Facebook Lead Gen Forms Reimagination

Problem
The Business Growth team identified an opportunity to increase revenue by improving lead generation performance for small and medium-sized businesses on Facebook. Prior research showed that business owners often stopped using Lead Ads because they perceived low ROI. Existing studies also revealed significant user drop-off during form completion, suggesting that people were being asked to share information before sufficient trust had been established.

Context
As the lead researcher supporting Facebook Business growth initiatives, I was tasked with understanding how businesses and consumers wanted to interact throughout the lead generation journey and identifying opportunities to reduce friction in the experience. Because Facebook serves businesses globally, it was critical to understand whether preferences and behaviors varied across markets before making product decisions at scale.

Methodology
I began with a review of existing research and behavioral data to identify known barriers and knowledge gaps. Building on those findings, I designed and conducted a series of in-depth interviews with both consumers and small business owners across the United States, Brazil, and India.

The research focused on:
~Understanding expectations around business-to-consumer communication
~Evaluating alternative lead generation workflows and design concepts
~Identifying trust barriers that caused users to abandon forms
~Exploring market-specific preferences for contact methods and information sharing
~Uncovering unmet needs among small business owners using Facebook to drive growth

By triangulating insights across markets, I was able to distinguish universal friction points from region-specific behaviors that required localized solutions.

Impact
The research revealed meaningful differences in consumers' willingness to share personal information across markets. We found that users in the United States were comfortable providing different types of contact information than users in Brazil and India. We also uncovered significant differences in communication preferences, particularly around the use of WhatsApp versus Facebook Messenger as follow-up channels.

I translated these findings into a set of experience recommendations and partnered closely with Design and Engineering to optimize the lead generation flow. The resulting changes reduced lead form abandonment by as much as 60%, improved activation for small business advertisers, and supported broader revenue growth objectives for the business.

Beyond improving a single feature, the research helped shift the team's understanding of how trust, communication preferences, and cultural context influence conversion behavior throughout the acquisition funnel.