Most accountants are looking for an edge when it comes to their marketing. What new channels or methods can I use to engage my target market, and generate new qualified leads?
Lead generation isn’t easy. In fact, around 80% of internet marketers report that their lead generating efforts produce only a fraction of the results they desire.
Usually, the way accountant marketing works online is to collect lead information via form submissions. This often involves presenting something of value to the website visitor – say, a free Ebook download with money management advice – in exchange for their name and email address.
This is a great idea, except it has one big problem. It requires that the user leaves the place whether they discovered your offer in order to get hold of the value proposition. Why is that a problem? For accountant marketing, this involves multiple steps where a bounce can occur. That’s not great.
What if you could collect information from people without requiring them to leave the platform they’re browsing?
That’s where Facebook Lead Ads can solve your problem.
In this guide, we’re going to go over the essentials so you can begin integrating this strategy into your accountant marketing. This continues our series on how to transform your accountant marketing.
So, first things first…
How Do Facebook Lead Ads Work?
You purchase FLAs through the Facebook for Business platform. How this works is simple, yet quite revolutionary.
Instead of your advert sending Facebook users to your landing page, it allows them to submit their information within the platform itself. This opens up the potential for you to increase your conversions, since people don’t feel like your advert is particularly cumbersome or “interruptive.”
How to Set This Up For Accountant Marketing
Before you can get cracking, you’ll need to do a few things beforehand:
- You’ll need admin access to your business’s Facebook Page.
- You’ll need the URL for your privacy policy.
- You’ll need a creative/image to make your advert stick out on people’s newsfeeds.
From here, go to the Power Editor or Ads Manager for your business page. The latter is probably the one you’ll use if you’re just starting out on this. So let’s go forward as if we’re using Ads Manager.
Click on “Create Ad” on the top right, and on the new screen click on “lead generation.”
From here, name your ad campaign and set your account details. This will include currency, country and timezone, for instance. This is the part where you’re setting up the account for your accountant marketing, not for the ads themselves you’re setting up.
Now you need to use the drop down menu to select your business page. Read the terms and conditions before you accept them.
So here we get to an exciting part of accountant marketing. Setting up your ads!
Within the targeting interface, you can define the exact audience you want to show your Facebook Lead Ads to. Filter through gender, age, income, profession and more. See below for an example campaign I set up recently for an IFA in Essex.
Facebook will ask you whether to Edit Placements or use their Automatic service. Unless you are an advanced user, it’s usually best to select the latter if you’re just getting started with Facebook Ads. After this, you can set your daily/lifetime budget.
Now it’s time to design the ad creative.
For simplicity, select Single Image. Customise your headline, text and CTA (call to action). Make sure the person who sees it will easily understand what your advert is about, and what happens when they click on it.
On the “Questions” tab, you will then be asked what information you want to collect from your leads. Try and keep these to a minimum, as the more questions you have the higher your bounce rate will be. Name and email might be enough, for instance. Check the privacy policy setting before proceeding.
You’re almost done! Customise the “Thank You” screen and insert your website link. Check your ad to make sure you’re happy with it. When you’re ready, press “Place Order”!
