Social lead ads vs landing pages 2021

Social media lead ads are so simple. When the ad appears in a user’s feed, they fill in their contact information without ever leaving the platform. In fact, in most cases, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., pre-populate the lead forms with user data making the barrier to submission as low as possible. The user effectively just has to click on the ad and hit submit without having to type a single thing.

In contrast, with Landing Pages, you have to go to a separate website where load times, intimidating forms, and distractions potentially take you off course from providing your contact info.

These days our lives are becoming more and more digital by the year. Social networks are leading the charge in how businesses interact with their customers and optimizing how you do this has never been more important.

You can implement two ways so users can take an action on your page, one is the lead gen form and the other is a landing page.

For this post, you will discover what lead gen forms and landing pages are. Plus, what the benefits of both are and which of the two is better for you. Let’s start out with some definitions.

What are Lead Gen Forms?

Lead generation forms are forms that are usually shown on social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn. They are used to capture information like the names and emails of potential customers.

Things such as contact forms, registration forms, and newsletter signup forms are all common lead gen forms types that you will see frequently on social networks.

What are Landing Pages?

Landing pages are entirely separate web pages that are made specifically for campaigns such as advertising or marketing. These are where visitors are taken to after they follow a link in on an ad on a social media page like Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Unlike regular web pages, landing pages are produced for a certain focus, most of the time it involves a call-to-action of sorts. Normal web pages often have several goals in mind and want the user to explore the whole page.

Why You Should Use a Lead Gen Form

For mobile users, lead gen forms are much more applicable. They don’t require them to load up a completely new page to get to the call-to-action.

Loading new web pages on mobile devices in particular can take a while and if it is not a page that’s very mobile-friendly, users may just back out due to long wait times.

On the other hand, lead gen forms do not force the user away from the site that they were browsing already. Most people will click off new websites almost instinctively if they click on something that takes them away from their current site.

Lead gen forms solve this problem by keeping the user on the page they were already on. Essentially, when they click on something, it just comes up as some kind of form to fill out and the better optimized this for is, the more users will be willing to fill them out.

Plus, for most lead gen forms, they import information from the users social media profile. So basic information that is already on their profile can get filled in automatically and make less steps for the user.

This is certainly the more streamlined process of getting users to take action on social media sites. Lead gen forms are much more commonly used in the current times and people have grown used to them at this point, making them all the more reliable.

Why You Should Use a Landing Page

For the most part, landing pages are the lesser of the two options. They often have longer load times, require more clicks, and need more user given information. However, landing pages do have some benefit and some businesses still use them.

If the user is the kind of person that is willing to take the time and wait for landing pages to boot up, you will almost certainly get more information out of them and these users will be much more willing to work with you for better quality information.

Landing pages also have a lot of ways you can format them as well. Lead gen forms are fairly versatile as well but a landing page is, of course, a whole separate web page.

You can put whatever you like on a landing page and not have to worry about the social media platform you are running a lead gen form on interfering with certain aspects of your call-to-action you want noticed.

Which to Choose? Landing Pages or Lead Gen Forms

You will almost certainly see more users fill out lead gen forms. They are trustworthy and they pretty much always require less information to complete. The user is hardly given a reason to click off it other than they simply don’t want to fill it out at all.

Lead gen forms work great on both desktop and mobile while landing pages are only really usable on desktop devices. It takes a lot more effort to make them operate well on mobile.

Those that are willing to give you more information on landing pages are few and far between and while they can be useful, they will come by very infrequently.

Some companies will employ both strategies and tend to keep the lead gen forms geared towards their mobile users while their landing pages stick towards desktop users. However, this is becoming more and more outdated as lead gen forms are also well formatted for desktop.

In the end, landing pages have become a relic of the past in terms of how to get your users to take action. Especially when it comes to social media, very seldom will you see a user want to go off Facebook just to fill out a CTA form.
Conclusion

You want to encourage potential customers to take action and fill out information in the most simple, streamlined way possible. This way is best done through social media and with lead gen forms.

They have become increasingly popular and are mostly considered as the best way to get users to click on calls-to-action and fill out the information that is always valuable to your company.

Of course, it is up to you to consider both of these options and figure out which one will help your business the most. Both have their merit but, to put it frankly, one simply works better than the other in the current times. Lead gen forms are best used for the ever growing population on social networks.