Facebook Improves Customer Acquisition With New Offline Conversion Solution For Lead Ads

Facebook has just introduced a new Offline Conversion solution to help marketers better understand the attribution of offline conversions from their lead ads.

One of the most important parts of running Facebook Ads campaigns is being able to understand what is really working. The presence and correct implementation of a Facebook Pixel makes things a lot simpler when it comes to attributing conversions to specific online actions. But offline conversions are a whole new kettle of fish.

While Facebook offers the ability to somehow attribute offline sales to a campaign that you’re running, when running lead ads, this is harder. That’s why Facebook has introduced an Offline Conversion solution for lead ads.

Facebook introduced lead ads to “make mobile signups easy by removing the usual friction of filling out an online form.” They save people a lot of time, as they are pre-filled with personal information from their Facebook profiles. And of course, they ensure that businesses can collect the right information, without worrying about incomplete information being filled out. However, for many businesses, getting the right information from people who are interested in their products or services, is only one step to turn them into paying customers. As Facebook explains in a recent blog post,

[quote]currently, marketers are trying a little bit of everything to move people down the conversion path, including phone calls, in-person visits or in-store transactions. [/quote]

However, brands may want to optimise their lead ads for different parts within their sales funnel. For example,

[quote]an auto brand might want to optimize their lead ads to those resulting in dealer visits, or a business operating in the field of education might want to optimize to lead ads resulting in people who begin the application process or a business services client might want to optimize lead ads that result in people who becomes sales qualified.[/quote]

Having this information allows businesses to attribute success correctly – optimising their campaigns based on the attribution results. And, as the examples shared above are not tied to the digital space, attribution is more difficult. So, Facebook is now allowing businesses to connect their CRM, point of sale (POS) or even their call-center systems to their Facebook ad campaigns, to monitor which of their lead ads drive those business results.

What You Can Do Now

Direct connections between ads and results, whether a sale in a store, a booking over the phone or an in-person meeting you can see, measure and adjust their campaigns based on real downstream metrics that matter to their business.
Create campaigns based on offline success by targeting high-value customers from the prior month using Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences, and excluding in-store purchasers to find new local prospects.
Gain insights and build campaigns based on the actual transactions by retargeting buyers of a certain category with the next product or service you’d like them to buy.

You can now connect your CRM, POS, or call-center systems, to your Facebook lead ad campaigns

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You Will Need

To take advantage of the Offline Conversion solution you will need to have

a Facebook Business Manager,
a Facebook app,
a Business Manager system user and access token generated for that system user
an offline event set.

Three Ways To Connect Your Own CRM Solution

Using Facebook’s native offline event manager and upload the outcome of leads. Get started here.
Connecting with Salesforce or Marketo, both of which have already built the connections necessary. Using Zapier enables seamless connection between 750 CRM systems. These include MailChimp and Hubspot.
Building directly into the Offline Conversion API to connect your CRM to the solution. Get started here.