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Meta Ads for Lead Generation: Building a High-Quality Email List

A woman working on her laptop doing lead generation

Social media, and particularly the omnipresence of Meta and its platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – are still some of the best places for small businesses to get the attention of potential clients and customers. This makes the platforms excellent for lead generation, especially for email newsletters. We’ll explain the why and how of leveraging Meta ads to start communicating directly with your audience through email.

Why Email?

Social media including Meta’s platforms are excellent ways to update and interact with your audience. Yet, email has stood fast as one of the best ways for businesses to communicate directly with their audience. It’s the channel where a business has the most control in their messaging and content, and they’re able to send it directly to the inbox of their subscribers. This can be a key difference where social media content might be missed in a follower’s feed. With this stable communication, email is effective at helping to retain and maintain returning customers or clients. This is why it’s important to grow your email following with a high-quality list.

Benefits of Meta Ads for Lead Generation

There are numerous reasons why Meta is effective for lead generation when building a high-quality email following. One is simply the scale of reach, over 3.3 billion people use Meta daily and over half the population of Canada actively uses Facebook and Instagram. Meta simply provides a staggering advertising network for lead generation. Furthermore, Meta also has built in advertising specifications for lead generation. Their tools and templates help you design ads specifically honed to growing a dedicated following on your website and email newsletters.

Using Meta Ads to Build a Quality Audience

When it comes to building an email audience, quality always beats quantity. A quality audience is engaged with your emails, regularly opening them and clicking on the contents in genuine interest. A disengaged audience doesn’t open emails and may even begin to negatively impact your sender reputation. This is another benefit of Meta ads for lead generation. Meta possesses a rich swath of data about its users such as location, age, and interests. Meta uses these to create profiles which your business can then target in its lead generation ads. This helps to attract the right potential audience to your email content, helping to create an email audience that is great in both quantity and quality.

How Lead Generation Works in Meta Ads

For brevity, we’ll need to assume you have some familiarity with Meta and Facebook ads. When creating Meta ads for email lead generation, you have two main methods for this: collecting the emails directly through the ad or redirecting users to a landing page on your website.

Collecting Emails through Meta

With its built-in lead generation functionality, Meta can have users directly subscribe to your emails with a simple “Subscribe” button on the ad. When users click this, it will verify they want to share their email and any other personal information the ad requests, such as their name. If they approve, they will then be added to your business’ email audience. For this functionality, you will need to set up the Meta integration on your email marketing platform.

This is extremely convenient and fast for users looking for a one-step sign-up. However, users are not necessarily willing to provide their information through such a quick email sign-up. The easy process may raise concerns of legitimacy or safety. On the other side, the simple sign-up could also make it easier for bots to subscribe to your newsletter, bloating and reducing the quality of your audience.

Directing Users to a Landing Page

This is where the strengths of directing users to a landing page start to shine. First, users are instead taken to your website to subscribe. Here they can provide the information they want rather than what is specified in the Meta ad. Second, the landing page will help establish your business’ credibility and legitimacy. The landing page can provide more information about your business, establish a value proposition, and will allow prospective subscribers to browse the website and learn more. Overall, while the landing page might not be as simple, it can be much more effective at conversion.

Motivating Subscriptions

Whether you choose to grow your email audience through Meta lead generation ads or converting users through a landing page (or a mixture of both), there will still need to be some incentive to generate these leads. As we mentioned, a landing page will help establish the value proposition of your business and email list. However, users will still need to be enticed to click the ad. Creating effective lead generation ads will mean following good advertising practices such as captivating images and intriguing copy.

However, there are some other methods for motivating email subscriptions:

  • One-time discount: A tried-and-true tactic. Entice new subscribers with a one-time discount on their next purchase.
  • A Loyalty Program: Loyalty programs are great for customer retention and repeat business. They can also further the value proposition of your email newsletters to help motivate subscriptions.
  • Sneak peeks and Exclusive Benefits: As a direct method of communication, your email newsletter can provide subscribers with product or service updates before you publish updates on other channels. It can also provide practical benefits such as early pre-orders or access to exclusive subscriber discounts.

Beyond Meta with Lead Generation

You should have a much better idea of how Meta’s ads are great for lead generation on Facebook and Instagram to help build a high-quality email audience list. Social media like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are incredibly potent tools for communication, but you should be leveraging that communication for conversion, directing users to other channels that you control. This can also work the other way. If you already have a substantial, high-quality email list, you can leverage your email to generate leads towards your social media channels.

