How to get more leads from social media ads

Generating leads from social media ads is not as straightforward as you’d think. Despite the extensive reach of platforms like Facebook and Instagram, many campaigns fail to produce consistent, high-quality leads… and the issue isn’t the platform: it’s how you approach it. 

If you want to learn how to get more leads from social media ads, you’ve got to deepen the trust and motivation you create in the hearts and minds of your ideal prospect.

Here’s a 22-minute video where I explain this solution:

Social media leads vs. search leads

Before fixing the problem, we must understand the context.

• Search leads (e.g. from Google or Bing) are active. They’re intentionally looking for a solution. Their mindset is engaged, and they’re closer to taking action.
• Scroll leads, on the other hand, are passive. They’re on social media to unwind, not shop. Your ad interrupts them, which means you must work harder to capture attention, build trust, and inspire action.

This fundamental difference shapes everything. If you treat scroll leads like search leads, your campaign will struggle.

Why social media leads don’t convert like search leads do

Let’s break down what makes scroll-based lead generation different and more complex:

Factor	Search Leads	Scroll Leads
Mindset	Hunting	Relaxing
Motivation	High	Low
Trust in platform	Strong (Google = reliable)	Weak (Trust is declining)
Urgency	Immediate	Minimal
Friction	Lower	Higher

In Australia, and globally, trust in advertising is in decline. This “trust recession”, documented by Edelman and Roy Morgan, is magnified on social platforms due to the ease of creating low-quality ads.

As a result, scroll leads often don’t engage or convert because:

• They’re not aware they need your service yet
• They don’t trust your message
• They’re not motivated to act now

Mapping the market: The ‘Larger Market Formula‘

To understand the broader challenge, consider the Larger Market Formula:

• 3% – Ready to buy now
• 17% – Gathering information
• 20% – Problem aware but inactive
• 60% – Not problem aware

Search lead gen operates in the top 20% (buying now + researching). These are easier to convert.

Social lead gen hits the bottom 80%—the people unaware they have a problem, or only just becoming aware. This is a harder crowd to win over.

Even with smart targeting (like Meta’s Advantage+ algorithm), most of your audience is still outside the “ready to act” group.

Rethinking the funnel for social media lead generation

The classic online lead generation funnel model still applies, but your expectations must shift.

Funnel stage	Search Leads	Scroll Leads
Awareness	✅	✅
Consideration	✅	Requires effort
Decision	✅	Rare at first touch

Scroll leads begin in the awareness stage. Your role is to pull them down the funnel by:

• Increasing trust
• Increasing motivation

Get more leads from social media using the trust/motivation matrix

To convert more scroll leads, you must increase both trust and motivation. That’s where accelerators come in.

Offer accelerators: Increasing motivation

Offer accelerators push scroll leads to act sooner. Here are three key types:

1. Urgency Motivator

Create a reason to act now.

Example:

“The first five loan applications this month receive a $500 gift voucher.”

This creates time pressure and rewards action, without violating compliance rules.

2. Session Performance Guarantee

De-risk the first step.

Example:

“If we don’t give you three actionable strategies to improve your mortgage in your first session, we’ll send you a gift card.”

This shifts the prospect’s perception from risk to guaranteed value. Caveats apply—this works best when well-qualified leads receive genuinely useful consultations.

3. Service Performance Guarantee

Traditional performance promises still work.

Example:

“If we don’t deliver the result we promise, you’ll be compensated.”

These guarantees reduce perceived risk and increase confidence in your offer.

Authority accelerators: Building trust

Authority accelerators help you stand out without needing to change your business model. These are ideal for regulated industries like financial services, legal, or healthcare.

1. Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

Clarify why you’re different. It must be:

• Specific
• Outcome-oriented
• Not easily claimed by competitors

2. Signature System

Package your process with a name and structure.

Example:

“We use our HomeReady™ Pathway to get you the right mortgage, faster.”

This builds curiosity, suggests a proven method, and positions your business as distinct—even if the underlying service is similar.

3. Empathy Statements

Articulate the dream, enemy, and pain of your prospect.

