How to generate leads on Facebook
Building a business online is tough work. And it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, or what product or service you sell.
So read through this guide and you’ll skip the right through the tough learning curve that most new marketers have to suffer through.
So how do you generate leads on Facebook?
- Create A Facebook Profile Funnel
- Participate In Facebook Groups
- Engage On All Of Your Friends Posts In Your Feed
- Find, Friend And Follow Your Dream 100 On Facebook
- Create Pro Influencer Level Content Even If You Have No Following
- Create Your Own Facebook Group
- Publish Something Every Day
- Run A Contest
- Do A Q&A Or “ask Me Anything” Session
- Add New Friends Who Fit Your Dream Customer Profile
- Create A Facebook Business Page
- Go Live On Facebook
- Encourage User Generated Content On Your Facebook Page
- Validate With Organic Traffic Before Spending Money On Ads
- Maximize Facebook Messenger To Generate New Leads
Generating leads on Facebook isn’t actually hard.
It just takes some focus and determination and willingness to commit. But the results you’re looking for are right around the corner!
How To Generate Leads On Facebook
You need an edge – a leg up – on the competition. And the good news is that social media, specifically Facebook, can give you that edge.
Why Facebook?
As a platform, Facebook is a lot different than other social platforms. There are aren’t any format, time, or character limits and as a platform it’s the most mature.
In addition, according to Statista, Facebook has 2.85 billion – with a “b” – active monthly users, so there’s no doubt your dream customer is on Facebook already.
It all starts with changing how you use social media.
You’re going to go from being a consumer of social media to a producer.
And when you’re a producer, and you’re doing it right, you will fill your sales funnels on autopilot with qualified leads from your dream customers.
So let’s start with first things first.
Create a Facebook profile funnel
One of the keys to generating leads on Facebook is changing how you use social media, like I mentioned.
The first thing you need to do is to change how you present yourself on Facebook.
Because one of the most effective ways to generate leads on Facebook is by converting your personal Facebook profile to a profile funnel.
I converted my personal Facebook profile to a profile funnel in 2019, and I’ve never looked back.
Since then, I get leads into my current funnel on autopilot, and all I had to do was make some easy tweaks to how I was approaching things.
What’s a profile funnel?
A profile funnel is a way of modifying your personal Facebook profile that presents you as a solution provider.
The purpose of any funnel is to guide someone to something new and the personal Facebook profile is the perfect solution for this.
Think about it this way.
You’ve got a lot of screen real estate on your personal profile.
And as your personal brand grows more and more people will start to click through to your profile to learn more about who you are and what you’re all about.
The way to do this is to build your entire profile around an objective.
The objective could be to get them to sign up for your new lead magnet, or it could be to encourage them to join your Facebook group.
The idea here is to be intentional with how you use your personal Facebook profile to help you achieve your goals.
Participate in Facebook groups
A natural question you might be asking is, “how do I get people into my Facebook profile funnel?”
You do that by becoming omnipresent, ∫ you become “omnipresent” by participating everywhere on Facebook.
I’ll spell out more about what that means in a minute, but the way you get people clicking through to your profile funnel, at least the most successful way I’ve seen it done, is by participating in Facebook groups.
There are so many Facebook groups out there, that are full of your dream customers, the untapped potential is virtually limitless.
First of all, you have to find good groups to join where your dream customer is hanging out.
Think: who would benefit most from your skill set?
Engage with the content in the group and become the testimonial for the group owner.
Showcase yourself as a compliment to the group owner by answering questions, engaging in a thoughtful way, making valuable contributions by sharing your expertise, all in a way that contributes to the overall benefit of the group.
People will start to see your name and wonder what you’re all about and click through to your profile funnel where you’ve got it set up for them to take the next step in finding a solution to the problem they’re having.
Engage on all of your friends posts
First off, everyone loves to see their posts get likes and comments.
When you engage on the posts in your feed you’re building a ton of goodwill.
This will really help with getting your name in front of your audience.
This is just being a good social media citizen.
Second, Facebook has an algorithm that determines what content you see and how your own content is viewed.
So there’s a big-time relationship between how you engage on Facebook that will help determine how your own content is seen.
Every day you need to “wake up” the algorithm and let Facebook know you’re online and you’re ready to engage.
To maximize your reach you want to start by engaging on every post you see.
Nope – don’t skip one.
You may (or may not) know that you’ve been training Facebook on how to serve you content since you signed up.
So what you want to do is tell Facebook’s algorithm that you’re someone who engages a lot.
This helps you elevate your status in the eyes of the algorithm, and it also helps you to build what’s called Facebook omnipresence.
Facebook omnipresence means that your name is “everywhere” and all over the place.