If you’re looking to set up new Meta lead generation ads on Facebook or Instagram, be sure to contact Rosewood’s ads team. Our email marketing experts can also help you onboard this new audience and create captivating newsletters that keep your audience dedicated.

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The Benefits of Outsourcing Marketing: Leveraging Agency Expertise

An outsourced marketing team working together on a tablet

Marketing is essential for any business. While it might seem that large businesses dominate the marketing arena, it’s only more vital for smaller businesses trying to establish their presence. Of course, smaller businesses also naturally have smaller teams to dedicate to marketing, usually a single individual. That’s why small businesses should consider outsourcing their marketing. In this article, we’ll explain the benefits of outsourcing marketing and hiring a marketing agency like Rosewood Marketing.

The Why of Outsourcing Marketing for Small Businesses

As we already mentioned, smaller businesses are more focused in their marketing budgets and resources. This means it is more of a substantial investment for small businesses to create a dedicated marketing position, let alone an entire team if that business is interested in multiple marketing channels. An alternative is to dedicate part of another staff member’s or your own time to marketing. However, this also means diverting that person’s (or your own) attention away from primary responsibilities, into a role outside their expertise. This could ultimately further result in time and energy being inefficiently used.

However, even hiring that dedicated individual has its limitations. That’s why outsourcing marketing is especially cost-effective for small businesses. Rather than just a single person dedicated to their marketing, you gain access to the expertise, insight and diverse perspectives of a full marketing agency. Professional marketing teams like Rosewood Marketing provide the small business with a team of experts for all kinds of marketing channels, including ads, websites, email, social media, and more. Rather than just one person, outsourcing also provides a whole swath of marketing professionals with insightful perspectives backed by decades of collective experience. As a result, smaller businesses gain access to comprehensive expertise, resulting in better ROI on your marketing efforts.

The Small Marketing Touch

Now following that logic, it might seem to make the most sense that outsourcing to a larger marketing team is inherently better. A larger marketing company means more people which means more perspectives and more insight. However, in that way marketing is a lot like a kitchen; too many cooks can spoil the broth. In this case, outsourcing to a large marketing company can mean less focus or insight. That’s critical for small businesses, whose marketing thrives on authenticity, personality, and a deep understanding of the brand. Larger agencies may lack the ability to connect as deeply with your business, leading to generic strategies that miss the mark.

This is why outsourcing to marketing companies like Rosewood Marketing that focus on small to medium sized businesses is more effective. Rather than generic, broad sweeping strategies, that smaller marketing focus offers a refined, personalized touch. It hones in on a small business’ unique offerings, its personality, and how it connects to its audience. The breadth of experience that’s then offered by an agency team tailors the most effective marketing strategies according to the small businesses’ individual needs and goals while identifying real opportunities for growth.

The Tailored Approach

Outsourcing to an agency specializing in small businesses doesn’t just mean better strategies, it also means flexible, tailored services. You will gain access to a breadth of experience and insight, but your business might not need to use every marketing channel. An agency like Rosewood Marketing understands that small businesses are looking for different levels of services. Some might want the full suite while others might only be interested in their SEO, photography or consultation.

Outsourcing to an agency can also mean consultation rather than direct services. In this case, the team provides expert guidance through audits or strategy sessions. These reviews can help refine existing approaches or uncover innovative opportunities for growth.

Small Business Marketing, Powered by Experts

That’s the expertise that small businesses can access by outsourcing their marketing to an agency like Rosewood Marketing. It’s both broad and deep specifically where it matters. Your brand can gain access to the breadth of experience and insight of a full marketing team while still having the focus, specificity and personal touch that small business marketing demands. It’s overall the most cost-effective and potent marketing option available.

If you’re ready to elevate your marketing efforts by partnering with an expert agency or seeking guidance to refine your strategies, Rosewood Marketing is here to help. Let’s chat and explore how we can empower your business to thrive. That’s another benefit of outsourcing: our team is as invested in your success as you are.

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Google vs. Facebook Ads: Which Platform Is Best for Your Business?

A man and woman working at a laptop setting up their Google and Facebook ads

Online ads are essential for any business, and today Google and Meta / Facebook are the online advertising dyad. However, with two comes a choice: which one to use? Large companies have the budgets to advertise everywhere, but smaller businesses need to be more selective and ensure they’re advertising or focusing their budgets into the space with the most ROI. We’ll explain the strengths of each advertising platform and help you determine which is best for your business.