• Dream: What do they really want? (e.g. “memories in the dream home”, not just “getting a loan”)
• Enemy: Who/what is in their way? (e.g. “the big bank that keeps saying no”)
• Pain: What is the cost of inaction? (e.g. “missing out on your kids growing up in the right environment”)

Done well, empathy creates a sense of connection that generic ads can’t replicate.

4. Differentiated Knowledge Posture

Move beyond generic content. Share insights, not just information.

Example:

Instead of “5 reasons to refinance”, share “Why refinancing in 2025 could leave you worse off without this clause.”

Use opinions, predictions, and unique explanations.

5. Proof Stacking

Bring all your credibility elements together.

• Reviews
• Testimonials
• Awards
• Certifications
• Case studies

Display these together in ads, landing pages, emails, and social posts—not scattered across platforms.

6. Consistent Nurturing Mechanism

Replace random campaigns with a content rhythm.

• Blog regularly
• Email weekly or fortnightly
• Post social content consistently
• Retarget site visitors with educational content

Your competitors are likely inconsistent. Just by showing up regularly, you can stand out.

Final thoughts

To generate more leads from social media ads:

• Stop expecting search-like results from scroll environments.
• Design your funnel around trust and motivation.
• Use offer accelerators to nudge action.
• Use authority accelerators to build credibility.

By adapting your strategy to fit the scroll environment, and not forcing the wrong tactics into it, you’ll produce stronger, more consistent lead generation results.

Video transcript

So how do you generate more leads from social media ads? It’s a great question. It’s a common question, and I’m going to unpack the answer in this session. It’s quite a detailed answer, and we actually need to zoom out a little bit to understand the root cause of not generating leads from a social media environment and also understanding the difference between search lead gen and scroll lead gen. So search lead gen is your traditional lead gen where you go to Google or Bing or a search engine, you type in a query to get the result you searching for the result that you’re after. Whereas scrolling Jen, it’s a completely different environment, different dynamic. We’re interrupting people who are not actively looking and fundamentally, and as I’ll explain, that’s what we need to understand. So as always, if you want to speed this video up to be gear icon or something on the bottom part of the player that lets you get through this faster, I realize you’re busy.

So if you want to speed me up, feel free to do that now. So in this session I’m going to answer these four questions. Number one, why don’t scroll or social leads convert as easily as search leads? Number two, what makes social media leg gen fundamentally different from inbound marketing or search marketing? What an effective social media lead gen funnel looks like? And yes, there is still space, there is still latitude to discuss a funnel in this scenario. I know it’s been done to death, but a funnel is still an effective thought model that we, even at the CEO and executive level, it’s very important to consider that when we analyze this problem. And then lastly, how do you actually get better results? How do you generate more leads from social media? And that’s by increasing trust and motivation and that’s sort of the core of the solution or the answer to this question.

So let’s dive right in. Number one, why don’t scroll or social media leads convert as easily as search leads. And what we’ve got to do here is consider the environment in which we are pulling these leads from. So in a search environment, and I’ve alluded to this already, search leads are already actively searching for a solution. They’re already searching obviously. And what that means is they’re in a different mindset as opposed to the scrolling environment where we are showing ads to people who aren’t searching. They’ve gone there to relax, to escape the real world, to go brain dead for a while. They’ve had a big day, get that dopamine hit from the stuff that we do and see on social media. So understanding the fundamentals of the difference between these two environments helps shape our response in changing the strategy for social media lead generation.

So some of these other points here. So a search lead is already motivated, whereas a scroll lead, their interest is very passive, there’s low urgency, they’re not actively, there’s no urgency around engaging you straight away. Search leads trust the platform. So when we go to Google, we know, or most of us know, there’s this general sort of accepted paradigm that when you search for something on Google, they’re going to give you a decent result that you can trust. And Google works really hard to maintain that, to achieve that goal, to become the trusted source of this part of the research or decision making process. Whereas on social media, trust is a little more scarce and people natively, I mean look, trust is in Australia right now. Trust is generally at a bit of an all time low. We’re in what’s called the trust recession. And this is a thing you can Google. It’s been researched by Edelman, Roy Morgan I think as well, where trust, consumer trust is low. This is amplified on social media I think because of the low barrier entry to producing ads to the fact that ads can look, they don’t look like ads, ugly ads they’re called.

