usually resonates more with audiences than messaging from a corporate page.  

It’s why hitting the mark on your creative is so important. Use of generic imagery, an overly complex text layout or low-value propositions is unlikely to drive engagement.  

5. Your LinkedIn Lead Gen form is too complex 

Simplicity is key here. On LinkedIn, the heavy lifting will be done after you’ve captured the data – whether that’s following up directly with your leads or targeting them with email marketing.   

You need to make the initial form as simple as possible – ideally just a name, company, email address and/or phone number – then ask the complex questions in your follow-up communications.  

 

Get in touch for help with your Lead Gen ads and social media marketing 

Need help ensuring your social media ad spend is working hard for you? Find out more about our social media marketing services or read more of our social media marketing tips.