Lead Form Ads: How To Get Leads Without Landing Pages

What are lead form ads?

There was a time when the only way to get leads from digital advertising was to use a landing page. That meant time and money spent in designing and building a landing page before you could even run your ads. Now there are a growing number of channels (Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat) where you can run lead form ads that collect the prospects’ details directly from within the ad. Read on to find out if lead form ads could work for you.

How lead form ads work

All lead form ads work in a similar way. The prospect clicks on your ad and is shown a form without leaving the site or app. For most of the social networks this form is prefilled with the prospect’s details such as name and email address, leaving the user only to complete any additional form fields. Once the form is submitted their details are either stored in the ad system for you to download later or, if configured, sent directly to your CRM or other solution.

How to use lead form ads

Lead form ads are ideal for businesses of all kinds that want to capture leads at the top of the funnel for follow up by sales or by an email drip campaign. Typical uses include:

Early access to new product/service

Email newsletter signups

Webinar signups

Offers and promotions

Lead magnet (info)

Competitions

Request a quote or sample

Lead form ads are designed to minimize the friction for the lead to complete the form so it’s best to keep both the offer and the form as simple as possible. Resist the temptation to promote complex products or services, or ask for too many details. Keep the offer simple, and the number of form fields to the minimum.

Lead form ads vs landing pages

Setting up and managing landing pages is both expensive and time consuming. In addition to landing page design and development costs already mentioned, you should also be tracking conversions accurately (sometimes harder than it should be) and running landing page variation tests to improve performance. And unless you are already an experienced digital marketer, you will need to pay someone to set up and manage your landing pages for you. You may also decide you need a dedicated landing page solution like Unbounce or LeadPages, so you could end up paying a software subscription as well.In contrast, designing and building a lead form ad is quick and easy. And conversion rates are tracked accurately because leads never leave the site or app. Plus you can still experiment to improve conversion rate by testing different ad variants.

Where can I run lead form ads?

 and can also be used with , making them ideal for converting browsers of specific products or services into identified leads. Facebook lists , including most popular CRMs and marketing automation platforms.

, such as no support for dynamic ads.

. Alternatively, check out , a solution that offers no-code third party integrations for Google lead form ads.

As is to be expected, Google .

 or other third party system. Again,  has this covered if you need a simpler solution.

. The good news is that , an API connector for a wide range of software solutions, is included. My advice would be to get the leads first and worry about integration when the scale of the problem warrants it.

Platforms where you can’t run lead form ads

Twitter Lead Generation Card

Twitter removed its lead generation card feature at the end of 2016. It seems the format was inconsistent with Twitter’s other ad formats and failed to deliver the performance marketers had hoped for. Now you have to use website cards and send visitors to a landing page instead. I think it would make a lot of sense for Twitter to update and relaunch its lead generation ad format, as there seems to be increasing demand for it.

Reddit, Pinterest and WhatsApp?

Despite their large user bases, Reddit, Pinterest and WhatsApp don’t currently offer lead generation ads with forms. I wouldn’t be surprised to see lead form ads roll out in the next 12 months across all three platforms.

Which works best, landing page or lead form ads?

Whether lead form ads or landing pages work best will depend on your situation. , you are likely to experience a higher volume of leads from a lead form ad but they may be of a lower quality than those typically captured by a landing page. The reason for this might be that a lead form does not provide enough information for prospects to ‘de-qualify’ themselves whereas prospects viewing a detailed landing page have a lot more information to assess their suitability for the offer.My experience to date has been running lead magnet promotions for SaaS products. I typically see leads of a similar quality to landing page prospects but at a reduced cost per lead. For this reason alone I would recommend testing lead form ad variations alongside any campaign which uses a landing page.

Time to experiment with lead form ads?

It’s over to you to explore the opportunities presented by lead form ads for yourself. If you’re promoting a B2C/D2C product or service, try Facebook first because of its large audience and low cost. Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube are also worth experimenting with for this audience type. For B2B products or services, LinkedIn is your best bet. However, Facebook and Google Search Lead Extension ads will probably have a lower cost per lead (CPL) as LinkedIn advertising can be expensive. If you are a SaaS or subscription based company looking for help to get started with lead form ads, please .Photo credit: .

Previously published at //www.47insights.com/blog/lead-form-ads/