Meta has announced a suite of new lead generation tools, AI features and a CRM partnership to help marketers sign, seal and deliver new customers.

One of those features is full campaign automation for lead generation campaigns. Powered by Meta Advantage, lead generation marketers can use AI to streamline and increase the effectiveness of targeting, creative, placement and budget. Meta is also testing generating Instant Forms from existing content, which it says should save time during the creation process.

Additionally, a new CRM integration with Hubspot and a simplified CRM integration with Zapier is designed to help businesses achieve better leads at scale. Meta says that integrating a CRM with the Conversions API and using a conversion leads performance goal can have clear benefits.

Meta

“In a recent study, ads that used this campaign setup saw an average 16% reduction in cost per quality lead and 21% increase in rate of converting a lead to a quality lead, compared to ads using the leads performance goal.”

Help brand increase sales

Lead generation is the bedrock of many businesses, and to help them connect with potential customers and increase sales, Meta has decided to introduce these updates.

Meta is also looking to grow the role of messaging for business. According to data from Meta, there are more than 600 million chats between people and businesses across Instagram and Facebook per day. To help turn those chats into cash, it has added a lead objective to Facebook and Insta ads that click to start a WhatsApp chat.

Selected advertisers can also add a Q&A flow in Ads Manager.

Meta

“Also, advertisers that choose to engage people through click to message ads on Instagram Direct can now offer people a coupon for completing the question-and-answer flow, and those discounts can be applied to their next purchase or service.”

Even though Meta claims this could improve discovery for small businesses, it could also be harmful to business – the customer who filled in the initial inquiry might not be aware of the other options, which could result to that first company losing its lead. 

Meta is working to improve business phone call performance

Meta is also working on ways to improve business phone call performance by testing the ability for brands to call potential customers through Facebook. Much like when a Facebook friend calls you via Messenger, these business calls will display the caller’s business name and logo. 

Marketers can turn this feature on by toggling on ‘display business information to encourage call pickup’ during the Instant Form creation process in Meta Ads Manager. As unfamiliar numbers may be perceived as spam, Meta hopes that this method of calling people will yield results.

When marketers choose to use this feature, they will receive the lead’s phone number and a proxy phone number with downloaded leads data. The call made to the proxy number will be reputed to Meta, and your business name and logo will show up

The call can be made with a phone’s traditional dial pad and will be received via Facebook or Messenger.

Business Help Centre

“The format of proxy phone numbers are similar to traditional phone numbers, making them seamless to integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) databases and call centre tools.”

For someone to receive a call, they must have microphone permissions turned on and have opted in to receiving calls via Facebook or Messenger on the instant form.

Instant Forms reform

Instant Forms are designed to help marketers generate and qualify leads by asking the people it targets to fill in a form. Instant Forms can be used to collect information from people who are interested in your business or what you sell without asking them to leave Instagram.

To make things easier for them, several aspects of the form can be prefilled if the person has already provided their information to Meta.

To make Instant Forms a bit better, Meta is testing an ad format that lets users submit information to multiple businesses at once – which could help them get a better price for their inquiry. As mentioned up top, it’s also testing a feature that automates some of the creation process.

Meta

“Once a person fills out the form, they are given the option to share their contact information to other businesses, for example a nail salon, that may also be relevant. This means added convenience for people and for small businesses, more opportunities to be discovered by people who may be interested in your business.”

Instant Forms can be used to generate quality leads that marketers can follow up on – for example, they may decide to use the new call option!