If you run a business, you probably already understand the value of Facebook as a way of attracting qualified prospects for your products or services. But not everyone has gotten on board the Facebook paid ads train. So, here are seven steps for using Facebook ads effectively to generate leads.

1. Know Your Ideal Customer

Just like the internet in general, there are all kinds of businesses vying for attention on Facebook. Unless you can snag someone’s attention immediately, they’ll just scroll past your paid post without even thinking about it. To maximize the effectiveness of Facebook’s targeting options, it’s essential that you know your ideal customer.

2. Create a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is something of value that you offer for free to prospects in exchange for their contact information. They’re typically a short e-books, checklists, videos, etc. that help your prospects in some way. The good news is, creating a lead magnet is fairly easy.

3. Create a Squeeze Page and a Thank You Page

A squeeze page is a stand-alone page on your website that’s designed to capture contact information from potential customers. Those who click on your Facebook ad are taken to your squeeze page for more information on your free offer. After a prospect submits their contact information from the squeeze page, they should be automatically directed to your thank you page.

4. Add the Facebook Pixel To Your Squeeze and Thank You Pages

The Facebook pixel is a piece of code provided by Facebook that tracks actions on your squeeze and thank you pages and links them back to your Facebook account. The Facebook pixel is a great tool for tracking, optimization, and re-targeting.

5. Choose Targeting Options

Before you start creating your ad, you need to know who you want to see it. The point of targeting Facebook ads is to define the intended audience for your ad so it will only be seen by those users who are most likely to buy what you’re selling. This is where your ideal customer profile comes into play.

6. Design an Appealing Ad

Of course, if you don’t design an appealing ad, it won’t matter who sees it. A visually appealing, optimized ad targeted to the right audience can help you to spend your ad dollars wisely, and increase your return on advertising investment.

7. Evaluate Your Results

After your ads have been running for two to three days, there should be enough data available to analyze their effectiveness. Whether you used Facebook Ads Manager or Facebook Power Editor to create your ads, you can access your results in Ads Manager. If an ad is working to your satisfaction, you can continue running it. If, on the other hand, an ad is performing poorly, you should tweak it or replace it entirely.

What’s been your experience with launching Facebook ads?