How to Get More Leads on Facebook Ads

Running Facebook Ads without getting leads feels like yelling into a void. You're spending money, but the silence on the other end is deafening. Shifting your strategy from simply getting clicks to capturing qualified leads requires a mix of smart targeting, compelling creative, and a smooth user experience after the click. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to turn your Facebook ad spend into a predictable lead generation machine, from your offer to your ad copy and analytics.

Start with an Offer They Can't Refuse

Before you even open Facebook Ads Manager, your primary focus should be on what you're offering. The best ad campaign in the world will fail if the lead magnet isn't genuinely valuable to your target audience. People protect their email addresses, so you need to give them a compelling reason to hand them over.

Craft an Irresistible Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a free resource you provide in exchange for contact information. Its sole purpose is to solve a specific problem for your ideal customer. It needs to be something they can get and use almost instantly.

Here are some popular lead magnet ideas that work well:

• Checklists and Worksheets: These are powerful because they're actionable. A home organizer could offer a "10-Minute Decluttering Checklist," or a business coach could provide a "Quarterly Goal-Setting Worksheet."
• E-books or Whitepapers: Best for B2B or topics that need deeper explanation. A software company could offer an "Ultimate Guide to CRM Implementation."
• Webinar or Workshop Registrations: Webinars allow you to demonstrate your expertise and build a relationship. The promise of a live Q&A can be a massive draw.
• Free Trials or Consultations: A classic for service-based businesses or SaaS products. This brings high-intent leads directly into your sales pipeline.
• Exclusive Discount Codes: Simple but effective for e-commerce brands. Offering "15% off a first order" works wonders.

The key is to create something that feels like a no-brainer. Don't ask people to sign up for a generic "newsletter." Offer them a clear solution instead.

Build a Landing Page Designed to Convert

Once someone clicks your ad, they should land on a page with one goal: getting them to take action. Don't send them to your website's homepage, where they can get lost or distracted. A dedicated landing page is laser-focused.

Your landing page should include:

• A Killer Headline: It should mirror the message in your ad and clearly state the benefit of your lead magnet. For example, "Master Your Social Media in 15 Minutes a Day."
• Clear Bullet Points: Break down what the person will get. Use benefits-oriented language (e.g., "Learn the secret to writing captions that get shared" instead of just "Caption writing tips").
• Visuals: Show a mockup of the e-book cover, a screenshot of the checklist, or an engaging photo of you if you're the face of the brand.
• A Simple Form: Only ask for the information you absolutely need. For a lead magnet, First Name and Email are often enough. Every extra field you add hurts your conversion rate.
• A Powerful Call-to-Action (CTA) Button: Use strong, action-oriented text like "Download My Free Guide" or "Save My Spot!" instead of a boring "Submit."

Pinpoint Your Audience with Precision Targeting

Facebook's real strength lies in its profound understanding of its users. Your job is to leverage this data to show your ads to the right people. Guessing who your audience is won't cut it, you need to target them with intention.

Go Beyond Basic Demographics

Age and location are just the starting point. The real power comes from layering interests and behaviors to build a profile of your ideal customer. Think about what your audience reads, follows, buys, and does.

The "Narrow Audience" feature is fantastic for this. Instead of targeting people interested in Yoga OR Lululemon OR Mindfulness, you can target people interested in Yoga AND Lululemon. This simple tweak helps you find super-fans rather than casual observers. Dive deep into the detailed targeting options - you can target based on job titles, the pages they've liked, or even if they've recently purchased something online.

Leverage Your Warmest Audiences with Custom Audiences

Your warmest - and often most profitable - leads are people who already know who you are. Custom Audiences allow you to retarget these individuals. You can create them from several sources:

• Your Website Visitors: Using the Meta Pixel (a small piece of code on your site), you can show ads to everyone who's visited your website in the last 30, 60, or even 180 days.
• Your Email List: Upload an existing customer or lead list, and Facebook will match the emails to user profiles, allowing you to show them ads directly.
• Post Engagers: Create an audience of people who have liked, commented on, or saved a post on your Facebook Page or Instagram in recent months. These people have already raised their hand and shown interest.

Discover New Customers with Lookalike Audiences

This is where things get really powerful. A Lookalike Audience is an audience that Facebook builds for you based on the characteristics of one of your Custom Audiences. Essentially, you give Facebook a "seed" audience (like your best customers or your most engaged email subscribers), and it goes out and finds millions of other people who are statistically similar to them.

Start by creating a 1% Lookalike Audience based on your highest-quality source. This will give you a highly targeted group that's most similar to them. This will often be your best-performing cold audience.