Why Google or Meta Ads

While there are other options, Google and Meta ads are the current industry powerhouses. Along with appearing on Google Search, Google Maps, and YouTube, Google ads also appear on nearly half of all websites on the internet. With Google processing over 8.5 billion searches a day and having over 91% of internet search market share, it’s a massive advertising network for reaching potential clients and customers.

Meta Ads aren’t as gargantuan of a network, but that doesn’t mean it’s a slouch either. They appear on all parts of Meta’s platform including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger to reach Meta’s 3.98 billion users. (Threads currently does not have ads, but some anticipate they will come later this year.) Meta Ads also go to the Facebook Audience Network. This system adds Meta ads into mobile applications and can be found in many of the most popular apps and mobile games.

Google and Meta Ads, Which is Better?

Both Google and Meta offer huge advertising platforms to help a business reach more clients and customers. However, there are subtle differences between each platform. They have different user contexts and advertising structure that give them individual strengths.

Features of Both Google and Meta Ads

Both platforms share some systems that help them excel for advertising to small and big businesses. First is that both platforms allow for a variety of ad formats, including text, images, and videos. Importantly, both platforms also feature a set of data tools. Google and Meta are extremely adept at allowing businesses to pick advertising targets based on a thorough assortment of demographics including gender, age, interests, locations, etc. Whether you know the kind of customers your business suits or have an audience where you want to expand, Google and Meta ads will let you target them. Following those targeted campaigns, Google and Meta then provide informative metrics and trackers to help analyze and improve your ads.

Google Ads Strengths

While Meta and Google share some of this key functionality, there are some important differences. A key distinction is the context of the ads. Google Ads appear while users are searching for something, whether it’s a product, answer to a question, video, etc. As a result, Google Ads are usually a form of pull marketing, where ads attempt to sway and grab someone who is already interested in that exact product/service or something related. This context also informs Google’s ad payment model. Google uses a pay-per-click model, where businesses target certain keywords or phrases where their ads should appear. These determine what kind of searches your ad appears in and your business will pay whenever someone clicks the ad.

Meta/Facebook Ads Strengths

The context for Meta ads can include searches, but primarily they appear in users’ feeds. As a result, Meta ads are usually characterized as push marketing. They slide a product or service in front of a user the system believes the user might be interested in but is not actively searching. As a result, Meta also uses a different auction/bidding system for determining where ads appear. This system considers various metrics and the bids a business has made for when and where ads appear. The other strength to consider is that since ads appear in feeds which are typically visual content, there are more opportunities for images and video ads in Meta.

Google Ads and Meta/Facebook Ads?

Since Google and Meta provide such a powerful advertising network with useful tools, either or both is useful for any small business. However, because of the different contexts where ads appear, certain businesses can perform better in one over the other.

When Google Ads Works Best for a Business

People often use Google to search to answer a question, whether it’s to find some information or a solution to a problem. As a result, B2B (business-to-business) or businesses that offer services perform well on Google ads. These ads will resonate with those searching about a problem because they are actively in the process of trying to find a resolution. Similarly, people looking for a kind of business or service on Google Maps will more likely be pulled to an ad for a relevant business. Similarly, product-based businesses can do well on Google ads. Users still search for products or items with Google. Plus, connecting your shop to Google shopping will help to highlight specific products in those searches.

When Meta Ads Works Best for a Business

Meta ads are more suggestive. People typically encounter Meta ads in recreational moments. As a result, they are usually not trying to find specific information or products. Instead, these ads play on pre-existing interests. While some research shows younger people are using social media searches more similarly to Google, most Meta ads are encountered while generally browsing social media content or playing games. As a result, product-based businesses can perform well on Meta Ads, since they can advertise specific products to users who have shown interest or follow other similar products/businesses. Service based businesses can also do well, where users might note or remember that business. An important note is that in these instances, the ads might not turn into an immediate conversion (which is why Meta uses an auction system rather than a PPC). Instead, they plant the seed for a later conversion when the users are actively searching for that kind of product. Because of your ad, your business returns to the front of their mind.

Choosing Between Two Powerhouses

Either Google Ads or Meta Ads is a powerful choice for any business. They offer a massive audience with in-depth functionality and metrics. Using both is not a terrible option but consider where and in what contexts your ads are likely to appear and have the most impact on each platform. Use their powerful data tools to determine where you can best invest your business’ advertising budget for the best ROI. Our digital marketing and advertising teams at Rosewood can help you start or revise your current strategies. If you’re ready to take control of some of the incredible power in Google and Meta ads, be sure to contact us.

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