Do You Need a Landing Page to Generate Leads on Facebook?

Facebook Lead Ads vs. Landing Pages: Which Is Better?

Customers are the bloodline of every striving business. They make everything tick — and without them, the business will have no sales. Zero sales translate to no profit, and if you've got no profit, then there's no business.

It all boils down to having a community of loyal paying customers. Speaking of a community of loyal paying customers, you can find them on Facebook — and one way of converting them is by running ad campaigns.

But the big question is — do you need a landing page to generate leads on Facebook?

Simply put, Facebook Lead Ads vs. Landing Pages: Which Is Better? Well, there's no clear-cut answer to this — it all depends on what you're looking for.

In this guide, you'd discover the various ways of generating leads using Facebook Ads, and also narrow down the right channel that's the best fit for your business.

While running high converting ads on Facebook, you've got the option of generating leads using your website, Landing Pages, Facebook Lead Ads, or Messenger apps like Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct messages, and Whatsapp.

Before diving into the comparison of various channels for generating leads, you've got to get a good grasp of each channel. After that, the various ways of generating leads on Facebook will be compared using metrics like tracking, conversion rate, lead quality, cost of development, and lots more.

Let's get into it.

Website

A website is a set of similar web pages that are identified by a single domain. Ideally, a website is owned by an individual or an organization. Furthermore, the web pages are interlinked under a single domain name. For instance, 0penny is dedicated to helping businesses run profitable Facebook campaigns — and the website (https://0penny.com) is pretty much focused on that.

To build a website, you'd need a domain name, web hosting, and other things like plugins and themes. Alternatively, you can opt to hire a team of web developers.

Landing Pages

A landing page is a dedicated page where target customers land from an external source like Facebook, or emails. It's highly targeted and focused on helping the customer take action.

You can use landing page builders like Unbounce, Clickfunnels, Leadpages or hire developers as well just like you would do it with a website.

Facebook Lead Ads

These are pre-populated forms with your target audience's Facebook contact information. It helps your target audience to easily tap on your ad, and provide their information on the form that pops up. With a few taps, you'd get the information you need, and generate qualified leads for your business.

Messenger Apps (Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct Messages, and WhatsApp)

Messenger apps like Facebook messenger and WhatsApp are instant messaging apps used for sending messages and exchanging photos, stickers, videos, files, audio, and also interacting with bots.

 Moving on, here's how the various lead-generating channels perform when compared using metrics like tracking, conversion rate, lead quality, cost of development, and more.

Tracking

When it comes to tracking, you can easily track your leads using websites and landing pages — but these channels are limited. Yes, the tracking features here are limited, and you may end up not getting robust reporting when it comes to your leads, and how they are generated.

However, things are quite different when it comes to tracking using Facebook Lead Ads. Since everything is done on the Facebook platform, and there's no need to move your leads to a third-party platform before collecting their information, tracking is accurate, and you get detailed reporting of everything about your leads.

Conversion rate

The ultimate aim of running a Facebook campaign is to have great conversions. Unfortunately, the conversion rate differs depending on the channel you're using. During this campaign, the team at 0penny generated local leads for a dentist in Delaware. 

Here are some interesting things that were revealed in generating leads using two strategies — website traffic ads and Facebook messenger leads.

With the website traffic ads, the leads were warm even before the client reached out to them — they had learned everything they needed to know about the company. On the flip side, the strategy cost more than the second strategy. And following up with the leads was somewhat difficult.

The Facebook Messenger Leads were not warm when they were contacted — but the strategy was cheaper than the previous one, and following up with these leads was somewhat easy. Furthermore, the back and forth communication between the client and customers was fast and efficient. Why? Because people are more likely to reply to their Facebook messenger.

When it comes to conversion rate, you'll most likely experience excellent conversion when using Facebook messenger, Instagram direct message, and WhatsApp. Also, the conversion rate is great with Facebook lead ads, but much cannot be said about website and landing page conversion.

Landing page conversion is good but is much less compared to the Messenger and Facebook lead ads conversion.

Lead quality

People who land on your landing page must be highly interested in your product or service offering. Let's face it, before visiting your landing page, potential customers must have seen your ad on their Facebook feed and clicked on it. Next, they would be redirected to an entirely different platform where they get to know more about your product (or services). 

Since landing pages are built on third-party platforms, only customers who have high interest in your offering will move from Facebook to an entirely different platform — and they are high-quality leads.

