MBA1595 Q&A Wednesday: How do I lower my FB ads cost per lead?
2 Feb 2026 · 13 min
Omar Zenhom answers how to lower Facebook ad costs per lead. He breaks down four levers: audience targeting with retargeting and lookalikes, ad copy, creative assets, and landing page design. Split-testing and simplifying squeeze pages improve conversions and reduce your cost per lead.
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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Because business never stops moving. That's why you can't stop improving. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episode, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar MBA Net. Today's question is from Juan and Juan asks how do I lower my Facebook ads cost per lead? I've been running Facebook ads myself for the last six months and my cost per lead has not really improved. In fact, sometimes it goes up. What are some things I can do to lower my cost per lead so I can make Facebook ads worth my while? Love the show. Thank you so much for answering my question on Q and A Wednesday. You're welcome Juan. And by answering your question, we help a lot of people that have a similar question that have the same challenge in their own business. Facebook ads are definitely a great place to grow your business and we have found that they really, really work. Especially if you're trying to get leads at a low cost because there's such a large audience out on Facebook. Now remember, when you're running Facebook ads, so to speak, you're also running Instagram ads. Facebook owns Instagram. You can run Instagram ads as well. But if your cost per conversion to get A lead is not making financial sense, then it's not going to be worth you reinvesting in Facebook marketing. Let's say, for example, you sell a product that's $200 and your cost per lead is $10 and your conversion from lead to customer is 20%. That means if you get 10 leads, you get two customers, that's $400 in revenue and it cost you a hundred dollars, right? So you are profitable, really profitable. But if your cost per lead is not $10, let's say it's $50, then you're spending $500 for 10 leads and you're coming up $100 short. Negative, you're not profitable with those two sales, right? So lowering the cost per lead really can maximize your profitability and make reinvesting in ads really a simple decision. Hey, this thing pumps out money, right? I invest a hundred dollars and I get $400. It's a no brainer. But if it's upside down, so to speak, it's not going to be encouraging and it's not going to be worth you investing again. So let's talk about how you can lower that cost per lead so that you can continue to invest in Facebook marketing and grow your business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.
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Let's jump right into Juan's question. How do you lower your cost per lead in Facebook ads? Now again, when we say Facebook ads, we're also including Instagram ads, same elements owned by Facebook. So when you're running Facebook ads, you can also run Instagram ads. Now, if you're running your own ads, you can use Facebook's ad manager or business manager, it's also called, and you can create the campaigns yourself. Another tool that we've recommended on the show a billion times is adespresso. This actually is a little easier. The interface is a little easier. If you're not like an ultimate expert at Facebook ads, then using the actual Facebook ads manager. Having said that, I have to say, over the years, Facebook's interface has gotten better. It's actually a little bit more user friendly than it used to be. So if you don't want to use adespresso, that's totally fine. You could still use the Facebook ad manager to run your Facebook and Instagram ads. The only reason why I mention adespresso is because it allows you to split, test and run many different variants of your ads and go with what works best. It just integrates with your Facebook account and you're ready to rock and roll. Now, regardless of what you use, Facebook ads really perform based on four factors. Okay, These are the four levers you can pull to lower your cost per acquisition or cost per lead or whatever you're going for. Right? So let's talk about what those four levers are. What are the four factors that we can really test and try and manipulate so we can lower that price? The first factor is the audience. The audience you're gonna be showing this ad to. Facebook allows you to do a lot of different things when it comes to audience. And it's the most kind of sophisticated part of Facebook. You can actually target certain people based on demographics, age, where they're based, their interests, all that kind of stuff. You can also do what's called a lookalike audience based on a lot of things. Like you can upload your email list and it can find people that are similar to those on that email list. You can also do what's called retargeting an audience that's based on those who have visited your website before by adding a Facebook pixel. So you've ever been to a website and seen a Facebook ad right after you've been to that website? Well, that's called retargeting. That's an ad being shown because Facebook has identified, hey, that's an audience. We want to show this ad. And actually, it's not Facebook. It's actually the person who created the ad said, I want to show people have visited my website, this ad. So you could spend hours on crafting different audiences, and Facebook will give you some recommendations. It will tell you, you know, how many people you can potentially reach with this audience. In my personal experience, retargeting, you know, getting people that have been on your website is a great audience because they're already warm, they're familiar with you. And then two is lookalike audiences based on your current email address or email list, I should say. And two is your lookalike audience based on your current email list. So you can literally upload the email list you already have of people that you are on your email list, whether they're customers or non customers. And Facebook will find people that are similar to those people with the same interests. You know, click on the same kind of ads. It's very, very sophisticated. Okay. You can also exclude certain people that you want to exclude, whether it's demographics, if you don't serve a certain audience or age group, things like that. So that's the first lever, audience. The second lever is the actual ad copy, the words that you put on the ad. This is actually very, very powerful. And this is why you should definitely not only roll with one copy, you should try to split, test copy. And Facebook allows you to do that to give, you know, four or five or six different sets a copy for the description, for the title, for all that kind of stuff. And then they will run different variants, different scenarios to see which copy converts best. So the copy you use is part of the conversion, part of making sure that you're getting the right people that will actually opt into whatever you're asking them to opt into to get the