Have you considered how to use Facebook to generate more leads?
Facebook is the most popular social media platform among today’s parents and a great way to generate leads from interested families. From your Facebook Business Page to Facebook Messenger and Lead Ads, there are many options to promote your childcare business and capture new leads on Facebook. Plus, when you integrate Facebook with a Childcare Experience Platform, you can capture Facebook conversations and leads in one place and create automated emails and texts to follow-up on leads immediately. Discover how to boost enrollment by optimizing Facebook.
Facebook is often one of the first places families go to get information about your childcare business. In a 2021 survey by LineLeader by ChildcareCRM, 71% of owners and directors responded that they use Facebook to help grow their childcare businesses. There are more options than ever before to optimize your Facebook Business Page for efficient lead capture and streamlined communications.
So, what’s the difference between a Facebook Business Page, as opposed to a regular Facebook business profile? A Facebook Business Page serves to help people learn about your childcare business in terms of your core values and educational focus, health, and safety protocols during COVID-19, how you can be contacted, and where your centers are located. Interested families can contact your Facebook Business Page directly if there is an action button, while a Facebook business profile would first require the prospective parent to add the account as a ‘friend’ before allowing a conversation.
Your Facebook Business Page will have a menu on the left side that allows prospective families to view information such as an about page, photos and videos, events, reviews, and posts. Having a centralized Facebook Business Page that offers your most informative, credibility-growing information in one place helps promote your childcare business to interested families.
Share engaging information like updates about holiday festivities, new teachers and staff, and program start dates.
Add an action button directly on the top of your Facebook Business Page with a prompt for visitors to send you a private message through Facebook Messenger.
Choose to add an action button to Facebook advertisements, as well, to increase lead generation
Facebook Lead Ads are a paid-for service that further increases your visibility and how far your reach can go. You can specify who will see your Lead Ads based on factors such as age (Reminder: Millennial parents are your key demographic), geographical region, and interests. Since you can pick and choose who sees your Lead Ads, your business will only get pushed out to relevant families that are actively searching for care from a childcare provider within your local area.
In addition, Facebook Lead Ads allow you to easily source and capture prospective families by using an Instant Form on Facebook. You can simply collect personal contact information such as parent name, email address, and phone number from prospective families that engage with your ads. With the click of a button – strategically placed on your ad, the form captures contact information and automatically inputs it into your Childcare Experience Platform. The data can be tracked, used to communicate with families, and improve follow-up.
70% of Facebook users in the U.S. log into Facebook daily. With Lead Ads, your childcare business can reach a wider range of individuals, while still specifically targeting interested parents based on age and relevance.
Use Facebook targeting to narrow your audience to parents with young children
Tailor your Lead Ad language to fit the specific needs of your targeted families – make sure they feel attended to
Focus on one call-to-action button to lead with valuable, concise information
How often do you check Facebook Messenger?
Toggling between Facebook and several other tabs is time-consuming, plus messages get lost. It’s disjointed – there's no single place to see all conversations with a prospective family. Whether you’re regularly losing track of where leads are coming from or you feel like you’re constantly going back and forth with parents on Facebook Messenger just to collect basic contact information, it’s time to find a better solution.
Look for childcare experience platform software that integrates with Facebook Messenger. Doing so will allow you to view and respond to Facebook Messenger conversations from your childcare experience platform inbox or from the lead record itself, displayed just like text messages.
When a parent sends an inquiry or engages with your page, the message automatically goes to your LineLeader inbox and appears as a notification in your inbox along with other messages and communications from various sources. Easily respond to the message yourself and/or automate an immediate confirmation message so families remain engaged with your center. Plus, a Facebook Messenger integration can keep track of all communication and follow-ups with an audit trail to see which staff members are completing specific tasks.
Now that you’re generating leads from Facebook, you have to follow-up immediately. Two-thirds of consumers prefer to use messaging apps to connect with businesses. But if you’re not responding to these messages from parents within 30 minutes or less, your estimated conversion success will drop by 80% with each lead.
Remember – follow-up is a key part of engaging with prospective families, even on Facebook. In fact, businesses that have a response rate on Facebook Messenger above 90% and response times under 15 minutes can earn a “very responsive” badge. This is a great way to stand out from your competitors and encourage more inquiries from families.
Your staff is already busy enough, take follow-up off their plate with automation. Integrate with a childcare experience platform to automatically bring Facebook leads into a centralized system as an ‘action pending’ task. Look for childcare experience platform software that includes task management to allow the organization of all communication and staff duties for each new, incoming lead with automated texts and emails.
After implementing Facebook Lead Ads, Messenger integration, and following up consistently, it’s important to determine if Facebook is working as a lead generation channel for your childcare business. Without tracking, you don’t know if you should be spending more or less on your Facebook marketing strategy.
Tracking lead sources can help your childcare business identify which advertising platforms and online sources are providing the best ROI for your business. Then, you can adjust your strategy to improve marketing performance by only spending your budget on what’s truly working to increase enrollment.
Once you know where a family has heard about you, look for childcare experience platform software that can create personalized communications using automated email campaigns based on the source data. While Facebook has its own tracking feature, your childcare business will benefit from the robust, in-depth tracking features provided by a childcare experience platform. Whether families are coming from Facebook Messenger, Facebook Lead Ads, or somewhere else – you can personalize the enrollment experience with communication management tools and centralized lead data storage. Stay ahead of your competitors effortlessly and grow the number of prospective families that reach enrollment.
Using Facebook as a lead generation and communications tool is a great way to connect with today’s busy parents. Make sure you have an effective Facebook business page that uses Facebook Messenger to have real-time conversations with families. Generate more leads using Facebook Leads Ads. And integrate with childcare experience platform software to manage Facebook conversations, automate lead follow-up, and track Facebook lead performance more easily.
Schedule a demo to see how LineLeader works in real-time and discover how our integration with Facebook will help you increase conversion.
Check out our new Facebook Integrations. Integrate Facebook Messenger conversations into LineLeader. Automatically add families from Facebook Lead Ads directly into LineLeader for immediate, automated follow-up. Track Facebook as a lead source to measure performance. See how in the LineLeader Knowledgebase.