Why Your Cost Per Lead From Facebook Ads Is Too Expensive - Part 1

When running any paid marketing one of the most critical metrics you need to keep an eye on is cost per lead.

This metric can literally make or break your business.

A low cost per lead allows you to finance many more leads allowing you to generate more paying customers and clients, and a strong ROI.

A high cost per lead of course does the opposite.

When it comes to what classes as a high or low cost per lead, it’s largely subjective.

Depending how good you are at converting leads into money, you will have different views on what is low and what is a high CPL.

I have clients who are happy with a CPL of ￡10 or more. Others prefer a CPL of closer to ￡5 or less.

Whilst this article is all about lowering your CPL, there are other metrics that are critical to your success with FB Ads and paid ads in general.

In particular, quality and quantity. Combined with CPL, this forms the triad of most important metrics you need to be all over.

Your ultimate goal with FB Ads is not just a low CPL. You also want high quality, and high quantity. I.e.

• Leads that are cheap…
• but are also the perfect target audience for you…
• AND are in large numbers. I’m talking dozens, hundreds, thousands. Not a handful.

That is what my business, Impactful Marketing, does for all of our clients using Facebook Ads.

And it’s why I am best place to advise you on the precise reasons your CPL is high and how you can turn that around fast.

So without further ado, I invite you to dive into part 1 of the reasons why your CPL with FB Ads is too high…

Reason 1: You are not utilising Facebook Lead Forms

In 2020, Facebook brought out a new form of data capture for your ads: Lead Forms.

These essentially allow you to run ads to a landing page and form that FB themselves host, instead of directing people outside of the platform to your externally hosted landing page or webpage.

At first, they were not anything special. But in 2021 updates massively improved Lead Forms, allowing them to be a source of cheap leads.

Just how cheap?

50% cheaper if not more!

Much cheaper than running identical ads to an externally hosted landing page or webpage, to the exact same target audience.

Seriously. We’ve tested it countless times for our clients ads, and our own.

The only change we made was switching out a landing page/webpage with a lead form. That’s it.

The same ad copy – ad image – ad audience – ad offer – call to action.

By not using lead forms, your CPL is always going to be so much higher than it could be.

And this one reason alone is keeping your CPL up to 50% higher than it could be.

In perspective, you could get twice as many leads for your same cost. Just imagine that!

Reason 2: You are not taking steps to counter the iOS changes

iOS. The bane of paid ads and traffic.

The updates introduced in 2021 had a huge impact on every single advertiser of paid traffic.

The result? Much higher CPLs.

As you probably already know, the iOS updates significantly reduced the amount of people you and I could advertise to via FB Ads (and other platforms).

Combine this with the fact that we could no longer rely upon the metrics and data FB Ads was reporting, and CPL’s were easily doubling or even tripling in some cases.

For those advertisers in the know, they were able to counter the iOS changes fairly fast and maintain their original CPL. Sure, it wasn’t easy – it was a tough few weeks. But for our clients now it’s as if the iOS changes never happened. The CPL has restored to how it was, and in some cases even gotten lower.

If your CPL is higher, the chances are you haven’t taken the steps necessary to counter the iOS changes.

You’ve been unable to make up for the smaller audience pools you can advertise to.

You’ve not discovered a work around for the metric reporting, so you’re making decisions blind to what the exact results you are receiving from your ads.

Reason 3: You are not targeting precisely enough

One of the reasons I love FB Ads over any other paid traffic source is the sheer number of people on the platform. There is quite literally BILLIONS of daily active users on Facebook. A huge chunk of the population of the planet.

The problem is, not everybody will be interested in your business, your ads, what you have to say and offer. That’s just the brutal reality.

Which is why I also love all of the different targeting options that Facebook Ads gives us.

These options, when used correctly, allow advertisers to precisely and accurately target their ads to only those who would be most interested.

This then ensures your CPL is kept as low as possible, because you’re not burning money running ads to the wrong people.

I just love all of the different targeting options available. However they’re not always obvious to advertisers. They can be confusing, and many options go unnoticed.

If your CPL is higher than you would like, you are probably not targeting your ads precisely enough. You are probably unaware of all of the options and tools at your disposal to target your target audience.

You are potentially spending (burning) hundreds of pounds/dollars, or even more running ads to people who would NEVER be interested. What a waste.

Those are 3 of the main reasons why your CPL from FB Ads is too high.

But there’s more, and in the next edition of Impactful Facebook Ads I'll reveal all!

For now, process the 3 reasons in todays article and create an action plan of the changes you need to implement ASAP to get better CPLs.

Take care,

Dan