I had a friend message me one time saying, “I see your stuff everywhere!”
It was a fantastic complement.
The reason she said that because I was doing what I’m telling you to do here.
So wake up the algorithm by liking, or hearting every post you see, tag the post author, and leave a meaningful comment on everything you see for at least 15-30 minutes every day.
Then you can post whatever content you’ve got planned for that day.
Find, friend and follow your dream 100 on Facebook
According to Chet Holmes, the “’Dream 100′ is the fastest and least expensive method for doubling your sales.”
Your Dream 100 is a list of influencers and leaders in your space that are already having success and have built a huge audience already.
These are people who are working in a space that’s complementary to your own (not in competition) who have already built an audience that’s full of your dream customers that you’d like to get in front of too.
On Facebook you want to get on the radar of these people for all the right reasons.
You want to win their attention and open doors.
Implementing this strategy on Facebook means that you need to add them as friends and follow them.
They all won’t respond to your friend request, but some will, and by following them, you still get to see their stuff either way.
Comment and share what they publish.
Buy their products and promote what they’re doing.
Be a good fan and work on opening doors, you’re building a relationship here.
There will come a time to propose a joint venture, or make an ask of some kind, but the main goal at first is to serve and lift up the people who are on your Dream 100 list.
If you want to go deeper on the Dream 100 I recommend Chet Holmes’ Ultimate Sales Machine and Dana Derricks’ Dream 100 book.
The Dream 100 is one of the best ways to find leads on Facebook, not only by getting on the radar of these people, but also by getting in front of their audience by engaging, commenting and sharing their stuff.
Create Pro Influencer Level Content Even If You Have No Following
Here’s the thing about generating leads on Facebook:
You have to completely change the way you use social media.
I mentioned that at the beginning so I want to elaborate on that a bit.
The key is to stop being a consumer and start being a producer.
No more wasting Saturday mornings scrolling through the latest dog videos.
No more getting into political arguments with people you haven’t seen face to face in years.
It’s time to become a producer – someone who delivers entertaining, valuable content, on a consistent basis.
There are a lot of different kinds of posts you can use but there’s a single point to all of it:
It has to be tantalizing, engaging, polarizing, and irresistible.
That’s a pretty big ask, I admit, so let me explain.
Tantalizing content is content that has an irresistible hook. It’s alluring; just like the sirens’ song would lure sailors toward the coast, so too your content enchants your dream customers, friends and followers drawing them in closer to you to grab tons of likes and comments.
Engaging content is content that demands a response. These are the kinds of posts that your friends and followers will find virtually irresistible to comment on. These are the posts that people comment on without even thinking about it.
Polarizing content means that you have an opinion, and you believe in something and that you’re willing to stand on that. It does NOT mean that you’re offensive, divisive or rude.
But think about it this way:
Maybe you’ve got a strong opinion about something happening in your industry.
Stand up and say something!
Don’t be negative. Be positive. But speak up. You’ll attract the right people and rebuff the wrong ones.
Irresistible content is content that has a fantastic hook. The “hook” is what will stop your dream customer in their tracks as they’re mindlessly scrolling and capture their attention.
Creating content like this is a very deliberate strategy about the kinds of content you publish and if you create your content that way, you’ll see your engagement skyrocket, your profile in your community will grow and your authority will explode.
This is about being more than an entertainer – which is an easy trap to fall into on Facebook.
It’s about being a business lead generator and creating content like this will help you with that.
Create your own Facebook group
One of the best things I’ve done for my business is create my own private Facebook group.
It does everything you need to build a community of raving fans, who are also your dream customers.
Creating your own Facebook group is a great tool for helping to build a community around your business.
It can serve as a user support forum too, where your customers can answer each other’s questions and help each other find answers.
Another benefit of building a Facebook group to generate leads is that it allows you to go deeper with a more targeted group of people.
Your Facebook profile, and your Facebook page are kind of like the sample station at Costco. It gives lots of people an opportunity to try your stuff.
But a Facebook group is like a demonstration at Costco where they walk you through all the features, advantages, and benefits with an audience of warm leads just waiting for the opportunity to buy.
Does that make sense?
This is a community of people with a vested interest in your area of expertise, and an absolutely fantastic, continuous source of leads when you do it the right way.
Publish Something Every Day
Let me get up on my soap box for a minute here.
This is something that all business owners need to do.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to generate leads for a travel agency, or you’re a realtor.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a digital marketer or a personal trainer.
When you’re trying to figure out how to generate leads on Facebook, you have to build top of mind awareness, and a great way of doing that is to constantly and consistently be putting fresh content in front of your audience.
That means that you’re publishing something every single day.
In fact, depending on the type of post you’re doing, you probably need to be posting more than once a day.
