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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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Social Media Customer Service: Tips for Handling Feedback and Complaints

A woman holding a tablet and smiling as she oversees customer service on social media, handling feedback and complaints

One of the primary strengths of social media is that the platforms provide a direct channel for communicating and interacting with your audience, customers, and clients. This allows them to reach you in return. That communication will sometimes be positive, while other times customers may voice an issue or complaint. We’ll explain the importance of conducting customer service through social media and how you can handle that feedback and complaints.

The Importance of Customer Service on Social Media

Besides in-person and over the phone, most businesses offer customer service through their email and self-service portals. These are essential for any business that operates digitally. However, with the rising dominance of social media platforms, a growing portion of users have begun to seek customer service through social media channels. In a recent study, 1 in 4 users said they prefer to get customer service through social media, which was up from 1 in 5 just a year prior. The same study also found nearly a fifth had sent a customer service request in the past 3 months. This means it is essential for businesses to offer customer service through their social media.

Answering Questions

The primary customer service task boils down to answering questions. These can be about specificities of a service or product, the cost of shipping, the status of an order, etc. Such questions will often come as direct messages or comments on a specific post. In either instance, a business should answer the question promptly and accurately. If the question is too specific or requires confidential information, be sure to politely direct the communication to an alternative channel, such as email.

Gathering Feedback

Customer service isn’t just about answering questions. One of the things people love about social media is that it provides them with a voice. In fact, because social media makes this so easy, many prefer to provide their feedback on these platforms. This is no different for a business, where customers or clients might provide feedback on their products or services. You can also use social media to gather and survey feedback from your customers/clients. This feedback can take a few forms on social media. It can be comments, direct messages, polls or user-generated content about your business. Sometimes this feedback will be positive, praising your business. Other times it might be requests or suggestions. Be sure to respond and engage with this content, thanking them for the kind words or acknowledging the suggestions. This feedback can be highly informative, and your public responsiveness further helps to build your brand’s sincerity.

Handling Complaints in Social Media

Unfortunately, sometimes the feedback will be negative or even be a complaint. Occasionally these comments will just be abusive. With these follow the old internet adage, “Don’t feed the trolls.” Hide these comments, block their messages, and move on. Other times, these may be more sincere concerns or issues. Treat these earnestly and as an opportunity to demonstrate your care for your products/services and those who receive them. It should go without saying that you should not respond dismissively or, worse, with hostility.

If you begin to notice numerous comments or messages with complaints for the same issue, you should acknowledge you have a more serious concern. In these instances, direct the users to a collective communication channel such as a customer service email. You can also turn off comments on this post to prevent the issue from getting out of hand and create a post or story that directs anyone with the issue(s) to contact your more official channels. Coming up with a set number to make this call at is considered a good idea.

Taking It “Offline”

This brings us back to an important thing to remember about social media customer service. Overall, social media is a powerful and convenient communication tool, but it is highly public and subject to the control of the other platforms. It’s perfect for addressing simple and basic customer service occasions. However, if the service required is more specific or complicated, or the issue or complaint more severe, your social media team should direct that person to more official channels offered by your business. We’ve already mentioned email, but in certain instances you can also offer a phone call. If there is a serious complaint or issue, you can also consider allowing your social media team to direct the person directly to the business manager or owner through email, the phone, or even in person. This provides a direct access that they might appreciate.

Understanding that Customer Service on Social Media is Social

You should now have a better sense of how social media is useful for customer service. However, it isn’t a complete solution. Instead, it will often serve better to address simpler questions, gather feedback, or open a line of communication to another more specific and official channel. It’s still more social than it is official business. For this reason, you can consider using a chatbot to help address any simple questions or direct users to the official communication channels. Just remember that people always prefer dealing with a person for customer service. If you’re looking to incorporate your social media more into your customer service strategies or need help overseeing your social media channels, be sure to contact Rosewood’s social media marketing team.

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The Role of Social Listening in Understanding Your Audience

A man sitting at his laptop at a cafe while talking on his phone, working on an discussing social listening

The value of social media is forming, growing, and interacting with your business or nonprofit’s audience. It allows you to directly connect and communicate with those who are interested in your business. However, social media is not just useful for getting your message out. It also provides exceptional opportunities to learn from and understand your audience. We’ll explain what the role of this social listening is and how you can use it to better understand your target audience.

What are Social Listening and its Benefits?

Along with insightful metrics, the power of social media is the conversation. Social listening is using social media to get a sense of your audience’s thoughts about your business and its products or services. This is extremely beneficial for small businesses since it provides a fuller sense of what their wider digital community thinks or wants. That helps your business better understand its target audience and begin to make decisions about those desires or expectations. This listening and reacting also helps to foster a stronger and more dedicated community on social media as your audience realizes they are being heard.

Social Listening and Small Businesses

Social listening is an area of digital marketing where small businesses really shine. Larger businesses can be inundated with posts and comments that can be difficult, if not impossible, to sift through. Listening requires attention and focus, and that is a daunting task with a massive audience with myriad of voices. However, small businesses tend to have smaller, more focused audiences. That means it’s much easier for your social staff or digital marketing team to track and listen to most of your audience. Since at least 42% of users use social media to voice concerns about a product or service expecting a resolution, small businesses are better able to hear those customers. This focus is the same strength small businesses have on social media more generally. They can genuinely engage with their community.

How to Listen: Social Listening Strategies

To be fully comprehensive, social listening needs to employ multiple strategies to understand a target audience.

  • Listening to Direct Communications: Comments and private messages are direct communications with your business. Noting these means you are both paying attention to important comments or feedback. Responding to these communications also shows your audience that you’re actively listening.
  • Collecting Feedback: You can also foster direct communication with engaging posts. These might ask for input about what products or services they want to see offered, what their favourites are, or any other useful information.
  • Tracking Mentions, Keywords, and Tags: A lot of what you should listen to from your target audience isn’t said directly to you. For example, 96% of displeased customers don’t tell the company; they tell friends. The same goes for celebrating or recommending a product or service. Tracking keywords, mentions, and tags of your business, products, or services will provide a fuller sense of what your audience is saying. You or your marketing team can also track these for related brands or similar businesses to better understand your wider audience.
  • Attentive Listening: As you listen and respond to your audience. Be sure to listen attentively and consider the frequency of what they are saying. For example, if there is an issue with another company’s product or service, pay attention to what they say, and you may find a specific place where your business can address that issue and directly address it in your marketing. Similarly, if your audience repeatedly asks a similar question, it’s a good idea to provide a featured post that answers that question.
  • Understanding What is Beneficial: Not every comment, feedback, or impression will be informative. Not every social post or comment is thoughtful and attentive. Your marketing team will consider everything, but they will analyze and determine what is useful.

Start Listening, Start Understanding

Social listening is a key strategy for any business to understand its audience. Social media has given every user and business the unique opportunity for having a platform and communicating. A key part of communication is listening, not just speaking. By attentively and strategically listening on social media, you or your digital marketing team can begin to truly understand your audience and make effective and resonating decisions for your business. If you’re ready to start listening or want help mastering your strategy, contact the social media marketing team at Rosewood.

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