And other reasons as well that I won’t go into now. So generating leads on social in a scroll environment, we’ve got to factor this general sort of distrust that people have in the environment and the process. And then at the bottom here on the search lead, there’s lower friction. Obviously people they’ve searched, they’ve gone to a landing page, they’ve, they like what they’ve liked, what they’ve seen on the landing page to the point where they’re ready to inquire. So a lead that comes through search is already so further down or through this internal decision making process of liking and trusting no like trust. Whereas on social media, that’s just not there naturally. It’s just not there. Which is a good segue into the question of what makes social media legion fundamentally different. It’s the passive state versus the hunting mindset. And the diagram here, this is another good way to visualize it.

This diagram is your total addressable market. And you might recognize the ratios here. This is called the larger market formula. And what this suggests is that at any given time, 3% of your total addressable market and your total addressable market is the cohort of potential people that could work with you or could buy from you or engage you. 3% are ready to buy now. So they’re your hyperresponsive buyers. 70% are gathering information. So they’re problem aware, they’re a bit more advanced than being problem aware. They’re problem aware and they’re researching solution. 20% are just problem aware. So they haven’t started the process yet and then 60% are not problem aware. Maybe they will be one day, but they’re not right now. Generally this model is good for working out a strategy based on where people are in their journey. And search is at the top of this model.

So those that are buying now and those that are gathering information is search. That’s the dynamic for search, lead gen. And then scroll is people who are mostly problem aware, probably not problem aware, and maybe there are some who are gathering information and are ready to buy now, but we’ve got to assume that scroll and there’s more work to be done to get them to ascend into gathering info or buying. Now a side note is that the Facebook advantage plus targeting algorithm algorithm is getting pretty good now at detecting people who are actually, where’s my mouse? Here it is detecting people who are gathering info about solving a problem or creating an outcome that you provide or even buying now. So the new algo advantage plus is good at this, but nature of the ratio and the size of these ratios is that mostly the huge, the wide audience that we can target on Facebook predominantly going to be in the bottom half of this diagram.

Another good way to look at this is with our traditional funnel. And the question here is what does an effective social media legion funnel look like? Now, comparing the two scroll versus search or scroll, they’re at the top in the awareness quadrant or section, whereas search, they’re further down in consideration or decision. What this means is that we’ve got to apply effort and pressure in a way that moves a social media scroll prospect down the funnel. And there are two ways in which we do that. There’s increasing trust and increasing motivation, and these two kernels core things that somebody has to feel in their heart and in their mind is the foundation of the strategy that I will walk you through. And that’s in a two by two matrix, which we can see here now. So the question is how do I increase trust and motivation so I generate more leads from social media and what we can do is create or place people in two by two matrix based on whether they feel high or low motivation and high or low trust.

Now, before we get to our solution, which is our accelerators here, let’s place the two. So a search lead probably is high motivation and low trust at the very start of their journey. So they’re motivated to solve a problem, they’ve searched for a solution, they’ve found you, they’ve read your landing page to the point where they’re comfortable enough to inquire with you. So trust is probably low. And as they talk to you and as you start your sales process, their trust will increase naturally as you go through your sales process or whatever path to purchase somebody has to follow to become a customer or a client. Now social media leads or scroll naturally are going to be low motivation and low trust because of where they are within. Back to the top here, they’re problem aware or not, or not problem aware. Generally they’re in the awareness stage, which means that naturally we don’t start with high trust or high motivation when we are immediately introduced to a problem that maybe we didn’t know that we have or a solution that we didn’t know we needed just yet. And so they’re going to need time and these things here that I’ll walk through to help them ascend or migrate towards high motivation and high trust.