Here’s the deal:
You have to beat out your competition for the attention of your audience.
And the demand for attention is greater than ever.
By committing to publishing daily and sticking with it, you’ll outpace what just about everyone else is doing.
Run A Contest
When I first started my Facebook group one of the things I did to accelerate growth was I ran a contest, and it worked like a charm.
I added a TON of new members fast, and all it cost me was the money I spent on the prize which was worth every penny compared to the rapid growth it gave me.
Here’s how I did it.
First, sign up for free at kingsumo.com.
Second, figure out a prize that will resonate really well with your target audience – this should be HIGHLY targeted so make sure you’ve got a good plan.
Next, make sure that you incentivize your bonus entries. These are additional ways that entrants can engage with your contest like subscribing to your YT channel, or joining your group.
The default mechanism here is to “share” the contest via various different platforms. Create a link to your group using the bonus entry option.
Once you’ve got the details ironed out, it’s time to launch your contest and promote it like crazy!
Among the places you want to promote your contest you will want to make sure to promote it to your existing list and places like other Facebook groups where you can do that without stepping on other group owners’ toes.
Keep it relatively short – I did my contest for 7 days. Any longer than that and it tends to slip out of people’s minds and you lose the anticipation and excitement.
When you do this right, you’re going to attract a ton of your dream customers so you can get them into your world and start building a relationship with them.
Anything that incentivizes sharing your contest will be a big winner for you here.
Do a Q&A or “Ask Me Anything” Session
As you start to grow your audience nothing is better to generate leads on Facebook by hosting a live Q&A or “Ask Me Anything” session during a Facebook Live broadcast.
Setting up the camera and going live on Facebook to have a conversation about frequent questions you get is a fantastic way to build a deeper connection with your audience.
People like to see and hear the people they’re thinking about doing business with.
They want to get to know you.
And they want answers to their questions.
You can even end your call with a special call to action to take the next step by sending them to your lead magnet where they can learn more.
When it comes to generating leads on Facebook this one is a win all the way around.
Add new friends who fit your dream customer profile
Since we’re talking about being producers instead of consumers, we have to get it on straight about how to get the right people on to our friends lists.
That doesn’t mean that you unfriend grandma and Aunt Christine, but it does mean that they’re going to see stuff from you that’s totally different than what you’ve been publishing before.
And one of the keys to being a good producer is to get the right content in front of the right audience.
So now it’s time to find the right audience.
But how do you do that?
This is the trick that makes everything you do on social media go from low-engagement, and wondering why you bother, to explosive engagement and an inbox full of leads.
You have to fill out your friends list with the people who are your dream customers.
Facebook allows you to have 5000 friends on your personal account, and unlimited followers.
You need to spend time every day adding new friends to fill out your friends list.
How do you do that?
You do that by adding new people who are engaging by commenting and asking questions in groups that match up with your dream customer profile.
You’ll see the engagers in the groups you join after you’ve spent a bit of time in the group.
Send a friend request to those people with a warm introduction in Facebook Messenger talking about your mutual interest and how you’d like to connect.
You will also want to send friend requests to people who are engaging and commenting on the posts of the people in your dream 100.
Your Dream 100 people on Facebook will likely already have great engagement posts asking great questions, and qualifying people for offers.
Send friend requests to all those people who are responding and commenting on those posts.
And you’ll also want to send friend requests to people who are already part of other premium, paid groups that you’re a part of.
As an example, say you just joined the One Funnel Away Challenge. One of the bonuses of the challenge is the private Facebook group.
That group is absolutely full of people who just spent money to join a challenge – at least $100! That’s what you call a $100 buyer lead, and those are among the most valuable leads you can get.
Think about other mastermind groups that are part of offers you’ve bought, or courses you’ve purchased in your niche. You should be friends with all those people.
Many of those people are your dream customers and are already qualified as people who spend money on solutions, so go in and send a warm friend request to all of those people.
Keep doing this until you’ve reached the 5000 friend limit.
Create a Facebook business page
Most things we’ve talked about so far are completely free to do and organic.
But there will come a time, once you’ve validated your marketing concepts organically, that you will want to poor gas on the fire that you’ve been building so you can grow exponentially (we’ll talk more about that in a minute).
And one of the best ways to do that is via paid ads on Facebook.
This isn’t a post about paid ads, so we won’t get into the weeds on that here.
But it’s important to know that having a Facebook business page will help your business immensely when it comes time for that.
There are things that you can do on a business page that you can’t – or shouldn’t – do on a personal profile page.
So you’ll want to have a Facebook business page set up to do all these things.
One of the great benefits that you get with a business page is that you can incredible insights into your audience.
You can see demographic info, page views, post reach, and so much more.