Furthermore, landing pages are dedicated to selling a specific product or service offering — and when these leads are converted, they pretty much everything they need to know about your product. Turning these leads into repeat customers would be a breeze — and that's high lead quality!

The story is quite different when it comes to Facebook lead ads and messenger. Here, there is no dedicated page to thoroughly explain your product or service offering — and most leads you generate using these channels have minimal interest.

Yes, they're cold leads — and you'd have to do the hard work to get them warm.

Overall, the lead quality here is good — but not as good as the leads generated using landing pages.

UI/UX Familiarity

Facebook Messenger, Instagram direct message, and WhatsApp are some of the most used apps on the planet, and everyone knows their ways around them. Therefore, you're pretty much sure of excellent user experience when it comes to these platforms.

Since your customers already know the ins and outs of messenger apps, you won't lose sweat when it comes to user experience. But that's not to say that other lead-generating channels have a poor user experience.

Far from it!

Facebook lead ads come with a great user experience. Except your customers have been living under the rock over the last two decades, they probably know all there is to know about Facebook — and since Facebook lead ads are found on the platform coupled with the autofill feature, filling out their information won't be a great deal — and they get to easily follow up right there on Facebook.

The user experience of landing pages and websites is entirely dependent on your team of web builders. If they do a good job, then you're sure of getting the most from the platform. But if they do a bad job, then you're to blame when your customers have a poor experience.

All in all, Meta Platforms, Inc. has done a great job in ensuring an excellent user experience on Facebook messenger. And Facebook Lead ads have a great user experience as well. However, the same cannot be said for the quality of experience customers will have on landing pages and websites — that's entirely up to the business owners.

Cost of development

There are lots of factors that come to play when building a website. You'd have to deal with the issues of hiring top-notch website developers, getting domain names and hosting, buying good plugins and themes, and also handling the extra logistics that come to play. All these things are very expensive — and you'd got to shell out large bucks.

Building a landing page is expensive as well. But when it comes to Facebook lead ads — it cost nothing!

Yes, it cost zero dollars to build Facebook lead ads. Everything you need is already provided for you. All you need to do is click and drop, add images, and other necessary items and start running your campaign. Well, you'd have to spend some cash — but that's the budget you've set aside for running your Facebook campaign.

When it comes to the exact cost of building a Facebook lead ad, you'd spend nothing.

Yes, nothing — and that's all there is to it.

Customization

How you customize your website and landing pages is entirely dependent on your team of web building. There is no limitation when it comes to that. If you've got the right team with the right tools, you're pretty much free to customize your website(s) and landing page(s) just the way you like it.

Yes, there's great flexibility and freedom to build and customize everything from scratch — but the same cannot be said for Facebook lead ads.

There is a degree of customization allowed in Facebook lead ads, but the flexibility is very limited. There are things you cannot change — things like the theme of the page, and other major changes that can be done on a landing page or website.

There is a degree of customization allowed in Facebook lead ads — but it's very limited. When it comes to Facebook Messenger, Instagram direct message, and WhatsApp, there are extensive options available for you.

Auto-fill details

Since Facebook lead ads are built on the Facebook platform, and your customers pretty much have a profile on the platform, auto-fill details are pretty much in this channel of lead generation.

Messengers and WhatsApp also come with the option of auto-fill details, but the case is entirely different with websites and landing pages.

There are no options for auto-fills while using websites and landing pages — your customers have to manually provide their details.

Follow-up

When it comes to follow-up, everything is done within the platform for business owners who opt for messengers and WhatsApp. But for Facebook lead ads, landing pages, and websites, you'd need additional resources like email marketing tools.

Conclusion

As a business owner, your ultimate goal is to build brand awareness and generate leads for your business. When it comes to generating leads, landing pages are important — but you don't need one if you're generating leads on Facebook.

On the flip side, if you have a team of copywriters, marketers, developers, and conversion specialists, then opting for landing pages is a good choice — after all, you've got the resources and technical know-how to build and manage them.

However, if you're limited in terms of resources and technical know-how, you're better off using Messaging apps — and you're sure of generating good results.

Furthermore, ad budget shouldn't be an issue when it comes to generating results. There are cases where businesses on a tight budget recorded massive results by following a simple rule.

If you're still in doubt, reach out to the team at 0penny and let them take it up from there.