So with that in mind, how do we do this? There’s two fundamental strategies or sets of tactics that we implement here and we call these offer accelerators and then authority accelerators. Now, an offer accelerator is designed to increase motivation and there are lots of different offer accelerators that help motivate a social media or a scroll lead. I’ve got three examples here and I’ll quickly introduce you or explain what these are just so you get a general feel for how that might apply to your situation. Firstly, we have an urgency motivator. Now let’s zoom out and say that we are a mortgage broker and we are running ads on social media and of course, as we know, we are interrupting people in their environment where they’ve gone to escape the real world and we hit them with an offer that says, Hey, let’s have a chat.

Let’s talk about your current situation, where you are now and where you want to be. So obviously you want to buy a home or refinance your home. Where you want to be is you want to move into the home that you really love or you want to have a mortgage solution. That means that you’re not overpaying, that there’s some nice perks for your future growth, all that sort of stuff. Now that sort of offer in that sort of industry, it’s hard to differentiate that it’s hard to do something because of compliance and the way the industry works and lots of other reasons. So we need a way to get people to move now and choose you. So an urgency motivator could be something like the first five people to inquire with us and apply for a loan with our mortgage braking firm. This month we’ll receive a $500 gift voucher.

Now, we won’t talk about the economics of how you fund that side note that comes out of your commission. They’re the first upfront commission, but that doesn’t really matter. This is designed to get people to say, oh, okay, great. Well, I better move now because I want that $500 reward. It’s limited to five. That’s where the urgency comes in. That can be repeated every month on an ongoing basis. So the campaign messaging is evergreen, but the urgency timeline is limited to that particular month or whatever you set that to be. Another offer accelerator is a session performance guarantee. And basically what we’re saying here is coming back to our mortgage broker example, if I can’t give you three great strategies that’s going to help you get the loan that you really want or save a certain amount of money per month, if I can’t give you those three strategies, I’ll give you a gift card or I’ll buy you a pizza or I’ll buy you something that you find valuable.

Now, there is a caveat to this sort of session performance guarantee. You have got to exclude tie kickers, so you can’t just accept anybody who’s not qualified to obviously apply for a loan. And you’ve also got to deliver a really impactful session with lots of good strategies. We won’t talk about that too much now, but when done well, this really nails it. This is a very effective strategy at attracting the right people, getting ’em to actually answer the phone because this changes their expectation of value. So instead of thinking, oh, it’s a risk talking to this broker because they might not be able to help me, that changes from I’m going to talk to this broker and either way, if they can help me, amazing, I’m going to get a great loan. But if they can’t, then I’m going to get a gift voucher. For example, like I said, there is a caveat.

You have to exclude people and you have got to deliver a great session. So don’t just go and dive right in and then contact me and complain because it’s not working for you. There are nuances to it, but fundamentally that’s what you’re doing here is you are guaranteeing their investment in their time to chat with you to start your sales process. And then lastly, we have a service performance guarantee. And this is a traditional guarantee where it says, look, if the solution that we provide you doesn’t provide the expected result that we say it will, we’ll compensate you in some way. So a classic guarantee. So those are offer accelerators, and as you can probably tell, they’re designed to increase motivation to get people to act sooner rather than later, reduce the risk that they feel that might be stopping them from engaging you and positioning you in a different place than your competitors.

And then finally, we have authority accelerators, and these are designed to build trust. They’re designed to, again, help you stand out in a creative marketplace. And these are particularly good in industries where you’re bound by compliance. You can’t naturally go and disrupt things because of how you do what you do or the way that the industry works. Classic professional services firms are a good example where if you’re a broker, you can’t go and do some wild new thing. If you’re an accountant, financial planner, a law firm, you can’t go and do wild new stuff to completely disrupt your industry. So you need to rely on these authority accelerators to help you build trust and differentiate your business without having to go and create that wild differentiation. So what are some of these accelerators? The first is a unique value proposition or a unique selling proposition.

You’ve probably heard of this. This is demonstrating how you provide unique value that your competitors cannot. I won’t talk too much about that now. I think you’ll be familiar with this. The next is a signature system, and I love this concept. I love the signature system because it allows you to drive a point of differentiation by explaining how your process is different instead of your business model. The beauty of it is that, and let’s go back to our mortgage broker analogy is that with a signature system, you create a name for your process, you assign sub methodologies, you create sub methodologies for your process in a way that people read your messaging and go, oh, okay, I mean, right, these guys are going to get me a home loan. But the way in which they do it is different. It sounds like it’s different, and it sounds like the value that they provide is slightly different based on their process.