Design Ad Creative that Captivates and Converts

People don't go on Facebook to look at ads. They're there to connect with friends and see interesting content. Your ad has to fit in while still standing out enough to stop the endless scroll.

Follow the Hook, Story, Offer Framework for Ad Copy

Effective ad copy follows a simple but powerful structure designed to grab attention and drive action.

1. The Hook: The first sentence is the most important. Start with a direct question addressing a pain point ("Struggling to find new clients?"), a surprising statistic ("85% of podcasts don't make it past episode three."), or a bold statement that challenges a common belief.
2. The Story: This is where you connect and empathize. Briefly show that you understand their problem because you've either been there yourself or have helped others with it. This builds trust without being overly long.
3. The Offer: Clearly and concisely explain what your lead magnet is and the main benefit they will get from it. Then, tell them exactly what to do next with a strong call to action, like "Click the link below to get your free checklist and start organizing your week today!"

Keep your copy conversational. Write like you're talking to a friend, not a corporation.

Use Visuals that Stop People in Their Tracks

The visual part of your ad - the image or video - will do most of the initial "stopping" work. Today, slick, overproduced creative often gets ignored because it looks like an ad. Authenticity sells.

• Bet on Short-Form Video: Reels and Stories placements are pure gold right now. A simple, 15-30 second video filmed on your phone can vastly outperform a high-budget commercial. Use captions on ALL of your videos, as most people watch with the sound off.
• Choose Relatable Static Images: Test images that look like user-generated content (UGC) instead of stock photos. Think bright colors, clear visuals, and images with people in them. Adding a simple text overlay that highlights your main offer (e.g., "Free Webinar Inside!") can also boost performance.
• Test Carousel Ads: These are great for showing off multiple benefits of a lead magnet or guiding someone through a short, step-by-step process. Each card in the carousel is a chance to tell another part of the story.

Set Up Your Campaign for Lead Generation

How you set up your campaign in Ads Manager tells Facebook's algorithm what you're trying to achieve. Choosing the right objective is not a suggestion - it's an instruction that dictates who the platform shows your ad to.

Use the "Leads" Campaign Objective

It might seem tempting to choose "Traffic" to get clicks or "Engagement" to get likes, but if you want leads, you need to use the "Leads" objective. Facebook has tons of data on user behavior and knows who is likely to click an article and leave, and who is more prone to actually filling out a form. The Leads objective specifically works on getting conversions - so you’ll get fewer clicks but from more qualified users, which improves results.

Lead Forms vs. a Website Landing Page

Within the Leads objective, you'll have to decide where people convert:

• Instant Forms (On-Facebook Lead Ads): These are forms that open directly within Facebook. They're amazing on mobile because Facebook can pre-fill information like the user's name and email, making it extremely easy to submit. The downside is that since it's so easy, the leads can sometimes be lower quality.
• Website Conversions (Landing Page): This sends users to the landing page you built. It requires more effort from the user, which can mean fewer leads, but the people who take the time to fill out the form are often more serious and highly qualified which many campaigns favor!

Which one to use? For a top-of-funnel offer like an e-book or checklist, starting with an Instant Form can be a great way to generate volume quickly. For a bottom-of-funnel action like a consultation sign-up, sending them to your website is almost always better.

Keep the Data Coming with Smart Optimizations

After your campaign launches, your job is to become a data detective. You need to keep tabs on your campaigns so you can identify and solve roadblocks preventing your ads from working more effectively at scale.

• Cost Per Lead (CPL): This is the main performance-check metric you’ll want to review. Every lead is a cost: How much are you paying for each name and email? Decide on your goal for success ahead of time and measure performance against it.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): A poor click-through rate (below 0.5%) is a strong indicator that viewers are not connecting with your ad's creative hook or design. A healthy CTR is typically above 1%. If your rate is low, it indicates your copy and visuals should be reconsidered to better capture your viewers' attention.

Test different variables to see what improves your cost per lead. Start with big changes - a new video or overhauling your ad’s copy - before worrying about small tweaks like the button CTA.

Final Thoughts

Generating leads with Facebook Ads is never about a secret hack or "one weird tip". It’s a systematic process combining an enticing offer, precise audience building, compelling creativity, and ongoing analysis. By focusing on each of these areas, you move from guesswork to a dependable method for filling your pipeline with your sales prospects.

As you run lead campaigns, having a strong organic social media presence helps warm up your potential customers and builds crucial social proof. We built Postbase because we knew that managing your entire social presence shouldn't feel disorganized. Having a beautiful visual calendar lets you plan out a content plan, test creative you just might want to turn into an ad, and manage all your content with robust automation to make sure new prospects find you naturally at all times of the day with almost no effort from you.