How to Get Leads From Facebook Ads

Instant forms or your website?

With the Leads objective in Meta Ads Manager you choose where the lead is captured. The two main options:

• Instant forms. The form opens inside Facebook or Instagram, with name, email and phone prefilled from the person's profile. Easy to complete, so volume is higher and cost per lead lower. The trade-off is quality: some people submit without really meaning to.
• Website. The ad sends people to a landing page with your own form. Fewer leads, but people have read about you first. Needs the Meta Pixel and Conversions API to optimise properly.

For high-value services such as conveyancing, home improvements or B2B, we often test both. For low-cost, high-volume offers, instant forms usually win.

Build a form that filters

An instant form that asks for nothing filters nothing. To improve quality:

• Add one or two qualifying questions: postcode, budget range, timescale, or the service needed. Use multiple choice to keep it quick.
• Use a form type with a review step, so people confirm their details before submitting.
• Write a short intro that states exactly what happens next, such as "We will call within one working day to book a free survey".
• Link a clear privacy policy, which Meta requires on lead forms.
• Ask for consent separately if you want to add leads to marketing emails. Under PECR, a lead form enquiry is not automatically marketing consent.

Audience and creative

Targeting on Meta has shifted towards broad audiences and letting the algorithm find people, using Advantage+ audience with your suggestions as signals. That works when your creative does the targeting. Speak to one type of customer at a time: "Homeowners in Nottingham thinking about solar" beats "Save money today".

• Use real photos and short videos of your work, team and customers. Vertical 9:16 for Reels and Stories, 4:5 for feeds.
• Lead with the problem and the offer in the first line and first three seconds.
• Test a few different angles, such as price, speed, guarantee or a customer story, rather than tiny tweaks.
• For local services, set a sensible radius and check special ad category rules if you advertise housing, employment, credit or financial services.

Tracking and lead quality

Meta optimises towards whatever you tell it is a success. If every form fill counts equally, it will find people who fill forms, not people who buy.

• Install the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API, which sends events from your server as well as the browser. Together they lose fewer conversions to browser restrictions and ad blockers.
• Send qualified lead and sale stages back from your CRM, so Meta can learn which leads actually turn into customers.
• Respect consent: the Pixel should only fire once the visitor has agreed.

Connecting a CRM to Meta can need developer work. Our sister company dijitul developments builds CRM integrations if yours does not connect out of the box.

Follow-up, then cost

The quickest gain is often outside Ads Manager. Lead forms send leads into Meta's Leads Center unless you connect them to email or a CRM. Set up instant notifications, call within the hour where you can, and send an automatic email confirming the enquiry.

Judge campaigns on cost per qualified lead and cost per sale, not cost per form fill. A campaign with cheap leads that never answer the phone is more expensive than one with fewer, better leads. Keep a simple sheet or CRM stage for each lead: contacted, qualified, quoted, won. After a few weeks, the pattern shows which ads, forms and audiences are worth more budget.

Our Facebook ads and Instagram ads management is from £150 a month + VAT plus ad spend, paid directly to Meta. Conversion tracking with Meta CAPI is £145 + VAT one-off. We never promise a cost per lead in advance, but we report it honestly every month.

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