So if you can solve a particular problem for a particular prospect type, create a certain solution for a particular prospect type, and then tie it back to your unique process as the differentiator, and also use that to create curiosity and weave that into your messaging where the labels that we apply your process to your process, people read and go, oh, that’s interesting. What is that? And then causes them to read more on your ad or either click through to a landing page or read an email or watch a blog post or whatever that might be that is going to set you apart in a way that your competitors simply cannot achieve because the name you’ve got for your signature system, the process that you’ve articulated is completely different and is not the same as what your competitors are doing. Anyway, I won’t dive into this too much now, but I love this because it lets a business who can’t naturally differentiate itself find a point of difference by articulating a different process instead of a business model.

Number three here is empathy statements. And this empathy is such an untapped and underutilized strategy that when you get this right, when you nail it, your marketing is light years ahead of your competitors. And there’s three ways in which we do this. Dream state, enemy state, and then pain state. So if you can articulate your prospect’s dream almost better than they can. Now in the case of a mortgage broker, the dream is not to get alone. The dream is not really to get a home, kind of the dream is to have those memories with your family. The dream is to start a hobby in your spare room or a business in your spare room, or have friends around and play in your pool and create memories that you have for the rest of your life. That’s the real dream that a mortgage broker is trying to help their clients get.

So if you can articulate your understanding of what your prospect’s dream is, the real thing that they really want, not just the product, not just the transaction that will set you is ahead. Next is the enemy. So if you can articulate what’s stopping your prospect from getting the outcome from getting the dream. So in this case of a mortgage broker, the enemy is the bank where the prospect might be thinking, oh yeah, the bloody bank didn’t give me the loan I wanted. So what do I do now? Or I’m worried that the bank will say no, what do I do? And then if you can articulate how you fight their enemy for them to the point where you can get them the result that will set you light years ahead. And then finally, the pain. So we all know about problem-based marketing, if you can articulate the pain that those problems create and demonstrate that you deeply understand those pains even better than your prospects can. So they read it and go, wow, yeah, that actually is the uncomfortableness that I’m feeling. That is the pain that I’m feeling. It’s like this person is reading a page out of my diary. That builds trust, that builds authority and sets you apart much further than your competitors.

Number four, here we have differentiated knowledge posture, and this is in the world of ai. Information is available anywhere. People can search, ask questions in a GPT model or even on Google now or perplexity or wherever, and get the information that they want, which means that classic blogging where you provide 10 reasons to do something or how to do X, Y, and Z, that sort of blogging is losing relevance because of the rise of ai. A good, effective, differentiated knowledge posture contains your opinions and your insights. This is the stuff that’s going to set you apart. If you can explain why you think something is happening or how you think it’s happening or a prediction or an insight into why something is happening that will set you apart as opposed to sharing content that is just like five reasons to do something.

Number five here is proof stacking. And this is where we take things like your reviews, testimonials, case studies, accreditations, awards, all that sort of stuff. And instead of being in lots of different fragmented splinted places, we stuck it all together in landing pages and ads and emails and blog posts and so forth. And then finally, and probably one of the most important parts is a consistent nurturing mechanism. This essentially sets up a rhythm where you consistently do all of this on a regular basis. So in digital marketing as a CEO or as an executive, you’re familiar with the concept of a marketing campaign. And marketing campaigns have been the core. They’re a core delivery vehicle for marketing messages and creating outcomes for decades. They’ve always been around. Whereas we need to change our mindset into a regular rhythm for blogging and emailing and sharing content on social media and showing up to our prospects as soon as they inquire. You’ve got to be consistent, and I’m mentioning this because your competitors probably aren’t doing this, so all you got to do is show up with stuff that you’ve planned and it will drive a competitive wedge. So I don’t think I have anything else to add. If we zoom back to our original problem, which is how do I generate more leads from social media? We want to increase motivation and increase trust using these three.