These kinds of things are either not available or are severely limited when you’re just using a personal profile.
Go live on Facebook
People do business with other people who they know, like, and trust.
They want to know who you are and what you’re all about.
They’re vetting you to see if it’s worth their time and effort to take the next step with you.
And a fantastic way to build brand recognition, visibility and give life to your personal brand is by going live on Facebook.
I started going live daily on my personal profile in 2019, and the benefits have been amazing.
Not only have I learned a ton about myself – my strengths, and weaknesses; what I was good at and what needed work – but it’s been incredibly beneficial to my bottom line by winning new customers and clients, and it’s helped build my brand immensely.
You can go live on your Facebook profile, or on your Facebook page that we just talked about. You can also go live in Facebook groups – your own and others!
You just have to be careful when going live in other groups – sometimes group owners see that as spam and will kick you out, so just make sure that you’re following the group owner’s guidelines.
Encourage User Generated content on your facebook page
There’s nothing worse on social media than silence.
You post something, no one engages, and it’s just a ghost town in the virtual world.
It’s disappointing and discouraging – I know I’ve been there.
But when you get people talking, it’s awesome!
So how do you do that?
There are a couple ways.
First – I recommend using “attraction” and “engagement” types of posts.
These are posts where those who follow your Facebook business page will see the question and can quickly answer.
These kinds of questions are usually super simple and fun topics that they can fire off an answer with hardly thinking about it.
Ask a question like, “What can you talk about for 30 minutes, non-stop, with no preparation?”
I bet something immediately came to mind for you.
For me, it would be college football.
And it would take me all of two seconds to make a comment like that.
And thus engagement grows…
and…
…when you get greater engagement on your Facebook business page, the Facebook algorithm will show your content to more and more people as engagement increases!
(By the way – this kind of content also works well on your personal Facebook profile and in groups too.)
Another idea would be to encourage people to share something they get excited about.
Starbucks had a genius campaign several years ago called the “White Cup Contest” where they asked their customers to share pictures of doodles on their Starbucks coffee cups that resulted in a huge amount of participation.
How could you take an idea like that related to your business to encourage users to engage your page?
Validate with organic traffic before spending money on ads
What’s the best kind of traffic: paid or organic?
This is a question you see floated out on Facebook from time to time and it almost always generates some strong opinions.
Some people will say only organic traffic, and others will say paid traffic can’t be beat.
Here’s the thing:
They’re both right.
As mentioned before, Facebook ads can separate you from your money very quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing.
No one likes wasting money.
So here’s the deal:
Validate your campaign by testing it using the organic – and free – methods I’ve talked about so far in this post.
If you do it right, your campaign should give you some vital feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
Then, as you tweak it and it continues to grow, you start to see serious results.
And THEN – once you’ve got it dialed in and it’s working like it’s supposed to, then you can pour gas onto the fire you’ve built to launch your campaign to the moon!
Here’s a pro tip:
If it doesn’t work using organic methods, it’s not going to work using paid ads.
It really is that simple.
So use all the organic traffic methods we’ve talked about here to get your campaign right, then scale it by sending paid traffic to it.
Maximize Facebook Messenger to generate new leads
Facebook Messenger open rates are orders of magnitude greater than open rates for email.
A good email open rate is 15-20%.
But did you know that Facebook Messenger open rates are 70-80%?!?
<queue mind blown gif here>
Now, there are a few limitations on Facebook Messenger that aren’t there for email, but that’s what makes Messenger such an effective platform.
And just like you can build all kinds of different sequences in a good email service provider, you can build all kinds of sequences using Facebook Messenger.
Incorporating Facebook Messenger chatbots into your Facebook marketing plan can make the difference between a good campaign and an amazing campaign.
You can use it to generate leads and connect with your audience.
You can use it to make announcements about an upcoming event, like a Facebook live session.
You can use it to sell.
The things you can do with Facebook Messenger are limited only by your imagination.
But if you’re struggling with the “how” and the “what” you can do with Facebook Messenger, there are services like ManyChat, which I’ve used for my own campaigns, that can help you get off the ground quicker by providing you with some starter templates.
Next Steps
Learning how to generate leads on Facebook really is just a perspective shift.
Your thinking needs to go from being a consumer of social media and instead becoming a producer.
Here’s the best part:
It doesn’t have to take weeks or months.
You can create a Facebook profile funnel today.
You can start searching for groups where you can find your dream customers now.
You can start engaging and answering questions as soon as you’re done with this post.
It’s time for you to start working on generating leads for your business on Facebook. Now.
Have any questions about any of this? Just leave me a comment below.
OR
If you’d like some help implementing what you’ve learned here I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group, Digital Marketing Mastery – would love to have you over there.