lead. The third lever is the image or the video you're gonna be using on the ad. This is probably the one thing a lot of people will take for granted. Images are really important on social media. What people see is really processed really quickly as they're scrolling, and if it catches their eye, they're gonna stop and they're gonna read your copy, right? So this is really important. So if you get the audience right and you're showing it to the right person and they catch the ad because the image or the video really catches their eye, then you got them. Then the next step is they read the copy. And if they get the copy and the copy really resonates with them, then they'll click and go to the page that you're sending them to, that opt in page to grab that lead. Whether you're giving them a free course or a free downloadable, or you're asking them to join your next webinar. And that's the fourth lever, the landing page they're gonna go to when they click on your ad. This is critical. This is the last stop. This is where they convert. You've spent the money to show them the ad. They saw your ad, they read your ad, they clicked on your ad. The investment's been made. Right now you got to bring it home. They're on the page that you have sent them to. Now, I really, really endorse the fact that you should have a congruent landing page with your ad. The ad should have some sort of link, whether it's a logo, an image that is on the ad, and it's also on the page. It should be straightforward. It should show them exactly what to do. It's gotta be simple, and it's gotta be easy for them to opt in. If you're running ads, try to minimize the steps they have to do to sign up. So name, email address. Done. Those are the four key elements. The audience, the copy, the image of the ad, and then the landing page you're sending them to. This is really all you can play with to really lower the cost per acquisition. A lot of people think it's an ad problem. My first suggestion is to optimize the landing page first. Make sure there's nowhere for them to click other than to register or to sign up. So this is called a squeeze page. Doesn't allow them to go anywhere else. So they don't like, kind of bounce around and go to the blog and see other things. And then you lost them. Right. They got distracted. Make sure it's easy. One click and they can go ahead and give their name and email address and reset. Make sure there's congruency between the ad and the landing page. So my first suggestion to lower your costs is to optimize the page. The landing page are you sending them to. The second thing I would say is the audience, the audience that you're showing this ad to. Because if you're showing it to people that are just not interested, you're wasting your time and money. When I first started with Facebook ads, I was just using audiences, like going through categories, people that like certain topics. People are interested in business. And I really didn't use any custom audiences. I was just building audiences off Facebook's, you know, kind of categories or demographics. And it just didn't do well. It wasn't showing the ad to the right people. Once I started doing, you know, lookalike audiences that were based on my email list or retargeting where I was showing the ads to people that have been on my site before, that really ramped things up. So make sure you're doing that, tightening up your audience. Facebook gonna reward you. They actually like the fact that you're showing them an ad or showing the right people the ad, and they're gonna find more people that are like that person that clicked on that ad to show them the ad again. So this is what's great about Facebook ads, is that it actually gets better over time. So after the first day, second day, third day, your conversions will start to get better. If you have the right cause, it'll snowball. And the same thing goes if you have the wrong audience, it will snowball to higher cost per lead. So the trend should be going down and not up. The other thing you can do to really lower your cost per lead is to split, test or show different variants of ads. So again, different image with different copy, different image with different copy. Three or four different types of ads you want to show because Facebook's gonna run all of them. And then what you can do is you can only turn on or you can shut off the ones that are not working. So turn on the ones that working and shut off the ones that aren't. And this requires you to check into your ads, you know, on a, I would say a daily basis to see how it's going, which ones are converting at the lowest rate, shut them off and then set your budget for the ads at the campaign level. That way the money that you're spending on the ads, say, for example, you're saying, I want to spend $40 a day on this ad. The campaign will automatically push that money to the ads that are on and working.
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To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's question from Juan how to lower his cost per lead on Facebook ads. Play with the four levers I mentioned the audience, the copy, the image or media, the video, and the landing page you're sending them to. These are the four things you can play with. These are the four things that you can experiment with. And if you're going to invest in perfecting something, the two areas I really think have the most influence is the audience and the landing page itself. Of course they're all important, but these are the ones that are going to make the biggest difference. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 NBA Show. If you have a question you want to ask, I can answer it for you right here on Q and A Wednesday. Just email me@omar mba net. We got a ton of questions, but I'll make sure I'll get to yours for sure. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Spotify or Stitcher Radio, Apple Podcasts or Himalaya or we're on them all by hitting subscribe when the next episode is available, it's right on your device. Nothing to download. It's all set. You'll also get access to over 1500 business lessons in our archives. It's the only way to get access to all the lessons is by hitting subscribe. So do that right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this since COVID 19 has struck earlier this year, it's never been a better time to invest in digital marketing and paid ads. In recent years, prices have really dropped because a lot of big, big companies have pulled their marketing dollars off the shelf, have pulled their marketing dollars off these platforms, leaving a lot less competition for eyeballs. And you're able to actually get a really good return on investment. So I highly recommend if you haven't started using Facebook ads or Google Ads, go ahead and experiment with them now because it's a good time if you have some marketing dollars to spend. So because you can get a good return on investment even if you're only investing $1,000 a month or $500 a month even. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
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