Lead Generation Battle: Facebook vs LinkedIn Ads for Capturing Quality Leads

Both Facebook and LinkedIn are great platforms for generating leads for your business.

They both have built-in lead forms which make it easy to capture potential customer’s details. 

You don’t even need a website to do it.

(Though it’s probably a good idea to have one regardless). 

They also have objectives you can select to optimise your campaigns around generating the highest number of leads possible.

The big question is, well which do you choose?

Both have pros and cons, as we’ll explore below, so it’s largely up to you to decide.

We’re here to make that decision easier by giving you all the facts. 

Not sure if you should be targeting leads or sales? Check out this article.

What Are Leads? 

Before we start, let’s get some terminology out of the way.

Leads are prospective customers whose details you capture so that you can contact them through your other sales channels. 

In the “old days” we’d generate leads by cold calling people to determine their interest, but the industry has moved towards having an inbound approach where we put out advertising and wait for the leads to contact us. 

For information on Facebook lead ads see this page, and for LinkedIn lead ads see this page. 

What is Lead Quality? 

Lead quality refers to how likely a potential lead is to become a paying customer (or conversion). 

It’s a very important metric because each additional lead we generate costs us money whether it becomes a sale or not.

Creating 100 low-quality leads that ultimately result in 10 sales will generally be more expensive than creating 20 high-quality leads of which 10 become sales. 

In an ideal world, you want as many high quality leads for the lowest CPL (cost per lead) possible. 

Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook lead ads are your generally your best bet for products or services with a widespread appeal that are relatively inexpensive. 

They let you leverage Facebook’s enormous user base of 2.7 billion monthly users to reach ten times more people than on LinkedIn.

This in itself has pros and cons. 

If you’re trying to reach a huge audience, and you know most of them are likely to convert, it’s an amazing tool for generating huge numbers of leads at a low CPL. 

The main drawback is that we’ve found the quality of leads can be significantly worse than LinkedIn, especially for more niche products and services. 

This makes it better suited to generating B2C (business to consumer) leads because the lead quality is often less important than generating a lot of leads. 

Generally, it’s best suited to industries that operate with lower margins but higher transaction volumes. 

If you’re looking for sheer numbers of leads, look no further than Facebook Lead Ads. 

Facebook Lead Ads Pros

• Best for B2C leads.     
• Massive reach allows you to generate many leads. 
• Lower CPL on average. 

Facebook Lead Ads Cons 

• Leads will generally be of a lower quality than LinkedIn.
• Less suited for niche and B2B products or services. 

LinkedIn Lead Ads

LinkedIn lead ads are by far the best for B2B and more niche products and services. 

Despite having a significantly smaller reach of only 260 million monthly users, LinkedIn is a great tool for generating high-quality leads because of the additional plethora of information you can both capture and target on their platform. 

Because it’s a professional networking tool first and foremost, users are encouraged to have up to date information about their job titles, professional interests and seniority levels.

This is amazing for B2B businesses because it enables you to target the exact decision-maker in the businesses you’re trying to sell to using a combination of their job titles and the size of the companies you’re looking for. 

As many as 59% of B2B marketers in one study reported LinkedIn as the best platform for generating sales. 

It’s less ideal for the B2C market because of the types of content people go to the platform to engage with. 

People generally are looking for things that will either allow them to connect better with their network, or further their career/knowledge in some way. 

It’s harder to sell in this context, but some advanced strategies can still incorporate LinkedIn Marketing. 

LinkedIn ads are also notably more expensive than Facebook ads to run. 

Generally, it’s best suited for B2B businesses with high margins and lower transaction volumes, where lead quality is more important than quantity. 

If you’re looking for high-quality B2B leads, use Linkedin lead ads. 

LinkedIn Lead Ads Pros

• Best for B2B (business to business) leads.
• Leads will generally be very high quality. 
• Easily reach business decision-makers.                                                                                  

LinkedIn Lead Ads Cons 

• Higher CPL on average. 
• Worse for generating a high volume of leads. 

Conclusion

Facebook lead ads serve as a great platform for generating a large number of leads, where LinkedIn lead ads generate fewer but higher quality leads.

Generally speaking, you want to use Facebook lead ads for B2C applications and LinkedIn lead ads for B2B applications, though there are some industries where this is not the case. 

Be sure to choose the right platform for your specific business, and continually monitor the quality and quantity of leads you’re generating to make sure they meet your needs. 

Looking to use LinkedIn to boost your leads generation?

Check out our ultimate guide to LinkedIn Ad specs for all you need to know when designing your ads. 

This article was brought to you by Syte. We’re e-commerce digital marketing specialists obsessed with driving up your bottom line. If you’d like to get in touch with us, feel free to reach out with the form below.